“The day the laughter stopped” is how Buster Keaton described September 5, 1921. That was the day that Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was accused of raping an actress at a party he had thrown in San Francisco. Russell Brand was no Fatty Arbuckle. None of his films was ever a world-conquering success. The American public never loved him. And at a trial that finished last week, and a sentencing that came down Monday, it was determined that Brand, unlike Arbuckle, was indeed guilty of the crime of rape and sexual assault. In the case of Brand, what laughter there was wound down many years ago.
Brand emerged at a very peculiar moment in British life. The “lads’ mags” culture of the 1990s was still around and leaking into the 2000s. It was a period where a certain type of male—never female—promiscuity was admired and even encouraged. Brand himself was crowned “shagger of the year” several years in a row by Britain’s leading tabloid. Even a future Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister boasted in those days of the number of women he had managed to get into bed.
It was also a time when the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say-no-more sauciness of British humor was still alive but not well. Elderly BBC executives imagined that perhaps in Brand’s effeminate, piratical popinjay persona they had stumbled on the much-coveted “voice of youth.” It soon became clear that their chosen voice was a liability.
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