Nigel Farage has stepped into to defend comedian Paul Eastwood after it was reported that he had made a series of jokes about foreigners and Muslims at the UKIP party conference. According to Farage, we can’t start ‘censoring’ humour as we will end up killing it altogether.
During the last 11 years that I have been working in comedy this is a discussion that keeps on coming up. Comedy is subjective and there are always going to be some people that don’t like a joke. I have had angry complaints about certain jokes that I’ve made myself, including one that I made on BBC 2’s Mock the Week, ironically by members of UKIP. I agree that comedians should not be censored but we do have a responsibility to be considerate. And if you are challenged about any material then you need to be able to defend with something stronger than “it’s only a joke”.
Soyini Denise, a poet and author, tells me: “I don’t think you should censor humor but you should censor hate. People who hate have no business spreading that under the guise of comedy. If you are able to empathise and feel some responsibility to your subject matter then that should be sufficient to prevent you from needing to be censored.”
When booking a comedian, promoters should have a clear idea of the type of jokes that they tell and what kind of audience they will have at their event. Like any other kind of relationship, you can’t just throw the two together and expect that it will automatically work. Some comedians and audiences are just not compatible. As I’ve explained before it was a mistake to book Reginald D Hunter for the PFA Awards dinner when football is trying to rid itself of the scourge of racism.
However, UKIP and Paul Eastwood were a perfect match and that is what is so concerning. Eastwood knew that the material in his set making fun of people using racial stereotypes would be well received by UKIP members and their supporters. As the old saying goes “many a true word said in jest”. UKIP’s policies tie in with the jokes. This is a political party whose leader is an MEP, and at this same conference he complained that Britain was like a foreign land. He said: “In scores of our cities and market towns, this country in a short space of time has frankly become unrecognisable. Whether it is the impact on local schools and hospitals, whether it is the fact in many parts of England you don’t hear English spoken any more. This is not the kind of community we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.”
Steve Bennett, editor of Chortle (the UK comedy guide) website, says: “Nigel Farage is kind of right… and I can’t believe I just said that! Censoring comedy is a slippery slope. But equally the rest of us can – and should – condemn comics for telling outdated gags. Even though I found Paul Eastwood’s jokes more pathetic than offensive, it’s not some dark forces of political correctness that are massing against small-minded comics like him, but a growing consensus that his sort of humour is tired, lazy, ignorant, bigoted and dated. So you can see why UKIP booked him.”
I agree with him up to a point. Bennett may not find these jokes offensive but at the end of the day, as a white, middle-class British man they do not affect him. I am sure that members of the Polish, Somali, Asian and Muslim communities may well find them very offensive. Especially given the amount of racist attacks perpetrated against them.
And the ‘right to free speech’ argument doesn’t hold up in a court of law. Because as much as you think you have a right to say it, people have a right not to be subjected to it.
Nabil Abdulrashid, a black, Muslim comedian, tells me: “It is difficult to get right with a golden rule, because context and sociopolitical issues vary from joke to joke and society to society. For example you have a lot of hack white comics complaining about hack black comics doing ‘racist’ jokes about white people and not being able to do the same about black people, these people complaining tend to completely overlook social conditions that allow that to happen.
“There is a power imbalance and as such it isn’t as harmful when a black coin does jokes about white people not being able to dance as it is when white middle class comics do their material about black/urban (code name for black) ‘youth’ typically portraying them as violent, ignorant, homophobic criminals (that speak in a slang I’ve never actually heard outside a comedy club). This same comparison can be used with jokes from women, with men being the butt of the joke.”
This point is perfectly illustrated in this stand-up sketch by Aamer Rahman, of the ‘fear of a brown planet and reverse racism’.
I do hope that the three Asian women at the event where Eastwood said that they “looked a little bit lost” now understand exactly what type of people they have aligned themselves with. Perhaps they, Mr Eastwood and Mr Farage would like to attend a Stand Up to Racism gig where I will be speaking and learn a little more about the impact that UKIP, their speeches and ‘jokes’ have on people’s everyday lives.