I am struggling with sleeping again, though I think it might be for all the right reasons. My brain will not stop churning over, so I hope that lots of good creative stuff spews forth into the sickbag of art. What an unpleasant way of describing it. I spent much of today writing letters to new prospective parents telling them how wonderful we are. I am not always comfortable with such things, but, have to concede that I have improved in this area over the years. Perhaps because of the pride I feel in having survived as a small business I fond it easier? Who knows? I delivered the letters, and then prepared an average curry for the assorted small people and large in the house. I then watched a little television, read some of the Julian Barnes book "A Sense of an ending" which has won this years Booker prize. It is a short book, so it will not take long to read, but I shall report back with interest. I have another of his books that I have yet to tackle, called Arthur and George which is excellent by all accounts, So I am hoping that I like his writing! It is always good to find an author that you like. I also read some of Shaun Ryder's new book, which I think will provide me with some contrast to say the very least. I then settled down with a degree of excitement to watch the Holy Flying Circus. I was so very disappointed. What started out as a promising attempt at telling the story of the "Outrage" caused by The Life of Brian, ended up being an unintentional parody. The criticisms that the clergyman and Malcolm Muggeridge had of the film could far more comfortably have been aimed at this programme. It was "typical undergraduate humour" to coin a phrase. For some inexplicable reason, Michael Palin's wife was taken by the character of Terry Jones in drag, and whilst the performances were accurate in terms of characterisation, they could go nowhere because of the shackles placed on them by the script. John Cleese was played excellently by Darren Boyd, but that was the problem...it wasn't John Cleese, it was Basil Fawlty. This was acknowledged by a little dream sequence section, but this made it no less infuriating. I wanted to see the characters explored, not a second rate version of a Python Sketch. There were hints of it, and that is what made it all the more frustrating. A Taxi driver mentioned character in the latter stages of the programme mentioned that the problem with the sketch format was that it is hot and miss, well I think that hit the nail on the head for this show. It was almost sketch based, and didn't really work for me.
I was also interested to hear mention of the word "Mong" in the show. There has been a bit of a Twitter Storm over the last few days as a result of that word. Ricky Gervais uses it regularly as an insult, and many people have called him on it. Comedian and writer Richard Herring has written a beautiful explanation of why he feels that Gervais is wrong, and does so far more eloquently than I can muster. I just wonder whether irony is sometimes used as an excuse for being small minded and nasty. I think Gervais is close to the edge sometimes, and as a result, he slips on the wrong side of what should be acceptable. Much like Frankie Boyle, I find a lot of what he does to be funny and clever. This time however, I think he is wrong. When you hear the word "mong" you instantly associate it with Down's Syndrome. It is not a word that has been "Reclaimed", or changed. I recently argued with David Baddiel and Jonathan Ross on twitter about the use of the word "yid" at Tottenham. I felt that it could be argued that the word HAS been reclaimed by football fans at Tottenham and is now used as a positive. They both argued, politely and eloquently that the word still has far too many negative connotations to be reclaimed in this way. I am still not sure about that, but am open to persuasion. However, I would have hoped thta both of them would decry Gervais for use of the word "mong", and neither has. Perhaps their celebrity friendship prevents them from doing so..we shall never know I suspect. I would just hope that rather than wasting many hours trying to justify the use of the word, that Gervais might spend a little of his time and money in helping a disabled charity.
No comments:
Post a Comment