Irish comedian De Bishop says #MeToo caused a ‘major social change’, particularly in comedy
MALE defensiveness around feminism, consent and sexual harassment are normally subjects considered to be no laughing matter, but American-Irish comedian Des Bishop is happy to go there.
Confidential
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MALE defensiveness around feminism, consent and sexual harassment are normally subjects considered to be no laughing matter, but American-Irish comedian Des Bishop is happy to go there.
The native New Yorker and one of Ireland’s most loved comedians decided to broach the topics when he wrote the description for his new Sydney Comedy Festival show Egorithm seven months before he landed in Australia.
And then the #metoo movement happened.
“I wrote the description of my show a long time ago, so anything that is there about feminism is pre-Harvey Weinstein so I had no idea about what was going to happen,” Bishop told Confidential ahead of his first Sydney Comedy Festival Show last night.
“I didn’t think I would even broach it, but in the end I did talk about it. I find it a very interesting time, it’s probably one of the biggest cultural changes that will happen in my time so I would feel weird to not try and tackle that subject.
“I’m a guy so I can only speak about it from a guy’s point of view, so I’m pretty honest about how it comes at you as a man and the defensiveness about it and how I think men can be better, I think that stuff is really important to talk about.” Bishop says the #metoo movement has caused a “major social change”, particularly in comedy.
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“#Metoo did a lot of stuff, not just about writing material, some of these (accused) people were comedians Louis C.K. goes down, Aziz Ansari, it’s like ‘wow’, you know these people and happening around you and you question what you saw, what you didn’t see.
“It’s more a feeling of ‘do I deserve my right to be on this stage or am I part of the problem’ so it was more interesting to work my way around those feelings of how do I become part of the solution.”
The 42-year-old, who will play five shows at The Comedy Store in Sydney this week, says consent is one of the subjects he tackles in his show that “we could probably do with a bit of a rethink on”.
He said a lot of shit that may have been acceptable years ago is no longer acceptable in today’s society.