I Hate Mean Humour
Today I am feeling a pressing need to blog about how much I hate mean humour. And I mean I really, really hate it. Cue pompous, self righteous rant etc:
Perhaps it is because I’ve been watching quite a bit of Candid Camera from the 80′s and 90′s recently. The American one, obviously, not the pale British imitation. If I watch just half an hour of Alan Funt’s Candid Camera, I feel better for it. The show is funny whilst being eminently good-natured at the same time. Humour, of course, is a highly subjective thing, and so is a risky business - as I was told time and time again whilst trying to find a publisher for Lex Trent (to be published in the near future by Headline). Lex Trent versus The Gods is my first comic fantasy and was - by far - the book I enjoyed writing the most. It was also the book I had to battle for the hardest to find a publisher. Because humour is very much a matter of personal preferences. But I do not believe there can be anything more satisfying than hearing that you made someone laugh.
Unless they’re laughing at you, of course.
It seems to me that there is a disturbing modern trend for comedy to get more and more mean. We laugh at people now. There is certainly no heart-warming aspect to modern comedy, although it was a big part of Candid Camera.
First there was Trigger Happy TV which, for the most part, I liked, but you could see the mean humour starting to creep in there. Then there was Borat, which was all about laughing at people. Now you’ve got Boiling Points, which is all about trying to make people lose their tempers, and Little Britain, which is just ghastly in every sense of the word. Even at the audition stages of the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, there seems to be a sort of frenzied delight present in watching no-hopers get ripped to pieces by the judges. It’s what the audience wants, apparently. I’m sorry, but this is not humour - it is a mild form of sadism. A particularly ugly manifestation of schadenfreude. Where’s the wit? Where’s the sparkling dialogue and the intelligent scripts? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t all have to be as good-hearted as Candid Camera. Mocking is fine when it’s done in a way that’s smart rather than mean. Monty Python, for example - pure genius. But it seems like many modern comedy shows prefer to resort to dumb, playground-standard jibes disguised as jokes. I saw much of this at school and even at college and university - laugh quickly at someone else before they can laugh at you.
You watch shows like this and you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth about humanity in general. I don’t believe it’s true that the only laughs to be gained are at somebody else’s expense. I think a show can be both funny and good-natured. Candid Camera, in my opinion, puts these newer comedies to shame. You can see just by looking at Alan and Peter Funt that these are generous, kind-hearted people. Their decency rubs off on the TV show itself so that even human nature seems decent too. I would much rather see that aspect of humanity brought to life instead of the cruel, small-minded, pettiness that seems to be all the rage nowadays. Cruelty and meanness may well be ever-present but, for pity’s sake, let’s not find humour in them and thereby legitimise them. In the words of Dorothea Brande (in which she refers to books but could just as easily refer to television):
“The influence of any widely read book can hardly be overestimated. If it is sensational, shoddy or vulgar our lives are the poorer for the cheap ideals which it sets in circulation; if, as so rarely happens, it is a thoroughly good book, honestly conceived and honestly executed, then we are all indebted to it.”
Sensational, shoddy and vulgar - three adjectives which, I believe, would apply to most comedies today. Screw Little Britain, you couldn’t pay me to watch that crap. I’ll stick with the Candid Camera box set and consider it money well spent.
