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'.
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