Dear On the Mic Diary,
I’m feeling a bit better today. It’s been a tough but productive festival this year.
On top of the ravages of late capitalism, as performers we’ve also had to deal with a gauntlet of problems this year including people getting offended about literally anything and everything which just adds another layer of complication to what should be a nice simple situation – doing a show for people that want to watch a show because they want to see a show and not because they’re on the prowl for something to complain about.
I’m doing a show called c*nt! and I thought that would filter out the feckwits, but no, a man still came up to me after the show to tell me that he’d counted I’d said the word ‘cunt’ 140 times and he thought the show needed a content warning.
Cuntent warning, more like; for me… regarding the audience. “Warning this audience may be full of officious, humourless cunts”
It wasn’t by the way. The audiences have been mainly lovely, but it did remind me of an article I read earlier about a content warning now even being appended to that relic of the pre-watershed British sitcom era; Allo Allo.
Viewers are now being warned the show
“May may contain negative stereotypes of certain nationalities or cultures that some viewers may find offensive”.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m going to quickly deconstruct the humour of Allo Allo and explain why it doesn’t need a content warning for racism.
It doesn’t need a content warning because it isn’t racist. All the characters have funny accents, INCLUDING THE ENGLISH ONES.
If you agree with that statement you can stop reading now but, if you need further clarification, here it comes…
Racism involves hierarchy….
If Allo Allo was racist, the white, English characters would have to have normal voices and the rest of the ‘foreigners’ would have ones that could be described as ‘funny’ but they don’t.
They all have funny voices… because it’s a comedy and people doing funny voices is something people do in comedy!
It’s not just Vicky, ze sexy waitress who has a funny French voice or the German SS officer Herr Flick, who has a funny German voice but the English officers Fairfax and Carstairs they have ‘funny’ English voices too!
All the characters have funny voices because… mic drop moment… it’s meant to be a comedy and not because it’s covertly racist!
Allo Allo is actually very inclusive because it takes the piss out of everyone!
In the Allo Allo mythos, it doesn’t matter where in Europe the character is from or their age or class background everyone is given an equal opportunity to be portrayed as a total feckless idiots by Messrs Lloyd and Croft.
Phew. I hope that’s cleared that up and no one is wasting their time getting offended by Allo Allo now, well not because of alleged racism at any rate.
Now people can watch it, just get offended by it for the right reasons! – Because it’s dated old rubbish, and you’ve wasted half an hour of your life watching an episode.
