The Cutprice Guignol

You can’t work in the media these days without being tripped up by people making, protesting against, or apologising for offensive jokes. Whether it’s Frankie Boyle joking about how lucky the late Jade Goody’s husband was now that she had passed, to Jimmy Carr saying that he blamed Reeva Steenkamp for her own shooting, to Rickey Gervais suggesting that an overweight woman walking down the street eating chips should be sterilised. It’s comedy’s business to make the unthinkable thinkable and to tackle subjects that we might feel uncomfortable about tackling in our day-to-day lives. And I get that. I don’t think comedians and other entertainers should be forced to stop making jokes that offend people, because then all we’re left with is the kind of half-hearted comedic mush that doesn’t offend anyone, but doesn’t entertain anyone either.

But what really irks me about offensive humour is how protective people are about it. Let’s take, for example, the big shitstorm that surrounded comedian Daniel Tosh a couple of years back. After a woman in the audience protested his take on rape jokes always being hilarious, he replied with ” “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like, right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”. He apologised, but the incident turned out to be the comedy’s Helen of Troy, the comment that launched a thousand thinkpieces. There were people defending his right to make rape jokes, there were people arguing that the gang-rape of a random woman was not fair game to joke about, but there were also a lot of people screaming into the void on social media and other platforms: “Get over yourself. Get a sense of humour. Loosen up. Stop being so uptight/feminist/sensitive.” These comments were coming from comedy fans and comedians alike, and those are the people I want to address.

Look, I love comedy. Who doesn’t? I watch a lot of it on television, and I watch a lot of stand-up .I think a big part of the problem that comes with making offensive jokes is that people forget the point of near-the-knuckle humour. And therein lies the rub: often, when I don’t find an offensive joke funny, it’s because I just don’t think it’s funny. It’s not because I’m too busy rushing for the smelling salts to eke out a grin, it’s because simply having someone yell an inane statement about a touchy topic in my face doesn’t make me laugh. People who defend these kind of comments seem to forget that it’s the comedian’s job to make me laugh, not my job to find them funny.

Take the best rape joke in the world, told by Louis CK: “I’m not condoning rape, obviously. You should never rape anyone. Unless you have a reason, like if you want to fuck somebody and they won’t let you.” This is a joke that actually has some thought behind it; by presenting the unbelievably stupid and simplistic reasoning behind the act of rape, he’s making the rapist look like an idiot. He’s doing more than pointing at someone and shouting “HAHA YOU SHOULD BE RAPED!” (interestingly, CK tweeted his support to Daniel Tosh during the furore, so make of that what you will). That’s what makes it funny. I’m not saying that everyone in the world should fall in line with my sense of humour, just that writing off our ability to laugh because we don’t think the very concept of gang-rape (or whatever “edgy” topic the comedian has taken on in this  week’s controversy) is hilarious.

Because a lot of people seem to think that the offensive topic itself is what makes the humour intelligent. I’ve written before about Family Guy and it’s complete failure to say anything new about controversial topics, even as it visibly pats itself on the back for addressing them. Identifying a touchy topic and immediately adopting the stance that is least socially acceptable for it’s target audience is pretty shallow humour, as it rarely says anything about the topic at hand.

Really, what I’m saying is this: if you’re keen to go down the offensive humour route, try and actually say something. Because when comedians blurt out something akin to the comment Daniel Tosh made, they’re often not being half as edgy as they think they are. You can find them all over your screens: Family Guy having a character throw up for thirty seconds straight after he realizes that he’s been in contact with a transgender woman, or Trevor Noah tweeting about how fat women are grateful for the weekend because then people will get drunk enough to find them attractive, or Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner laughing about how Black Widow is a slut. These kinds of jokes, and hundreds like them, the kind that skewer people who society has done a really good job of skewering already, aren’t so much pushing boundaries as they are falling in with the party line. Now, I’m not saying that means they shouldn’t be allowed to exist, or that no-one should find them funny, but rather the people who crack these kind of jokes shouldn’t be held up as pantheons of forward-thinking, ground-breaking comedy, when they’re doing nothing that dares undermine the status quo.

And that’s where the problem with offensive comedy lies, at least for me. It provides a safety blanket for comedians and entertainers who are too belleigerent or arrogant or whatever else to accept that maybe, just maybe, their audience does get the joke, but it’s just not that funny.

So, with Comic-Con taking place over this weekend, I’ll be putting up a few trailer reviews for the teasers that tantalise me the most. Let’s kick things off with a look at Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, whose latest trailer was released today. You can read my impressively underwhelmed reaction to the last trailer here.

0:01: This is three minutes forty seconds long? What will there be left to show in the cinema?

0:15: “Oh, so I’m heading out to a protest about how I’m an abomination? BETTER WEAR THE FULL SUPERMAN OUTFIT, DON’T WANT ME SLIPPING BY UNNOTICED”.

0:21: That cape is not suitable court attire. I should know. Don’t ask how.

0:26: BRUCEFLECFK!

0:31: He looks pretty cool, but I will defend Christian Bale’s louche charm as Bruce Wayne to the death. He might not have been the best Batman, but he was the best iteration of his alter-ego.

0:40: Running dramatically into dust! Hugging children! This really is a Ben Alfeck Batman, isn’t it?

1:00: He just doesn’t look right. I’m willing to be disproven about this when I’m strongarmed into watching this movie, but he looks like an aloof dad that I would have had a crush on in high school.

1:10: I love it when a trailer tries to stylistically interesting and just renders every shot too dark to watch. I LOVE IT.

1:16: YUS LARRY FISHBURNE! If you haven’t been watching him in Hannibal, you should have been watching him in Hannibal. Unf, his voice is what salted caramel desserts would sound like if they could talk.

1:17: I don’t like the fact that I’d consider paying to see this movie just to look at Henry Cavill for a couple of hours either, but here we are.

1:29: Every time Superman appears onscreen in full garb, my mind wanders away to wondering when someone’s going to adapt Red Sun as an awesome TV miniseries. I would never stop watching that.

1:36: I think whenever Henry Cavill leaves the house, he’s surrounding by people trying to touch him, just like in this shot.

1:50: Fuck tho, Jesse Eisenberg looks amazing. He’s absolutely one of my favourite actors around at the moment, and I can’t wait to see him play a bad guy. Note: Go watch The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg(s), because you like to use words like “dynamic” and “stylised” to describe movies the same way I do.

2:02: That’s a Joker reference, and I will be purchasing out an entire cinema just to fully appreciate that moment on the big screen.

2:13: It would be hilarious if someone recut this with the Adam West Batman in place of Batfleck. I’m not saying you should spend all of tomorrow doing it when you should be working; I’m just saying.

2:33: GUNS! SCREAMING CHILDREN! COFFINS! FIRE! DID ZACK SNYDER MENTION HE’S AVAILABLE FOR WORK?

2:37: If you squint, you can make out the moment everyone remembered that Wonder Woman was in this movie. Wonder Woman in a Xena cosplay, that is.

2:44: No-one will admit that the outfits look hilariously silly against the serious backdrop, but we all know somewhere in our hearts that it’s true.

2:51: Jesse Eisenberg has young Heath Ledger hair, and you do not want to remind me of The Dark Knight, Snyder. You’re on a knife edge.

3:02: All of that was good because Jesse Eisenberg, and my distraction over wondering if metal-plated underwear would rust.

3:08: Jesse Eisenberg looks SO GOOD, but then I did see Man of Steel. Fool me once, DC. Fool me once.

3:25: OMG THE LOGO IS SUPERMAN’S S INSIDE THE BAT SYMBOL IT’S A METAPHOR YOU GUYS BATMAN EATS HIM INB4

Spot the cat in this picture.

This is a picture of me, ready to brace the heat and cold summer showers that have been inflicted on my city for the last week. It’s also one of the first full-body pictures of myself I’ve associated with in the last year and a half, because I don’t want people to see my body.

There’s a lot of reasons that that statement makes me angry. After all, it doesn’t matter what I look like: my friends will still drink with me and laugh at my godawful puns; my family will not disown me (probably), and the people who employ me will not want to hire me any less based on what I look like. I’m a feminist, and know that the idea that people should be ashamed of the way they look is a cruel, pointless, horrible thing. As a pop culture addict, I understand that the general size and shape of women in the media differs from my own, and that’s where many of my preconceptions about what I should look like come from. I can rationalise these thoughts, but they don’t mean a thing when I catch myself at a bad angle in the mirror and run off to do a bunch of sit-ups because my stomach looks disgusting. Things came to a head last week when I replaced my Evan-Rachel-Wood-in-lingerie screensaver to something that wouldn’t make me loathe myself, because I felt so shitty looking at her slender legs and perfect body. And when my weight problems interfere with my ability to letch over beautiful women who I may or may not be in love with, we’ve got a problem.

It’s doubly ironic, too, because right now I am healthier than I have been in ages- I quit smoking, I exercise every day, and I attempt to eat what my insane appetite will deem a reasonable diet. Two years ago, I was a lot slimmer, because I was eating small amounts of crap in between partying so hard I woke up on the floor or the ladies’ bathroom more than once. I might have been a train-wreck healthwise, but I could fit into a UK size 8 and that was all that I cared about. Then, at the start of last year, I started putting on weight, and went up to a size 12and ever since then I’ve been grappling with the stupidly time-consuming act of hating the way I look.

I think the most irritating part is holding the feminist side of my brain and the body-concious side of my brain in tandem with one another. Because the feminist side of my brain tells me that it doesn’t matter what people look like, that it’s not my buisness to judge them or treat them any differently because of their weight- things I know to be true. And then there’s the other side, which tells me stuff like “well, at least you’re not as big as her” or “she’s just too skinny” so I momentarily don’t feel quite as shit about my own size. But that makes me feel even worse, because I don’t want to be the kind of person who can only be happy with their body if they’re comparing it favourably to someone else’s. That’s gross, and it’s a side of myself I try to shut off whenever I can. I want to celebrate other women, not throw myself back into competition with them, but that’s how body-shaming makes us relate to one another; as targets to be beaten, not actual human beings.

But then, I’m often unsurprised that I’m as self-concious as I am about my weight gain, considering the way we treat people who don’t fit the perscribed beauty mould. Take Colleen McCullogh, neurophysicist, best-selling author, and Yale medical researcher, who’s obituary opened with a jibe about her weight: “Plain of feature and certainly overweight…”. Christ, if a woman as accomplished as her can be reduced down to her size despite all her achievements, what the hell can I be remembered for? “Freakishly small of mouth and thundery of thigh…”. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the pervasiveness of the ideal body type across all media, because we’re all bombarded from it at all angles: in magazines, on television, in movies, online…all I’m saying is that if a bunch of us were asked to describe the perfect body, it’s striking how similar our answers would sound.

And that’s the worst thing about having body image problems: it’s so fucking dull. Everyone has issues with their body, no matter what they might be, because we’re constantly told that you need to look a certain way to be successful and loved and admired. And as long as I continue telling myself that it’s bullshit- that I can look however I want, and I will not stop being the person I am right now-maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to re-instate that Even Rachel Wood screensaver.

I’m genuinely curious to hear: how do you feel about your body? It’s a question we don’t hear an honest answer too all that much, for fear of coming across as arrogant or  insecure, but here’s your chance. Tweet me, comment on this article, and let me know about your relationship to the way you look.

Every generation, a film comes along that defines the way we think about movies. Scorcese’s brutal and brilliant Goodfellas, packed with rich, dense tracking shocks and the tarnished glamour of the mobster life; Lord of the Rings, the sweeping fantasy epics that redefined the way we look at genre films. And then there’s Troll 2, a layered, witty, understated masterpiece that bubbles over with imagery and thematic elements to rival any Linklater, Anderson, or Iniratu outing.

Troll 2 follows the harrowing story of the young Joshua, who holidays with his family to the mysterious town of Nilbog (which is, as the film slowly reveals through barely perceptible nods and hints, goblin spelt backwards).  Things start going very wrong for the family, the very depiction of all-American wholesomeness, led by a staggering, screen-dominating performance by George Hardy as the powerful patriarch of the Wilts tribe. Watching his nuanced take on the character, it’s hard to believe that he’s a dentist by trade, and not an actor who could stand up to the likes of Pacino and Norton with ease and style.  The direction, too, is flawless: through repeated use of a single, striking shot of lightning balanced with the use of a repeated musical theme, the film implants immovable images in the viewer’s mind that refuse to be shaken.

The film, for all it may seem nothing but a practice in finger-chewing suspense, is actually a perceptive diatribe on puberty and burgeoning sexuality, which, as the film depicts, are inevitabilities of growing up that will eventually murder and eat your entire family. The chilling Creedence Leonore Gielgud plays as a juxtaposition between the mother and the whore; at once nurturing her goblin offspring (created through the use of ground-breaking prosthetics that Spielberg would later quote as influence for his mildly entertaining creature feature, Triceratops Park) and acting as an object of sexual desire for the film’s boisterous and hilarious group of teenage boys. The most erotically charged scene in the movie comes when she arrives at their caravan with a corn-on-the-cob, only to fill the tiny space with mountains of popcorn as she seduces one of it’s unlucky occupants, juxtaposes the thing that once bought such childhood joy-popcorn- with the horror, fear, and death that lead from pursuing sexual desire. The scene drips with unconsummated sexual tension, pulsing with latency and potency. This isn’t the kind of sexy you’ll see in most mainstream movies; it’s real and raw, and allegedly unsimulated.

Joshua, the young boy at the film’s epicentre, plays out similar themes of the apposition of puberty and childhood. Regular visits from his grandfather (played by a disappointing Richard Attenborough) are held up against scenes where he is forced to rebel against the incoming goblin force through any means possible, including one disturbing sequence where he urinates on the family’s dinner to stop them eating poisoned food (you wouldn’t know it from watching the scene, but instead of freeze-framing the actors, the director chose to shoot the scene with them in absolute stillness). Joshua, and to a lesser extent his sister Holly (who mercifully escapes any of the flash-of-flesh sexualising that many young actresses at the time were bestowed with) are innocents against a corrupted town, forced to battle their loved ones to keep the goblin threat at bay. Alas, it’s all for nought, but their fight makes compelling viewing.

Overall, Troll 2 is a deeply considered piece of work, with universal themes that appeal to everyone: age is represented in the stunningly choreographed shot of a fly crawling across a young man’s face as he screams in terror, while Joshua follows his bouncy red ball around to keep him safe. Profound, moving, and not afraid to go to the darkest places in the human psyche, Troll 2 remains one of the most important movies of the last half-century.

Rating: Ten Goblins out of a possible Ten