The adventures of Canadian comedic duo Kenny and Spenny with a rather unfortunate goat has landed a second South African broadcaster in hot water with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA).
Radio station 567 Cape Talk was fined R10 000 by the commission for a segment called “The Week that Wasn’t” on the Redi Direko show where, according to the BCCSA, “a guest presenter (comedian Nick Rabinowitz) in a programme explicitly describes a bestiality scene from a DStv programme called Kenny vs. Spenny. The guest presenter explicitly describes the sexual scene to the listeners and he even adds his own words of encouragement for the goat to take the person on.”
The BCCSA has chosen to interpret the words “scene or scenes” that prohibits the depiction of explicit violent sexual conduct, bestiality, etc. as not limited to visual scenes. According to the BCCSA “a description of bestiality could constitute a contravention of clause 28 (of the Broadcasting code).”
567 Cape Talk had submitted that the show was “a satirical [not a word the BCCSA likes] review of the news stories of the week as seen by a stand-up comedian. 567 Cape Talk’s audience is sophisticated adults who understand satire for what it is.”
The station argued that “a reasonable 567 Cape Talk listener would have understood the broadcast in question as a satirical take of what was topical in that week.”
The BCCSA regularly finds against comedians satirising societal taboos around issues such as sex or religion. It recently found John Vlismas guilty of hate speech after he contravened the BCCSA’s rather subjective view on the “bounds of humour.” In 2002 it fined 5FM R17 500 after the station aired the line “Stupid people have stupid children. If you’re stupid, please don’t have sex! If you insist on having sex then please have sex with animals, preferably animals smarter than you are.”
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