14 DAY TRIAL // When Ricky Gervais took to the stage for his opening monolog at the Golden Globes 2011 and his first remark was about how there’ll be lots of heavy drinking and partying on the way – “or, as Charlie Sheen likes to call it, breakfast” – some members of the audience were in shock.
Since Sunday night, the debate on whether Gervais was funny or simply pointlessly offensive has been raging on – but perhaps we’re looking at this the wrong way, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly believes.
Celebrities are not like these deities that should be spared the embarrassment of having things told to their face, and neither are they above the rest of us in terms of making fun of them.
To paraphrase Tucker, celebrities, they’re just like us – but the Americans still don’t get British humor, which can, at times, come to embody the art of “rude” brought to perfection.
“Gervais reminded viewers once again that the British, they’re not like us. Oh, we can get taken in by the accent and that uncanny ability to speak in complete, grammatically-correct sentences, but then we get sucker-punched by the combination of impertinent tweaking and abrupt honesty that, over the pond and among themselves, English citizens commonly refer to simply as ‘rude,’ as in, ‘How rude!,’ followed by a delighted shriek of laughter,” Tucker argues.
There is also the question of Gervais’ type of humor: he’s always done it, and inviting him to host the Globes and somehow expect him to do something else than what he’s been doing for years would have probably been foolish on part of the organizers.
In the end, those who took offense with the jokes need to look at themselves because that’s where the problem is, Tucker believes, and not in Gervais, the celebrities or the organizers. Especially since none of them were really offended.
“Anyone scandalized by Gervais’ humor has probably forgotten how refreshingly abrupt his original version of The Office was. His Globes performance also benefited from some viewers’ genuine shock that anyone would tell a movie star to his or her face that his or her movie wasn’t very good,” Tucker argues.
“It’s as though the public-relations handlers who oversee so many movie-star interviews to guarantee that nothing revealing is uttered have also trained Americans to be upset when someone dares to say to a star the same kind of joke you’d say to a colleague at work. Remember, folks, celebrities are not your superiors,” he says.
Tucker also argues that Gervais is not the only one to have perfected this art of impeccably worded rudeness, since fellow Simon Cowell too has been doing the same for years while he was a judge on American Idol.
Piers Morgan is next: he’s taken over Larry King on CNN and is expected to best his predecessor on the show.