Balbontin’s Joke About Ilicic’s Depression Proves Twitch Is Not TV

During the live Twitch commentary of the Portugal-Slovenia match, in connection with the Gialappa’s Band there was last night Enrique Balbontinthe comedian who was famous on Zelig for his “Savonese lessons”. On Josip Ilicic’s entrance onto the pitchmore or less halfway through the second half of extra time, Balbontin made a very unfair joke that, in a television context, would have had more or less the same effect as the joke about socialists that Beppe Grillo made in 1986. Before showing it, a bit of context: Josip Ilicic’s presence at the European Championships is the most classic of fairy tales with a happy ending. The former Palermo, Fiorentina and Atalanta footballer fell and got up several times from a depression that led him to fully recover only once he returned home, to Maribor, the team that launched him as a boy. So seeing that great champion play in the eighth finals against Cristiano Ronaldo’s team is exactly what, forgive the rhetoric, is usually expressed with a phrase: the magic of football.

Enrique Balbontin clearly knows this context. Here he launches into a harsh and very incorrect joke that Gialappa’s Band immediately labels as “Balbontin’s prophecy”: “About Ilicic, it would be nice if after overcoming depression, he took a penalty, missed it and committed suicide.” Gialappa’s comes in right away: “Nooooo!”. And the Dissocillo immediately takes the stage, which is the puppet that the Gialappa’s Band has invented for the occasion when someone in the studio takes the liberty of making a joke of this type. As if everything had been written, the game drags on until the penalty kicks and Josip Ilicic misses it. Balbontin and the Gialappa’s can’t hold back their laughter while in the studio, to tell the truth, a bit of chill seems to hover.

Whether the joke may please or not, raise indignation, muddy, annoy one’s personal spheres, is not the writer’s business. Everyone has their own experience on their shoulders, their own intelligence and is able to evaluate the context according to the compasses of reference they have in their pocket. The “Balbontin prophecy”, however, reveals to us how the context of Twitch is, at least apparently, freer than that of television. It is no coincidence that Gialappa’s Band itself has long since decided, in the absence of other relevant proposals, to migrate to this platform for its projects. Gialappa knows very well that on Twitch she can free her language in a way that not even on Tv8 canmanaging to find absolute comfort even on very delicate topics such as mental health. Enrique Balbontin would never have managed to make a joke like that on Rai or Mediaset. The television henchmen, associated with one or the other political party, would have started right on time to ask for an account, to measure the audience data; the questions, the press releases, the distances, the protections would have started. In short, the axe of protection and guarantee of other people’s sensitivity would have fallen.

The paradox is that freedom on Twitch is limited to a certain point.: a joke like this about mental health could hit much more than a bare breast. Yet on the platform owned by Amazon, sexual content, like gratuitous violence, is explicitly prohibited. The simple exposure of a nipple is enough to get content creators into serious trouble. Speaking of excesses. For the rest, we can also discuss all day about whether or not a joke about depression can be funny. But not about the fact that a joke like that shouldn’t be made. We would, in fact, fall into the trap of “you can’t say anything anymore” which is, in fact, a trap. It’s not true that you can’t say anything anymore, you can say everything, you should say everything. We cannot deny, however, the witch-hunt climate that has long targeted even the sacred monsters of political incorrectness, from Ricky Gervais to Dave Chapelle. Ok, Enrique Balbontin is not Ricky Gervais, he is not Dave Chapelle, but that is exactly a joke (it’s a joke!) that they would have made. A joke that in traditional media, even in the same GialappaShow broadcast on Tv8, would never have aired today. A joke that demonstrates the alienating effect that is generated every time someone jokes about supposedly untouchable subjects.