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Leicester Comedy Festival 2008: Sarah Millican - Preview Show

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kaybee
 
Jan 21st 2008
 
Sarah Millican's set at the Preview Show certainly provoked a real mixture of responses amongst the group I saw the Show with, with most of the debate on the closing material on rape.

A few reactions:

Rape is an untouchable subject for comedy.

Nothing is an untouchable subject for comedy, but her rape material was offensive and, crucially, unfunny.

Sarah Millican likes to provoke and challenge - this material was evidence of her brave and creative approach to a difficult subject.

The closing material turned her from the "victim" to the empowered person of the piece (and the view that it did quite the opposite).

Its a throwback to the old days of routinely sexist comedy, legitimised by being delivered by a woman.

Freedom of speech is all - she can say what she likes.

Freedom of speech is all - vote with your feet if you hate it.

Her material was fine; possibly misplaced in a mainstream venue/line-up, but no more than that.

I've tried to present a cross section of what we discussed, though on balance there were more negative comments than positive ones. I'd be really interested to know what other people think (yes, yes, I know, I should really consider getting a life and having a laugh and not dissecting every single act!)

Peace,

Kaybee
Liney23
 
Jan 22nd 2008
 
Hmm. it was tricky. Rape as a comedy subject was a bit of an "ooh should I laugh or should I not find this funny?" I did laugh at her idea of shouting " I consent" at the last minute and thus taking away all the power of a potential rapist but it was an awkward laughter and a bit uncomfortable in the audience.
I suppose comedy featuring 1 joke about rape in a routine is no worse ( or better) than all the jokes that go around after eg the death of someone or a disaster - I can remember Tsunami jokes/ hurricaine jokes/ flood jokes etc.

Whilst you might not approve of your own laugh or guilty snigger - most of the time we do laugh - possibly as a way of finding impossible situations dealable with.

I did like the rest of her act though which was as much having a laugh at men as it was at women. Her remarks about her dad made me think of mine who sounds very similar. Would like to hear more of her routine to make a fair assessment of her comedy.

Good preview show though. Paul Sinha was my favourite.
lucybec
 
Jan 22nd 2008
 
I thought the evening was great fun overall but Sarah Millican disappointed me for two reasons. Initially I was fed up because she repeated word for word the gig she did at Summer Sundae last summer. Secondly her joke about rape was unnecessary and offensive. I believe in freedom of speech and in using comedy to make strong points about difficult subjects but her jokes about rape didn't succeed in empowering victims of rape or belittling perpetrators, it simply reinforced age old negative stereotypes about women and about rape.

There seemed to be a consensus of opinion from the friends I was with that it wasn't big and it wasn't clever, and for that matter it wasn't funny.

Looking forward to seeing lots of other acts though over the comedy week.

Cheers
digby1
 
Jan 22nd 2008
 
oh dear....thought sarah was really good until her jokes about rape....such a bad idea. I dont need to say too much here as its already been said but Please dont Try and make rape into a laughing matter, its really Not funny!!!!!!!!!

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