Gervais has a new Netflix special. I will not watch it (or indeed watch anything by him anymore) because I was so disgusted with his earlier one with its rampant transphobia and the smug, preening, overweening sense that he was being ever so edgy and clever. But according to what I read, rather than learn from feedback from that first show, he seems to have doubled down.
Aja Romano writes about all that is wrong with Gervais and others of his ilk like Dave Chappelle who seem to think that making the trans community the target of ridicule is somehow acceptable.
Gervais, like many other comedians of late, has spent his last several cycles on the comedy circuit reacting over and over again to so-called “woke” culture and comedy, as if the concept of comedy that refuses to punch down is so egregious all he can do is continually react to it, then react to the reactions to his reactions.
This time around, having been through repeated backlash over his previous offenses, he’s at pains to explain the structure of his comedy — to explain to us why he holds the comedic high ground over his invisible future catcallers. See, he stops to inform his audience, the joke he’s about to tell isn’t offensive because he’s being ironic. Now he’s being metaphorical. Now he’s using figurative language to illustrate that words aren’t violence.
Gervais, predictably, given his overt approval of TERF talking points, builds his entire indignant anti-woke stance specifically around transgender people: their anatomies, their pronouns, their existence. It takes him all of two minutes to make his first trans joke: A mention of fellow British comic Eddie Izzard, who has long identified as transgender and began using she/her pronouns two years ago.
…Toward the end of the show, he drags out an appalling sketch full of racist Sinophobic stereotypes, which he insists isn’t racist because it’s “ironic.” Doesn’t matter that this kind of “irony” is what allows white supremacists to operate in plain sight. Doesn’t matter that five minutes into SuperNature an audience member audibly laughs at a mention of rape, which might indicate that perhaps Gervais’s audience isn’t as ironically humorous as he wants them to be. No, Gervais seems to have decided that because words aren’t literal physical violence, nothing he says can cause harm.
…Gervais has spent years making fun of trans women onstage; on social media, he’s spent the past few years amplifying transphobic TERF talking points about how trans people (usually women) are rapists, perverts, liars, and linguistic terrorists. Much like J.K. Rowling, Gervais claims to be very concerned with the state of cis men pretending to be women in order to rape them, while insisting that “real” trans people should be respected; but if you look for examples of Gervais actually embracing, supporting, or affirming “real” trans women, you won’t find any. Trans people seem to only interest Gervais when he has an excuse to dismiss or dehumanize them — or joke about beating them up or compare them to rodents.
…Onstage, his obsession with trans people includes a vile fixation on anatomy. He expects his audience to laugh at the idea of a trans woman having male anatomy; he expects us to ridicule the idea that anyone wouldn’t laugh. Over and over again he “jokes” about trans women having penises. He says he personally supports trans rights, then talks about trans women raping other women, implies that trans people are “mental,” and implies that trans people invented “self-identification” sometime after the ’60s in order to exploit their marginalized status.
I wrote some time ago about how racists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists use the idea of irony as a mask to lure people into their movement, by persuading them that their speech attacking marginalized groups is just for the ‘lulz’, that they are being so ironic, and that those who get angry over this are humorless dimwits who do not get the joke.
When you have to explain away your jokes as being ironic, that means you are not funny. Eddie Izzard, whose name he drags into his routine presumably because he is transgender, is far funnier than Gervais could ever hope to be.
When it came to his series After Life, I had to stop watching it too, despite it being praised in some quarters, because there too he seems to enjoy making fun of people whom he thinks of as losers and society’s misfits.
There is a pattern here that reveals him to be a horrible human being.
I also was watching “After Life” (thanx for reminding me of the title), and stopped when Gervais’s character gave his junkie friend money to buy heroin to kill himself (which he’d already stated as his intent). It seemed a nice show up till that point, but after that I just found myself saying “meh” and totally lost any desire to keep watching. And I have NEVER heard ANYONE even mentioning the show after that. Is he even still making new episodes?
… he’s spent the past few years amplifying transphobic TERF talking points about how trans people (usually women) are rapists, perverts, liars, and linguistic terrorists.
Right…his bigoted nonsense is just words, and totally ironic and therefore harmless, but trans people’s words are “linguistic terrorism?” Gods what a jucking foke. “Super Nature” just wasn’t funny — just a sad shitshow of yet another comedian pretending a standard risk of his line of work — people not laughing at his routine anymore — is some sort of dreadful hysterical witch-hunt. Poor dear…
“Eddie Izzard, whose name he drags into his routine presumably because he is transgender, is far funnier than Gervais could ever hope to be.”
Yep. Gervais has never said anything as funny, or as enlightening as, “Do you have a flag?”
BTW, I was a bit surprised at the declaration that Eddie prefers she/her pronouns. SkyNews reported this on December 21, 2020, but then Eddie said this on January 2, 2021:
“If they call me ‘she’ and ‘her’, that’s great -- or ‘he’ and ‘him’, I don’t mind. I prefer to be called Eddie, that covers everything. I’m gender fluid.”
Caitlin Joline Brown, 2012:
Irony of Ironies?: ‘Meta-disparagement’ Humor and Its Impact on Prejudice.
Like so many entertainers, scientists, philosophers, etc…..I once took a passing interest in Gervais simply because he was an atheist….and like many other examples we all know too well, that kind of single-issue interest in some celebrated individual is like going to a movie solely based on the trailer. Rarely does such a venture turn out to be interesting or likeable after you’ve experienced the whole thing.
You are doing exactly what gervais wants, to have people talking about him. It like little children who realize that negative attention is better than no attention. Stop giving these pieces of shit what they want, free publicity. I have never found this guy to be funny about anything.
Oh yay!
Stoned Ranger is here to white-mansplain everything again to we ingnoramuses.
You know what, SR? If I were you, I would reexamine your handle (that’s old white-guy terminology for your username). The Lone Ranger trope is chock-full of racism and sexism. Maybe if you want to be perceived as such a woke human, you might want to lose the the implicit othering.
While calling out bad behavior does give publicity to the person doing it, ignoring it also has its down sides.
To be fair, I enjoyed his film The Invention of Lying which I thought was rather well done.
Hm.
I personally was not that bothered by the two seasons of After Life I watched, though it did drop off towards the end. Should’ve stuck with the one season, IMO.
I thought the outrage it supposedly aroused was rather, um, reachy.
Anyway. Now that you mention it, I might check it out, see if it’s funny or not.
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In passing, he’s been quite active in the animal rights movement, got awards for it and stuff. I know, I know… they’re not ‘people’.
@ 8 John Morales
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/089279392787011638
… actually here’s a better link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany
Silentbob, ah yes.
Lemme see…
Nazis loved animals; Hitler loved animals; therefore Ricky is a Nazi.
No?
OK, one can be a twisted, evil person and yet love animals.
That it?
Oh, wait.
There is no correlation between caring for animals and vileness, unlike the correlation between animal cruelty and viciousness.
That’s gotta be it, right?
@ ^
Fuck you’re a dope. “Horrible human being” and “animal lover” are demonstrably not mutually exclusive. Unless you were implying otherwise your “in passing” @8 was a non sequitur and inexplicably off topic.
Content note for quotes of transphobic “comedy”.
I’m going to climb on my soapbox for a bit, sorry, but I think it needs underlining this is not just a case of “woke snowflakes” not being able to take a joke.
I’m a trans woman and I used to be TRANSPHOBIC!
Here’s a relevant video by a trans woman about how she grew up with transphobic “comedy” and internalised the idea that trans people are disgusting, ludicrous, pathetic. If you’re cis please watch the whole thing. If mockery of trans people has that effect on trans people, how much more do you think cis people internalise these ideas?
Here’s an excerpt from Gervais’ “comedy”:
The whole “joke” is to portray trans people as predatory and deceptive.
Now here’s an excerpt from a judge’s summing up in one of the very common cases of a trans woman being bashed:
Are we really to pretend there’s no connection between Gervais’ style of “comedy” and transphobic assaults like this?
The point is, this isn’t about not being able to take a joke; “humour” is one of the ways prejudice is normalized in society, and it will inevitably manifest in actual real world harm against the minority, however “ironic” one pretends it is supposed to be.
Silentbob:
But I never claimed that, nor am I claiming that now. Being a dope and all.
(That’s you making an unwarranted assumption, but I like the way you’re punching up 😉
Mind you, it means they’re not an unmitigatedly “Horrible human being”, since surely it’s worse to be cruel to animals than to be kind, and worse to ignore their plight than to advocate for them. So he could be even more terrible, in your estimation, no?
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Well then, it falls flat, no? And people won’t laugh, since it’s a “joke” and not a joke.
Are we really to pretend it’s a causal factor?
You really think that, were it not for his comedy skit, such things would not happen?
Maybe giving no credit to those who care about animals and ecology is another way.
@6
Im not white so fuck off. Thats you being racist, not me. Im not mansplaining, Im giving an opinion, just like you. Well, not just like you but you get my drift hopefully. Ive had the handle The StonedRanger since 1975 when I started using radios for communications. It has nothing to do with the Lone Ranger. It has more to do with the fact that I did a bit of travelling (courtesy of uncle sam) and the fact that I smoke cannabis. Nothing at all to do with being sexist or racist. If you dont like my comments thats all well and good, but at least try not to appear to be as big an asshole as post 6 would indicate you to be when you respond to me. As for othering, if that isnt you calling the kettle black, then I have no clue as to what you mean.
No individual snowflake is a causal factor in an avalanche. Nevertheless, one can meaningfully point to the fall of any individual snowflake onto a particular slope as contributing to the later avalanche. It’s common sense, obvious, demonstrable.
I was thinking about this this morning. My thought process went down the line of:
1. Trans people ARE “deceptive”, in that they present as women, and right now, “women” in our society means “people born with a vulva” (very crudely).
2. The deception works because, in our society, people signal that they have vulvas by other means -- lighter bone structure, lack of pronounced larynx, clothing choices, cosmetics, voice tone, etc., all things it’s possible to copy for people not born with a vulva.
3. The crucial question is: why does this matter? People in our society present as having hair when in fact they don’t, but people don’t get beat up for wearing wigs. Why? Because nobody is brought up to think it’s shameful to think that guy has hair when in fact he’s bald. Nobody is going to impugn your masculinity because you were taken in by a convincing syrup. It matters because toxic masculinity means men can be shamed for being attracted to trans women, shamed to the point of lashing out in violence. Consider: if it were perfectly acceptable to get involved with a trans woman, and one perhaps discovered that one’s partner was trans at a late stage and decided for whatever reason one didn’t want to proceed with the encounter, the response would be unlikely to turn to violence. It would be no different than finding out the woman you were about to sleep with had posters of Donald Trump on her bedroom wall -- you wouldn’t beat up her, you’d just beat a hasty retreat and chalk it up to experience.
Incoherent thoughts, I know.
(to clarify (1) above: I say freely that trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights. Society doesn’t, fully, yet.)
Ya’ll are far left and wild af with your logic in here! lol
Dealing with people trying hard to rationalize an illogical and morally uneven ideology can, for most intellectuals, be a frustrating endeavor. But my easy nature remains due to a persistant sense of humor, which ya’ll are in desperate need of. Just laugh at yourselves already! Clearly no one has told you people, so pay attention: Humility and the ability to be even a little self depricating goes a long way towards winning people over. This whole “How dare you speak of our kind!” thing is souring you to the rest of the world. And since you’re peddling nonsense anyways, maybe try and be a little likeable. lol wow
Dear Max,
It’s spelled deprecating
Do run off and play in traffic with your own kind.