James Acaster
A well-known British comedian who isn’t afraid to punch up instead of down
Comedy in the social media age has become something of a farce. Gone are George Carlin and Bill Hicks and the others.
Instead, we have Dave Chappelle using trans people as an easy target for his form of comedy that hasn’t grown past the early 2000s. We have Tom Segura and his wife Christina P who host a podcast featuring pieces where they make fun of disabled people on TikTok.
It’s sad to watch their impotence at criticizing “The System” or “The Man” or whatever fester for so long that now they have to point to marginalized groups for their brand of “humor.”
Most comedians kind of suck, now
It’s easy work. It’s juvenile humor without any real message — it won’t anger the sponsors too badly, and if it does, they’ll just put it up online somewhere and ask for donations or something.
I’ll probably do a piece on Carlin one day, since I bet a lot of people have never watched his stuff, especially people who use words like “based.”
Anyway, back to James. He isn’t having any of that punching down shit.
The Ricky Gervais joke kind of kills it. He’s right, too — name-dropping Ricky too soon would put off half of the audience. Instead, he got buy in with the concept first, and then pointed his finger at who he was specifically talking about.
That’s a good strategy.
He also has some things to say about British museums.
And he makes a ton of appearances on panel shows.
Hopefully we are seeing a resurgence of good comedy in the likes of James, Bo Burnham, Donald Glover, and others. The more punching up comedy does, the better. Humor and sarcasm and satire are tools best levied against those who have too much power, in my opinion.
Check out James’ accounts and other stuff below. He’s got a couple podcasts, so check those out.
- YouTube
- Twitter accounts for Off Menu and Perfect Sounds
- Website
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