Chris Morris: A Thinking Man's Pervert
In the fall of 2005, I had the privilege of making contact with English and Welsh soil for the first time. Had it not been for certain difficulties in the area of automotive technology, I'd be able to speak of a similar introduction to Scottish soil (but I wouldn't be able to say that I spent the first hours of my 27th birthday sleeping in a van with eight other guys in a gas station parking lot in the middle of the jolly English countryside). Seeing a dozen new cities (including my first and all-to-brief experience of London), hanging with the members of Night and the City of Broken Promises (who, when not busy inconveniently suffering punctured bowels, served as more than worthy banter-mates), and watching the drowning of New Orleans on the BBC were unforgettable experiences. Though I spent a considerable percentage of my cumulative half-day's worth of time in London inside the Tate Modern, the bit of art that has stuck with me the most from that trip was on a DVD I watched at our driver's house in Barnsley.
I had never heard of the show Jam. I didn't recognize any of its cast members, and none of the related TV shows our host mentioned rang any bells. Jam ran for one season in 2000 in the UK. If you've never seen it, it's like this: think of the darkest sketch comedy you can conjure. Oh come on, you can do better! Slap yourself and try again. You probably still can't compete with Jam, and now on top of that you've slapped yourself for nothing. Jam is relentless in its coverage of the taboo. And it features a sort of anti-laugh track: the arty, often sea-sickly cinematography is underpinned by an unsettling ambient soundtrack. You should be able to decide in the following 20 seconds whether you need to see more:
You can't get the Jam DVD in the US, and though I've done my best to describe my favorite sketches to friends, I was worried that I would never be able share the full experience. Then I remembered a little thing called YouTube, that honestly I don't spend much time on and is not usually at the front of my mind. All the good stuff I see on YouTube is either sent to me or posted on message boards. I don't do much mining on my own. But sure enough, Jam is all over YouTube. Before I get to the brain behind the twistedness, here are a few more of my favorite sketches:
If you find those bits to be right up your dark, dark alley, then continue over to YouTube and search for "jam sketch" or some such thing. There's much more there, including quite a few I haven't even watched yet. So, as I was revisiting these videos on the internet, I started reading about Chris Morris, the satirist behind Jam. He's been at it since the late 80s; highlights include the radio programs On The Hour and Blue Jam, a Jam precursor. On The Hour morphed into the television program The Day Today, which further evolved into Brass Eye, a spoof current events show that anticipates Sacha Baron Cohen's antics in its humiliation of gullible celebrities and government officials. Below in three parts is the Brass Eye show entitled "Paedogeddon," a hilarious pull-no-punches send-up of the media hysteria that surrounds pedophilia. It racked up the third most complaints in British television history.
Morris is also responsible for a trippy, irreverent video remix of the Archbishop of Canterbury's eulogy for Princess Di; as well as the brilliant reworking of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address that you've probably seen without knowing who did it. I leave you with those two videos and encourage you to hunt down more from this under-exposed perverted comedic genius pervert.
I had never heard of the show Jam. I didn't recognize any of its cast members, and none of the related TV shows our host mentioned rang any bells. Jam ran for one season in 2000 in the UK. If you've never seen it, it's like this: think of the darkest sketch comedy you can conjure. Oh come on, you can do better! Slap yourself and try again. You probably still can't compete with Jam, and now on top of that you've slapped yourself for nothing. Jam is relentless in its coverage of the taboo. And it features a sort of anti-laugh track: the arty, often sea-sickly cinematography is underpinned by an unsettling ambient soundtrack. You should be able to decide in the following 20 seconds whether you need to see more:
You can't get the Jam DVD in the US, and though I've done my best to describe my favorite sketches to friends, I was worried that I would never be able share the full experience. Then I remembered a little thing called YouTube, that honestly I don't spend much time on and is not usually at the front of my mind. All the good stuff I see on YouTube is either sent to me or posted on message boards. I don't do much mining on my own. But sure enough, Jam is all over YouTube. Before I get to the brain behind the twistedness, here are a few more of my favorite sketches:
If you find those bits to be right up your dark, dark alley, then continue over to YouTube and search for "jam sketch" or some such thing. There's much more there, including quite a few I haven't even watched yet. So, as I was revisiting these videos on the internet, I started reading about Chris Morris, the satirist behind Jam. He's been at it since the late 80s; highlights include the radio programs On The Hour and Blue Jam, a Jam precursor. On The Hour morphed into the television program The Day Today, which further evolved into Brass Eye, a spoof current events show that anticipates Sacha Baron Cohen's antics in its humiliation of gullible celebrities and government officials. Below in three parts is the Brass Eye show entitled "Paedogeddon," a hilarious pull-no-punches send-up of the media hysteria that surrounds pedophilia. It racked up the third most complaints in British television history.
Morris is also responsible for a trippy, irreverent video remix of the Archbishop of Canterbury's eulogy for Princess Di; as well as the brilliant reworking of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address that you've probably seen without knowing who did it. I leave you with those two videos and encourage you to hunt down more from this under-exposed perverted comedic genius pervert.
