A trip to the leafy ’burbs demonstrates that noise pollution can strike anywhere, not just in urban apartments
humour
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
On politicians without humour
In John Fowles’s novel, Daniel Martin (Triad Grafton, 1978), there is a wonderfully revealing passage as far as humourless politicians are concerned – the type that justifiably comprises the butt of comedians’ jokes. Dan and Jane (an old friend and one-time lover who accompanies him on a work-related trip to Egypt) are at a dinner-party […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
‘In Bruges’: Film-making at its best
Martin McDonagh’s dark crime-comedy In Bruges (Universal Studios 2008) represents film-making at its best. Without excessive reliance on the special effects with which Hollywood is infatuated (and infected), and simply by employing the basics of cinema – successive images and sounds – it manages to draw its audiences into the unlikely world of professional assassins, […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Why cartoons are linked to human freedom
There is a very obvious reason why cartoons are inseparably linked to human freedom. And here I don’t mean the Walt Disney variety, or indeed any cartoon film, although they are clearly connected to “artistic freedom” insofar as one’s creativity sets the bounds for the imagination as source of the construction of such films. What […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Is #whitegenocide funny if corrective rape isn’t?
Brace yourself. Some of you are not going to like this piece. Possibly quite a few of you. That’s the only predictable thing when it comes to jokes: somebody, somewhere is going to be offended. For years I’ve studied comedy from various angles: academically, from the trenches in the ad industry and as an occasional […]