Kathy Foley

March 16th, 2008

Copy as filed, not as published

Did you hear the one about the man in a straitjacket who wouldn’t get
into a taxi outside the Central Mental Hospital? It’s a corker.

A couple of comedians thought it would be funny to dress up as a nurse
and a patient from the hospital and prank an unsuspecting taxi driver.
They stood outside the hospital in Dundrum, the “nurse” called a taxi
on a mobile phone and, when the taxi arrived, the “patient” in the
straitjacket refused to get into it, ran away, hid behind a small tree
and lay on the ground refusing to get up.

Alright, so it’s not likely to win a major comedy award. But when this
skit aired on the I Dare Ya programme on RTE 2, members of the public
complained to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC). The BCC
upheld the complaint, ruling that RTE had breached broadcasting code
stipulations against stereotyping or stigmatising people with mental
disability.

What a shame the BCC didn’t tell the humourless complainants to take a
hike. The sketch mightn’t have been in the best taste, but it was
funny. Why? Because there is no way this situation could actually
arise. Certainly, there was a time when the mentally ill were
restrained in straitjackets, but not any more. Remember the old adage
– tragedy plus time equals comedy.

I’m just sorry there isn’t a commission to which I can go to complain
about complaints upheld by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.
One of the complaints about the I Dare Ya sketch, as summarised by the
BCC, ran as follows:
“The joke is based on the preconception that
mentally ill people are running around in straight jackets [sic]
afraid to get into taxies [also sic]. This portrayal has a big impact
on the general public’s view of mental illness and contributes to the
unfair stigmatisation of people with mental health problems in our
society. This affects their right to social inclusion and has
devastating consequences like suicide.”

Laugh? I nearly cried. Absurd, reductionist logic like this is far
more offensive than the original sketch could ever have been. Anyone
with a shred of sense knows that those suffering from mental illness
are unlikely to be running around Dundrum in straitjackets. A viewer
who happened to flick over to RTE2 during that scene would have
quickly deduced that it was part of a comedy programme.

To argue there could be a link, however tenuous, between a sketch like
this and suicide is grossly objectionable. If anything, the I Dare Ya
crew neatly skewered popular prejudices about the mentally ill.
But that’s beyond the ken of the bad taste vigilantes, who rally
together with the catchcry of “It’s absolutely disgraceful!”. These
joyless curmudgeons are quick to take offence on behalf of others and
love nothing more than writing to the BCC or the letters pages of
newspapers, or ringing Joe Duffy or berating anyone who’ll entertain
their self-righteous bellyaching. Where there is a comedian telling
jokes about bodily functions or minorities or paedophile priests, the
kneejerk outrage is never too far behind. It’s so tiresome.

You just know the people who complain to the BCC are exactly the sort
of people who would have been horrified at Jonathan Swift’s modest
proposal to sell poor children as food for rich people. Not, I hasten
to add, that I Dare Ya is remotely Swiftian in its scope or execution.

The point is that humour in bad taste can not only be uproariously
funny – admit you’ve laughed at whoopee cushions – but can also be
scabrous in its exposure of popular prejudices and misconceptions.

At least the BCC doesn’t always buckle before the persnickety
guardians of political correctness. It recently rejected a complaint
that it was inappropriate for the Late Late Toy Show to include June
Rodgers singing a pantomime song about stealing another girl’s
boyfriend. I can only concur with the complainant, although on the
grounds that June Rodgers is deeply unfunny and should be kept off the
telly whenever possible.

In recent months, the BCC has also rejected complaints regarding Ardal
O’Hanlon, who told a story on Tubridy Tonight about his wife arriving
home to find him in that characteristic male slob-out pose – sprawled
on the couch watching TV, with one hand down his trousers; the use of
the word ‘ride’ by Podge and Rodge in reference to Glenda Gilson; and
the broadcasting by Galway Bay FM of a song entitled Horse it into ya
Cynthia.

Who makes these complaints? If they insist on writing querulous
missives, couldn’t they do so on behalf of Amnesty International or to
raise funds for homeless shelters, rather than acting as
self-appointed moral guardians for the rest of us?

It’s such a pity the BCC’s remit stops at upholding or rejecting
complaints. It would be so much more useful if it could remonstrate
forcefully with complainants for wasting the commission’s time and
taxpayers’ money with their Pooterish whinging, before dispatching
them to find better uses of their time than squawking outrage about
weak jokes in dubious taste.

Defending its broadcast of the straitjacket sketch, RTE put up a
pretty lousy defence, albeit one with the unintended benefit of
reminding us what passes for comedy around at the state broadcaster
these days: “Comedy pokes fun at everybody, whether it is Catholic
priests, bald men, fat people, Kerry people, librarians, women
drivers, taxi drivers etc.”

RTE could have added that if comedy gives offence, it usually says
more about the offended than the comedy and a double standard almost
always applies. Bald men may laugh uproariously at jokes about women
drivers, but can struggle to smile at jokes in similarly bad taste
about bald men.

Or as the frequently risqué comedian Jimmy Carr once put it: “One
person came up to me after a show and said that they really liked the
stuff about retarded children, they loved the stuff about gypsies,
that was fine but they had a child with ADD [attention deficit
disorder], so the joke about that wasn’t funny.”

The best bad taste jokes are iconoclastic, smashing taboos and forcing
us to examine our own preconceptions. And the worst? Those gags that
are crass, vulgar and lacking in all subtlety or intellectual nous?
They should be allowed too. Better that than the alternative –
po-faced, right-on attempts at humour that don’t amuse anyone.