I like most of the work of Ricky Gervais. The Office was a brilliant comedy in many ways – subtle, inventive, intelligent and above all it had an underlying tragic sensitivity that elevated it above your average comedy. The Office was an examination of how TV searches for people that will provide perfect rubber-necking TV. David Brent was the archetypal reality TV star – someone so ignorant of his own limitations that they could be easily edited into a bumbling, embarrassing incompetent by amoral TV executives. The point of The Office was that the documentary makers were inviting audiences not to laugh with David Brent, but to laugh at him and the show is frequently infamously cringe-worthy because of this. Essentially, the Office was actually a dark series about how TV executives could happily film a man teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown who gradually loses his job and dignity as the ‘documentary’ goes on because it makes ‘good’ TV. The series played on the fact that most people would still tune in and not even realise this – instead they happily mocked Brent just as the fake producers of the documentary show inside The Office knew they would.
One consequence of this is that now Gervais faces a lifetime of being asked to ‘do the dance’ by people who completely missed the point.
Most people don’t really think too much about TV, it seems. Most people might miss the subtle editing that reminds the audience that you’re not seeing David Brent the human being, you’re seeing David Brent the edited-for-good-TV version. One scene – for example – in the second series starts – very briefly – with the employees laughing along with Brent with real warmth and it is obvious that we have missed a moment when Brent was connecting with his staff. Brent’s new boss (or equal in the eyes of Brent) then makes a humorous introduction to the staff and Brent follows up with a floundering mess culminating in him doing a John Cleese goosestep whilst imitating Hitler. The Office is a comedy that requires the viewer to be aware that we are not viewing the whole scene, but rather the snapshots that are designed to set up Brent for a TV audience to poke fun at.
It is a theme that Gervais memorably returns to in Extras when during a powerful penultimate scene his character (Andy Millman) comments on the nature of celebrity and pseudo-celebrity TV shows when he has entered Big Brother and suddenly realises what he – and a significant part of TV has become:
fuck you, the makers of this show as well. You can’t wash your hands of this. You can’t keep going, “Oh, it’s exploitation, but it’s what the public want.” No, the Victorian freak show never went away. Now it’s called “Big Brother” or “American Idol,” where in the preliminary rounds we wheel out the bewildered to be sniggered at by multimillionaires. And fuck you for watching this at home. Shame on you.
The Office was the Victorian freakshow, where documentary makers wheeled out the bewildered David Brent so the audience could laugh at him as his life fell apart. The point of the Office was that David Brent wasn’t an evil man, he was simply a man unaware of his own limitations who desperately wanted to be significant (hence his belief that he was some kind of amazing comedian / philosopher who was having a positive impact on the world). He wanted to be liked and respected but his weakness (his lack of self-awareness) instead meant that he was vulnerable to be filmed, edited and put on display for the entertainment of millions who could mock him from the comfort of their own sofas.
The Victorian freakshow never went away.
And then we get to Science – screened recently on Channel 4 – which was weak, really weak. Gervais’ projects that have had a real heart and an intelligent subtlety have almost always – it seems to me – involved a significant role for Stephen Merchant, when Gervais is alone on a stage he just seems to revert to lowest-common-denominator comedy. It’s unfunnily ironic, considering that in Extras Gervais warns us about what good comedy can become when it is butchered for the mass-market – When the Whistle Blows (Millman’s sit-com in Extras) is an imagination of what The Office might have become had the BBC insisted on dramatic changes in order to make it appeal to a mainstream audience – people who Gervais and Merchant mock as knowing nothing about good comedy.
Science was tired stuff – I mean the amount of time spent basically mocking the fact that Noah couldn’t possibly fit two of every animal on the Ark through the use of a child’s book was amazingly lazy and weak – it has been done a million times before. It’s the kind of comedy sketch that has been done not by just comedians but pretty much anyone who has ever discussed the story of Noah with even the faintest whiff of worldy cynicism.
Anyway, that is of course not what the Daily Mail is complaining about and not, ultimately, the point of this blog post. Ricky Gervais pursued the ‘outraged response’ crowd by using the word ‘mong’ and then inviting people to not complain because that would be stupid because the word isn’t offensive anymore. Language evolves, seemed to be his point, and in isolation it is a fair one.
Language clearly evolves. There are tens, hundreds, thousands and possibly tens of thousands of examples of this that he could have picked to demonstrate his point. But he picked ‘mong’ simply because he knew this would get him the most attention. And it did. He has a standard faux-outrage (their outrage is false because they happily and frequently publish far more offensive things) article from the Daily Mail to hang on his wall of achievements – after all, anyone on the end of a Daily Mail attack can normally smugly know that they are not only right, but moral as well.
But I don’t think that is the case here. I don’t want to get into the whole argument about the word ‘mong’ because I think it is fairly clear to see that it is still used in a broad context to mock people with disabilities and others have already made this argument. What I want to point out is that Gervais’ Science show was obviously trying to portray itself as being intelligent comedy and Gervais’ response to the ‘mong’ debate on Twitter has been mocking – i.e. only stupid people are upset because they are not clever enough to understand what Gervais is doing.
But it wasn’t clever, it was just shit. We live in a period where language is being distorted and abused all of the time by our corporate and political overlords (see Unspeak by Steven Poole for example) and we’re currently staring into the abyss of the complete collapse of the capitalist system. If Gervais wanted to do intelligent comedy he doesn’t have a shortage of material. Instead he decided to treat us to his view of the recession – is it real? I’m rich so I don’t know – a bit where he uses mong to try to claim that it isn’t offensive at all, and that anyone who is offended by his use of it is just a stupid person because language evolves – as if he was making some deeply philisophical observation- and finishes with a lazy skit about how the story of Noah’s ark is a bit silly (as if we didn’t already realise that).
Basically, my point is this: Ricky Gervais is free to make lazy, unchallenging, unintelligent and tired lowest-common-denominator-comedy which he can sell to packed-out audiences, but what I object to is his attempt to package it as something more than that.
Science was not clever, nor was his point about the word ‘mong’ accurate or philisophical or remotely clever or even challenging comedy. It was just lazy and shit – as has his defence of it been (linking to one blogger who even claimed that those criticising him were just as bad as Hitler). Ricky Gervais can do clever comedy, what he cannot do is try to package shit comedy as intelligent comedy simply by being purposefully controversial.
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12 Comments
Just because a word has been bastardized now, doesn’t change its original connotations. Once upon a time the word “retard” was a medical term.
In comedy here’s a fine line between being offensive and funny, and being offensive just for the sake of being offensive which tends to be not funny.
If I called him a bastard for this moronic analogy, I wonder if he’d be offended, given its meaning been changed over time and all that…
I have never heard the word mong used in an offensive way. I’m 24, and I think the vast majority of my generation would agree. Certainly going by Radio 1′s Newsbeat FB page earlier, that was the consensus.
We should be annoyed at Gervais because mong is a word only used by blokes in their 50s (my 58 year old father being a prime example) and he should not be bringing back such an outdated word!
Am I missing something here? Gervais said, when defending his use of the word on his Twitter, that he would never use ‘mong’ to abuse anybody with Down’s Syndrome and that the word has moved on from meaning ‘someone with down’s syndrome’.
He is right in this respect. I was at school relatively recently and we never used it to mean ‘someone with Down’s Syndrome’ – it was used to mean _anybody_ with learning/physical disabilities.
Let me clarify: there were _no_ pupils with disabilities at my school. So, when we called each other ‘mongs’, what we meant was ‘you are acting stupid’. Which was short for ‘you are acting stupid _like someone with a learning difficulty_.’ When my friend tried to take a penalty during P.E. and missed, we all called him a ‘mong’. Because he wasn’t able to do something properly – _like someone with a physical disability_.
Gervais says that the word has changed. Well, I’m considerably younger than him, so any change should surely be reflected in the way that _I_ use the language, shouldn’t it? So, so far, it seems that the only change is that ‘mong’ is no longer used to abuse people with Down’s Syndrome. In this aspect, Gervais is right. Instead, the meaning ‘mong’ has simply expanded to short-hand for ‘disability’ – _all_ disability. That is why we use it. And to pretend otherwise is COMPLETELY disingenuous.
So, back to my opening paragraph: Gervais says that he would never use ‘mong’ to abuse someone with Down’s Syndrome. But ‘mong’ no longer means that. It means ‘disabled’, and more than likely ‘learning difficulty’. And the first time that I was aware of Gervais using ‘mong’ was in his God-awful Science show. Where he was abusing Susan Boyle. _Who has a learning difficulty_. This is why he called her a ‘mong’ isn’t it? Would he have called Kylie a ‘mong’? Or AntandDec a ‘mong’? Or that woman from Daybreak a ‘mong’? No. Because they are able-bodied and seem to be free of any outward signs of disability. Yet, Susan Boyle, who has a learning difficulty, is funny, according to him, because, quote: “She’s a mong”. Wow.
Sorry if this post is too long – I was thinking whilst typing and so am not being succinct. I am not disabled and do not have any disabled friends, but I commend Richard Herring for saying something on Twitter. I _would_ tweet him so, but it would get lost amongst all the shit he is getting from Gervais fans who seem to think that because they are not offended by something, nobody should be offended by anything.
Incidentally, I grew out of calling people ‘mongs’ when I was around 13. You see, I realised that what I was doing was wrong and the damage it could cause. That’s what happens when one grows up.
I don’t agree with you that The Office is making any real point about the imaginary production team and their editing techniques. The premise of the documentary is to give an edge of realism, and to heighten Brent’s neurosis because he’s constantly aware that he’s being filmed. That realism isn’t meant to be undercut by doubts about the editing. The Office is all about the people on screen.
The show encourages us to care about the characters, and the moments of poignancy are one of its great strengths. Those moments can’t work unless we believe we’re seeing the characters truthfully. The Christmas Special isn’t supposed to make us think about how the producers have manipulated the material. It’s supposed to make us cry, because we’re supposed to believe it.
Excellent analysis of The Office and the phenomenom of ‘reality TV’
I think it very sad that whilst most people (as you say) know they’re in the right when attacked by the Mail, Gervais is not. It really is a bad day when you make The Mail look moral.
AFZ
I have only followed the twitter debate from the side of Richard Herring et al. since I do not follow Gervais and hence cannot comment on this incident specifically. However in defense of Gervais regarding the claim that he is intentionally intending to be controversial I will say that I have heard him use the word ‘mong’ on several occasions over the back catalogue of his famous podcasts which I think span bacl to 2005 or earlier. I would suggest therefore that Gervais has long since decided in his own mind that ‘mong’ is sufficiently detatched from Down’s syndrome or mental disability in general to be ok for general use. Personally (just in case you’re interested) I feel that the fact that ‘mong’ may be more liberally used to denote a slow witted or perhaps clumsy person is a direct reference to it’s more specific meaning which clearly may cause offense.
Slightly off topic:
He has a standard faux-outrage (their outrage is false because they happily and frequently publish far more offensive things) article from the Daily Mail…
I don’t think that’s quite right. My Nan could in the same sentence show her outrage for racially motivated crime while using offensive racial epithets. That shows a lack of self awareness, verging on hypocrisy, but it could still be real outrage. What makes the outrage faux-outrage is that they go out of their way to find things that outrage them, to the extent of making up details that didn’t happen, and are then unironically hypocritical. In addition the lack of modes in between approval and outrage feeds into this. I’m not happy with the changes to my bins, but I understand that the council has to weigh up a lot of factors even if I disapprove. I don’t feel fury.
uuuh….pretty sure The Office was at least partly about laughing at David Brent and a satire of terrible bosses/work stereotypes.
The theme you point to is probably there but it’s not the major theme, and I think you’re over-intellectualising the show somewhat.
Now I’ve never been much of a fan of Gervais. In fact he’s, in my eyes, on of the most overrated comedians I’ve seen. Now it may be unfair since I have not watched too much of his material. I’m certainly not placed to discuss the intricacies of David Brent.
I don’t see much difference between Gervais and Brent. The Twitter comments are just the sort of thing that Brent used to say in the Office. Is there much difference from Brent craving attention and telling the racist joke and then trying to justify himself afterwards?
Then again I’ll never forgive him for the bad taste Comic Relief video he did those years back. The one where Merchant found him doing it in front of a blue screen.
In addition to have a fist magnet for a face, Ricky Gervais is Not Funny. If ever there was a performer who should learn not to read his own reviews, it’s Gervais.
And as far as I’m concerned, “The Office” was less satire and more a fly-on-the-wall documentary. I’ve had bosses who make David Brent look rational.
It was basically word for word the same argument people use to justify their use of homophobic language. “oh as long as I’m not actually talking about a gay person, it’s OK”.
There was a whole South Park episode making that particular argument – interestingly really, when they’d previously done an episode making the point that white people can never understand how it feels for a black person to hear the “N” word, yet there they were as two straight men presuming they have the right to say it’s OK to call someone a “fag” as long as they aren’t gay.
That episode put me right off the show – I often disagreed with their politics, but they usually made their point well and were always funny in the process. That was the first time I felt that not only had they missed the point by a country mile, but that the episode might actually be genuinely harmful, considering so many teenagers take the show as gospel and will now feel vindicated in their use of homophobic language against anything and everything they don’t like… meanwhile gay teen suicides continue to far outstrip straight ones, especially in America. But I’m sure there’s no connection there. Nope.
Ricky Gervais the liberal humanist who exploits the mentally disabled and vulnerable for commercial and comedy purposes. He thanks “God” that he is an atheist. so do we….
Gervais is a yellow pussy who only hits on safe and soft targets.
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