Dapper Laughs
As I begin this assembly, I must apologise to the house as a whole. This assembly does not have any motivational sporting or academic message, and unforgivably does not intertwine with current sporting events – with no reference to the staggering form of Wycombe Wanderers this season. So, as I have rudely broken this previously unmentioned tradition of Ridley House assembly, I can only reassure you that all shall be returned to normality next week.
From Private Walker in Dad’s Army to Mickey Pearce in Only Fools and Horses, encompassing Gaz from Geordie Shore, Jay from The Inbetweeners, Mark Wright from TOWIE, and many more, audiences have habitually been entertained by the “woman-hungry geezer” character of popular culture.
This product of 21st century Britain, characterised by stand alone augmented biceps, dressed usually in some form of vest top with ‘Hype.’ or ‘Ibiza’ scrawled across its front, with a haircut suspiciously similar to my own, these dubious alpha-males frequent most urban centres of the UK. But lads will be lads. Compared to similar figures of the past, there’s a moment in the opening credits of Happy Days where the Fonz approaches a mirror to perfect his quiff, then realises he is, in fact, already staring at the vision of perfection. Though such actions of the Fonz are ridiculous and ego-driven, they are loveable and above all – harmless. However, his perception that the opposite sex were mainly non-thinking vessels put on earth as future conquests does truly belong in 1950s Wisconsin, but at least writers kept him the right side of “potential date-rapist”.
However, decades later, we have Dapper Laughs. He’s ITV2’s short-lived lad star. Dapper made the jump from Vine Internet sensation to host of his own dating show, poetically titled ‘On the pull’. Wanna get some? Dapper enquires, “Don’t treat them like a mate then!”. This sound bite just one of his numerous citations regarding women that will unquestionably become immortalised in centuries to come, similar to the sonnets of Shakespeare or the romantic poetry of Keats.
Anyone who has seen the online videos of Dapper Laughs - real name Daniel O'Reilly - will be au fait with the misplaced pride in idiocy and the triumphant sexism of the loosely described ‘comedian’. His act is a woeful, misogynistic celebration of banter-based cretinism that is sadly having a renaissance among the confused, socially naïve youngsters of today. To summarise the entire works of Dapper Laughs to those not familiar with this six second vine masterpieces, he represent an avalanche of brainlessness 21st Century lad culture, like a soft wave of WKD-infused phlegm.
One of Dapper’s recurrent jokes is to shout “She knows!” as a woman passes him by in the street. The joke, if not made clear to you by its ground-breaking original comic concept, is that the woman doesn’t know what Dapper is laughing at while he feels both powerful and manly, clearly having adopted the Shakespearian theme of dramatic irony.
If only this character was one of fictional idiocy, a David Brent of this world. But no. The harsh reality is, we’ve all met Dapper in some form, or more accurately, we’ve met dozens of Dappers, hundreds and hundreds of Dappers in fact. He’s that lad in any group of lads you might run into in a bar who dishes out some outrages ‘pars’ and cracks out the Geordie Shore finger blast while exclaiming ‘HMMM!’, but eventually takes “banter” to an unnervingly “creepily offensive” level. He’s funny if he’s not picking on you though. He’s that lad who lads think are really funny, until the lads grow, the word banter loses its impetus, the Borat impressions become stale, and characters like Dapper Laughs usually are shunned by matured friend groups for the terrible people they really are.
Unfortunately, the fact is a faction of teenagers loves Dapper’s work – clocking 1.7 million Facebook Likes for a page dedicated to jokes about gonads. This new wave of lad culture is worrying to say the least, harnessed by ITV, who know that if they give him space on ITV2 they can sell youth advertising space around him. That’s really as far as ITV2’s thinking has stretched here. It certainly hasn’t stretched to, “why do we think it’s OK to peddle this same old misogynistic nonsense about women for a new generation of teenage boys?”. In a world where over the last half a century we have made small steps towards gender equality, why does a mainstream television network feel obliged to employ senseless characters such as Dapper Laughs?
Fortunately, after a successful 50,000 strong petition signed calling for ITV to axe his dating show, his tyrannical reign over easily influenced teenagers has come to an end. O’Reilly, almost to his credit, on Newsnight this week, when asked what Dapper Laughs does now, he replied: ‘Dapper Laughs is gone’. The rise and fall of the all too real character has portrayed extreme Lad culture, on a rare occasion, in its unglamorous worrying light. It is important to quash this laddish behaviour, as it is not only detrimental for the on-going quest gender equality, but for the general wellbeing of humankind.