Saturday Night Takeaway 2020

As an aside, away from the topic, All4 is now in HD for new content on AppleTV and will be on other platforms soon.

The usual "this doesn't affect ME so it's obviously not an issue and everyone should shut up".

I'm convinced that neither ITV, Anne-Marie or Ant and Dec meant any disrespect whatsoever. The Japanese were responsible for some truly horrific wartime crimes and there are still many British servicemen who have bad memories of what they experienced and yes they would be entitled to be offended particularly due to the fact that the Japanese have never officially apologised for their actions.

This does however raise a concern. If every show starts worrying about the possibility of offending someone even though in 98% of cases no offence would be taken then they run the risk of what I call "treading on eggshells" and developing irrational fears. That would be wrong.

And that's precisely what the "anti-woke brigade" are trying to combat. This isn't about fighting for the right to say what you want about your least favourite minority. This is about chronic self-censorship as a result of accusing mostly well-meaning people of the most heinous hate crimes.

Just look at the recent incident with Jimmy Fallon when RuPaul implied he wasn't "a drag queen" and Jimmy watched his career flash before his eyes as he prepared for the cancel culture mob to ruin his life. Only when he insisted he was "THE drag queen" was it apparent he was joking, but it's a horrible sign of the times that Fallon could've easily had his career taken away from him at that moment after what he felt was an innocent comment.

I don't watch Jimmy Kimmel but I can certainly understand how he must have thought "oh **** that's my career gone".

I firmly believe that 98% of entertainers don't set out to offend. The other 2% such as Roy "Chubby" Brown are simply not funny but also sick

There has to be a balance between what is considered funny and what is considered offensive. That balance has shifted over the last 50 years or so. For example "Love Thy Neighbour" in the 1970's was a huge success, there is no way on the face of the planet that that kind of show could be made in 2020.

Another less well known example is "Fawlty Towers". I'm not referring to "The Germans" episode. As I understand it when the show was bought by Spanish Television they redubbed Manuel from a Spaniard to an Italian.

There is a great danger that the battle between "woke" and "anti-woke" (which I personally feel are bloody stupid terms) will lead no just to a self-censorship of programming but also internal self censorship. It could be a version of 1984 just 36 years late.

He was initially relabelled as an Italian but it didn't work out so they eventually settled on Mexican.

Fawlty Towers also uses N-word and other derogatory terms that clearly wouldn't make it into a comedy show these days.

I’m not entirely sure what woke means, and if it’s positive or negative.

Regarding this, I imagine the vast majority didn’t even notice the offensive flag, it was just mixed in with the generic Japanese imagery, and if they did probably didn’t even realise it was offensive.

Most people who did realise it was offensive will know that they obviously didn’t mean to cause offence and a simple apology will suffice.

Then there are those who want to make a big deal out of it

If "cancel culture" actually existed Donald Trump wouldn't be president.

No, genuine Nazis are fine.

The Urban Dictionary's definition of woke is:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke

Hope that helps.

Thanks for that mate, I’ve always wondered what that meant. I thought I was down wi’ t’kids but I’m clearly past it at 32.

I had genuinely never heard of the term until about 6 weeks ago, when I saw it used in here. I had to Google it to find out what on earth it was