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Showing posts with the label comedy

Is Rape Funny?

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Well, no, of course not. Rape is terrible. But George Carlin, one of the most revered American comedians of the 20th century, says that rape can be funny. So it's cool when Daniel Tosh makes fun of a heckler by saying how funny it would be if like five guys raped her, right? Well, no. The difference is that George Carlin, along with Louis CK and other people who have wrought comedy from the sensitive subject of rape, are extremely sophisticated comedians to the point where you could call them social satirists, social commentators, or (almost) stand-up philosophers (to paraphrase Mel Brooks). Daniel Tosh was, is and always will be extremely unfunny, lazy, obnoxious, tasteless, artless, pandering, juvenile, anti-intellectual, and idiotic to the point of being submental. What happened in the recent incident at the Laugh Factory just highlighted these qualities in the starkest terms. Like Michael Richards, and many others before him, Daniel Tosh has a right to say whatever he wa...

Comedy as Anarchy: Richard Lester's The Knack...

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The Knack...and How to Get It 1965. 85 minutes. UK. Directed by Richard Lester. Watchdate: 11/11/2010 It's not often that I've encountered a movie that combines visual and verbal panache so deftly and cohesively. This was Richard Lester's follow up to A Hard Day's Night , and the superb direction he exhibited there was merely a warm up for the tour de force work he delivers here. The Knack  moves so quickly it's sometimes hard to keep up. It's almost painful. Yet I was almost constantly laughing or in awe of the incisive madness of this whirling contraption. It's one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.