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?”
For instance, my life-long love of Clive James was compromised by his fervent climate denialism. Similarly, I don’t look at Woody Allen films with the same wonderment I once did. Same with Louis CK.
I haven’t mentioned female comedians here because no female comedian I’ve been a fan of has done anything to compromise my love of their craft. I think the brilliant Joan Rivers had different politics to me. But, on a general level, different politics isn’t going to stop me laughing.
But the behaviour thing remains a dilemma. So is using a megaphone to marginalise rather than unite. I’ve been known to turn a blind eye to footballers who have behaved in an anti-social way or used their platform to divide. But we have a different relationship with comedians. I don’t know why. Maybe you need to actually like them to laugh at them.
I’ll leave the comments open. Let me know if you can laugh at people you might not like?
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 Barry’s whole schtick is outdated as was his opinion on transgender humans.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.