In the wake of Barry Humphries’ death on Saturday, social media was divided over the comedian. I’m guessing aound 75 percent eulogised him in the most glowing terms. And about 25 percent trod on his legacy, condemning him for his views on trans people, women and Asian immigration. The debate made me revisit a quandary that has bugged me for years: “Can you like the comedian, if you don’t like the person?”
Hiya, Adam - thank you for raising this. I thought your dads story said as much between the lines as in the text. I have laughed in the past to Barry in different guises but like Leunig, Picasso, JK Rowling and the examples you’ve used we can no longer forgive the arseholery of anyone like this. Barry’s whole schtick is outdated as was his opinion on transgender humans.
My gal and I had long discussions about this today and we can’t forgive ‘their’ outspoken personal opinions - if they weren’t famous no one would give them the time of day except others of their ilk.
So no Vale from us today - Barry received accolades back in his day and we believe that’s enough.
I've been thinking about this. I found his public bigoted comments unconscionable. Yet apparently, one on one he was witty and kind and those that knew him like that are right to mourn, I can see that. I too, appreciate his efforts to establish the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, even if outgrew him. And a part of me mourns another ubiquitous personage of my youth gone, another familiar presence changed, like old furniture, when you return to it as an adult and a spring pops out and jabs you when you attempt to get comfy. It's just not the same.
However, I never found Edna funny. And this is where I get ranty. Perhaps it's the justice sensitivity. Edna mocked easy targets: middle aged women of the middle of the 20th century who clung to their sense of self (importance) because it was the only thing they were allowed to have, apart from their neat homes and mother's little helpers. Women in their glasses and purple hair were average only in the sense they had talents, skills and dreams that were largely uniformly suffocated by patriarchal social expectations, and class values that rendered their stale dreams ridiculous. .Experiences which Humphries only observed the results of, and rather critique the cause for laughs, he went for the impact: their looks, their casual prejudices , their house pride. Everage was meant to be a wholly unremarkable woman who rose from housewife to superstar for no reason. She's not funny because remarkable women who were also housewives didn't get any limelight let alone the level of acclaim that the man who belittled their suburban lives "absent of intellectual activity" received. Edna got to go large in a public life denied these women, precisely because she wasn't who she said she was and they were. How many women suffered for trying and failing, or by having their dreams denied? I feel like, in Edna, at least, he mocked the narrowness of women's lives, blamed them for the stagnation of suburban Australia, when these same women were caught in and victimised by it, even as they also took some pride in it, having been denied the level of access to opportunities for education and self expression that Humphries enjoyed as a carefree young man studying law. And he leaned into it, hard. He was laughed at everyone (his mother included) but himself.
Mrs Normal Average, how dare she suppose she is worthy, how dare she imagine she could be important? That's the joke right? How she, a bitter tongued and limited housewife hosts a talk show, pretending to be substantial beyond the glitter. Luckily for us, any woman, boring or not, can host a talk show as a podcast, and we can grieve rather than laugh at the secret and unmet ambitions of Australian women who were our mothers, our grandmothers, our forebears, and friends. So yeah. Phew. I told you. Ranty.
Apr 23, 2023·edited Apr 23, 2023Liked by The Kicker
I’m very glad that you raised this issue. I think Barry Humphries was not an ally of women, but that did not diminish Dame Edna’s popularity, who may have been a bit kinder if her creator appreciated women more.… maybe not as funny. And maybe we don’t need another man satirising women.
The answer is that - it is complicated. Humphries’ humour was often cruel. He savagely humiliated people. His comic creations, Edna and Sir Les were monsters, both of them. But he was brilliant, amazing ,with astonishing timing and wit. I hated him and admired him and laughed uproariously with him all at the same time. Miriam Margolyes and Philip Adams knew him personally and it seems that most who did forgave him. People are complicated. There are no heroes, no saints. Just people muddling along. It is a perennial problem, not just with comedians but artists. You can’t cancel Picasso because he was a bastard, or Tolstoy. It doesn’t mean you can’t call them to account, or acknowledge the bastardry, but we all suffer if we don’t allow their genius to take its place in the pantheon.
Barry poked fun at everyone - no one was safe, that’s why he was the great comic egalitarian. A brilliant, wonderful man who was a founding member of the first Melbourne International Comedy Festival - if you can’t laugh at yourself then you’re sad and sorry soul.
Interesting post. Tricky topic. Some uncollected and possibly contradictory thoughts.
(1) While EDNA was satirising (perhaps too cruelly) parochial suburban housewives, the rest of the culture ignored the world of women completely. EDNA helped make suburban womens experiences and perspectives a subject women would pursue and perfect. eg Kath and Kim.
(2) All good comedy has cruelty at its heart.
(3) No one should get a free pass. If they say or do something deliberately hateful, they should be held accountable.
(4) No one should get a free pass for being unfunny either.
(5) His RW political views don't accord with mine but I still find parts of his work sublime. Les Paterson's 'He's horny enough to have a go at the hair on a barbershop floor' line is peerless.
(6) Times change and the older one gets the weirder the world seems. Does that mean you can behave like an arsehole? No. But at some point, we will all lose the capacity to see and understand the right now.
(7) I had huge admiration for Ricky Gervai,s but his last Netflix special was so full of tired, 'provocative' anti-trans stuff, I turned off. It was tedious and labored. Now, I'm not so keen on his schtick.
(8) If you don't like someone's art, don't engage with it. We are blessed with millions of folk trying to amuse us. Try another flavour.
Pitching a pedophile & a misogynist against a politicalised scientific argument is an unfair poke at Clive, there. He's the King! And I can always laugh along with someone who's politics I dislike, it's their honesty that can really spark things. I just can't punch back with a laugh when I know their persona is a lie. Like a burst tire, I'm left flat with every future punchline. Think of Geoff James Nugent AKA Jim Jefferies.
Then there is Barry Humphries. Born into a time of stigma & alienation. Yet where people today, people he championed. People he opened the doors of social acceptance into the modern world, wish to condemn, purely due to them not having any historical context, or a sense of humour. Because he didn't want to use a pronoun. Vale Barry Humphries.
I saw Ben Elton when he last toured and he posed a similar question regarding Germaine Greer (now being trod on) and feminism. I wish there were a clip of it as it is utterly brilliant. He summed it up well. Elton is clearly left in his politics but he said he honestly has trouble to coming to terms with some of the newer social developments, citing trans issues, in particular. He says he tries every day to be better but he still doesn't fully get it. (I'm paraphrasing here - he was far more eloquent).
People of Humphries and Greer generation are older than Elton and maybe, it's as simple as it is just that much harder for them to be able to come to terms with the changes that are happening. This should not itself be a reason to tread on their legacy.
So to your question I think we can forgive (for want of a better word) Humphries views and still enjoy his comedy.
Allen and CK are different. It's not their views that got them into trouble but their actions. That should set the bar much higher.
Oh course you can laugh at comedians you don't like. Today we might call that the 'Jeremy Clarkson Effect'. James May once said of him, "The man's a buffoon but you can't help but like him." I'm not sure I'd say I 'like' him but I do find him entertaining. Probably because he's a buffoon. I don't particularly 'like' Jim Jeffries but by God he knows his craft, and his audience. You wouldn't invite Dylan Moran into your house: he'd be drunk, he'd smoke, he'd be rude to everyone, but on-stage he's fucking hilarious. Some comedians spend their careers cultivating an on-stage persona that is purposefully awful. Be honest people: who of us hasn't sniggered at the odd line from Andrew Dice-Clay or Rodney Rude or Rodney Dangerfield. You may never contemplate having them over for dinner, you may even find their personalities abhorrent, but they made you laugh.
Barry Humphries was a national treasure. Dame Edna is part of our national psyche.
Apr 23, 2023·edited Apr 23, 2023Liked by The Kicker
I think Louis CK is a creep but he is so funny, and clever funny, i would not hesitate to go see him live. I have zero clue as to why people cant seperate the art from the artist. I never really got Woody Allen's film style - bit to art house for me. However his awkwardness and self flagellation is quite funny and shows he has humility & can make fun of himself... but he slept with his kids nanny and really messed with Mia Farrows head. That being said if he made a brilliant film i'd watch it. In my humble opinion Ricki Gervais is the most irreverent of all the comedians. he makes fun of marginalised groups, women, says the G word and makes fun of dead kids and babies... and he is hilarious - he consistently makes fun of females, he hangs shit on the lack of good female comedians; there is some truth it - Ali Wong, Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, and Melissa McCarthy are about the best - they dont hold back. I could not watch a comedian who censors him or herself
I haven't tried rewatching any Graham Linehan comedies since I learned about him personally, and I don't really want to because I don't know how his involvement is going to poison my enjoyment. EVery time I hear a joke in Father Ted, Black Books, or the IT Crowd, I'm just going to wonder whether Glinner wrote that joke, and if so, did it come from a place of genuine disgust with women, transgender people, or whoever else he hates and whoever the heel of the gag was.
Hiya, Adam - thank you for raising this. I thought your dads story said as much between the lines as in the text. I have laughed in the past to Barry in different guises but like Leunig, Picasso, JK Rowling and the examples you’ve used we can no longer forgive the arseholery of anyone like this. Barry’s whole schtick is outdated as was his opinion on transgender humans.
My gal and I had long discussions about this today and we can’t forgive ‘their’ outspoken personal opinions - if they weren’t famous no one would give them the time of day except others of their ilk.
So no Vale from us today - Barry received accolades back in his day and we believe that’s enough.
I appreciate your work, Adam.
Thanks, Gaz (& Kim)
I've been thinking about this. I found his public bigoted comments unconscionable. Yet apparently, one on one he was witty and kind and those that knew him like that are right to mourn, I can see that. I too, appreciate his efforts to establish the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, even if outgrew him. And a part of me mourns another ubiquitous personage of my youth gone, another familiar presence changed, like old furniture, when you return to it as an adult and a spring pops out and jabs you when you attempt to get comfy. It's just not the same.
However, I never found Edna funny. And this is where I get ranty. Perhaps it's the justice sensitivity. Edna mocked easy targets: middle aged women of the middle of the 20th century who clung to their sense of self (importance) because it was the only thing they were allowed to have, apart from their neat homes and mother's little helpers. Women in their glasses and purple hair were average only in the sense they had talents, skills and dreams that were largely uniformly suffocated by patriarchal social expectations, and class values that rendered their stale dreams ridiculous. .Experiences which Humphries only observed the results of, and rather critique the cause for laughs, he went for the impact: their looks, their casual prejudices , their house pride. Everage was meant to be a wholly unremarkable woman who rose from housewife to superstar for no reason. She's not funny because remarkable women who were also housewives didn't get any limelight let alone the level of acclaim that the man who belittled their suburban lives "absent of intellectual activity" received. Edna got to go large in a public life denied these women, precisely because she wasn't who she said she was and they were. How many women suffered for trying and failing, or by having their dreams denied? I feel like, in Edna, at least, he mocked the narrowness of women's lives, blamed them for the stagnation of suburban Australia, when these same women were caught in and victimised by it, even as they also took some pride in it, having been denied the level of access to opportunities for education and self expression that Humphries enjoyed as a carefree young man studying law. And he leaned into it, hard. He was laughed at everyone (his mother included) but himself.
Mrs Normal Average, how dare she suppose she is worthy, how dare she imagine she could be important? That's the joke right? How she, a bitter tongued and limited housewife hosts a talk show, pretending to be substantial beyond the glitter. Luckily for us, any woman, boring or not, can host a talk show as a podcast, and we can grieve rather than laugh at the secret and unmet ambitions of Australian women who were our mothers, our grandmothers, our forebears, and friends. So yeah. Phew. I told you. Ranty.
I’m very glad that you raised this issue. I think Barry Humphries was not an ally of women, but that did not diminish Dame Edna’s popularity, who may have been a bit kinder if her creator appreciated women more.… maybe not as funny. And maybe we don’t need another man satirising women.
The answer is that - it is complicated. Humphries’ humour was often cruel. He savagely humiliated people. His comic creations, Edna and Sir Les were monsters, both of them. But he was brilliant, amazing ,with astonishing timing and wit. I hated him and admired him and laughed uproariously with him all at the same time. Miriam Margolyes and Philip Adams knew him personally and it seems that most who did forgave him. People are complicated. There are no heroes, no saints. Just people muddling along. It is a perennial problem, not just with comedians but artists. You can’t cancel Picasso because he was a bastard, or Tolstoy. It doesn’t mean you can’t call them to account, or acknowledge the bastardry, but we all suffer if we don’t allow their genius to take its place in the pantheon.
Barry poked fun at everyone - no one was safe, that’s why he was the great comic egalitarian. A brilliant, wonderful man who was a founding member of the first Melbourne International Comedy Festival - if you can’t laugh at yourself then you’re sad and sorry soul.
Good news is you can read Robert Weide's educated discussions of the Mia Farrow case and go back to enjoying Woody Allen's prolific work again.
Interesting post. Tricky topic. Some uncollected and possibly contradictory thoughts.
(1) While EDNA was satirising (perhaps too cruelly) parochial suburban housewives, the rest of the culture ignored the world of women completely. EDNA helped make suburban womens experiences and perspectives a subject women would pursue and perfect. eg Kath and Kim.
(2) All good comedy has cruelty at its heart.
(3) No one should get a free pass. If they say or do something deliberately hateful, they should be held accountable.
(4) No one should get a free pass for being unfunny either.
(5) His RW political views don't accord with mine but I still find parts of his work sublime. Les Paterson's 'He's horny enough to have a go at the hair on a barbershop floor' line is peerless.
(6) Times change and the older one gets the weirder the world seems. Does that mean you can behave like an arsehole? No. But at some point, we will all lose the capacity to see and understand the right now.
(7) I had huge admiration for Ricky Gervai,s but his last Netflix special was so full of tired, 'provocative' anti-trans stuff, I turned off. It was tedious and labored. Now, I'm not so keen on his schtick.
(8) If you don't like someone's art, don't engage with it. We are blessed with millions of folk trying to amuse us. Try another flavour.
I might add, that he was quoted as saying, that when it came the Dame Edna, he'd "created a monster." RIP Bazza.
Pitching a pedophile & a misogynist against a politicalised scientific argument is an unfair poke at Clive, there. He's the King! And I can always laugh along with someone who's politics I dislike, it's their honesty that can really spark things. I just can't punch back with a laugh when I know their persona is a lie. Like a burst tire, I'm left flat with every future punchline. Think of Geoff James Nugent AKA Jim Jefferies.
Then there is Barry Humphries. Born into a time of stigma & alienation. Yet where people today, people he championed. People he opened the doors of social acceptance into the modern world, wish to condemn, purely due to them not having any historical context, or a sense of humour. Because he didn't want to use a pronoun. Vale Barry Humphries.
You're the brave one who asks all the good/hard/thought-provoking questions. Thank you.
I saw Ben Elton when he last toured and he posed a similar question regarding Germaine Greer (now being trod on) and feminism. I wish there were a clip of it as it is utterly brilliant. He summed it up well. Elton is clearly left in his politics but he said he honestly has trouble to coming to terms with some of the newer social developments, citing trans issues, in particular. He says he tries every day to be better but he still doesn't fully get it. (I'm paraphrasing here - he was far more eloquent).
People of Humphries and Greer generation are older than Elton and maybe, it's as simple as it is just that much harder for them to be able to come to terms with the changes that are happening. This should not itself be a reason to tread on their legacy.
So to your question I think we can forgive (for want of a better word) Humphries views and still enjoy his comedy.
Allen and CK are different. It's not their views that got them into trouble but their actions. That should set the bar much higher.
Oh course you can laugh at comedians you don't like. Today we might call that the 'Jeremy Clarkson Effect'. James May once said of him, "The man's a buffoon but you can't help but like him." I'm not sure I'd say I 'like' him but I do find him entertaining. Probably because he's a buffoon. I don't particularly 'like' Jim Jeffries but by God he knows his craft, and his audience. You wouldn't invite Dylan Moran into your house: he'd be drunk, he'd smoke, he'd be rude to everyone, but on-stage he's fucking hilarious. Some comedians spend their careers cultivating an on-stage persona that is purposefully awful. Be honest people: who of us hasn't sniggered at the odd line from Andrew Dice-Clay or Rodney Rude or Rodney Dangerfield. You may never contemplate having them over for dinner, you may even find their personalities abhorrent, but they made you laugh.
Barry Humphries was a national treasure. Dame Edna is part of our national psyche.
I think Louis CK is a creep but he is so funny, and clever funny, i would not hesitate to go see him live. I have zero clue as to why people cant seperate the art from the artist. I never really got Woody Allen's film style - bit to art house for me. However his awkwardness and self flagellation is quite funny and shows he has humility & can make fun of himself... but he slept with his kids nanny and really messed with Mia Farrows head. That being said if he made a brilliant film i'd watch it. In my humble opinion Ricki Gervais is the most irreverent of all the comedians. he makes fun of marginalised groups, women, says the G word and makes fun of dead kids and babies... and he is hilarious - he consistently makes fun of females, he hangs shit on the lack of good female comedians; there is some truth it - Ali Wong, Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, and Melissa McCarthy are about the best - they dont hold back. I could not watch a comedian who censors him or herself
I haven't tried rewatching any Graham Linehan comedies since I learned about him personally, and I don't really want to because I don't know how his involvement is going to poison my enjoyment. EVery time I hear a joke in Father Ted, Black Books, or the IT Crowd, I'm just going to wonder whether Glinner wrote that joke, and if so, did it come from a place of genuine disgust with women, transgender people, or whoever else he hates and whoever the heel of the gag was.