Need to shock shows comic’s lack of talent

I don’t know if many of you watched Russell Peters’ Christmas special on CTV, which aired, absurdly, on Dec. 1. I do know that only someone unable to reach the remote would have watched it for long, because it was agonizingly unfunny. The publicity it received was because the bland and safe Peters had asked Pamela Anderson to play the Virgin Mary in this vapid monstrosity. Shock, horror! A man who makes people feel cozy with his suburban humour asked what is in effect a large walking breast to portray the Mother of God.

Yet another achingly ordinary comedian showing his courage by kicking people who won’t fight back. Of course it’s offensive, but so what? My faith is not going to be dented by a desperate comic and a vacuous sex object. If you really want Christian persecution, spend some time in Pakistan, Egypt or China. Nevertheless, to do this at Christmas in particular was cruel and bullying, and it was done for no point at all; in that it wasn’t satirical and thus significant, but trashy and thus wrong.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Peters wouldn’t have asked a self-identified bimbo to play one of Mohammad’s wives — even the one who was a little girl — because he knows that the reaction would likely have been a fatwa. He also knows that Christians won’t react violently, and that the worst he will face are a few nasty letters. Better still, he understands that Christian pain means more support for him from the soggy left and the half-wit atheists, who still think that it’s “terribly brave” to make fun of those evil Christ-worshippers.

Also, there is the self-evident fact that it’s open season on Christians, and that if you run out of new material, make a joke about God and Christ, and have the audience laugh well within their comfort zone. Yet while obscenities about Jesus or Catholic priests are now commonplace, numerous human rights commissions make sure that gay people, Muslims and certain other protected groups never have to worry about being even slightly perturbed at a joke made at their expense.

Yet much as all this is abundantly true, and that such a clumsy depiction of the Virgin Mary does indeed annoy me, I’m not sure it matters very much. And this may be where those of you who have so far purred with agreement suddenly regard me as a terrible heretic. Humour is allowed to offend. Better still, humour often should offend. The genuinely talented funny guys — Frankie Boyle, Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr for example — offend a great deal of the time. Just last month Gervais got into trouble for making a joke about the handicapped; yet his new television series, which unlike Peters’ gruesome pablum is genuinely funny, stars a dwarf, and has him as the cynical yet moral conscience of the comedy, surrounded by twits and bigots.

Be very careful here. Abortionists who kill Down Syndrome children in the womb, for example, tend in my experience to be totally humourless. Just because we joke does not mean we don’t care. Good comics often offend, but they make us think. If they don’t, they make us laugh. Can you seriously imagine Russell Peters making jokes about, say, the Holocaust, the disabled, gay silliness or Israel? Of course not, because his career might suffer. The comics I just mentioned have no such boundaries, and it’s one of the reasons why they are so extremely funny. Forgive me if I’m not following some party line here, but I’m less interested in limiting the areas for humour than in expanding them.

It was George Orwell who said that the reason Nazism would never triumph in Britain was that when Germans watched soldiers goose-step they wept with emotion; the British would fall about laughing. I’d rather trust someone who laughs at almost anything than someone who is offended by almost everything. God has a sense of humour. Proof? He made us didn’t He, and knew how ridiculous we would be. Pray that no state arbiter can ever tell us what to laugh at, and pray that Our Lady forgives Russell Peters — for not being funny.