After Tino’s article yesterday on the issue of Camcomics and the Freaky Table, I went back to look at all the brouhaha that ensued between Kwoh Elonge and Cyril Inter on the issue of some Cameroonians “not being funny.” I actually watched the Facebook live that Cyril Inter did. All 43 mins or so of it. I also read through the back-and-forth posts they did, as well as the flurry of commenters of onlookers, cheerers, and supporters.
That being said, as a very sarcastic person myself, I know too well how that can get one into trouble. My sarcasm has landed me in trouble very often and I have creased a few personal relationships just by being light-heartedly cynical. Not everyone gets sarcasm, not the least Cyril Inter, as the evidence will show and what was passed as light-hearted fun with a sprinkle of bitter truth has been taken the wrong way. And it certainly didn’t help that Joan was laughing herself to stupor at Kwoh’s remarks.
I would expect that someone who makes jokes for a living would have thicker skin, but today isn’t Christmas. I have seen Cameroonian comedians mock people with disabilities; crippled, people with speech impediment, people with Down’s syndrome, autism…and gotten away with it unscathed. But the minute someone criticizes their art in general, war is declared. I can only imagine what would have happened if Kwoh had criticized the content.
Cyril Inter had every right to protest what he thought was a unjust “attack” to his art form. But needless to say, he went about it the wrong way. The live he did was full of paternalistic proclivities – going on about how “children” who know nothing were saying some comedians are not funny and a bunch of other things amongst which were direct insults at the hosts. Joan, in particular was the special target of his attack as he hurled direct insults at her looks, her age, her relationship status, and even her fertility.
True evidence that age (that he brought up), after all, does not bestow emotional intelligence.
I’m not a big fan of many Cameroonian comedians. I’m a person who likes to be entertained intelligently. My top 4 favourite stand-up comedians are Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Trevor Noah and George Carlin. All these men have one thing in common, their comedy makes you reflect deeply. I don’t like slapstick and caricature stand-up comedy and I find the likes of Kat Williams just off-putting.
But that’s just me. I have seen senior Pastor perform, and I laughed till I slapped my knee, but at the end of it, that was all there is to it. Just good jokes. I went back home and I forgot them. Dave Chappelle, however, makes deep jokes that resonate over time and that can be discussed in a sociology class; but then again, that’s just me.
As Tino said, the mistake that the Freaky Table made was not to go a little deeper into the categorisation of the different comedic genres and trying to look at things from that perspective. It doesn’t help that many Cameroonian comics themselves don’t know exactly what line or a mix of different lines they fall into. But the Freaky Table, nevertheless, made a lot of good points on that show, never mind that they bruised a lot of egos in the process.
But did that warrant the vitriolic response from Cyril Inter? Not in my books.
The most interesting part of the saga for me was the aftermath of Cyril’s Facebook live vitriol. Kwoh Elonge, basically took the upper ground and asked/proposed to Cyril to have a live discussion on this issue on Facebook. But Cyril turned it down; citing one of his reasons as being that he cannot speak good English.
Since when is speaking good English a basis for having an informed opinion? If English is really a problem (and I doubt it is) could they not have the discussion in Pidgin English? Won’t Anglophone Cameroonians, the primary audience of both entities still follow the discussion if ever there was one in Pidgin?
The French man calls this “une fuite en avant.”
I am reminded of a certain marketing manager who commented under an article I wrote here, saying that I was sabotaging his brand and looking for cheap publicity on the internet. I told him that if he felt I had slighted his brand in any way, he could write an email explaining how I had done so and I would publish it. He never did.
Cyril Inter declining to have that conversation with Kwoh Elonge is a really big mistake on his part. There are certain things that Kwoh Elonge does not see or know, that Cyril as a comedian, sees and knows. And there are certain things that Kwoh as an audience and critic sees, that Cyril does not.
A live discussion that Nabil Fongod proposed to host would have been a good place for both men to discuss the issues and for people tuning to watch to also leave comments and observations. There would have been no better way for the industry to grow. Open and sincere conversations are needed every now and then. Unfortunately everyone will now go back to his own plantation nothing will be grown on the community farm.
Cyril has done nothing to help his case, or the case of Cameroonian comedians. In my eyes, and in the eyes of many, he is the guy who could not articulate clear arguments and so resorted to insult a lady, and later on, to back out of a potentially-enlightening discussion.
In this very instance, to paraphrase Shakespeare, Cyril is a poor player that frets and struts his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, but in the end, signifying nothing.
All hope isn’t lost, however. Perhaps this is the opportunity for another comic to step up and have that live discussion,
- Wandji Wilfred