Misaimed Fandom/Comedian Characters

Examples of Misaimed Fandom for characters created by comedians.

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• Sacha Baron Cohen relies on this phenomenon when performing in the character of Borat -- he presents what can only be described as an over-the-top, wholly unbelievable portrayal of a backwards, anti-Semitic Central Asian reporter, expressing opinions that most people would find intolerable, and in so doing, gets people to agree with those opinions. Perhaps the ultimate example is "In My Country There Is Problem", which starts off innocently enough before launching into the chorus "Throw the Jew down the well/So my country can be free..." which the audience had no reservations at all about singing along to. The video is both hilarious and very, very disturbing.
  • Apparently the audience caught on that he was joking, and apparently some of them were in fact Jewish. It's quite possible to sing along to a very catchy song (with questionable lyrics) with your tongue firmly lodged in your cheek.
  • Furthermore, whilst there's certainly some participants who don't come over at all favourably, with at least some of the interviewees there's a sense that they're just otherwise polite people who are a little bit freaked out by this guy (who does, at times, come across as overbearingly and deliberately offensive) and are consequently trying to humour him as best they can so that he'll quickly go away and leave them alone.
• Similarly, Baron Cohen's Ali G character was intended as a satire of white guys trying to be black but was ultimately worshiped by the very people it criticized.
• Al Murray's Pub Landlord character was intended as a parodic stereotype of working-class British Nationalists. He was given a talk show on ITV and asked to play the character straight.
• Jamie Kennedy's character B-Rad. B-Rad was a satire of white kids who want to be black along the same lines as Ali G, but those who only saw him in Malibu's Most Wanted might not know how much Jamie Kennedy despised the character. He mocks it in his standup act.
• Harry Enfield's sketch character "Loadsamoney" was intended as a biting parody of smug, narcissistic, possessions-obsessed yuppies. Guess who became the character's biggest fans.
  • This led into Creator Backlash, and the character being Killed Off for Real.
• Sarah Silverman, especially when her fans drool over her looks, demonstrating one of the attitudes she mercilessly satirizes.

"I don't care if you think I'm racist, I just want you to think I'm thin."

• Stephen Colbert's character has been mistaken for real more than once. A fan asked him about this before a taping of The Colbert Report:

Fan: What do you think of conservatives who watch your show and think you're serious about what you say?
Stephen: It just goes to show that we haven't gotten rid of all the lead paint in our houses.

• • In fact, a recent study has shown that conservative fans think that Colbert is exaggerating and presenting his actual views in a comical manner, rather than being outright sarcastic. Both fans and newcomers were presented a clip and asked what they thought Colbert's real views were. The clip was an interview where Colbert attacked a liberal guest in an exaggerated way.
• Dutch comedians Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie had it happen to them with their characters Jacobse en van Es. Originally, they were supposed to be smalltime crooks, until, in 1980, they decided to start a political party called de Tegenpartij (the Opposing Party) with the motto "geen gezeik, iedereen rijk" which means "no complaining, everybody rich" ("geen gezeik" is Dutch slang for "no pissing" and by extension "no complaining"). It was supposed to be a spoof on all the extreme right-wing political parties. Unfortunately, said political parties had no sense of satire and openly embraced the Tegenpartij. As a result, on May 10th 1981, "Jacobse en van Es" were shot to death while staging a coup d'etat in The Hague. Van Kooten en de Bie were very sorry to have to retire their favourite characters, and had them come back from the dead several times.
  • The Centrum Partij, a full on extreme right wing party, had the characters on the cover of their pamphlets and said: "THESE GUYS FINALLY LET PEOPLE HEAR THE TRUTH!"
• Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, who starred on the hit Canadian comedy series SCTV, created the characters of Bob and Doug McKenzie (two beer-drinking, somewhat idiotic brothers that talk about menial subjects) as a way to get back at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who (at the time the show was being produced) tried to force the show's production team to add two minutes of "identifiably Canadian content". When the show premiered, it was a hit with the audience that the two actors were trying to lampoon, and the characters became one of the most famous aspects of the show.
• Dave Chappelle is one of the ultimate cautionary tales of racial comedy -- he stopped doing Chappelle's Show when he realized that much of his white audience was just laughing at the sight of a black entertainer doing clownish, stereotypical things, not paying attention to the messages.
  • It got to the point where he was even teaching actual racists new things to be racist about. The show had gone from satire to educational.
• Comedy shows such as The Office, Little Britain, Extras, and Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat have been praised by some for their disregard of political correctness, when in fact the disregard of political correctness is what's frequently being satirized.
  • This is traditionally a risk of doing provocative comedy routines, particularly those involving racism and other forms of bigotry; no matter how noble the intentions of the performer, it inevitably becomes difficult to tell whether people are laughing at the satire of the racist character or whether people are laughing with the racist character. The reverse can also be true, it at times being difficult to tell whether the performer actually is satirizing racial issues or whether they're just using this as an excuse to get some cheap laughs using racially-based humour.
• Alf Garnett of the British comedy show Till Death Do Us Part and Archie Bunker of All In The Family, the American adaptation, still provoke great debate over whether they were supposed to be satires of the kind of racist mindset they displayed, or played straight. Word of God claimed the former, but a heck of a lot of viewers seemed to believe and agree with the latter.
  • To a lesser extends this goes for the Dutch series "In Voor en Tegenspoed" (English: "For better and for worse") as well. The lead character, Rijk de Gooyer who was born for the part, was an extreme bigot. This was around the time that racism in politics became a hot issue again (due to the right-wing Centrum Democrat Party). Somehow, people missed the scathing satire totally. Set eventually right when a parody of the Centrum Democrat Party came to his house to talk about the 'issues' in modern day Holland. The main character listens attentively, agrees with most of the stuff and calls over one of his friends to listen to what they have to say. Que one of his black friends coming over and listening to their drivel. Funny as hell, especially because you see the smile on his friends face getting bigger and bigger, while the representatives from the racist party getting more nervous by the second.
• Charlie Brooker, in a Radio Times interview, described how he was once approached by the Conservative Party to star in an election broadcast. Though he doesn't bash viewers over the head with his politics, it's still quite clear that he isn't a Tory.
• Several mainstream news organizations have taken Jon Stewart to task for being voted America's most trusted newscaster. Yes, the host of a program dedicated to mocking the news is America's most trusted newscaster. The irony? It's entirely possible The Daily Show is the most reliable news program in America, given that it's one of the few programs (comedic or otherwise) that's willing to make its guests uncomfortable by asking hard-hitting questions (and having an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter) - most guests show up thinking they're in for a totally different interview.
  • Stewart lampshaded this fact in his well-known appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" in 2004 - Stewart says that news organizations look to his show for cues on integrity. When the hosts try to grill him for not being "hard-hitting enough" on guests, Stewart explains, "I come on before a show that involves puppets making prank phone calls...if your idea of confronting me is that I don't ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we're in bad shape."
• Andrew Dice Clay. His comedy character is an over-the-top parody of a 1950's style greaser, with appallingly backwards views on women and sex. The satire, unfortunately, seems a little too on the nose for most people. Roger Ebert reviewed one of his shows and was aghast at the audience, who basically responded to the sexist drivel by pumping their fists and chanting his name. However, Ebert himself made the mistake of confusing the character with the comedian.
  • Part of the problem was that Clay didn't break character in interviews, leading many to believe that the Diceman was a real guy. He has since attempted a comeback by returning to that character after his failures to move into more mainstream and family-friendly fare.