With Ricky Gervais it's Such a Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever

I'm sure you all know the scene in Spinal Tap, the seminal mockumentary, where the band are in the hotel lobby berating the fact that another, more successful, band have got away with having an outrageously misogynistic cover on their album, whilst their own was banned.

Duke Fame's cover involved him being subjected to torture from semi-nude women.

"He's the victim", says Ian, the band manager, "That's fine, you can do anything as long as you're the victim".

The band nod and reflect on their own, on which the band are holding out a leather mitten, forcing a semi-nude and enslaved woman to 'Sniff the Glove'.

"It's such a fine line between stupid and... clever".

This one scene could sum up the career or Ricky Gervais, and indeed a whole school of ironic comedians, though he is probably the master.

He takes us to incredibly uncomfortable areas and forces us to confront how ourselves, and society as a whole, react to certain situations.

In such a way he promotes antithetical positions - he's an exploitative wanker vs he's a comedy genius exposing our own flawed reason.

The fact is that both are true.

He is rationally and deliberately mining taboo areas and manipulating the grey area that exists in people's minds when forced to confront these issues. He hides behind the layer that having the potentially exploited person as the victim, and the layman as the subject of our vitriol, allows.

In previous material he has confronted disabilities - it's fine we are laughing at David Brent being a twat, not the disability. That has some validity to it but the scene still contains the original laugh, whether you own it or not.

The upcoming 'Life's Too Short' is guaranteed to be full of  scenes of 'look we're not laughing at Warwick, we're laughing at all the cunts around him'.

This isn't true, and we all know it. The idea of someone three feet tall falling over here, not being able to push that button there etc is viscerally hilarious, and I'm sure Gervais will exploit this for all it's worth. And I think we can also rest assured that he will do this better than anyone else on Earth.


He is, after all, one of the funniest men of his generation.

If there were no prejudice and we all had mutual acceptance, whatever our size, shape and colour, then we could all laugh at each other and our stupid bodies and behaviour, there would be no need for ironic humor and we would all co-exist in an hysterical bubble.

But it does exist and it ruins people's lives.

When you're confronting emotive issues you cannot be Duke Fame without also forcing people to 'Sniff the Glove'.

Rebels Without a Cause – Coming Soon to a City Near You

After several surreal nights of rioting, amid the full spectrum of opinion, ranging from “send in the army and smash the cunts to pieces” to “they are disenfranchised with nowhere to go”, the one aspect of it all that scares me the most is:

All these kids are capable of is random looting, arson and violence.

I’ve followed threads on twitter, with people tweeting “millions take to the streets in Egypt for democracy, in London it’s for 42” plasma TVs”. Sorry, but I find the latter more profound. An oppressive regime – stand up and be counted, get on the street if you are brave enough and enforce change. The motivation is transparent and people can unite behind the cause. What the hell are these kids fighting for? They don’t even know. They don’t even know who they are. Fact is, no-one gives a shit.

Theresa May, the banshee that she is, goes on national TV –“let’s be very clear – this is mindless violence and destruction”. Yes it is and how fucking scary is that? The youths that we are talking about are so fucking apathetic and devoid of aspiration that when collecting en masse all they can think of is nicking some fucking plasma TVs and setting fire to things! 

Karl Marx? Is that the charity shop next to Debenhams? Let’s burn it!

The feeling on social media, before it got out of hand, secretly urging them to have a cause, was almost palpable. Sorry guys, there isn’t one. 

If there is some kind of hidden agenda to dumb people down, to reduce us all to the lowest common denominator, then it’s fucking working! You feed people the fucking X-Factor and bullshit TV, crappy tabloid newspapers, all the disposable crap that is aimed at aspirational living, but which is ultimately unobtainable, all the visible means of excelling in life, shoved in their faces, and rob them of any opportunity to achieve it, and then you have the temerity to shout out at the subclass of idiots you have created! 

Our Darwinian society has allowed corporations to thrive at the expense of the masses, dictating policy and enforcing governments to adopt counter-intuitive social policy. There are so many people these kids could be angry with, so many fronts that they could be rising up against. 

Instead, they are rampaging like a bunch of fuckwitted Frankenstein’s monsters, destroying small businesses and communities in the same breath as burning down J D Sports.

I guess we can now expect parliament to pass some God-awful legislature to allow for the imposition of civil right depletion, before sticking their heads back up their gigantic arseholes.

If they do, then it may be that the zeitgeist of zombie movies, seemingly released every week, won't be so far off being realised.

And no, I’m not condoning the violence.