She
warned us at the start that “some Christians may find this film difficult”.
Well it does have Anne Widdecombe in it. Still I stuck with it, as she
suggested. Her aim was “to find out what is happening, and why is it so funny
to say Christians are stupid.” A laudable aim, slightly diminished by the fact
that she didn’t actually show any clips in which people said that Christians
are stupid. (There were some which pointed some out some absurdities and
difficulties in the stories in the Old Testament, admittedly. Oh, and there was
a clip of Frankie Boyle saying that it “was absurd to say that Jesus was
married, when everyone knows he rose from the dead and flew up to heaven” but
he didn’t say anything about the intelligence of believers. )
Other
questions asked at start “Is Christianity more subject to ridicule than other
faiths?” “Is what I regard as most sacred now merely fodder for a cheap gag?”
(Answers on a postcard?). I think we can see from the outset what direction the
argument is likely to go.
Still,
you don’t necessarily expect Anne Widdecombe to be able to look at an argument
objectively and take on other people’s points of view. This is after all the woman
who, when presenting a programme in the history of Christianity series about
the writing of the Bible, said that she didn’t care what all the scholars said,
she was going to stick to what she wanted to believe, and a few facts weren’t
going to get in her way in that regard. We needed to take this into account
continually in what followed.
Anyway,
on to the content of this programme. “Jokes about Christianity are everywhere
you look.” I think she is looking in different places to me. I always didn’t quite
follow her leap of logic from Christianity being an allowable subject for
comedy but taboo in politics, to the assertion that “it is OK to talk about
Christianity so long as you don’t take it too seriously.” Still, maybe the steps
between these assertions can be filled in. We’ll allow that as acceptable
hyperbole.
But
before we got on to jokes about Christianity, we had a clip of her in panto. I
suppose jokes about ugly sisters are de rigeur and not strictly offensive, but I
do think that her action of making gratuitous, offensive and hurtful (and
unfunny) “jokes” about the Liberal Democrats might be more carefully considered
if she’s going to claim she’s offended by other people’s jokes about something
important to her. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective.
Marcus
Brigstocke explained calmly why comedy made a point and how it gave him an
outlet to express his views on a religion which he found “horrible”, when it
condemned friends of his and prevented women from “achieving their position in
society”. He also explained coherently why he might mock prayer, when Anne asked.
He would also potentially mock Jesus; Marcus is a political writer, and Jesus
was a political figure. Anne listened carefully to him and gave him no reply. She explained in voice-over that Jesus was not
a political figure, but was “special” – “too big to be mocked”.
Then
there was a clip in which she watched, and we saw a bit of, an excerpt from “Goodness
Gracious Me”, season 3, which, apparently due to protests from Christians, has
earned a lifetime ban – she had to get special permission to watch it. She
was “wounded” by this clip. The writer, Anil Gupta, explained carefully and
patiently to her that the sequence was not a joke about Christianity, but about
British Asians not understanding English ways and English religious practices,
specifically communion. (The whole series was always about Asians trying to be
more English and failing miserably, and covered a host of other topics. The
Church of England, being quintessentially English, naturally was covered in
this idea.) And the clip, if you watched it, did show exactly that. There was
no comedy aimed at the sacred act, it was all about character. The satirist Marcus
Brigstocke discussed it with her and he was gracious enough to consider her
woundedness and reflect when she explained she was “bereaved”, although he did
ask how long the bereavement lasted. (I thought Jesus was alive, but that’s
just me, I suppose.)
If
only Anne could show the same respect to Anil Gupta as Marcus did to her.
I am outraged.
This programme which I didn’t see at the time had been forbidden to me – by whom?
I may say that to me it was not offensive, was funny, and was in keeping with the
series tone. In fact it was very clever.
I’ll
skip quickly through the rest. Anne watched Life of Brian, which was considered
by many to be outrageous at the time. She found it silly, childish and
pointless. I agree with the first two, mostly. She wasn’t offended. She didn’t
seem to consider that if something widely condemned and banned at the time can
now be seen widely as being funny and making pertinent comments (George Carey
said he found it very funny) and quite acceptable, then maybe Christians in the
past have over-reacted – and that maybe some still do? There’s a reference
about beams in eyes that comes to mind. Steve Punt made the incisive comment
when he said that to understand eg the cheesemaker joke you needed to know the
actual content of the Sermon on the Mount. Thus it is a joke for Christians, not about them.
Steve
Punt also made the comment, on discussing the content of the Bible, that if
Christianity and comedy are sometimes opposed, then in his opinion it was a
fair fight due to the profile of “aggressive American creationists”. Some clips
of Americans seemed to support his view. Punt also explained why he wrote comedy
about Christianity and not Islam. His words were “I’m not entitled to, I don’t
know enough about Islam”. This did seem to contradict Anne’s view that wider
society has lost its Christian base knowledge.
Anne
did find some religious comedy by Anil Gupta funny, notably the sequence about
praying, from Citizen Khan. It seemed to me she was on very thin ice but I suppose
it was being funny about Muslims so it was all right. I thought praying to
Mecca was a sacred act, mind. Perhaps I’m wrong there. Maybe it was about
character; some Muslims being stupid?
She
was also amused by a 13th century beautifully illuminated copy of the
Book of Psalms, which contained at the bottom of some of pages, cartoons added
by the monks that were frankly filthy and disgusting. If there was any humour
that offended me, it was this addition by Christians to copies of holy works. I
guess you had to be there.
Anne
found one or two Christians to agree with her position on comedy, and only
George Carey to disagree. Many people had turned down her invitation to appear.
Well it would mean meeting Anne, to be fair.
Interestingly
she did not summarise the problem with any conclusions. It finished with Marcus
sharing his favourite religious joke with her. She seemed to find it amusing.
