Comedy roasts are barbaric - even if the target is Charlie Sheen - Globe and Mail
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Comedy roasts are barbaric - even if the target is Charlie Sheen
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Sep. 20, 2011 6:00AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Sep. 20, 2011 10:50AM EDT
Listening to some of the many leaked, wretched jokes from Charlie Sheens Comedy Central Roast, prior to its airing on Monday night, one wonders: What kind of madman genuinely enjoys the sport of roasting?
Sheen, one supposes, deserves the acerbic insights of the likes of Anthony Jeselnik and Amy Schumer, having agreed to this travesty in the first place as a way of counterbalancing or rivalling the premiere of the revamped Two and a Half Men.
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Here are some of the jokes: Brooke Mueller is not very bright unless Charlie throws a lamp at her. ... Mike Tyson, your opponents spent less time bleeding in the corner than Charlies ex-wives.
This is Jeffrey Ross (central to the concept of the celebrity roast is the dubious, even non-existent fame of the roasters) having some good fun with domestic violence and calling the actor a vicious felon.
And Jeselnik to Sheen: The only reason you got on TV in the first place is because God hates Michael J. Fox.
Yes, Sheen replaced Fox on Spin City in 2000 after the sitcom star became afflicted with Parkinsons disease: Larry David did a whole episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm this season involving Fox and his illness that was irreverent and hilarious. Was it Jeselnik-funny? You be the judge.
Cringing at the whole spectacle, including Sheens recent contrite about-face (he has done massive PR recently, condemning his having been out of control this summer his disastrous, obsequious appearance at the Emmys on Sunday was particularly poignant), one wonders: When did this barbaric tradition begin, and why?
Apparently the New York Friars Club is where the notion of placing a star on a dais and humiliating him began.
Maurice Chevalier was the first to be roasted there, in 1949, and while there does not appear to be any extant footage, it is unlikely that disgusting riffs on Thank Heaven for Little Girls were made as the Gallic actor winced with shame.
Then came the 1970s, a decade so traumatized by war that its collective sense of humour was unfailingly dark and grotesque.
Think of a queasy-looking Richard Nixon saying, Sock it to me? on Laugh-In, two years before the decade began, and you see the origin of the kind of humour that invites derision, excites mortification and views nothing as sacred.
And Dean Martin, drunk out of his mind (or pretending to be disgusting either way), stumbled into this decade with his Celebrity Roasts at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Watch one or two of these on YouTube. With a stiff drink of your own.
You might see the abstemious Foster Brooks, acting loaded and unintelligibly roasting Sammy Davis Jr., then jabbing Martin for being such a warm host because he drinks Sterno!
Don Rickles and Red Buttons will slap the table, and hacking, tubercular laughter will fill the smoky room.
It sounds funny, and the vibe was certainly a large basis for Joe Flahertys brilliant turn as talk-show host Sammy Maudlin (and John Candys Ed McMahon-ish, hysterical sidekick, William B. Williams) on SCTV, also appearing in the late, crazed 1970s.
But it is not. It is awful, because the roasts are rarely funny; they are always mean-spirited and they ask, above all, that we possess zero empathy toward the roast victim, and the comics kiting bad jokes.
At least Martins roasts included Frank Sinatra; at least everyone was, somewhat excusably, wasted or in that free-for-all zone.
The modern roast, Comedy Centrals domain, is a no-holds-barred attack.
While watching Barack Obama coolly fillet Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner last year was amusing, because of the Presidents poise, style and slyness, it is far less pleasing to watch a fatheaded Seth MacFarlane make blustering porn-star and Tiger Woods jokes.
Because this type of crack, as Sheen himself said, is too easy; because the speaker is witless and crass.
Cruising other Comedy Central roasts, there is Pamela Anderson, being serenaded by Courtney Love, looking hideous and slurring her words. Yet she gamely continues, to the revulsion of the other roasters, who turn on her and suggest she is either high or crazy.
Flick through roast after roast: Ugly woman barking, But enough about the coloureds! Cut to random hip-hop guy, laughing and making obscure hand gestures.
Again, these roasts are designed to obliterate the idea of the sacred: One imagines Heath Ledgers sociopath Joker asking about our embarrassment for these people, Why so serious?
But some things are sacred. This Sheen launch, just another in a series of sheepish people submitting to a public ribbing, makes sport of a mans violence against women and suicidal spiral: good times.
On an episode of The King of Queens, Kevin Jamess character, Doug, is hosting a roast for his boss and killing, when he makes the mistake of mocking the mans urinary slowness.
The room is silent. Someone hisses that the boss has prostate cancer.
Cancer, huh? Doug says. Boy, that cancers wild, isnt it?
Dead silence.
Expect more of the same about Sheens roast, which timed out before it even aired.
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