Thursday 5 January 2017

Real Housewives of ISIS? (Neither satire nor slur, just mildly revolting.)

Did anyone out there watch BBC 2’s “Revolting” ? I did, and by God I want my money back.

I was going to say ‘sorry Sarah AB, but I was surprised you thought it was worthy of a whole thread’ but I didn’t, because obviously Sarah AB wasn’t the only person who thought so.


Like, the Real Jihadi Brides sketch is all over the media and that. 




Mind you, most of the commentary focuses on a clutch of inane Tweets, which, if that’s the way journalism is heading, I give up. (not that I think I’m a journalist by the way)

The so-called humour in the entire programme was lame, tedious, unoriginal and irritating (but not intentionally so, like in, say, The Office.’) 
The so-called Jihadi brides sketch was the least plodding of the sketches, only because it attempted to poke fun at the entity that most Muslims insist is Nothing To Do With Islam. It’s not a very hard scenario to ridicule, given the ridiculousness of the thing. It ridicules itself for you. 



The idea of making social media jargon appear ‘amusingly incongruous’ fell flat because members of so-called Islamic State do seem to communicate in social media jargon; so it wasn’t even  incongruous. Not a patch on the Armstrong and Miller pilots, where the incongruity of the language was genuinely hilarious.


If anyone involved really does claim the programme is daring or edgy, that would be funny. Indeed,  that would be the funniest thing about it by far. The next funniest would be the fact that anyone found it Islamophobic.  
A hate crime, perhaps? But not as we know it. Beam me up Abdul.

8 comments:

  1. OUT: ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It's Islmaophobic to associate them with proper Muslims, which is why referring to them as the 'so-called Islamic State' is in the BBC Style Guide.

    IN: Making fun of ISIS is Islmaophobic!

    Seriously, I think the BBC commissioned this deliberately to generate fodder for their Complaints For Both Sides defense. "Our critics say we never make jokes about Muslims. Finally we do, and look at the reaction. The truth is, we get it about right."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Complaints From, not For. Sorry.

      PS: Love the Armstrong & Miller sketch.

      Delete
  2. #WTAF

    Although its an actual achievement to offend everyone!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The BBC's getting desperate. You can hear the anxiety in the panellists on Radio 4's News Quiz as they make jokes about migration, or rather find ways of not making jokes about migration while appearing to make jokes about migration. Especially as they are "hideously white" and have the example of John Holmes before them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The BBC's tactic seems to be working. The writers have responded:

    "You can't go after David Cameron for five years like we did and not go after the Islamic State."

    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bbc-real-housewives-isis-sketch-sparks-controversy-961002

    Complaints From Both Sides in full swing now. What's more 'trivializing' of what these animals do to women: this comedy sketch, or the BBC and the Guardian casually dismissing the phenomenon of these teenage girls running off to join ISIS as rash behavior by young people who have no direction and are attracted to the glamor?

    ReplyDelete
  5. LOL! Video taken down. Keep up the value for the license fee, BBC.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Remember the look of horror that Jim Hacker would give whenever Sir Humphrey congratulated him on being courageous? Perhaps somebody has congratulated the BBC on its courage, with a reminder of what happened when Charlie Hebdo poked fun at the extremists...

      Delete
    2. Or perhaps the BBC is just afraid of adding a couple of million signatures to the 'Revoke the BBC's Charter' petition - albeit signatures from an unlikely source.

      Delete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.