Frankie Boyle is in serious danger of becoming a parody of his original self. His once scathing wit seems to be rapidly descending into just saying anything as "controversial" as he can think of just to generate as much shock value in his act as humanly possible. If there is any greater satirical or ironic context than the superficial gratuitous shock value on offer in his current stand up routines then it is hard to detect. Boyle runs the very real risk of becoming a crude caricature of his currant persona and running his career smack bang into a solid dead end. His latest act has got him into hot water with Katie Price (AKA Jordon.) who is understandably pretty pissed off with Boyle as he had the following to say about her disabled son Harvey in his C4 show:
"Jordan and Peter [Andre] are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey – eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him."
He then promptly turns it up to 11 when he says:
"I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter – she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from f***ing her"
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Understandably this has become a talking point about what should be deemed as acceptable material for a stand up to include in his act. Are some topics just to hot for the microphone? Should stand ups face censure for controversial comments about minorities such as disabled children? The question becomes even more pressing when after Jordan complained to C4 with the threat of legal action, Ofcom announced they intend to pursue the complaint with an official investigation. This does raise the age old question, does free speech have taboos that should never be broken? And the additional question should Boyle be censured or even punished by law for what he said?
My own opinion on his comments is that they are unpleasant, they are a cheap attempt to push the boundaries just to get a shock horror response without any greater context or subtext to the routine in question. It is the stand up equivalent of running into a supermarket, grabbing the Tanney and shouting "fuck c**ty bollocks" at the top of your voice. Not exactly highbrow humour. Now I might not have much time for gratuitous shock humour, but that is only my personal taste, and people are free to laugh at this kind of stuff, or incorporate it into their act if they want to. However there is one important factor with the choice of target that shouldn't be overlooked. It has been argued that Jordan takes every opportunity available to stick her and her lovers, and her kids in front of the cameras, and she should take the flack for this, and that if she is willing to indulge in the light of publicity she should be able to take the flack that comes with it, thus Boyle was in effect doing just that. But Harvey has no say in what his mum does, nor will he ever be physically able to have a say in the future. Nor was it a social commentary on Jordon being a screen whore as C4 tried to make it out as. And lastly it wasn't even that funny, so it's not a case of really crude stuff being passable on the virtue of it being a good joke.
But the argument for banning Boyle, and indeed other comedians from telling jokes about taboo issues is another argument all together. When you start laying out what people can and can't say (short of slander, incitement to violence etc.) well you are on a road to pretty murky territory. Freedom of speech is one of the greatest gifts we have in our society, and I don't mean the sort of freedom of speech until someone says something I don't like variety that seems popular. So no he shouldn't be censored or threatened with legal action, nor does taboo subjects not have a place in comedy because people are a bit iffy with the subject. Some of the greatest satire such as the Brass Eye paedophilia special and Jerry Springer the Opera used extremely controversial issues to satirise the often double standards society has towards these issues, a context that Christian Voice and the Daily Mail writers appear to have missed at the time. But I'm afraid Frankie cocked up a bit by making lousy jokes about a disabled kid who can't fight back just to "edgy", and he is rightfully getting flack for it. Just because you can say a thing (and I emphasise he shouldn't be banned from telling jokes) doesn't mean you should do it. You might want to have a barney at your girlfriend, but would you do it her grans funeral? So in a nutshell he made some badly thought out comments, made a prick of himself and actually succeeded in making me sympathetic to Katie Price for once. But if he was prosecuted for what he said, then I'd be the first supporting this foul mouthed Proclaimers lookalike. Ah well.
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