Hello all,
Today I have, like a great deal of other people, been moved to great anger by an article published in ZOO Magazine (that links to the homepage of the magazine itself, so probably best not to click on it if you're in work. Or anywhere, really, but it gives you a flavour of the magazine in question). As I have been tweeting about it for a while, anyone following me may find some of this a bit familiar, but the remarks are intolerable.
The offending article is Danny Dyer's Agony Uncle page, which offered some unusual advice to a man who had recently split up with his girlfriend. In fact, Dyer suggested that he could "cut [his] ex's face, and then no one will want her"! Naturally, this remark produced an enormous uproar amongst people who found this "joke" distasteful, and ZOO were forced to issue an unreserved apology.
The apology, as I'm sure you will have seen by now, is a joke. The description of its publication as a "regrettable publication error" makes it sound as if these remarks were slipped in by something completely unbeknown to them. Perhaps the presses that published the magazines are planning to overturn their cruel overlords? It should have been spotted by the editors, and they should have removed it. Perhaps the error was publishing it in the first place.
This is presumably not the first "publication error" either, if this column is anything to go by. Granted, the fact that the image is more fantastic does not make it as unpleasant as his most recent suggestion, but this does not detract from the fact that he seems to take great joy in coming up with these suggestions. I don't believe for one moment that he would act, or expect anyone to act, on his "humorous advice", but there remains a leery, lad-ish tone more reminiscent of the 1970s than the 2010s.
Unsurprisingly, there have been people claiming that anyone complaining about this joke is missing the point, and that the statement is meant ironically. But irony will only work if it is transparent. Jimmy Carr's humour is offensive, but his delivery is so staged, coupled with the fact that his off-stage persona is so well known, that the intentions are self-evident. The title of this very blog is ironic, and yet I felt that the tone of this was so apparent that it too would be obvious. Dyer's column is the opposite, so that you could never truly claim that his vile comments weren't in keeping with the rest of the piece.
Dyer himself seems not to grasp the concept of irony. During an episode of "You Have Been Watching" last year, Charlie Brooker and panelists, including Frankie Boyle, discussed an episode of Dyer's Bravo show in which he was punched in the face. After mockingly mentioning that some of them would have liked a go, Dyer published an article in his column announcing he was quitting TV after the ridiculing he received. Clearly, when the humour is turned on him, he finds it far less funny.
Finally, there is a serious side to this. Domestic abuse affects, as we all know, hundreds of thousands of women a year. To make light of this situation is to do it an incredible injustice, and yet instances of this happening seem to be swept under the carpet. Today is the birthday of singer Chris Brown, convicted of assault against his then-girlfriend Rihanna. Whilst criticism of the ZOO article was trending on twitter, people wishing him a Happy Birthday was trending far higher. There is still, it seems, a long way to go before the issue of domestic violence is even close to being resolved.
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