Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

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Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby delphyne » Thu May 01, 2008 5:21 am

Triggering:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/200 ... vegas.html

Now men can sexually assault women on stage and audiences will laugh.
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby MaggieH » Thu May 01, 2008 6:36 am

And then most people are gonna tell you that, in the Western world, we are not living in a woman-hating culture at all... :angryfire:
Last edited by MaggieH on Thu May 01, 2008 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The assumption that "most women are innately heterosexual'' stands as a theoretical and political stumbling block for many women. It remains a tenable assumption, partly because lesbian existence has been written out of history or catalogued under disease;. . . partly because to acknowledge that for women heterosexuality may not be a "preference" at all but something that has had to be imposed, managed, organized, propagandized and maintained by force is an immense step to take if you consider yourself freely and "innately" heterosexual. Yet the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness. . ."
-- Adrienne Rich, in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence: http://www.terry.uga.edu/~dawndba/4500compulsoryhet.htm

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” ~ Alice Walker
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby bluecoat28 » Thu May 01, 2008 8:55 am

this is horrible and completely expected of a jerk like this. You know... people are always too harsh I think on women and girls for passivity. Sheesh-- when the harrassment and/or assault are happening, it is difficult to react with an ouright "no" right away.
Last edited by bluecoat28 on Thu May 01, 2008 10:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby delphyne » Thu May 01, 2008 9:22 am

The whole dynamic of a stand-up comedian in a theatre is that he has power over the audience. He got six audience members to carry her on stage. In what sense is someone going to feel in control of what's happening to them when that's done to them?
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby delphyne » Mon May 05, 2008 6:30 am

Article about it in the Observer:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/come ... 97,00.html

Sorry, but that really isn't funny, Johnny...

Jackie Clune
Sunday May 4, 2008
The Observer

Stand-up comedy, like rape, is mostly about power. No wonder men dominate it. A good comic, even a really gentle, seemingly chummy one, comes on stage with all the inner swagger of a confident sexual conquerer. Make no mistake, they have come to win us over, make us submit to their comedic world. That's the joy of it. The lexicon of comedy is by its very nature combative, and the language comics use to describe their performances is often adversarial - at a good gig they 'stormed it', they 'killed', and at a bad gig they 'died'. It's us or them. Always. There can only be one winner. The audience is there to be 'taken' - a metaphor that became all too real for a young woman at a recent Johnny Vegas gig.
Article continues

Vegas, well known and loved for his shambolic and spontaneous stage persona, came on stage (at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London) in his normal bitter and emasculated, pissed-up state and proceeded to select a giggling woman from the audience to molest. He press-ganged six other members of the audience into carrying her aloft on to the stage, and told her she was to act dead so that he could kiss her back to life again. He then stroked her breasts, warning her that if she moved he would kick her in the ribs. He lifted up her skirt, pinned her down and kissed her, and some reports even suggest he touched her in a very intimate way. She, by all accounts, looked nervous, unsure and shocked, although she never said 'Stop' or expressed any overt extreme discomfort. Many of the audience roared with laughter. But since the gig a number of the people who saw the show have sought to retract their tacit approval of Vegas's actions, claiming that they found it vile, disgusting and inappropriate. An abuse of power by a household name.
There has been a small flurry of media interest and a storm of blogs and comedy message-board postings fiercely debating the nature of the incident - was it a transgression too far? Did Vegas cross the invisible line? Should there be a line in comedy? At what point does audience participation become abuse? Was it misogynist? Clumsy? A searing comment on the desperate loneliness and disempowerment of 21st-century masculinity?

My response to the whole affair is tempered by the fact that I wasn't there, but that needn't preclude me from being fascinated by what the reportage has thrown up. As a sometime comedian, a feminist and an ex-academic the discussion has intrigued me.

As a performer and a lover of taboo-breaking comedy I found myself laughing at the description of the night. I've seen Johnny Vegas many times and remember with great fondness the Bacchanalian carnival atmosphere of his often wholly improvised gigs. One particularly memorable show involved Johnny deciding to sing 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' to the audience. For about 20 minutes. Half the audience joined in and the other half bottled him. The dogged way in which he dodged the missiles and continued through to his screaming finale - 'Let them know it's Christmas time!' - had me in stitches. I'm a big fan of his shuffling, disingenuous buffoonery.

As a feminist - and I flinch at the inevitable silent tut that word procures these days (offer a feminist critique of a lovable, working-class comedian? Get a life. Get a sense of humour, bitch) - I am appalled. How could I not be? It's no good invoking the popular argument that the young woman involved went to the gig freely, sat in the front row and didn't say no - that's just 'She was asking for it, M'Lud' in a theatre setting. Is it consent if you feel you would be ruining everyone's evening, and be labelled a humourless, ball-breaking cow if you got up and walked off?

As an ex-academic I am very interested in all the frustrating and often wrong-headed discussions about taste in comedy. Many comedians buy into what Freud so unamusingly posited, viz, that a good joke should act as a kind of psychological pressure valve. By saying the unsayable, doing the taboo thing, discussing the forbidden issues, a comedian releases the audience's repressed, socialised and most base responses, and is thus only giving public vent to what we all feel and think but are too ashamed to express. We laugh when someone in the front row gets picked on (it's not us), we cheer when the fat man knocks the young bird down a peg or two (wish it was that easy in real life), we secretly delight in the lynch mob baying for comedic blood (we are a pack and it feels good).

Maybe the real reason for the outcry after the gig was the fact that many of the audience members felt ashamed that they had not intervened to stop this misjudged routine. Of course there are boundaries - would an actual rape be funny? - but sometimes as an audience it is thrilling not to really know where the comic will draw the line. At the time it is easy to get swept away in the moment - that's how soldiers end up carrying out the most barbaric orders - but in retrospect it can become clear that something rather ugly has taken place, and the shame kicks in.

Vegas's gig sounds like any night at an ordinary brothel - a fat, sweaty bloke getting his jollies with a captive young woman way out of his league. Except it was he, and not she, going home with a fistful of cash.
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby laurelin » Fri May 09, 2008 5:52 am

I got a comment on my blog just now saying that 'the eyewitnesses had been discredited, there was no sexual assault' blah blah blah. I didn't publish it, but I have closed the comments thread. He also said that the articles about this have been removed from the Guardian and Observer (which is true), and that legal action is being threatened by Vegas.
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby delphyne » Fri May 09, 2008 7:19 am

I guess he's found the woman in question and got her to agree that she "consented".

Fucker.

At least he got exposed for what he is. Wonder if PG Tips are paying his legal bills. I'm sure they wouldn't want that associated with their brand.
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Re: Comedian Johnny Vegas sexually assaults woman on stage

Postby pisaquari » Fri May 09, 2008 10:00 am

Am I reading Jackie Clune correctly if a great many of her points are giving my brain hives?
You can call a woman anything these days except "woman"--Sam
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