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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Ali G - am i missing the joke?

12:18 / 31.10.01

ali g was mentioned elsewhere and it reminded me of the only time i saw the show. i turned it off halfway through because i found it offensive. i understand what the character is supposed to be about, but the repeated use of the term 'batty boy' was gratuitous i thought. made me wonder if the bloke that plays him was a bigot just hiding behind the character. on the other hand i was probably more pissed off at the audience's reaction to it - screaming laughter every time he said it. so perhaps it says more about them - that they went for it cos it meant they could finally take the piss out of us queers in safety? i have reclaimed many homophobic insults, but when someone says 'batty boy/girl' the next step is usually to do you some damage, so i can't find it funny.

but have i missed the point?

12:47 / 31.10.01

yeah .. his show was at best crap.. most of the time unwatchable..

he did his best work as an interviewer for the occasionally decent (mostly fucking terrible) '11 o'clock show'. he was fresh and funny..

by the time he got his own series the joke had worn waaaaaaaaay too thin.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:49 / 31.10.01

Ali G is another example of a comedy character that ends up celebrating the things he started off taking the piss out of. The early sketches, in the otherwise awful 11 O'Clock Show, were often funny even though they were both derivative (cashing in on Chris Morris' celebrity duping) and very politically dubious (Sacha Baron-Cohen, a Jewish Cambridge graduate, plays and this sends up a provincial, racially-ambiguous working-class guy). One of the good things that could be said about the character was that he nailed the fake gangsta, wannabe rude-boy young British male who wants to be down with hip-hop really, really well. And also how certain people react to this character: the guests he interviewed often condescending to rather than condemning his deliberately ignorant, often offensive remarks.

However, as soon as fake gangsta, wannabe rude-boy young British males saw Ali G, they absolutely fucking loved him. Thus, by the time you get the Ali G Show, Ali G presenting awards ceremonies, the Ali G bloody book, it's just like Men Behaving Badly (another show which started off as "aren't they horrible?" and ended up as "aren't they horrible? isn't it great!"). Ali G mentions weed. Audience laughs. Ali G mentions women in a derogatory manner. Audience howls. Ali G says 'batty'... you get the picture.

Funny thing is, I seem to remember Sacha Baron-Cohen saying he was going to kill the character off ages ago. Then they backed the truck full of money up, I suspect...

[ 31-10-2001: Message edited by: Flyboy ]

13:07 / 31.10.01

I thought it was the pilot for the revival of the Black and White minstrel show.

13:36 / 31.10.01

Interestingish character gone on too long, for my money.
Though I can’t help thinking that the kind of wannabe rude boys who it was poking fun at won’t see the joke.
Which may actually make it funnier, come to think of it.

DBC

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:44 / 31.10.01

Bah. The whole 'wannabe' thing is bollocks. The guy's new character is a straight racial caricature called Borat. It's a little light racist portrayal masquerading as complex satire - as several of Britain's black newspapers pointed out.

So no, you're not missing a thing.

13:45 / 31.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Flyboy:
as soon as fake gangsta, wannabe rude-boy young British males saw Ali G, they absolutely fucking loved him. Thus, by the time you get the Ali G Show

as happened to warren wotsisface with alf garnett in in sickness and in health

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:07 / 31.10.01

Exactly - and, arguably, Absolutely Fabulous. And Zig and Zag.

No star here laces

14:27 / 31.10.01

quote:Originally posted by DaveBCooper:

Though I can’t help thinking that the kind of wannabe rude boys who it was poking fun at won’t see the joke.
Which may actually make it funnier, come to think of it.

A comment which, of course, is far less elitist, condescending and classist than Ali G. Honest.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:53 / 31.10.01

I think the whole concept of "seeing the joke" is kinda flawed - just cos you laugh at someone sending you up doesn't mean that you don't realise they're sending you up (the point Ty is making, and I think he's right), but equally, it doesn't mecessarily mean you see anything wrong with the characteristics that are being sent up.

What really pisses me off about Ali G is that I suspect he's both contemptuous of his fanbase and happy to make homophobic/misogynistic jokes (and while I won't go so far as Nick in my interpretation, I think the racial connotations are dodgy to say the least).

15:00 / 31.10.01

I almost see your point, but I think the whole rude boy thing is just as rife with fakeness as any other thing like this : goths, punks, Harry Potter worship, claiming to be 'just like Bridget Jones' or whatever.

If someone satirises something, and you're the object of that, and you don't see it, but in fact applaud the satire, isn't that funny ?

I don't know if it's elitist, classist or condescending of me to say that just because the object of Ali G is to satirise something that's seen as 'street' and 'tough', any more than I laughed when Chris Morris got Tony Parsons (on the radio show) to praise the work of the fictitious victorian writer BidleyBodley Wilkinson. I thought that was funny, for exactly the same reasons as above.

DBC

The Knowledge +1

17:03 / 31.10.01

You is all clearly batty-boys

19:37 / 31.10.01

a little aside but:

i'm signed onto a site called livejournal.com..

as you can guess its a site with lots of livejournals on there..

and it seems to have a real ali g on there:

Called hardcore billiam.. warning .. there maybe explicit images on here.

Ganesh

12:02 / 01.11.01

Possibly gone on a little too long but, as a practising batty-boy, I still find him funny. I enjoyed the Borat stuff even more.

Am I a baaad person?

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:31 / 01.11.01

No, you're just easily amused. But then, we knew that already.

12:33 / 01.11.01

True.

Hooray for boobies.

14:53 / 01.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Zarathustra:

and it seems to have a real ali g on there:

Acctually, if you check out the site that it's attached to (follow the links) it's a joke site.

Ganesh

14:59 / 01.11.01

Being easily amused is a fine way to cope with life, I find. The alternatives are all rather grim.

Hooray for suffering!

11:35 / 04.11.01

Like Tom Stoppard said, "comedy is tragedy interrupted".

11:40 / 04.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Ganesh:
Being easily amused is a fine way to cope with life, I find. The alternatives are all rather grim.

I'm not knocking it, 'Nesh. I still giggle like a schoolkid every time someone farts.

11:43 / 04.11.01

I do find Ali G funny, some times more than others, though I do understand what you are all saying about the problems inherent in the way he plays his characters. I do think the way he played on being stupid to get people to reveal far more of their true beliefs than they ever would to a serious interviewer was extremely clever. People stopped being careful around him, and all their political correctness just slipped away. I think he got closer, in a lot of ways, to the 'truth' of his interviewees, whatever that means, than pretty much anyone.

The Natural Way

13:48 / 06.11.01

When I lived in west london I met tons of macho, rude-boy wannabes. I REALLY enjoyed watching Sacha take the piss out of them. Some of that stuff was sooo well observed.

And then I watched them recuperate the joke and everything went horrid.

18:30 / 06.11.01

i think it's the audience that really disturbs me. like harry enfield's 'loadsamoney', which was obviously poking fun at the thatcherite me me me thing a lot of people seemed to have affection for the character and not understand the joke.

13:25 / 08.11.01

Seen in the paper today that he's pissin of the Christians now, there's a photo of ali g in his boxers hanging from the cross...not sure why maybe he just needs a hug..

08:13 / 09.11.01

christians are so easy to piss off....

08:49 / 09.11.01

Apparently if you feed them after midnight they multiply..

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:42 / 09.11.01

Pah, I thought he was crap before any of you thought he was crap...

13:26 / 10.11.01

True, buthe was awful on the MTV music awards. Part 70's rasist (the french, the Germans) and part apologist after Daman Albarns speech.
Hopefully the MVT Music awards will be the nail in the coffin. Or else next year they will be presetned by Alan Partige.

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

17:12 / 10.11.01

Borat: yes, he is a racial caricature. But one used pretty effectively to poke fun at british reactions to different races. It's the only good part of the program.

The rest of it can be OK if you watch him like a clown, not like a satirist who you should respect. The celeb interviews are dead dull, except for noting that Mohammed al Fayed was the only one to have sussed Mr G out within seconds of coming on.

[ 10-11-2001: Message edited by: Mr.Karika ]

17:31 / 10.11.01

I find Ali G quite funny, the joke has been kinda stretched though. I don't have any real problems with what he is doing, surely it is just another Paul Calf type character. I identify with the whole being put off by the audience kind of thing, though.

03:13 / 11.11.01

In his own show his bigotted comments are rarely challenged so it just becomes one long celebration of them.
Indeed, he's become a celebrity not a character. Henceforth I would like to see a revival of Dennis Pennis just to take the piss out of the sell-out, or just anybody who appears on his show to ask something like "Do you really mean that about women Sacha?"

17:26 / 11.11.01

Originally posted by Buk:

I don't have any real problems with what he is doing, surely it is just another Paul Calf type character.

Ah yes. But what Paul Calf was doing was mocking the white, poor, ill educated working class.

That's OK - they need to be laughed at. And maybe given poisoned heroin now and again.

17:34 / 11.11.01

Everyone needs to be laughed at. I don't know one person, group or culture which isn't ridiculous at a certain level.

11:13 / 13.11.01

quote:
Ah yes. But what Paul Calf was doing was mocking the white, poor, ill educated working class.

That's OK - they need to be laughed at. And maybe given poisoned heroin now and again.[/QB]

HAHHAH. Joke right? Just like Ali G would tell.