by Brian Bamford
Ludwig Wittgenstein said: 'Humour is not a mood but a
way of looking at the world.' 'So if it is correct to say
that humour was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that
does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or
anything of that sort, but something much deeper and
more important.'
Perhaps to understand what that 'something' is, it would be best
to look at humour as something strange and incomprehensible.
For example, the philosopher Wittgenstein enjoyed reading
American detective novels and the casual humourous way
they bumped off their characters. For instance in
'Rendezvous with Fear' by Norbert Davis desribes a man
named Garcia cross-eyed with a thin yellowish face sat
drinking beer the colour and consistency of warm
vinegar. Meanwhile, when Doan shoots Bautiste Bonofile,
another 'bad man', the romantic but naïve heroine, Jane
asks with concern: 'Is he hurt?' 'Not a bit' says Doan, 'he's
just dead.'
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JOHN CLEESE has laid into the
"cowardly and gutless and contemptible" BBC after an episode of Fawlty
Towers was removed from a BBC-owned streaming platform.
A 1975 episode titled The Germans was taken off UKTV's streaming service because it contains "racial slurs".In it, the Major uses highly offensive language, and Cleese's Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war".
Cleese wrote on Twitter: "The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats."
He added: "I would have hoped that someone at the BBC would understand that there are two ways of making fun of human behaviour.
"One is to attack it directly. The other is to have someone who is patently a figure of fun, speak up on behalf of that behaviour."
"We laughed at Alf's reactionary views. Thus we discredited them, by laughing at him," Cleese wrote.
"Of course, there were people - very stupid people - who said 'Thank God someone is saying these things at last'. We laughed at these people too. Now they're taking decisions about BBC comedy."
He continued: "But it's not just stupidity. The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats. It used to have a large sprinkling of people who'd actually made programmes. Not any more.
"So BBC decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs... That's why they're so cowardly and gutless and contemptible. I rest my case."
'Audience expectations'
UKTV also operates channels including Gold, and many of its channels and its digital player were taken over by the BBC's commercial arm BBC Studios last year. A BBC spokesman declined to comment.A UKTV spokesman said: "UKTV has temporarily removed an episode of Fawlty Towers The Germans from Gold's Box Set.
"The episode contains racial slurs so we are taking the episode down while we review it. We regularly review older content to ensure it meets audience expectations and are particularly aware of the impact of outdated language.
"Some shows carry warnings and others are edited. We want to take time to consider our options for this episode."
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1 comment:
VERY good, you will note we have not pulled down the statue of the murdering mine owner union buster and general bastard Lord Londonderry during the annual Durham Miners Gala when 250,000 of us could have smashed it to bits and taken it home any year over the last 160 years. Not because we want to honour him we would at many points in our history have smashed him up and shot him in person. But that statute shows us what he thinks of himself, I use it to demonstrate talks and lectures on the coalfield struggles particularly those of the 1830's and 40s when virtual insurrections swept the coalfields.
The statue serves a useful purpose to show what those who put it there, and those of us whose families suffered under him think about him and the events which he lived through and to an extent was responsible for, the story how its told demonstrates the class division of history. We do not want to forget this, him or this history and while we would portray him in a radically different manner than the dashing cavalry officer he is represented as, this statue does not stop our history being told, indeed it is as good a platform for that tale .
I have in mind that we should through our miners banner society organise a 'verbal' demolition of the statue, where we, march to it with the miners banners and expose his history in contrast to ours, it will be a public denunciation in the style of the Chinese red guard , and call upon miners to join us in it. We will not be trying to pull it down physically as apart from anything we would like to do the public historic demolition every year, whats ye all think ?
Of course miners boys were bonded to the mine and the miner owner from the age of 6 , they worked 18 hours a day, were gassed, blown up, drownd, crippled, and sat in the total dark, as families had to buy their own candles and the wee laddies wage didn't run to that. If they ran away their families would be jailed, if anyone tried to employ a run away pit lad they would be jailed.
When the miners struck they were charged by cavalry, clubbed and shot, leaders shackled into stables, families from the new born to dying evicted onto the streets, but some will still talk of 'white privilege' not that with only six hours between shifts to eat and sleep a laddie would have any change to actually wash the black off of course so the white in white privilege would not have been visible, not least because they and millions like them didn't experience any.
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