Yous are All Sexists

About a month ago, massive images of 1990s' comedian Jim Davidson's face began appearing on posters dotted around Glasgow, bearing the news that his latest theatrical tour de force, "adult pantomime" Sinderella 2: Another Scottish Romp, would soon be rolling into town. It didn't take long for the city's sharpie wielding pranksters to start making their own additions to Jim's smirking face.

Liam Turbett, Vice Magazine, 2015

I am sorry to have missed Nick Nick's unseasonal pantomime. Apparently, Davidson got pulled, either because of poor ticket sales or a drunken indiscretion. Whatever, as a champion of freedom of speech, with a passing interest in being offended by art, Sinderella 2 was on my to-do list.

Turbett's review, predictably, coruscates Davidson for the laziness of his humour - he recognises that the problem with 'funny' racism, sexism and crudeness is that it relies entirely on the audience finding the subject intrinsically funny. He conjures an image of Sinderella as the cave where the 1970s  crawls off to die, with aged jokes and poor performance competing to bore the audience. 

yeah, they really did this

Obviously, I would never call for a ban on work like Sinderella (it seems as if the show can implode without any outside pressure), but I am not entirely enthusiastic about the revival of abusive comedy. As a pretentious theatre critic, I'm used to difficult art, but it rarely challenges my vague leftist politics. I was hoping Davidson could provide that challenge. But if, as Turbett suggests, that challenge involves imitating the dumb racist impressions that ruined The Two Ronnies, I'm out.

Since I missed the show, I don't really have the right to comment - but I am going to make a point about the resistance to Jimbo, Dapper and their ilk. Apart from their continued existence being partially the fault of liberals who laughed when 'irony' came into play as the big excuse for saying the unthinkable, banning these guys is not an effect strategy for eradicating brain-dead sexists. 

Dapper's new persona

Language does allow the human mind to form offensive ideas, but simply banishing certain ideas or words, or even people, does not get rid of the ideas themselves. Indeed, those who resist Jim Davidson are as sexist as he is... 

Look at the word used to make Jim look stupid on the poster. To demonstrate how low Jim is, the writer has used a swear word that is... oh, come on. This is 101 stuff. Call him a prick, a knob, even a bell-end.