Here is an NYT article on the failure of gays to make it in the world of stand-up comedy. Funny people tend to draw a crowd to listen to their jokes sometime in adolescence, whereas pre-pubescent children struggle to come up with their own jokes, humorous observations, ability to relate to the crowd, and so on. So this is another case of gay Peter Pan-ism. (See the pictures for even more vivid proof.)
It's also a great example of their inability to empathize, another one of their Peter Pan-isms. Their routines focus so narrowly on the boring fact that they engage in the butt sex, and whatever is related to that "lifestyle". Really, who cares? Even chick comics riff on topics farther removed from their personal life. The article mentions that their fellow homos don't find queers funny either, while they show up in droves to see fag hags like Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin.
We also see another example of how lesbians are not socially and emotionally stunted like gays are. I mean, they are women, so they're not going to be that funny or able to work up a crowd, but Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell are basically competent as comic performers, and they couldn't host successful talk shows if they couldn't relate to a crowd at a level above that of a child. O'Donnell may be a fat, obnoxious battle-axe, but that is a more middle-aged than toddlerish trait. And Wanda Sykes is pretty funny, probably because blacks aren't as awkward and retarded as many white people are in front of a crowd.
There used to be a lot of popular gay singers in the '70s and '80s, all in the closet of course, whereas now there are none. I don't think there were that many successful gay comics back then, but it still goes to show how much better they'll fit into society if there's a pervasive climate of homophobia.
Gays seem good(and eager) at insulting other people.
ReplyDeleteHere's a video of one of the guys:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLlewUjzM8Y
The guy's name is Simon Anstell. According to a different article:
ReplyDelete"Around the same time Grandma's House came out, Amstell did a standup tour. What is most noticeable about watching them is how similar they are. It's hard to work out if the standup was a dry run for the sitcom or vice versa. In both he complains of existential nausea ("People congratulate me for being mean"); his self-loathing is matched only by his self-love ("I am officially a claustrophobic narcissist"); he is obsessed with skinny, screwed-up men ("I'm a big fan of Jesus Christ; there's no one more thin or vulnerable than Jesus Christ"); and he relates the times he mooned at his grandmother and the compassion course he went on to help him understand his family better. What seems indisputable is that both his stage show and sitcom draw heavily on his life."
Certainly fits into what you've written - both about gays have narrow waists, as well as being immature(mooning his grandmother, for instance). Def. sounds like something a little boy might do.
As does this:
"Was he also inspired by Dennis Pennis, the character created by Paul Kaye who was fabulously rude to celebrities? Amstell balks. Oh no, he says, they couldn't be more different. "He just sort of stabbed them and ran away. I'm more into stabbing them, then just smiling and seeing the reaction. Stabbing them and seeing them bleed, then smiling as if it wasn't me." He knows his butter-wouldn't-melt face helped. And the more experience he gained, the more innocence he feigned. "I think I learned on Buzzcocks that something more angelic and less spiky is actually funnier and cleverer. You can take the piss in that 'Oh gosh, I don't know what I'm saying, I do apologise' way, you can be flirty and funny and sweet and lovely.""
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/mar/09/simon-amstell-dysfunction-my-career
Here's one more interview of that guy, which perfectly illustrates your thoughts about male homosexuality:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Dg7jm5giU&feature=related
Low empathy doesn't seem consistent with being succesful as writers... (?)
ReplyDeleteFrom a British perspective, thinking of notable gay comics - Graham Chapman (for all that he was the least funny Python) and Kenny Everett were pretty successful... Wilde was witty. I can't say as I've ever found Stephen Fry to be a scream (kind of fusty and witty but doesn't really crack me up)... I get the sense Stephen Amos, Mark Gatiss and Dara O'Brien are fairly sound guys but don't really funny. Matt Lucas is kind of annoying to me - too much camp.
All of them seem at least slightly neurotic and somewhat limited. Not very surrealistic or imaginative (?). Not likely to be great at standup.
I don't know who actually goes to see the ridiculously OTT camp gay comedians (it seems like the comedy market can bear perhaps one at a time) in the Frankie Howard and Kenneth Williams tradition (does anyone actually like this stuff? I get the sense only a minority of women, and even then more because "it's transgressive" rather than actually funny.).
couldn't host successful talk shows if they couldn't relate to a crowd at a level above that of a child
Gays are quite popular in terms of talk shows in the UK - really the only currently successful talk show we have at the moment is the gay Graham Norton's (not that I'm really keen on watching - TV interactions between image conscious celebs who don't make their name in off the cuff speaking and sponteous comedians tend to be awkward at best). The annoyingly camp Alan Carr and Paul O'Grady also seem to have a semi-successful talk show. It seems like those are actually "comedy" related (?) areas where they are a bit overrepresented (perhaps because they're more to do with being fairly blandly affable rather than being funny?).
I'm not sure if there's much behind the idea that successful standup comedians tend to be somewhat awkward and narcissistic socially - they seem pretty fucked up, addiction prone and self destructive in general, if you think about the most successful (or at least hyped) guys like Peter Cook, Richad Pryor, Russell Brand (?), Bill Hicks.
Also, Jews are overrepresented in comedy - does that have any bearing on how much of an empathy index it is likely to constitute?
talk-show hosts these days are expected to insult their hosts. Gays tend to be good at this. (Simon Cowell, for instance).
ReplyDeleteI don't think that being "fucked up and self-destructive" means that you lack empathy. Some of the greatest actors - Marlon Brando for one - were clearly self-destructive and had addictive personalities.
I don't think that being "fucked up and self-destructive" means that you lack empathy. Some of the greatest actors - Marlon Brando for one - were clearly self-destructive and had addictive personalities.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't really focus too much on the self destructive part - that the greatest comics are interpersonally unpleasant (I mean Peter Cook and Richard Pryor and Russell Brand, for examples, are all known for pretty awful treatment of the people who intersect with their personal lives). Just arseholes to everyone.
Comics may be more likely to have cognitive empathy (ability to take other perspectives) but I seriously doubt they have particularly high affective empathy (actually giving a damn about those perspectives and treating other people and their emotions with importance).
Of course, both these aspects develop from child to adult (likely cognitive ability more with age - children simply seem more impaired to understand others feelings more than they are to feel an appropriate response when they do).
Why the obsession with gays? Gays make up around 2% of the male population. It is also implausible that gays somehow "convert" straight men into becoming gay. The thought of having sex with another man is viscerally repellant to straight men (including myself). Excepting the medical costs of treating HIV/AIDS, which has dropped dramatically in the last decade, the actions of gays are irrelevant to straights.
ReplyDeleteSo I ask again: why the obsession with gays in these last few posts?
It's part of the ideological battle, where the gay issue is the next point that the culture-destroyers are trying to breach. We keep hearing all kinds of perfect nonsense about gays, so someone needs to keep the record straight.
ReplyDeleteThat's true even among conservatives, who have largely abandoned the framework of seeing gays as mentally abnormal. My posts show how their social-emotional growth is stunted in early childhood, and that they have profound addictive tendencies (related to being juvenile).
It's even more necessary to focus on their psychological abnormalities because that shows even more vividly how sick their defenders are, like encouraging drug addicts to shoot up and own it.