11 MAY 2014 Television W
ESTERN imperialists have visited many plagues upon our battle-scarred land, of which the latest is the “comedy roast”. Back in the day, if people wanted to insult each other for no particular reason, they’d do it somewhere civilized, like in a tavern after 10 milk stouts, or the comments section of News24 articles online. As of last year, however, we now seat them on stage, train cameras on them, and call it a major TV event.
Comedy Central’s “roasts” have a simple premise. The TV network selects a public figure and invites a group of other public figures to insult him or her in front of a live audience in the name of televised entertainment.
If you find the concept somewhat perplexing, you’re not alone. From what I can gather, in other countries the subjects of these roasts are generally well-loved individuals. To be roasted is simultaneously a mark of respect and affection. South Africa’s version appears to have dispensed with this element, either because any universally admired figure would be impossible to plausibly insult without seeming deeply mean-spirited, or because the only universally admired figure in the country died last December.
Instead, the two individuals Comedy Central has chosen to roast thus far have been Steve Hofmeyr and Kenny Kunene. The former, previously merely a philandering Neil Diamond impersonator, has earned himself the deep resentment of large swathes of the population for his illadvised foray into the political sphere via his “white genocide” obsession. The latter is a con man-turned-politician: at best, an attention-hungry misogynistic buffoon.
This being the case, perhaps the prospect of men like this being publicly insulted would be something to relish. But in fact, in both roasts they have come off substantially better than the people whose task it is to roast them. The format inexplicably requires the roasters to humiliate each other first, with Hofmeyr and Kunene practically an afterthought.
In the recent Kunene roast, Comedy Central contracted comedians John Vlismas and Tumi Morake, DJ Riaan van Heerden, “actors” — loosely — Khanyi Mbau, Dineo Ranaka and Somizi Mhlongo, and musicians Jack Parow and PJ Powers to do the dirty work, marshalled by English oneliner king Jimmy Carr.
The panel does not write all their own lines; they have a team of comedy writers to help out. As a result, the insults are tediously consistent. Women are attacked for being skanks; gays are attacked for being gay. If you unhelpfully happen not to be a woman or gay (or are both, as in the case of PJ Powers), then you are called talentless or ugly.
You may well say that a concept which is based on nothing more or less than people publically insulting each other is one that the “humourless PC brigade” should simply steer clear of. But there is something genuinely depressing in the way that women are treated — and treat each other — in these displays. Part of it is just the tedium of seeing females attacked for literally no reason other than the fact of their gender. Morake, whose private life is unknown, was the subject of a joke about the supposed roominess of her lady-parts.
It is true that the men featured were the target of sexual insults too, but with nowhere near the wearying consistency of the women. The roasts operate at the level of a locker room at an all-boys’ high school. Next time, can we aim for a little more spice with our roast?