Dapper Laughs Raped My Funny Bone: Daniel O’Reilly Must Be Killed
ITV2 have killed off Dapper Laughs show On The Pull because the star, one Daniel O’Reilly, made a joke about rape.
The Daily Mirror helped trigger the campaign to end the show by pointing to O’Reilly’s performance at London Scala, in which he told a female audience member:
“She’s gagging for a rape. Yep, we’ll have a chat afterwards. She’s having a chat about ‘yeah, I get quite tight but I get a bit… poor girl. Do you want to come backstage after? Bring two of your mates, you’ll need them.”
The women appear to laugh.
The paper says:
The Mirror approached ITV with the footage, and it has been confirmed that there will be no second series of Dapper Laughs On The Pull.
You might have thought ITV had seen O’Reilly’s act before hiring him. Presumably, they thought it ok, good enough for a mass audience. But they now say:
“We have given careful thought to the recent criticism of the character Dapper Laughs, which has focused on his activities outside of the ITV2 programme, whose content was carefully considered and complied. We have taken the decision that we will not be considering this show for a second series.”
And:
A petition had been launched on Change.org to get the show cancelled, and had reached 60,000 signatures by the time ITV made the announcement.
Wonder how many people in the room laughing along to Daniel O’Reilly signed it?
We’ve looked at rape jokes before. They are usually pathetic, picking on soft targets. It’s saying the offensive to someone unlikely to climb on stage and punch you in the head. You can be edgy on the telly so long as you pick approved targets.
Brian Logan noted that it’s not the joke you don’t like, it’s the joke teller:
Examples of rape comedy are easy to find. Reginald D Hunter has a routine that begins, “civilisation couldn’t have arisen without rape . . .”Jimmy Carr, of course, has several one-liners on the subject (“What do nine out of 10 people enjoy? / Gang rape.”). In a characteristic play on his words, Carr has called his current show Rapier Wit.
When the Andrew Sachs controversy was still a twinkle in Jonathan Ross’s eye, Russell Brand caused an outcry in Northampton when he prank-called the police live onstage claiming to have spotted a man wanted in the city for serious sex attacks. Even the women are at it: Geordie comic Sarah Millican has a skit about fetishistic rape roleplays with her boyfriend.
Jenny McCartney had more on Jimmy Carr, who unlike O’Reilly appears on the tax-funded Channel 4:
I recently turned on the television to hear the comedian Jimmy Carr saying: “What’s the difference between rape and football? Women don’t like football.” Again, I was a bit surprised – was that television humour now?
Actually, it’s a well-worn line of Carr’s. He has a whole wardrobe of rape jokes, including: “What do nine out of 10 people enjoy? Gang rape.” As he told an interviewer: “I do a lot of jokes about rape, but it’s not a discourse on rape. I do jokes to get laughs.”
Adding:
It’s not real, bloody rape that Carr and co are talking about: it’s joke rape, which is somehow comically sacrosanct and special. That was how the American comedian Daniel Tosh evidently felt when an indignant woman dared to interrupt his well-practised routine on rape recently by heckling: “Rape jokes are never funny!” and he responded: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys right now?” That shut her up.
But the Mirror likes tax-avoiding Carr, especially when it supports the paper’s Pride of Britian awards – he even presented an award.
So. What Daniel O’Reilly did wrong was to be disliked by the Mirror whilst working for a private company, which ITV is, and telling a rape joke in what amounts to a private setting before his fans.
O’Reilly describes women as being “proper moist”. His fans – the ones who pay to watch him perform – are portrayed as rapists-in-waiting. One writer opined:
I want to talk about the production team, the commissioners and the management behind the new ITV2 series Dapper Laughs: On The Pull. The runners are the only people I’ll turn a blind eye to. The truth is, the rest of you are old enough to know better. You have basically helped create a rapists’ almanac. Sure you haven’t told people how to come equipped with rope or chloroform – but you have contributed to a prevalent predatory culture that reduces women to nothing more than a piece of cunt. That’s an ugly turn of phrase but that’s exactly what you’ve done.
The moraliser’s claim is that O’Reilly’s fans are all so stupid they hear his words and think rape is ok. They don’t understand his comedy context, his outrageous persona and his need for laughs. They actually believe what he tells them. O’Reilly’s material is not that good – the jokes come thin and thinner – but rather than wait for fans of stand-up to get bored and look to a new funnymen, the enlightened want him banned.
And while you’re at it, one Indy writer wants O’Reilly’s fans banned, too:
…all women have met Dapper in some form, or more accurately, they’ve met dozens of Dappers, hundreds and hundreds of Dappers in fact. Every time we leave the house in summer with bare legs and “invite” shouting. Or wait at traffic lights for a Transit van with a full front seat to pass. Or try and get our cars fixed. Or pass a group of men loitering outside a pub waiting for the comment or grunt indicating whether any of the gang have decided whether we are a potential wank-fantasy or, alternatively, a donkey none of them would penetrate. Dapper is everywhere.
Not everywhere, surely not in the Independent’s offices. To the Indy writer, the ubiquitous Dapper exists only at street-level, where working class men function.
He’s funny if he’s not picking on you though. He’s that lad who lads think are really funny, until the years pass and they have a daughter of their own and suddenly they think, “Oh my God I have brought a little girl into a world where looking for ‘consent’ before sex is thought of as chivalrous.”
These working-class goons only understand a women’s place in society when they have a daughter. Men with sons or no children remain clueless their entire lives.
Of course, maybe that line should be turned about.
‘He’s that lad who women think are really unfunny, until the years pass and they have a son of their own and suddenly they think, “Oh my God I have brought a little boy into a world where someone saying something I don’t like can be banned and working-class men are protrayed as morons.’
Posted: 11th, November 2014 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
