least funny python to make shit documentary not worth watching

[phantom_power]

Of course these nobs who go on about culture wars and cancel culture conveniently forget about right wingers trawling the Twitter timeline of anyone vaguely progressive to fuck them over. Like James Gunn who got sacked by Disney for some dumb jokes he made a decade previously. That is far more pernicious than some well-meaning dopes getting worked up about some old art they think might be problematic

[dissolute ocelot]

Of course these nobs who go on about culture wars and cancel culture conveniently forget about right wingers trawling the Twitter timeline of anyone vaguely progressive to fuck them over. Like James Gunn who got sacked by Disney for some dumb jokes he made a decade previously. That is far more pernicious than some well-meaning dopes getting worked up about some old art they think might be problematic

The right-wing press has always excelled at this sort of character assassination, whether for political reasons or for fun, with gay vicars exposed in the 80s and nude photos on the Daily Mail website today - and of course other sex scandals kept quiet in exchange for favours. Plus the constant hunt for lack of patriotism. The idea that the left is ruining people's lives is bullshit.

Anyway, I hope they let Cleese plug his new movie Clifford the Big Red Dog. It would be fun to learn what jokes the woke stazi wouldn't let him put in that film.

[phantom_power]

The right-wing press has always excelled at this sort of character assassination, whether for political reasons or for fun, with gay vicars exposed in the 80s and nude photos on the Daily Mail website today - and of course other sex scandals kept quiet in exchange for favours. Plus the constant hunt for lack of patriotism. The idea that the left is ruining people's lives is bullshit.

And of course that is what Glinner and his mob have been doing to that woman from that pub in Scotland, trawling her timeline for nude pictures and then tenuously linking it to her saying one of the things she did was "children's entertainer", as if that made fuck all difference to anything

[Weeping Prophet]

Of course these nobs who go on about culture wars and cancel culture conveniently forget about right wingers trawling the Twitter timeline of anyone vaguely progressive to fuck them over. Like James Gunn who got sacked by Disney for some dumb jokes he made a decade previously. That is far more pernicious than some well-meaning dopes getting worked up about some old art they think might be problematic

I'd go so far as to say cancel culture is primarily a right wing phenomena.

There's a very good episode of the You're Wrong About podcast that traces the history of it.

[Kankurette]

No sex scenes with people under 5'6 because short people are "minor coded" in fiction!

I will never understand how this became a thing. My mum is tiny, that doesn't make my dad a paedophile because he was almost a foot taller.

Is this the point people start blaming 'internet teen prudes' on "the asexuals" like over in one of the three million glinner threads?

If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it.

[pigamus]

There'll always be CaB

What if Barry falls down a well, is there even a contingency plan

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

No sex scenes with people under 5'6 because short people are "minor coded" in fiction!

OH GOD

he's not "minor coded", he's short and baby-faced because he also has a big loud voice and practices shouting, it's FUNNY

22 years old is a "minor" now, jesus christ

take me back to fucking Yahoo! Groups and attacks on fanfiction by homophobes who weren't real and were just made up by clout-chasers

[Kankurette]

Warning: contains lemons.

[jobotic]

I don't understand what is being discussed at this point in the thread.

Am I Cleese?

[idunnosomename]

What if Barry falls down a well, is there even a contingency plan

he'll dig his way out!!

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Warning: contains lemons.

I swear, I'm almost at the point where I'll write something just to piss the pearl-clutchers off. A "Do Not Interact" list of "problematic" authors in my main fandom was circulated on Tumblr a month ago and I was on it, even though I haven't written anything "problematic" in four years and it was supposed to be problematic. I'm very disappointed that being on the list didn't get me a bunch of flames. All too busy harassing other teenagers on Twitter I expect.

[Ferris]

There's already been a documentary of this ilk, called Can We Take A Joke? which I think is on UK Netflix. To save you the bother of watching it, this review is spot on.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/can-we-take-a-joke-2016

Sad to see Gilbert Gottfried appearing in this. His version of the Aristocrats is one of my favourites (especially the threat halfway through that if the audience don't sit still he will start again from the beginning "otherwise it won't make sense).

I don't think anyone minds things that are offensive in the main, as long as they are punching in the right direction. It's bizarre that people don't understand this, though cleese hasn't done anything counter cultural in nearly 50 years so maybe that's why he's fronting this.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

[Kankurette]

It ties in with what VGF was saying. Some teen who writes fanfic is an easy target, as are a lot of YA writers (and funny how a lot of the ones who get dogpiled happen to be women, LGBT, POC etc.) JKR with her millions doesn't have to worry about what being cancelled will do to her career, but a struggling writer who's on their first book and isn't well-known does.

I mean, I understand people getting angry about Holocaust romance (Jewish prisoner gets it on with hot Nazi camp guard and/or converts to Christianity and yes, this genre does exist) or crap like Save the Pearls, but then you have the 'ahhh you used the word 'stupid' and it is a BAD WORD so you must be PUNISHED' type of callouts. It's repulsive. One of the most extreme examples was some poor person who drew fanart of Rose Quartz from Steven Universe where she was thin, and got so much abuse they ended up in hospital after a suicide attempt.

Sad to see Gilbert Gottfried appearing in this. His version of the Aristocrats is one of my favourites (especially the threat halfway through that if the audience don't sit still he will start again from the beginning "otherwise it won't make sense).

I don't think anyone minds things that are offensive in the main, as long as they are punching in the right direction. It's bizarre that people don't understand this, though cleese hasn't done anything counter cultural in nearly 50 years so maybe that's why he's fronting this.

Hasn't Gottfried always been super reactionary?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

YA is a particularly grim example because everyone seems to know how bad it is, and how it influences decisions made in regular publishing, but the only people who seem to cover it are reactionaries. In a different time it would be the subject of concern by liberal journalists but people seem to be genuinely afraid of even calling attention to it.

Interesting that the creators of both Your Fav Is Problematic and This Is White Privilege now regret their blogs and the influence they've had.

[Kankurette]

Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle. I always hated YFIP. 'Problematic' meant anything from 'made a homophobic joke once' to 'raped a child'. By that logic, the lads from Space and Ian Watkins are equally problematic. As if the person behind that site was a fucking saint themselves. I don't even know what they were trying to achieve. Plenty of musicians I like are terrible people, I am aware of this. Not much I can do about that.

I also find a lot of the discourse about white privilege - and race in general - frustrating because it's purely through an American lens. Like when black Americans had a right go at Adele for wearing her hair in Bantu knots and a Jamaican flag bikini, while Jamaicans and black Brits defended her because they knew her background - she grew up in a working-class neighbourhood with a big black population, she grew up alongside black kids and Notting Hill Carnival was a regular thing for her. She wasn't being disrespectful or mocking black hair. But no, the American way is the ONLY way. It's also why BIPOC does NOT WORK in a British context.

[Goldentony]

Hasn't Gottfried always been super reactionary?

I don't remember even the documentary on him giving much or anything away at all on who he was or whatever, but every time he's fucked it he seems to have just kept quiet rather than go fucking mad

[chveik]

just remembered a fucked up story involving famous YA authors

https://jezebel.com/how-to-use-the-fictional-teenage-girl-1839863520

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The carnival thing in particular did my head in, but there were some good laughs had at the expense of white liberals going apeshit. How hard can it be to understand that carnivals were set up to promote multiculturalism and designed to involve as many different people as possible? One second to google. And that there are situations where NOT adopting the dress/traditions of people you're with is considered just as offensive/rude as 'cultural appropriation' is in the USA? Imagine turning up to a carnival and conspicuously not taking part, yeah that's not offensive at all.

Respecting cultural difference by refusing to acknowledge that it exists.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

next time a german says guten morgen to me I'm just gonna bark BORE DA right in their face so they know I'm not going to do a cultural appropriation

oh thats right these inane rules don't work with european languages and white customs. Love to have lived through a miscegenation panic.

[bgmnts]

next time a german says guten morgen to me I'm just gonna bark BORE DA right in their face so they know I'm not going to do a cultural appropriation

As far as I'm concerned, Welsh/Wales is the ground zero of English assimilation and domination and appropriation. Long suffering.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

As far as I'm concerned, Welsh/Wales is the ground zero of English assimilation and domination and appropriation. Long suffering.

Hence Yoko Ono's song "The Welsh Are The 5'3 Erotic Fan Fiction Protagonists Of The World"

[evilcommiedictator]

John Cleese's thing is going to be shit

[Jumblegraws]

All these attempts to investigate cancel culture or whatever they're fucking calling it at a given point in time never seem to bother trying to bridge the gap between canceller and cancelled. Nobody external to Netflix made them, in any direct sense, pull The Germans episode of Fawlty Towers. And nobody subsequently made them reverse the decision and compromise with a content warning instead.

That's what's so frustrating to me about all this discourse; it might be worth shining a light on how someone's fortunes can turn on saying something that causes offence, and how their fate could ultimately be disproportionate, but the parties actually effecting the retribution - employers, executive authorities, whatever - always seem to get skipped over in favour of the adversarial framing of cancellers vs cancelled. But then people like Cleese who confidently arbitrate on stuff like who is and isn't oversensitive have a flimsy sense of power structures in the first place.

I don't know, maybe he'll surprise me, but with a blurb like "...why a new 'woke' generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can't be said" I'm not holding out much hope.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

but the parties actually effecting the retribution - employers, executive authorities, whatever - always seem to get skipped over in favour of the adversarial framing of cancellers vs cancelled.

Yes, this is the frustrating part. I can't find it in me to care if someone lost a service job for posting "heil hitler" on twitter, but I do care if private companies have excess authority in making that decision - how sure were they that the person deliberately caused offense, where did they get their information, are they just firing someone immediately with no pay based on a rumour, will Twitter moderate hate speech, what steps did they take to make sure it was a genuine offense and not concocted character assassination, can someone appeal etc. ? These are the important questions. No one asks them.

If a few accounts making an unsupported allegation is enough to take someone's livelihood away, the problem probably doesn't lie with the 'outrage' part.

[chveik]

he's going to concentrate on the wise old men vs young idealists narrative, a billionaire living in his bubble isn't going to bother with labour law problems

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I expect some chuckling at stupid things he believed when he was young, but now doesn't because he's seen it all.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

I don't know, maybe he'll surprise me, but with a blurb like "...why a new 'woke' generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can't be said" I'm not holding out much hope.

Maybe he'll get his old ISIRTA mucker involved.

[Kankurette]

The carnival thing in particular did my head in, but there were some good laughs had at the expense of white liberals going apeshit. How hard can it be to understand that carnivals were set up to promote multiculturalism and designed to involve as many different people as possible? One second to google. And that there are situations where NOT adopting the dress/traditions of people you're with is considered just as offensive/rude as 'cultural appropriation' is in the USA? Imagine turning up to a carnival and conspicuously not taking part, yeah that's not offensive at all.

Respecting cultural difference by refusing to acknowledge that it exists.

Like when white people in Japan at festivals and such get bollocked for wearing kimonos. Because being rude to your host and saying 'sorry mate, can't wear a kimono in case people online get mad at me' is so much better. Or when Dita von Teese got criticised for wearing a sari even though she was asked to by some Indian guys (designers?) Its a lame hill to die on.

[Brundle-Fly]

I don't know, maybe he'll surprise me, but with a blurb like "...why a new 'woke' generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can't be said" I'm not holding out much hope.

Blurb bait and probably not written by Cleese. It's got people talking, job done. It is a series rather than a one-off so hopefully, it will go into more depth than what is expected.

Larry Charles' Dangerous World of Comedy series on Netflix certainly puts things in perspective to what we supposedly can and cannot get away with in the Western World.