I'll be starting an MRES in Playwriting Studies at the University of Birmingham at the end of September. I graduated from my undergraduate degree in 2011 and whilst since then my practical portofolio has blossomed my academic writing has not. I thought I'd start by writing a few blogs about things I find interesting they cover a range of subjects over the coming few weeks they might be off interest to you they might not.
After the election I saw a lot of people on my twitter
feed making the same point “We are in for five years of great satire” it’s a
belief held by many that under Conservative governments there will be a blossoming
of satirical comedians tackling the tangled web of media opinion, slaying the
dragons of Westminster and an over use of metaphors. But can Satire really ever
change anything?
Satire is a genre of comedy in which vices, follies and
abuses of power are ridiculed, with the intention of shaming the individuals
involved into improvement. Jon Stewart, Charlie Brooker, Bill Hicks; they
aren’t just making jokes about the week’s news they’re also trying to get the
audience to think. Satire comes from a place of anger, it’s driven by morality
as much as it is by punch lines. However despite the best efforts of the
performer or writer can comedy ever change an audience’s opinion or is just
preaching to the converted?
Enid Welsford in her book The Fool asks the question. “Does comedy act on the spiritual system as a vitamin or a narcotic?” Laughter is cathartic, will laughing at something that angers you make you less likely to go out and change it? During the eighties Spitting Image was one of the most popular shows on TV, but the government it ridiculed continued to win election after election with huge majorities. Satire makes no real difference; it just feeds the narcissism of the social media echo chamber.
Enid Welsford in her book The Fool asks the question. “Does comedy act on the spiritual system as a vitamin or a narcotic?” Laughter is cathartic, will laughing at something that angers you make you less likely to go out and change it? During the eighties Spitting Image was one of the most popular shows on TV, but the government it ridiculed continued to win election after election with huge majorities. Satire makes no real difference; it just feeds the narcissism of the social media echo chamber.
Or perhaps it’s just what we need to wake up, the smell
of morality coffee in the morning, the ice bucket challenge of sanity, the cat
of social justice scratching on the door of indifference demanding love and attention. In America the British Comedian John Oliver
was on Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Not surprising
when you consider that after a segment on Net Neutrality he caused the FCC
website to crash after viewers flooded the site with criticism, and when Edward
Snowden decided to be interviewed for a US TV show it was Oliver’s Last Week
Tonight he picked. John Oliver is able to use comedy to talk about issues
traditional media outlets are reluctant or afraid to cover, a point he stresses
is more an “insult to the state of journalism than a complement to the state of
comedy.” So satire booms when other platforms fail? Perhaps or maybe there’s more to it.
In today’s multi-platform, digital world, when the latest
news is sent directly to your phone, there is an ever increasing tidal wave of
horror and misery, when the trending topics on twitter are all subjects that
show humanity at it worse it easy to feel dehumanised. The easy response is to switch off, stop reading the paper, or just presume the people publishing know what they are talking about and not ask too many questions, right?
Comedy makes us laugh, a
good joke can defuse tension. It makes the unbearable, tolerable even for just a second, comedy can bring an audience in, you can confront the audience with an issue they don't want to look at. Laughter brings us closer together, an audience laughing together at the same joke are united. In short comedy can help remind us that we are human. I don’t know
if it’s a narcotic or a vitamin on the spiritual system, but at least comedy reminds us we have one.