Melbourne Comedy Festival

Discuss the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Comedy Festival Awards here.

The director of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival has explained the decision to rename their prestigious Barry Award

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I have no doubt the vast majority of Australians love and respect the LGBTQI community. These outdated opinions expressed by people, particularly by older Australians who grew up with a different world view, are a reflection on them and their lack of enlightenment. I don’t see the point in people becoming outraged every time someone like Barry Humphries expresses a stupid personal opinion. Accept that people aren’t perfect, will not always conform to your world view and they may express an opinion that upsets you.

What a bunch of hypocrites the comedy festival directors must be. Some of the most distasteful comments I’ve ever heard have come from comedians at the expense of marginalised groups in the community. It would not surprise me at all to see the implementation of censorship of comedic material at comedy festivals because people have become so thin skinned and adopted a perpetual victim mentality.

Barry Humphries’s contribution to Australian comedy is more than the stupid, unenlightened comment he made about transgender. I’d argue his Dame Edna persona has probably aided acceptance of that group in society.

We’ve become a society of snowflakes.

Cue the outrage.

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i disagree that people wont always conform to your world view. my father is barry humphreys age and when i was forced out as gay he had a hard time coping with the fact that i was gay and it was not long after i lost my mother . for days on end dad and i would always debate about me being gay and it got to a point where it turned to be award silence. so one night my father after we had another another debate on me being gay and me pleading to my dad to aspect me for me and for not what iam he said" i already lost your mother iam not going to lose a son as well’’ so he went to my aunty whos a lot younger then him and saught help . to this day i dont know what was said or done nor do i want to know but it turned my fathers thinking around to where not only did he accpected me but the lgbtiq world and what it means . he even accpected the fact that one day i may even marry bf and this coming from a person who always thought that gay people belonged in a mental aslyem

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But if someone acts like a dickhead and now causes offence, there is no reason to continue to hold them in high regard.

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Like the outrage that was directed at Bert Newton after last year’s Logies. OK, he made some off jokes, but the outrage that was directed at him I think was unfair. I don’t really see the point in removing Barry Humphries’ identity from the MICF. If it was an award presented by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, then perhaps I’d take a harsher view, but I think this is just attention grabbing.

And, for years, I didn’t even twig that the “Barry” award was named after Barry Humphries. I just thought it was an ironically daggy name for their award and a half-hearted reference to the Logie :stuck_out_tongue:

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Big difference between some old school Bert jokes and Barry’s offensive trans comments, read them, it’s vile.

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yeah, ok, they’re not good. Still think changing the name is unnecessary.

I saw Judith Lucy on Sunday night. Great show and generally someone I see most years. She was great.

This weekend I am checking out Ursila Carlson and Joel Creasey, both I have seen a few times as well.

This year’s festival has been cancelled due to coronavirus, but I reckon that individual performances may continue.

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