“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to death my right to get offended. How dare you? Baahar mil.” – Desi Voltaire
Dear everyone,
Let’s
just all take a deep breath. They’re just jokes. Unfunny, crass or
whatever you want to call them, they’re still just jokes. The AIB
Knockout video has been taken down. While we’d love to claim that it’s
because so many people watched it that it broke YouTube, the truth’s a
little sadder.
First things first; no one person or force
forced us to take this video down. This is not something that’s
happened because of a 3 am phonecall or a morcha at our front door or a
gunman on a grassy knoll. Under the circumstances, this is us being
pragmatic. Allow us to explain.
People who’ve been
following our work will know that we’ve always tried to experiment with
content be it on Youtube or a live comedy show, with the sole intent of
making people laugh and/or think. AIB Knockout was another such attempt
to try something new and bring the roast format to a country where
celebrities aren’t often known to laugh at themselves. To our pleasant
surprise, we managed to bring together consenting adults who were
willing to be made fun of by other consenting adults in a crowd full of
(wait for it) consenting adults. And if we’re honest, it was a
phenomenally entertaining evening. Were the jokes repetitive? Crass? It
didn’t matter because they happened in the spirit of irony and good
humour. It was just liberating to be able to say those things, things
that people have thought in one form or another privately for years. A
lot of the laughter that night came from that spirit (there’s your
answer, people who wondered why everyone was laughing at terrible
jokes).
The video came with a clear disclaimer with
several age and content warnings. No one was forced to watch it, we
didn’t buy airtime on every single TV channel on Earth to broadcast it.
YouTube videos do not magically auto-play in front of you. And yet the
videos got over 8 million views. Far more importantly, on the video
page, the people who liked them outnumbered the people who disliked them
by ten times to one. Yes, ten times.
The format was the
same as any international roast i.e. insult comedy, delivered in the
form of one-liners designed to be as rude as possible. It is performed
with the understanding that none of the material is to be taken
seriously—none of the performers actually mean the “offensive” things
they say to each other on the night. We clarify this simply to provide
context.
With the Knockout, in our own juvenile, idiotic
way, we wanted to push the envelope of comedy in this country. But then
the envelope pushed back. Things got to a point where people who have
supported us, people who work hard to make what we do come to life, were
put in a position where things could get deeply unpleasant for them.
And that’s a problem. We can live with abuse, hate, anger, fury, rage,
ignorance, bigotry and perhaps even bullying. But we don’t want anybody
to get hurt because of us. And we do mean anybody.
We
hope it’s clear by now that we never write with the aim of hurting
people. That’s not our goal and we daresay that no comedian ever does
that. We don’t go to work and say, “Hmm, let’s offend XYZ people from
XYZ community today.” If we really wanted to piss off people and hurt
them, we’d be selling credit cards over the phone.
Our
job is to raid the newspapers, pop culture and life for observations and
analogies and it’s okay if you think we’re juvenile or unfunny. We
respect arguments that are critical, and as for the arguments we don’t,
we respect your right to make them without impediment. It is a courtesy
we wish worked both ways.
Over the last few days, we’ve
found ourselves subject to more scrutiny, judgment and opinion than
we’re worth. This Knockout shouldn’t matter. In a secure culture it
wouldn’t matter.
We’re lucky to have support pouring in
from all quarters. First up, from our fans, just the greatest people in
the world, who have nothing but good cheer and encouragement and
positive thoughts. We were pleasantly surprised that people in power who
we have made fun of in the past, including people from both the
so-called right wing and left-wing, went out of their way to convey
support to us. It was fantastic to know that they stand for free speech
as much as us. Friends in the media have told us to stay our course,
pledging their support for our right to say anything, no matter how
ridiculous. Thank you to anyone who has stated in the last few days that
we have the right to say what we want, not as comedians but more
importantly as citizens of this country.
There’s a larger
cultural conversation going on here, where we’re at the very edges of
what it’s okay to say. And it’s a conversation we need to have now
because the world we live in is entirely too complicated to be run by
silences. We still stand by our belief in the right to absolute freedom
of expression for us and for anyone who has anything to say about
anything at all. We hope to be part of an environment that supports that
sort of expression without fear of persecution, intimidation and most
importantly, annoyance. As always, in our own AIB way we’ll continue to
strive towards creating that very environment.
In the
meantime, we’d like to say thank you to our fans and everyone else who
is standing by us. You guys make the struggle worth it. To everyone
railing against us and against the stars that were present, to everyone
who’s decided we’re destroying the fabric of our culture, to everyone
who’s called us seditious pornographers while plotting the downfall of
Indian Values And Civilization As We Know It, we would like to reiterate
that we are just a bunch of comedians who work, and have always worked,
without any malicious intent whatsoever.
We encourage
any and all conversation on the subject of freedom of expression, for
our own silly selves, and for people better, smarter and more courageous
than us. For hundreds and thousands of artists, commentators and any
and all citizens that do not have the privilege of social platforms and
reach that we do.
We are also cooperating with the
authorities and hope to resume normal service soon. We’d like some sort
of cheerful resolution to this so we can focus on more important
national issues, like the upcoming Cricket World Cup.
P.S. Best of luck Virat Kohli. Sorry for the jokes. We heart emoticon you.
P.P.S. It’s a good thing nobody’s downloaded the file and put it on a torrent website or anything.”
