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Canada's Russell Peters tells CBC Radio audience: North Americans are the only tight-assed PC
June 2, 2011 - 11:31am
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Questioned by The Current's Tremonti, Peters Wednesday said that he had to be "particularly careful" of his language in the U.S., and to a lesser extent in Canada. The rest of the world embraced his humour without question. I don't have TV, and had never heard the fellow before. I was reminded of my first exposure to All in the Family. Do others find his humour "culturally freeing", incorrect, or something in between?
He's honest.
I noticed how he said there were things he just could not say in the US. He told Pollyanna that free speech doesn't exist down there. Apparently Lenny Bruce died for nothing.
Really? He should try wearing a swastika in Germany as part of his act.
(just remembering a great article I read a year or so ago about an American fellow - who happened to be Jewish - and walked around sporting a Hitler moustache just to see what would happen.
I do take Peters' point, and personally I do think there is a place for transgressive humour and art. But I am sure if he looked close enough he would see most cultures have their own taboos.
But I agree that things are considerably more repressive here than they are in some other countries (I presume his frame of reference is continental europe) on matters sexual and racial.
Try wearing a swastika anywhere.
He does look at others' taboos, some of which he incorporates into his act.
His point is that he can't speak as freely in the US as he can elsewhere, including Canada. If he tried, he's be unemployed in the US.
Peters is hilarious and pokes gentle fun at the absurdities in his and other cultures. That makes some people uncomfortable I guess, which is too bad because we all need to take ourselves a lot less seriously.
Yes, but they can actually arrest and charge you over there.
And there are areas in which - for good or ill - there is more free speech in the U.S. than there is here. Not to say Peters is wrong, but he is just looking at it from one angle.
Where in the U.S. and from what "angle?"
If my understanding is right libel cases in the U.S. have a much higher standard - proof of malice - rather than simple liability, as it is in Canada.
Also the standards of truth in reporting are stricter here than they are in the U.S. Further to that, I think anyone who listens to much American radio or TV realizes there are plenty of things people say down there which might get you a complaint to the Human Rights Commmission or the CRTC.
Or the threat of it, anyway, as the Ann Coulter sideshow demonstrated.
The Howard Stern radio show was broadcast edited into Canada after a CRTC ruling, and I think it was banned at one point.
I think there are plenty of ways in which information is restricted more in the states than it is here - primarily through copyright takedowns, but that is more a matter of presumed ownership than fewer restrictions on speech.
And by "angle" I was speaking generally. Clearly from Peters' perspective doing his job Americans are more uptight and I don't doubt he is correct. But I also see plenty of areas in which - for good or ill - there are fewer restrictions down there.
Here's an interesting article that popped up on facebook today, which makes some relevant points on the issue. Apparently you can legally threaten violence down there so long as you don't tell them when you are coming. On the downside, apparently it is okay for some people (and the government) to kill people for what they say - or what they are afraid they will say./
http://www.salon.com/news/first_amendment/index.html?story=%2Fopinion%2F...
OK, I don't know of this guy. What kind of things does he say in his act that he CAN'T say in the U.S(and sometimes can't say in Canada)?
Does the guy do handicapped Auschwitz victim jokes or something?
Outsourced - Comedy Now! - Red, White, and Brownen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Peters - Cached - Similar
Not even close. He pokes fun at differences between ethic groups, which makes his white liberal audiences squirmy (they don't see colour) and white conservative audiences reach for their Smith & Wessons.
Just type his name into youtube to get all kinds of standup pieces.
That's what I did yesterday after reading this. He seems like a pretty funny guy. He has a real knack for imitating accents.
One of the best in the comedy business. Like the all the best comedians he makes most people laugh at their own prejudices by presenting them as someone else's. Also like all really good comics he pisses the hell out of the true believers of all varities.
So please white people beat your kids so they can fit in. Great humour although it is generational in that Canadian born parents my age were quite permissive but my Dad had much the same philosophy as Peter's Dad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeWFm0VfXtc
OK...I'll check the guy out. I"m always a little suspicious of people who make comments about all the cool truth they can't tell because of "PC", so I guess I had a reflex response.
On a related note...
I like Hari Kondabolu way better than Peters. Peters is a hit with white folks because he says so much stuff that if THEY were to say it they'd be accused of being racist. He reiterates that it's okay for white folks to be racist. Edited to add: I do like some of his stuff though.
And W.Kamau Bell is hilarious.
Everyone has their own sense of what is funny and not funny. So like what you like.
However, I have seen Peters live twice over the years. Both time as the white guy, out with in one case family and in the other work collegues, I was a tiny minority in the hall. So I don't think that is a fair statement at all.
Right. Obviously; how could it be otherwise?
Just goes to show that comedy is highly subjective.
And whoever came up with the line that all comedy is based on suffering is right.
Thx for the link Maysie I had never heard his stuff. If I said most of Chris Rocks jokes the same thing would happen. I actually think he points to the reality that there are racists in every race. That is of course one of us white guys few comforts in the whole racism thing. It doesn't make up for the fact we have nastier ones than most races with real power but none the less its all we have.
Here is a great Indian comic.
Pass the Generky so I can feel my roots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6gu-t2lPCA
Peters makes ethnic jokes, yes, but he doesn't do it with malice. It's a reflection of his having grown up in a very diverse community in Miossissauga and he pokes gentle fun at habits, mannerisms, etc. of different cultures and the cultures he's joking about are the ones laughing the hardest. He's also a very talented impressionist.
Buy, yes, I remember watching his comedy act on TV one night and my American wife was rather shocked, saying that people back home would likely be offended by the routine versus considering themselves in on the joke the way we do here.
re: Americans being more uptight about humour. Is there ANY taboo that Southpark hasn't violated with aplomb over the last decade or so? Though I guess that's a late-night show, targetted at a chronically jaded audience, whereas Peters targets his act more at a prime-time, family friendly audience.
The rest of the world embraced his humour without question.
Well, what was the nature of the "humour" was was selling in "the rest of the world"? I'm sure people in Belfast would be quite happy to chuckle at jokes about accent differences between accents among Canadians. But what kind of reaction would he get if he started in with jokes that opened "So a Catholic and a Protestant walk into a sectarian brawl..."?
I"m always a little suspicious of people who make comments about all the cool truth they can't tell because of "PC"
Uh, yeah. Very often, "I'm being censored by political correctness" is just a self-aggrandizing way of saying something like "I was screaming a bunch of racial slurs against black people, so black people stopped coming to my show."
I was reminded of my first exposure to All in the Family.
When Norman Lear dies, I fully intend to compile a list of every single sociopolitical issue I first became aware of as a result of watching his sitcoms(mostly AITF, to a lesser extent the Jeffersons). It will be substantial, to say the least.
Yeah, I too had a sheltered childhood.
Well, even a kid who attended the School Of Hard Knocks would probably have needed Norman Lear sitcoms to know about some of the issues they covered, which included Miranda rights, the Jewish Defense League, and Thomas Jefferson's black offspring.
And anyway, everyone pretty much had a sheltered life compared to Archie Bunker who, despite being a lower-middle class guy of no particular significance, somehow managed to have major social issues playing themselves out in his living room week after week.
I remember asking who the Black Panthers were and why was it funny that Edith gave them a donation.
They were marvelous in their entirety.
Great American comedy with some universal elements.
When SCTV came out I had pretty much seen enough of Archie and his "dumb" wife and thought it was not only funnier but had far better social commentary, but maybe thats a cultural bias.
Perhaps we advance, in this at least? Sure hope the junior types think that this nostalgia is so 20th Century. Hope they can articulate their feelings/reaction and "come out."
When SCTV came out I had pretty much seen enough of Archie and his "dumb" wife and thought it was not only funnier but had far better social commentary
I liked SCTV, but I never thought that they did particularly hard-hitting social or political commentary. Mostly, they just made fun of TV shows, and to some extent the entertainment industry as a whole. I mean, sure, Count Floyd was spoofing crappy Z-grade horror movies, but that's not quite on par with, say, Mike schooling Archie on Manifest Destiny(when Arch was studying for his high-school diploma).
And I liked the MacKenzie Brothers as much as the next guy, but let's face it. It was really a lot of pandering to middle-class Canadians' self image.
But if you're comparing AITF to SCTV at the time when SCTV was in its artistic ascension, I might agree. Because by that point AITF was definitley in its decline, with decidely toned-down political humour and a more liberal-friendly Archie Bunker(there was a whole ongoing subplot about him having a gay friend.)