| The Germans 10:54 - Jun 12 with 6288 views | ted_hendrix |
You cant watch Basil doing his German thingy sketch anymore on UKTV's streaming service as it's been taken down, as Basil once said to Sybil "What's the point, what's the bloody point?" |  |
| My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic. |
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| The Germans on 21:39 - Jun 12 with 1532 views | Ranger_Things |
| The Germans on 20:32 - Jun 12 by BazzaInTheLoft |
I stand corrected.
Cleese agreed to the edit in 2013 but objects to the possibly non permanent removal while the footage is reviewed. Meanwhile the original footage is still available on DVD, YouTube, and dozens of other streaming sites. [Post edited 12 Jun 2020 20:33]
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Stone Island finest are mobbing up at Wembley Asda DVD department tomorrow to form a cordon around the comedy and light entertainment aisle. Those BLM mugs won't be defacing any boxsets on our watch. |  | | |
| The Germans on 21:59 - Jun 12 with 1478 views | CiderwithRsie |
| The Germans on 14:59 - Jun 12 by kensalriser |
The joke, as always, is on Fawlty. He's a caricature who's supposed to be loathsome and of course, has loathsome opinions.
It only dawned on me a few years that some people didn't actually understand the Germans sketch and thought it was taking the piss out of Germans rather than Fawlty as a proxy stereotype. |
Years ago I came to the conclusion that Fawlty Towers was one of the most acute critiques of Britain at the end of the 70s ever made. It is up there with Never Mind The Bollocks but using a scalpel instead of a half-brick. In hindsight you can see that Thatcher or something similar from the hard left was on the cards, the thing was at breaking point.
It probably is quite hard for people born in the last 20 years to get that it's satire, you had to have heard people in all seriousness spouting the stuff Basil comes out with to get the point that Cleese had created this awful character to take apart those attitudes (or the subtlety with which he gives us glimmers of an actual human being underneath it all.) It probably helps if you also knew that Cleese and his mates had been taking the piss out of reactionary pomposity for about 20 years previous. |  | | |
| The Germans on 22:00 - Jun 12 with 1473 views | paulparker |
| The Germans on 21:39 - Jun 12 by Ranger_Things |
Stone Island finest are mobbing up at Wembley Asda DVD department tomorrow to form a cordon around the comedy and light entertainment aisle. Those BLM mugs won't be defacing any boxsets on our watch. |
Oh dear someone has had to much time off school
Top marks for trolling though |  |
| And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
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| The Germans on 22:31 - Jun 12 with 1405 views | Boston |
| The Germans on 11:41 - Jun 12 by kensalriser |
It's OK for NWA to call themselves NWA.
It's OK for 4 Poofs and a Piano to name themselves too.
It's not OK to use those terms as insults. |
True, but it’s who gets to decide what is insulting that has me concerned. | |
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| The Germans on 22:42 - Jun 12 with 1378 views | Boston |
| The Germans on 21:59 - Jun 12 by CiderwithRsie |
Years ago I came to the conclusion that Fawlty Towers was one of the most acute critiques of Britain at the end of the 70s ever made. It is up there with Never Mind The Bollocks but using a scalpel instead of a half-brick. In hindsight you can see that Thatcher or something similar from the hard left was on the cards, the thing was at breaking point.
It probably is quite hard for people born in the last 20 years to get that it's satire, you had to have heard people in all seriousness spouting the stuff Basil comes out with to get the point that Cleese had created this awful character to take apart those attitudes (or the subtlety with which he gives us glimmers of an actual human being underneath it all.) It probably helps if you also knew that Cleese and his mates had been taking the piss out of reactionary pomposity for about 20 years previous. |
To be truthful, I always thought it was Cleese and his mates who were the pompous ones. | |
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| The Germans on 01:55 - Jun 13 with 1288 views | Match82 |
| The Germans on 22:31 - Jun 12 by Boston |
True, but it’s who gets to decide what is insulting that has me concerned. |
Not trying to be a dck about it... but does it matter?
If you have a choice of using two words to describe the same thing why not use the one that doesn't offend a large number of people? |  | | |
| The Germans on 03:37 - Jun 13 with 1263 views | PlanetHonneywood |
| The Germans on 01:55 - Jun 13 by Match82 |
Not trying to be a dck about it... but does it matter?
If you have a choice of using two words to describe the same thing why not use the one that doesn't offend a large number of people? |
If this continues to it’s inevitable conclusion, Christopher Biggins’ pantomime career as Widow Tw@nky and the latest young female soap star as Aladdin, will have to cease.
More significantly, given the connotations with South Africa, should our part of W12 change some of the names?
The way to remedy historical wrongs is not to airbrush them out and pretend they never happened, but to learn from them and not do them again! That said, this is the perspective of a middle aged white man, and those whose ancestors were enslaved, abused and who continue to experience racism, may well have a different perspective, and justifiably so.
That said, I assume we’re all on message with Jim Davidson being taken off the menu? |  |
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| The Germans on 03:43 - Jun 13 with 1267 views | stainrods_elbow |
| The Germans on 15:30 - Jun 12 by BazzaInTheLoft |
I'm going to deliberately ignore the identity politics of this thread, but can I just point out that Fawlty Towers has not been cancelled just one single special edition episode that was never aired where the N word was used A LOT.
This removal was not called for by BLM either, it was called upon by John Cleese himself. |
What are you talking about? Cleese has come out and called the BBC 'gutless and contemptible' (though may or may not have mentioned the war).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53020335 |  |
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| The Germans (n/t) on 07:11 - Jun 13 with 1217 views | The_Beast1976 |
[Post edited 13 Jun 2020 7:13]
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| The Germans on 08:16 - Jun 13 with 1163 views | stowmarketrange |
I guess the two male leads of White Chicks must be crapping themselves waiting for the lawsuits to come flooding in.Should we be more offended that they dressed up as women or that they changed colour?
Or should we just laugh because it might just be funny?
When is all this madness going to end? |  | | |
| The Germans on 08:54 - Jun 13 with 1133 views | BazzaInTheLoft |
Yeah, like I mentioned afterwards but you may not have seen because you seem angry, I was referring to his 2013 edit rather than the latest BBC article. Mea Culpa. |  | | |
| The Germans on 11:26 - Jun 13 with 1030 views | qpr_1968 |
| The Germans on 01:55 - Jun 13 by Match82 |
Not trying to be a dck about it... but does it matter?
If you have a choice of using two words to describe the same thing why not use the one that doesn't offend a large number of people? |
because in a comedians eyes the one that's used not to offend is not funny. | |
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| The Germans on 12:23 - Jun 13 with 971 views | essextaxiboy |
Love Thy Neigbour
Alf Garnett
It aint alf hot Mum
Fawlty Towers
all ridiculing the middle aged white bloke and his prejudices.. |  | | |
| The Germans on 12:34 - Jun 13 with 953 views | TacticalR |
| The Germans on 13:39 - Jun 12 by R_from_afar |
When I lived in Austria in the 1980s, I lodged in a grand house on the edge of town. The elderly Austrian owners lived on the top floor and let out rooms on the other two floors.
A Turkish bloke started renting a room and they used to refer to him (in German) as "The Turk". I had to point out to them that he did in fact have a name, Hakan Sukur*. Poor by them.
* Only joking, he was actually called Altu  |
That reminds me...during the David Irving trial, Lothar Hobelt, an associate professor of history at the University of Vienna, described Austria's Holocaust denial law as:
"A silly law by silly people for silly people."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4734570.stm |  |
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| The Germans on 13:02 - Jun 13 with 918 views | karl |
| The Germans on 12:22 - Jun 12 by qprxtc |
Fawlty Towers is a fictional comedy show. The characters in it are various exaggerations of certain behavioural types, especially British ones.
The major is a 80 ish year old man that has lived through two world wars and his vocabulary and world view are of his time.
These are characters in a fictional comedy show. Not all are going to be nice people with appropriate language. Not many of the characters in Fawlty Towers are that sympathetic but that’s the comedy of it.
Look at a film like Pulp Fiction. This has negative racial slurs throughout the film along with a high amount of violence. This can be watched on Netflix by anyone of any age, day or night. If I was to choose which I consider does more to continue stereotypes, I’d say this would. But I wouldn’t take away peoples choice to see it and make up their own minds.
Fiction has the right to portray the characters it depicts with the language that they would use. That may not fit in with the current world view but it’s not a reason to ban or stop people viewing it.
Tv shows, films, books, plays. All these things are there for us to participate in. They bring out emotions in us which is a good thing. That includes feeling uncomfortable at certain situations.
The difference is they are fictional and part of a narrative. Changing language or banning them is not the way to fundamentally change anyone’s world view but it does retrospectively change our cultural lineage.
To me these stories are important human expressions. They are not always cosy, fluffy ones. Some can make us question our behaviour and maybe look to change it.
Fawlty Towers has language in it that is out of place and wrong. But in the context of the situation, characters and time it was truthful. |
On a lighter note, it should be noted that the episode in question has sobered XTC to the extent he has posted the best reply.
I might try this after an all nighter and see if I pass the breathalyser in the morning, major breakthrough |  | | |
| The Germans on 13:41 - Jun 13 with 876 views | DannyPaddox |
Without a doubt, Ronnie Hylton, the physio, was well out of order that day but there’s no way we should replay that game. |  | | |
| The Germans on 15:23 - Jun 13 with 782 views | LazyFan |
| The Germans on 12:23 - Jun 13 by essextaxiboy |
Love Thy Neigbour
Alf Garnett
It aint alf hot Mum
Fawlty Towers
all ridiculing the middle aged white bloke and his prejudices.. |
Agree. And they do. Especially the Alf Garnett character
But New Labour types (Militant Moderates) didn't want this and worked with the Establishment against it. They don't want to have exposing satire on society as it may come to them being exposed as they well knew.
For them, no criticism is what they wanted. No critical thinking at all. Except when it suited them of course. |  |
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| The Germans on 15:29 - Jun 13 with 773 views | plasmahoop |
| The Germans on 15:23 - Jun 13 by LazyFan |
Agree. And they do. Especially the Alf Garnett character
But New Labour types (Militant Moderates) didn't want this and worked with the Establishment against it. They don't want to have exposing satire on society as it may come to them being exposed as they well knew.
For them, no criticism is what they wanted. No critical thinking at all. Except when it suited them of course. |
I always felt that was why new Labour tried so hard to shut pubs down. They didn't want people going to them and talking about how bad the government was. | | | |
| The Germans on 15:40 - Jun 13 with 745 views | BrixtonR |
Fckn Lee Hoos at it again |  | | |
| The Germans on 15:52 - Jun 13 with 735 views | rsonist |
| The Germans on 15:29 - Jun 13 by plasmahoop |
I always felt that was why new Labour tried so hard to shut pubs down. They didn't want people going to them and talking about how bad the government was. |
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| The Germans on 15:59 - Jun 13 with 719 views | Ranger_Things |
Is it a full moon tonight? | | | |
| The Germans on 16:43 - Jun 13 with 657 views | WadR |
It's a gesture (arguably an empty one without financial contributions & tangible actions) from an organisation with huge reach and exposure to express solidarity with black people in America, UK and globally who suffer at the hands of police brutality and systemic institutionalised racism.
An organisation that showcases and profits from a number of high profile black players who have often had to overcome great hardships and still face regular abuse and more insidious forms of racism (Raheem Sterling/Paul Pogba etc).
What is pathetic and ridiculous is the apologism and willful ignorance of Britain's police, politicians, justice system and widear society's role in this, from some (I stress some).
The discourse about Fawlty Towers is, largely, designed to obfuscate and undermine the important things that movements like BLM are campaigning against. If people are discussing a 40 year old British sitcom being rightly edited to take out a racist slur, it takes attention away from George Floyd, Windrush Scandal, Yarlswood, Sara Read, Mark Duggan, Julian Cole, Dalian Atkinson. | | | |
| The Germans on 16:47 - Jun 13 with 652 views | BrixtonR |
| The Germans on 16:43 - Jun 13 by WadR |
It's a gesture (arguably an empty one without financial contributions & tangible actions) from an organisation with huge reach and exposure to express solidarity with black people in America, UK and globally who suffer at the hands of police brutality and systemic institutionalised racism.
An organisation that showcases and profits from a number of high profile black players who have often had to overcome great hardships and still face regular abuse and more insidious forms of racism (Raheem Sterling/Paul Pogba etc).
What is pathetic and ridiculous is the apologism and willful ignorance of Britain's police, politicians, justice system and widear society's role in this, from some (I stress some).
The discourse about Fawlty Towers is, largely, designed to obfuscate and undermine the important things that movements like BLM are campaigning against. If people are discussing a 40 year old British sitcom being rightly edited to take out a racist slur, it takes attention away from George Floyd, Windrush Scandal, Yarlswood, Sara Read, Mark Duggan, Julian Cole, Dalian Atkinson. |
Agreed, It's not about black or white or Left or Right but basic human decency.
You may be black you may be white you may be jew or gentile It makes no difference.
And this is fresh
PLUR x | | | |
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