tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/us-comedy-53148/articles
US comedy – The Conversation
2023-05-12T11:14:01Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/201497
2023-05-12T11:14:01Z
2023-05-12T11:14:01Z
Seinfeld: how a sitcom ‘about nothing’ changed television for good
<p>A quarter of a century ago, on 14 May 1998, the final episode of Seinfeld was broadcast, ending one of the most significant sitcoms of all time after nine seasons and 180 episodes. In fact the self-styled “show about nothing” was so important we can talk about the pre-Seinfeld and post-Seinfeld eras. </p>
<p>Set in Manhattan, Seinfeld focused on the minutiae of daily life for four friends: Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), his best friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), his ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbour Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). </p>
<p>Such a setup might sound familiar to fans of 90s American comedy shows. But Seinfeld abandoned the traditional sitcom structure of an A story and a B story and instead gave each character their own storyline, full of self-aware and metatextual jokes.</p>
<p>While co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld wanted a single-camera, filmlike aesthetic, the network, NBC, forced them to adopt a multi-camera setup taped in front of a live studio audience to supply the laughter track. </p>
<p>Eventually, David and Seinfeld subverted that by shooting more scenes using single cameras and externally so that they could not be taped in front of a studio audience. They also employed a rapid-paced, quick-cutting, music-led style that was then unusual for sitcoms. </p>
<p>This created the opportunities for expanding the narrative and cinematographic possibilities we’ve seen since. Seinfeld was a forerunner of the cinematic television we watch today. </p>
<p>Consider the elaborate single-camera set pieces of the comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, or the epic, cinematic look of Netflix’s Better Call Saul.</p>
<p>Seinfeld tackled a host of then-taboo topics, which were part of everyday life, including antisemitism, same-gender relationships and masturbation. But because censorship and social mores at that time would not allow the characters to say the word “masturbation”, instead they referred to who can be the “master of their domain”. Such topics are commonplace these days.</p>
<p>All four characters are antiheroes. None of them is particularly likeable nor were they intended to be. They are morally ambiguous, malicious, selfish, self-involved and extremely petty. They refuse to improve themselves, evolve or even manifest the slightest desire for change. They learn no lessons and the arc of the entire series revisits those they have wronged. </p>
<p>Similar characters can be found in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367279/">Arrested Development</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/">It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</a>. Also, consider Walter White from <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/70143836">Breaking Bad</a> and <a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos">Tony Soprano</a>.</p>
<p>If all four leads in Seinfeld are bad, then George is the worst. Modelled on co-creator, Larry David, he is the epitome of male privilege. Such characters populate the televisual landscape today, not least in David’s later show, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/curb-your-enthusiasm">Curb Your Enthusiasm</a>, in which he stars as a version of himself. </p>
<p>Elaine Benes stands out as a strong female character for the time. In one episode, in the face of a shortage of contraception, she judges whether her sexual partners are “sponge-worthy” or not. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays her with a tremendous physical comedy, as well as comic timing. She was unapologetic, and her sexuality and work life are foregrounded. Clearly, this set the template for her later series, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/veep">Veep</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1njzgXSzA-A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Festivus is celebrated on December 23 each year, thanks to Seinfeld.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The show generated billions of dollars in revenue, making NBC US$150 million (about £93 million) a year at its peak. By the ninth and final season, Jerry Seinfeld was earning US$1 million an episode. NBC executives tried to get him to return for a tenth season by offering him US$5 million an episode, but Seinfeld turned it down. </p>
<p>Among the show’s fans was the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. “He was crazy about The Simpsons and Seinfeld,” his friend <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/kubrick-by-michael-herr/">Michael Herr recounted</a>. As a Kubrick expert, I even suspect that the set design influenced his final film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/">Eyes Wide Shut</a> (1999).</p>
<p>Watching Seinfeld again now – and I have re-watched every episode – some of it lands terribly today. Take the episodes with Babu Bhatt, a Pakistani immigrant who runs a restaurant across the street from Jerry’s apartment. He appears in three episodes of the show and is known for his catchphrase, “Very bad man!” which he uses to insult Jerry. </p>
<p>The problem is that Babu is played by actor Brian George, who was born in Jerusalem to Iraqi Jewish parents, and is clearly wearing makeup and affecting a south Asian accent. </p>
<p>At the same time, the lack of diversity in Seinfeld is striking. New York is represented by Manhattan alone, rather than any of the other four boroughs that make up the metropolis. Its image of the Big Apple is white and middle class. </p>
<p>As journalist and screenwriter Lindy West has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/politically-correct-jerry-seinfeld-comedy-marginalised-voices">observed</a>, the series featured only 19 black people, 18 of whom were one-off characters such as “the waiter” and “the guy who parks cars”. There was only one recurring black character – Kramer’s lawyer, Jackie Chiles – whose mimicry of OJ Simpson’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, makes him look like a real shyster. </p>
<p>So, while Seinfeld may feel like a dated product of the late 1990s, it was ahead of the curve aesthetically, structurally and in terms of narrative and characterisation. Today’s television would be unthinkable without it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams has received funding from research councils and charities including the AHRC and The British Academy among others. </span></em></p>
The 90s sitcom featuring Jerry Seinfeld influenced the type of cinematic television we are so familiar with nowadays.
Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177028
2022-05-11T12:06:12Z
2022-05-11T12:06:12Z
What can reverse late-night TV’s decline?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461829/original/file-20220506-22-htzlcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C53%2C2766%2C1917&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Corden, host of 'The Late Late Show,' recently announced that he will be stepping down from the show.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/host-james-corden-speaks-onstage-during-the-70th-annual-news-photo/539763272?adppopup=true">Theo Wargo/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In late April, after James Corden announced he would step down from “The Late Late Show” next spring, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/04/who-should-replace-james-corden-on-the-late-late-show">there was immediate speculation about his replacement</a>.</p>
<p>Others, however, have had a different response to recent changes to the late-night TV lineup: <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/comedy/late-night/late-night-is-over/">Who cares</a>? </p>
<p>Ratings <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/can-nbc-halt-jimmy-fallons-long-ratings-tumble-1254270/">are down</a>, they point out. The shows can’t get over their <a href="https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2021/06/the-sad-decline-of-late-night-television">Trump obsession</a>. They represent <a href="https://www.themudmag.com/post/the-death-of-late-night">a bygone era of television</a>. </p>
<p>But in my view, late-night can still matter. Contrary to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/4/21/23035573/why-late-night-talk-show-is-dead-snl-after-lorne">what some might say</a>, late-night is not “dead,” and it can come back. But if it doesn’t want to fall by the cultural wayside <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/major-league-baseballs-mlb-respect-strike-lockout-salaries-sports-money-players-canceled-games-cancellation-contract-dispute-11649613926">as baseball has</a>, it needs to do what the national pastime hasn’t: adapt and evolve.</p>
<h2>Asking the target demographic</h2>
<p>For nine years, I wrote for two late-night shows: “Late Night” and “The Tonight Show,” both hosted by Jimmy Fallon. I saw, firsthand, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-television-fallon-idINTRE5227FU20090303?edition-redirect=in">a fledgling show that aired at 12:30 a.m.</a> blossom into a <a href="https://variety.com/2014/tv/news/jimmy-fallons-debut-as-tonight-show-host-dominates-in-ratings-monday-1201110389/">hugely successful show in the coveted 11:30 p.m. slot</a>. I was also around for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/arts/television/jimmy-fallon-tonight-show-interview-trump.html">beginning of its slide</a>.</p>
<p>When I began teaching Writing for Late Night at Emerson College in 2019, late-night remained formidable. At the start of a semester, I asked how many in class regularly viewed a network late-night talk show. Every student watched at least one; most, two. </p>
<p>By 2021, only about half said they tuned in, with most watching “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2244495/">The Eric Andre Show</a>” on Adult Swim and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637574/">Conan</a>” on TBS – the latter of which <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009587267/conan-obrien-ends-tbs-show-leaves-late-night">would end in June 2021</a>. </p>
<p>This year, only around 30% of my late-night comedy students deemed themselves “regular” viewers of any of these shows. While I admired their honesty, I thought: This isn’t good.</p>
<p>So I asked my students, who make up a portion of late-night’s <a href="https://deadline.com/2021/06/late-night-ratings-late-show-wins-season-fifth-consecutive-year-1234772290/">key demographic</a> of 18-to-34-year-olds, “How would you change late-night?”</p>
<h2>Another spin of the news cycle</h2>
<p>A few themes emerged.</p>
<p>As one student observed, there is so much rehashing of stories that have already made news, it feels like you’re just watching more news. </p>
<p>Thus came the follow-up question: Why the need to intensely cover top news?</p>
<p>A suggestion from multiple students was to focus more on specific, relatable issues in monologues. I found this interesting, as that was the style of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wYs72Z4F7M">Joan Rivers</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZVWIELHQQY">Craig Ferguson</a> – two examples of personalities who eschewed rapid-fire topicality in favor of issues affecting everyday people.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Joan Rivers riffs on the frustrations of dealing with customer service representatives, mean parents and her disastrous wedding night.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is the true entertainment value of six jokes about the debt ceiling? What if, instead of dreary news about gas prices, the economy or COVID-19, the focus were on topics like choosing to work from home, going back to movie theaters or picking a pricey streaming service? What if <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MalsOLSFvX0">the deep-dive style John Oliver has mastered</a> for Sunday nights were tailored to those who’ve trudged through Wednesday? </p>
<p>Former President Donald Trump still makes for <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NTptDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA45&dq=late+night+TV+comedy+bad+ratings&ots=o2cHVwQwvB&sig=IfprySSvVH_iyze_1FSlLXHM-do#v=onepage&q=late%20night%20TV%20comedy%20bad%20ratings&f=false">easy late-night fodder</a> – and remains <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/donald-trump-has-fundamentally-changed-late-night-comedy.html">a reliable source of late-night virality</a>. But <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2018/03/5-late-night-hosts-told-the-same-stormy-daniels-trump-joke.html">when the same exact Trump joke gets told by five hosts</a> – which actually happened in March 2018 – the formula probably isn’t sustainable. </p>
<h2>A generational disconnect</h2>
<p>A number of students noted that they sometimes find late-night shows patronizing, with the hosts making misguided assumptions about their generation. They don’t all love <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-korean-boy-band-bts-toppled-asian-stereotypes-and-took-america-by-storm-97596">the Korean boy band BTS</a> or want to hear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGc37X4IoT0">celebrities talking about their lavish lives</a>. And they aren’t exactly on board with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faq">non-fungible tokens</a>, or NFTs – the digital collectibles that have seen a spike in popularity over the past year.</p>
<p>In January 2022, two of my late-night classes and an office-hours meeting all began with some version of the same question: “<a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/paris-hilton-and-jimmy-fallon-showing-off-their-nfts-is-the-longest-77-seconds-ever/">What’s up with your old boss and this ape thing</a>?” </p>
<p>They were referring to a segment in which Jimmy Fallon interviewed Paris Hilton and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zi12wrh5So">compared their respective NFTs</a>. I found the clip fairly innocuous – but I’m no longer part of the target demographic.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Funny or tone-deaf?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In class, it was described as “tone-deaf” – two wealthy people comparing costly purchases of digital cartoons when aspiring writers can barely afford laptops. Some students spoke of feeling alienated by what has come to be known as “<a href="https://www.uncmirror.com/opinion/2022/04/18/opinion-forgetting-ukraine-how-pop-culture-overshadows-war/">celebrity culture</a>.”</p>
<p>I was tempted to push back on this. Big-name guests are draws. But then I thought about <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/12/28/373657763/obit-for-potato-lady-aka-myrtle-young">Myrtle Young</a>. </p>
<p>Myrtle was a one-time guest of Johnny Carson – an elderly woman from Indiana who collected potato chips that resembled objects and people.</p>
<p>It was awkward and bizarre, but heartwarming and real. Myrtle wasn’t trying to hawk her wares to people who couldn’t afford them; she was simply sharing a funny but entertaining passion.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yuH1PhzOVR4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Myrtle Young appears on a 1987 episode of ‘The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’m not saying that audiences have to see some version of Myrtle and her chips each night. But do viewers need to see the same actor twice in one month, promoting the same movie they promoted last time they appeared?</p>
<h2>About the hosts …</h2>
<p>The most common suggestion from my students was that late-night needs more diversity.</p>
<p>A name that came up multiple times was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/arts/television/lilly-singh-week.html">Lilly Singh</a>, a hugely popular YouTube star who has amassed 14.7 million subscribers. </p>
<p>In 2019, Singh was announced as the new host for a nightly NBC show following Fallon and Seth Meyers – a move that was <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/youtube-star-lilly-singh-changing-talk-show-rules-a-little-late-1233240/">heralded as a much-needed diversification</a> from late-night’s “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9325637/vanity-fair-late-night-men-samantha-bee">straight guy in a suit</a>” trope. </p>
<p>Singh is bisexual, Indian-Canadian – and, most importantly, funny. I viewed Singh as a “Tonight Show” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph1CwhhuaEY">host-in-waiting</a>. </p>
<p>But something went wrong. There were reports <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/a-little-late-with-lilly-singh-gets-new-showrunner-set-for-season-2-4098709/">of new showrunners</a>, <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/12/lilly-singh-nbc-new-showrunner-head-writer-1234635597/">new approaches</a> and, finally, <a href="https://deadline.com/2021/05/a-little-late-with-lilly-singh-to-end-on-nbc-netflix-kenya-barris-1234751161/">a cancellation</a>.</p>
<p>From the outside looking in, it seemed as if those who could help promote and empower Singh on the television side counted on the new host to promote the show herself on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. </p>
<p>But if someone’s already watching something on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, why would they set their DVRs for 1:30 a.m.? </p>
<p>Several students spoke positively of Singh’s show and appreciated that it played to an audience accustomed to viral videos while modernizing late-night norms. Is it possible <a href="https://deadline.com/2019/09/nbc-katie-hockmeyer-head-late-night-programming-evp-1202738995/">those in charge of late-night</a> just didn’t “get” Lilly Singh? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman dressed in black smiles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461828/original/file-20220506-22-5ludlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lilly Singh’s show was pulled after two years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lilly-singh-speaks-onstage-during-the-2017-makers-news-photo/634164474?adppopup=true">Emma McIntyre/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>It wouldn’t be the first time that a young host went through some growing pains. In 1993, Conan O’Brien was hammered by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111025184110/http://www.conanofthenight.com/15-09-93.html">one critic</a> after <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/17opclassic_conan.html">another</a> during a rocky start <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/27/arts/nbc-has-picked-an-unknown-writer-to-replace-letterman.html">replacing David Letterman</a> on “Late Night.” Even O'Brien admitted that it <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/conan-obriens-three-year-overnight-success-174220/">took his show approximately three years to find its voice</a>. By comparison, Singh was given two. </p>
<p>And with that, network viewers were left with a menu of five – soon to be four – white guys in suits: Corden, Fallon, Meyers, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. </p>
<p>I often wonder how I grew up with Rivers and <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hall-arsenio-1956/">Arsenio Hall</a> only to see things go backward. I also wonder why the performer I consider the most talented of all current hosts, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SE8oZvxuY0&list=PLnJ18wO8CEBx-DXxRYeMWPS3oi6qZxwg_&index=4">Amber Ruffin</a>, who is not a white guy in a suit, airs weekly on the streaming platform Peacock rather than nightly on broadcast TV.</p>
<p>It’s baffling that my students, who eagerly consume <a href="http://www.auntydonna.com">Aunty Donna</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=i+think+you+should+leave+official+site&client=safari&ei=yTRwYpnFI52qptQPzLee0A0&ved=0ahUKEwjZzeOLysH3AhUdlYkEHcybB9oQ4dUDCA4&uact=5&oq=i+think+you+should+leave+official+site&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQghEKsCOgcIABBHELADOgcIABCwAxBDOgoIABDkAhCwAxgBOgwILhDIAxCwAxBDGAI6BAgAEEM6BQgAEIAEOgQILhBDOgUILhCABDoFCAAQhgM6BggAEBYQHjoFCCEQoAE6CAghEBYQHRAeSgUIPBIBMUoECEEYAEoECEYYAVCCAViTDWCmDmgBcAF4AIABbogBmAmSAQQxMy4xmAEAoAEByAESwAEB2gEGCAEQARgJ2gEGCAIQARgI&sclient=gws-wiz">Tim Robinson</a>, <a href="https://www.sho.com/ziwe">Ziwe</a>, <a href="https://www.adultswim.com/videos/the-eric-andre-show/">Eric Andre</a> and <a href="https://www.sho.com/desus-and-mero">Desus & Mero</a>, get none of the above in mainstream late-night.</p>
<p>I can’t force those in power to make changes. But what I can do is report the views of my students – talented, intelligent writers who hope to hear their own jokes on television one day, but who often struggle to find a show from which to learn.</p>
<p>Conservative comic Greg Gutfeld <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-conservative-comic-greg-gutfeld-overtook-stephen-colbert-in-ratings-to-become-the-most-popular-late-night-tv-host-166867">is dominating ratings</a> not just because he’s cornered one demographic on Fox News, but because of systemic shortcomings on network TV.</p>
<p>Funny or not, Gutfeld knows his audience and wants to win. He cares. Yet <a href="https://variety.com/2021/tv/columns/gutfeld-fox-news-review-comedy-late-night-1234947223/">the chorus remains</a> some version of, “He’s just a conservative blowhard from Manhattan who’s out of his element, and the sheen will eventually wear off.”</p>
<p>Interesting. The last time the pundits <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pollster-forecast-donald-trump-wrong_n_5823e1e5e4b0e80b02ceca15">were so arrogantly dismissive</a>, a network television host laughed all the way to the White House.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Rineman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Members of the key 18-to-34 demographic finds the format stale, the hosts unrelatable and the topics patronizing.
Jon Rineman, Affiliated Faculty, Visual and Media Arts & Comedic Arts, Emerson College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149012
2020-10-28T12:52:09Z
2020-10-28T12:52:09Z
Tom Lehrer and US satire from Charlie Chaplin to Randy Rainbow – why it remains relevant now
<p>Ten years ago my wife, the Broadway singer Judy Blazer, performed in a satirical revue for the <a href="https://www.92y.org/lyrics">Lyrics and Lyricists Series</a> at New York’s 92nd Street Y. The programme drew heavily on the work of the satirist Tom Lehrer, who was honoured by having the entire show named after one of his songs: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY">Poisoning Pigeons in the Park</a>.</p>
<p>And what a different time that was to now. The Obamas were in the White House, which exuded an air of elegance and grace not seen since JFK’s Camelot. Still, in an <a href="https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/poisoning-pigeons-park-art-satiric-comedy-song-62018/">interview</a> about the show, Lehrer responded to the suggestion that his songs seemed to have come from an earlier, kinder, and gentler time. As he saw it, it was a question of comedic tone: “‘irreverence’ had been ‘subsumed by mere grossness … Irreverence is easy – what’s hard is wit’”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of actors in Central Park, New York." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366095/original/file-20201028-13-12dmyn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (2010). Tom Lehrer seated, centre; Judy Blazer seated, left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Richard Termine/92nd Street Y</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last week, Lehrer, now 92, hit the <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2020/10/21/satirist-tom-lehrer-put-his-songs-into-public-domain/">news</a> with the announcement that he was putting the entire catalogue of his song lyrics into the public domain. They can now be performed and quoted endlessly. The question is, why should they be? </p>
<p>Two years ago, Lehrer <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x">mused</a> upon the possibility of his own obsolescence: “Things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.”</p>
<p>How similar this sounds to the worries of another master comedian, Charlie Chaplin, who implied <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O8o3DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=enjoyment+of+laughter&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjooML21c_sAhUDqXEKHb52DO8Q6AEwAHoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=marx%20brothers%20are%20frightening&f=false">the same thing</a> more than 80 years ago:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Modern humor frightens me a little. The Marx Brothers are frightening. Thurber, Stewart, Joe Cook, Benchley – yes, all of them. They say, 'All right, this is how we live and we’ll live that way.’ They go in for being crazy. It’s a soul-destroying thing. They say, ‘All right you’re insane, we’ll appeal to your insanity.’ They make insanity the convention. They make humor a premise. Acquiescence in everything disintegrating. Knocking everything down. Annihilating everything. There’s no conduct in their humor. They haven’t any attitude. It’s up-to-date, of course – a part of the chaos. I think it’s transitional.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In spite of his personal courtliness, Lehrer’s songs could be quite savage. Witness his contempt for the Nazi scientist, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio">Wernher von Braun</a>, designer of the V2 rocket that left London and other European cities in ruins. Far from facing judgement at Nuremburg, von Braun was drafted in to lead the US space programme after the war – all “to put some idiot on the moon”, as Lehrer sang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Don’t say that he’s hypocritical.<br>
Say, rather, that he’s apolitical.<br>
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?<br>
That’s not my department”, says Wernher von Braun.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lehrer has played with some terrifying subjects in his day. As a <a href="https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Lehrer_Songs/">mathematician</a> who had once worked at the Los Alamos laboratory where the US atomic bomb was designed, he could cheerfully sing a thing or two about nuclear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs">annihilation</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And we will all go together when we go.<br>
What a comforting fact that is to know!<br>
Universal bereavement –<br>
An inspiring achievement!<br>
Yes, we will all go together when we go.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>And yet now, like Chaplin before him, Lehrer professes to be scared by what he sees around him. Comedians have often felt unequal to the task of engaging with the raw stuff of their satire. Lehrer once <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/jul/31/artsfeatures1">said</a>: “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.”</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, the novelist Philip Roth – whose work The Plot Against America (2004), published 16 years before the Trump presidency, was recently <a href="https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/tv/a33274502/david-simon-plot-against-america/">dramatised by HBO</a> – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2007/05/quotes-for-the-day/54317/">expressed</a> a similar worry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one’s meagre imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Unspeakably funny</h2>
<p>Now, comedians and satirists are certainly thinking about how to handle the “figures” that American culture has tossed up for their raw material. They faced the same problem after the 2016 election – sometimes with sobering results.</p>
<p>In 2017, the comedian <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/716258113/kathy-griffin-life-after-the-trump-severed-head-controversy">Kathy Griffin</a> faced an onslaught of abuse and blacklisting after posing in photographs holding a Donald Trump mask, bloodied to look like a severed head. The following year – as I discussed in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/michelle-wolf-the-white-house-roast-and-the-thin-line-of-comedy-95888">previous article</a> for The Conversation – Michelle Wolf was pilloried for calling out Trump’s racism, misogyny and mendacity in the starkest of terms at the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner. Undoubtedly they were terms that Tom Lehrer would not have used.</p>
<p>But at the same time, today’s unspeakable terms are likely to get tomorrow’s green light. The late Texan comedian Bill Hicks was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/11/01/the-goat-boy-rises">censored</a> and cut from the David Letterman show in 1993 for taking on Christian hypocrisy, with not a four-letter word uttered. Sixteen years later – with the comedian in his grave – Letterman brought Hicks’s mother on to the show to apologise to her personally and to air the entire <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1NTmnG0hmA">cut segment</a>. As he confessed: “I don’t know why, I’m sorry I did it, and it was a mistake.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DPDPzbLFeP4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Times change. Yesterday’s “daring” is perhaps today’s “quaint”. But Lehrer has bequeathed to us a body of work that will always be relevant, even if he has felt unequal to the task of engaging with the horrors of today. We can certainly appreciate his influence in the work of the musical parodist <a href="https://www.randyrainbow.com/">Randy Rainbow</a>, who has been taking on the world of Trump mercilessly and hilariously. </p>
<p>Tom Lehrer has given us a <a href="https://tomlehrersongs.com/">treasure trove</a> for succeeding musical satirists to learn from and to build upon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149012/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will Kaufman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The famed US satirist recently released decades of his work for reuse free of copyright.
Will Kaufman, Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of Central Lancashire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143682
2020-08-06T20:01:59Z
2020-08-06T20:01:59Z
Friday essay: has Donald Trump broken satire?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351200/original/file-20200805-46028-1w7jtex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=351%2C0%2C2542%2C1917&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>For a long time, the answer has been yes. When Saturday Night Live, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xecEV4dSAXE">John Oliver</a> and the satirical establishment railed at him, the president’s supporters were only strengthened in their belief there was a highbrow plot against their guy. Trump met anger with anger, and the effect of satire on public opinion played out to a very noisy draw.</p>
<p>Now, however, three months out from the election in this most bizarre of years, the wheels may be falling off the Trump bandwagon. And <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvxj5gWah_E">satirists like Sarah Cooper</a>, with her brilliantly economical lip-synching of the president’s speeches, seem to be adding to the Trump campaign’s problems in politically effective ways. </p>
<p>Satire might be biting back, at least to the extent of nipping at Trump’s heels, while The Virus and his response to it are breaking his image as a strong leader.</p>
<p>Those of us who enjoy satires like to imagine that the good ones (that is, the ones that make us laugh) change minds and form public opinion. This silver bullet effect, though possible, is extremely rare, as the long experiment in combative public rhetoric called the Trump presidency has demonstrated.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sarah Cooper lip-synchs Trump live during his Fourth of July speech this year.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The case for yes (satire is broken)</h2>
<p>Satire makes us laugh, so we conflate it with comedy, which also makes us laugh. However, the laughter of satire is essentially “laughing at”, rather than the “laughing with” of benign and joyous comedy. It is more critical and appeals to harsher emotions in the audience. To be specific about the satirical element of cartoons, essays, sketches, and the rest – it <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/satire-and-the-public-emotions/44C9ECA05F209F158855C5B8C205D20B">mobilises the emotions</a> labelled by psychologists “<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b5e/273a1171d1c961cd5140f3aaf1f4d312c21b.pdf">the CAD triad</a>” of contempt, anger, and disgust.</p>
<p>Satirists dream that the objects of their critique will shrivel under the coruscating force of their truth. This seldom happens, and never with experienced public figures. Mostly politicians ignore the satire or try to laugh it off, giving the real or fake impression they are good sports. Mostly their supporters ignore or reject it. Meanwhile, those already disposed to agree with the satire go along for the emotional ride. They vent their anger, contempt, or disgust on the person or behaviour of the target, and political life in countries with free-ish media rumbles on. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/farewell-john-clarke-in-an-absurd-world-we-have-never-needed-you-more-76015">John Clarke and Bryan Dawe</a> fed the discontent of the discontented through seven prime ministerships over nearly 30 years. The format didn’t tire because a public appetite for satire at the expense of the powerful is ever present. </p>
<p>It is an important part of the ecology of liberal democracies when they are functioning well, and a more urgent one in times of malfunction. It cheers us up and does something to keep the bastards honest.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/farewell-john-clarke-in-an-absurd-world-we-have-never-needed-you-more-76015">Farewell John Clarke: in an absurd world, we have never needed you more</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So it’s no surprise Donald Trump didn’t resign in early 2017 after John Oliver or Saturday Night Live exposed some policy flaws to ridicule. It is, however, a surprise that the massed forces of the satirical industrial complex haven’t managed to strip much paint from him or his supporters over the years. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qV6eGYKKQOo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The public shaming mechanism implicit in political satire has been singularly ineffective in moving public opinion on his presidency, and here are two reasons why.</p>
<p>First, Trump is shameless - he refuses the shaming mechanism that is part of satire’s deal utterly. Normal politicians (excluding those in authoritarian regimes} at least pretend to be able to take a joke at their own expense. They buy originals of cartoons, submit to comedians at press gallery dinners, and arrange their faces in a rictus loosely signifying amusement when caught on the back foot by a member of the public. </p>
<p>Trump refuses all this. He hasn’t attended a White House Correspondents’ Dinner as president, and he fires back with anger and disgust whenever ridiculed. He doesn’t soak up or process the hostile emotions of satire. He returns them with exaggerated force.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351206/original/file-20200805-845-8zbq0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Obama laughs conspicuously at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Susan Walsh/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, his supporters seem to mirror this reaction. The anger and disgust satirists seek to vent on the president, Trump supporters vent straight back on the attackers in “the elites”. The public emotions are amplified rather than diffused. Division increases, and in the favourite verb of the culture wars, opinion is weaponised.</p>
<p>This theatre of anger and disgust has largely worked for Trump. It has distracted his opponents and energised his supporters. The polls suggest the numbers for and against him have been very stable, and until recently, he has stayed within striking distance of a second term. </p>
<h2>The case for no (satire may be rising again)</h2>
<p>Things may be changing at the moment, for many reasons. A <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/">gap</a> has opened between Trump and Biden in the polling and, if satire has anything to do with it, the key emotion is contempt. </p>
<p>Trump has revelled in the energetic emotions of anger and disgust, but his image as a strong leader capable of “making America great again” can bear very little of the cold detachment that characterises contempt. Australian journalist Jonathan Swan’s facial expressions and follow-up questions in his celebrated Axios interview with the president this week reflect low-voltage disdain rather than more combative emotions. </p>
<p>That approach kept Swan in the room and civilly engaged while his interviewee hung himself out to dry, appearing bumbling and unconvincing rather than a channel for the anger of the dispossessed.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ig_btdrmxD4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>As Farrah Tomazin <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/the-stuff-of-memes-hard-hitting-trump-interview-with-australian-reporter-goes-viral-20200805-p55ilq.html">in the SMH wrote</a> of Swan’s interview:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It had all the withering satire of an ABC sketch featuring comedic duo John Clarke and Bryan Dawe […] Except this wasn’t satire at all, but a serious political interview with US President Donald Trump merely 91 days from one of the most consequential elections in US history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cartoonists and sketch comedians are fastening onto things like the cool, hard separations from the Trump circus by Generals <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/murkowski-calls-mattiss-rebuke-of-trump-true-as-many-republicans-distance-themselves-from-the-former-defense-secretary/2020/06/04/f77ff460-a682-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html">Mattis</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/11/top-us-military-general-mark-milley-issues-public-apology-trump-church-photo-op">Milley</a>. This mobilisation of contempt may really shift a few votes. In a democracy, especially such a divided one as the US, voting intention only has to move a couple of points to be decisive.</p>
<p>It’s true satire is seldom influential in elections. Very occasionally it can contribute to a wave of anger that wipes someone out, as perhaps happened to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/14/jacob-zuma-resigns-south-africa-president">Jacob Zuma in South Africa</a>, and may yet happen to Boris Johnson in the UK. </p>
<p>Contempt is, however, a risk for a once-strong leader who has been weakened by events. It can act as a solvent on the uncommitted, whereas anger and disgust only tend to motivate the committed.</p>
<p>This has happened once in Australia, not so long ago. In her brilliant <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2007/12/exit-right">Quarterly Essay on the electoral demise of John Howard</a>, Judith Brett argued he was gone the moment the Chaser team infiltrated the APEC motorcade with an Osama bin Laden lookalike. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This was political satire that was reaching far beyond the usual suspects on the liberal left, and in the process turning the government’s national-security credentials into a national joke. When the Chaser motorcade breached the Great Wall of Sydney, Howard’s days as a strong leader were over. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="ABC TV/AAP" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351196/original/file-20200805-5488-rwi66f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julian Morrow (right) and Chas Licciardello (left) from the ABC TV show The Chaser’s War On Everything after staging a fake motorcade through Sydney in June 2007 during APEC.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Howard made people angry or proud with strong borders and the “War on Terror”, he went from strength to strength. When The Chaser and others made him look like old Uncle John wandering the streets in a green and gold tracksuit he lost crucial support.</p>
<p>Something like this might be happening to Donald Trump. As the nation’s death toll from COVID-19 grows, volleys of anger and disgust that tend to confirm audiences more vigorously in their convictions may be turning into a growing trickle of contempt. </p>
<p>In an electorate close to evenly poised, this might sap the conviction of a significant numbers of voters in a sufficient number of states to make a difference.</p>
<p>Sarah Cooper’s lip-synching reproductions of Trump’s speeches don’t shout angrily at the president, or present him as a terrifying menace. A fine-featured and expressive woman of Jamaican origin mouthing some of his less coherent interviews and news conferences just makes him look ridiculous. </p>
<p>She started with a TikTok video called How to Medical that parodies the presidential mansplaining of bleach as a prophylactic for COVID-19 with surgical precision.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RxDKW75ueIU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>It reminds me of John Clarke’s renditions of every Australian politician as himself in his own suit and voice. Cooper keeps her target’s voice (she even credits Trump as a writer) but subverts it with her vivid critical presence. While Clarke used the ethical standards of an older Australia to undermine the media spin of his victims, Cooper calls Trump out from a more modern America. </p>
<p>She incarnates a new turn in the cycle of American self-creation where puffy old men in suits are beginning to seem washed up. </p>
<p>Is this a sign of the tide changing irrevocably against Trump? Maybe not – the number of those who have underestimated his superhuman power to refuse shame is legion. His core support has never been a majority, but it has been incredibly durable. </p>
<p>All the same, too many more clips like Cooper’s or cartoons like <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/07/opinions/trumps-self-defeating-move-opinion-weekly-column-galant/index.html">this one by Clay Jones</a> about Trump’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-photo-op-with-church-and-bible-was-offensive-but-not-new-140053">photo op with the Bible</a> on June 1, and he’s in trouble. If you have come to think of someone as a dilapidated dill, you tend not to care much, or vote, for him.</p>
<p>Cooper’s parodies, Swan’s interview, and Jones’s cartoon detach viewers from the high emotions that Trump has ridden to defy attempts to shame and ridicule him. The cooler emotion of contempt may yet prove more corrosive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian received funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions to support work towards the recently published Satire and the Public Emotions (Cambridge 2020).</span></em></p>
Donald Trump’s bizarre interview with journalist Jonathan Swan went viral this week. While some regard the US president as beyond parody, satire may be starting to bite as he slides in the polls.
Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143171
2020-07-26T20:02:48Z
2020-07-26T20:02:48Z
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the funniest, filthiest comfort TV around
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348773/original/file-20200722-21-16izgb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C6%2C1422%2C737&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/mediaviewer/rm398244864">FX</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Art+for+trying+times">Art for Trying Times</a>, authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective during this pandemic.</em></p>
<p>In times of stress, it is only natural to seek out comforting art that reaffirms our faith in humanity. Why, then, am I back to binge-watching the utterly irredeemable <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/?ref_=ttmi_tt">It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia</a>? </p>
<p>Sunny is a cult sitcom about five friends who own Paddy’s Pub, a South Philadelphia dive bar in which customers arrive about as frequently as Godot. A lack of clientele means “the Gang” is free to drink, scheme and bicker their lives away.</p>
<p>The US show’s home video aesthetic and overlapping, semi-improvised dialogue recalls the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/fast-track-fandom-which-mumblecore-films-watch-first">“mumblecore” film subgenre</a>, although “shoutcore” would really be more appropriate here. Each episode, <a href="https://www.finder.com.au/where-to-watch-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-online">available to stream in Australia</a>, is essentially a 20-minute squabble in which everyone is under informed and over opinionated.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Charlie, you’re the most misinformed person I’ve ever met. You don’t even know what’s going on in Israel.”</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Inside Out for adults</h2>
<p>Although the show began during the George W. Bush era, I’ve come to see each character as a partial reflection of current US president Donald Trump. Frank (Danny DeVito) is a wealthy bigot; Charlie (Charlie Day) is an illiterate savage; Dee (Kaitlin Olson) is a needy narcissist; Dennis (Glenn Howerton) is a psychotic womanizer; and Mac (Rob McElhenney) is a love-deprived zealot.</p>
<p>Through the prism of these assorted neuroses, the show filters every contemporary issue imaginable: gun control, racism, #MeToo, climate change, and so on. Occasionally, the gang stumbles upon some crude solution to a topical problem. </p>
<p>In one episode, the question of how to gender bathrooms is solved by taping an all-inclusive Animal Shithouse sign to each door. More frequently, though, episode titles such as The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6362510/">The Gang Solves Global Warming</a> are just wishful thinking.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Gang tackles big issues – but rarely solves them.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The global warming episode – from season 14, which aired late last year – provides the perfect example of Sunny’s satirise-everyone approach. Conservative Mac shrugs off the crisis with “if God wants to roast us like turkeys, there’s got to be a good reason for it”. While progressive Dee buys recyclable shoes just to shame others on Instagram.</p>
<p>The show is less disgusted by any particular partisan viewpoint than it is by the bad faith discussions that occur between corrupt parties. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-birthday-mr-bean-celebrating-30-years-of-a-major-comedy-character-124593">Happy birthday, Mr Bean! Celebrating 30 years of a major comedy character</a>
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<p>It offers, hands down, the best replication of that clanking feeling one gets when encountering immovable ignorance online. “I’m an American”, Mac proudly <a href="https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=15566">declares</a>, “I won’t change my mind on anything, regardless of the facts that are set out before me.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“I’m not gonna stand here, present some egghead scientific argument based on fact.”</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Anything for a laugh</h2>
<p>Admittedly, this doesn’t sound like much of a tonic for our leaking garbage bag of a year. The idiots are everywhere; why should we be wasting our screen time with them? Because Sunny, as long as you can stomach its distinctive brand of filth, is the funniest thing around. </p>
<p>Over its 14 (and counting) seasons, it has evolved from a grimy Seinfeld xerox into a Monty Pythonesque carnival of the surreal and grotesque. The actors here are willing to do, or expel, anything for a laugh. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aczPDGC3f8U">If you loved Terry Jones vomiting in a high-class restaurant</a>, might I suggest <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VufV5-I94bI">Charlie Day vomiting blood all over his posh date</a>?</p>
<p>Obviously, sensitive gaggers need not apply. Nor those who are repelled by dumpster babies, glue-huffing, rat-bashing, sewer-diving, bed-pooping, or (and this is a crucial Sunny litmus test) a naked and sweaty Danny DeVito bursting forth from a leather couch.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“I believe there is a man in that couch.”</span></figcaption>
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<p>If nothing else, I cherish Sunny for the way it has unleashed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000362/?ref_=tt_cl_t5">DeVito</a>. The former Taxi star is an incredible comedic performer, but he was in danger of forever being defined as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtlB7q96NMs">Arnold Schwarzenegger’s improbable twin</a>. As Frank, he snorts and grunts through scenes like a rabid truffle pig with a bloodlust for depravity. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/was-that-joke-funny-or-offensive-whos-telling-it-matters-126167">Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters</a>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Good God, you are disgusting. A disgusting animal.”</span></figcaption>
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<p>While Frank is the show’s rotten core, Charlie is its heart. Intellectually stunted, possibly molested, and living in abject poverty, Charlie nonetheless radiates twisted <em>joie de vivre</em>. His helium voice and vacant gaze always kill me, whether he is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOY0pwuush8">torturing leprechauns</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZfCyTpAlg8">boiling milk steaks</a>, or getting rich off “kitten mittens”. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Finally, there’s an elegant comfortable mitten … for cats!”</span></figcaption>
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<h2>All together now</h2>
<p>Charlie is also responsible for The Nightman Cometh, a bizarre musical in season four that has since become a <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/the-nightman-cometh-oral-history">live singalong show</a>.</p>
<p>The casts’ theatre backgrounds have provided a number of surprisingly catchy songs over the years. This is no <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327801/?ref_=vp_back">Glee</a> though. Only a Sunny musical would make hay out of the slipperiness between “boy’s soul” and “boy’s hole”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Rehearsals go somewhat awry.</span></figcaption>
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<p>So why am I back in Paddy’s Pub once again? We are spoilt for choice when it comes to intelligent sitcoms filled with witty, warm-hearted characters who learn and grow. </p>
<p>If it’s escapism you’re seeking right now, shows like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3526078/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Schitt’s Creek</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5339440/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">One Day at a Time</a>, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4955642/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Good Place</a> are ready to shelter you from the storm. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia provides a different, yet equally important, service. </p>
<p>By the time I emerge blinking from yet another session in its dank and derelict hidey hole, I find that the real world almost looks bearable in comparison.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Cothren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
If it’s escapism you’re looking for, watch Schitt’s Creek or The Good Place. But if you want a dirty dive that makes the real world look good by comparison, try It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Alex Cothren, PhD Candidate, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/134468
2020-03-27T16:31:37Z
2020-03-27T16:31:37Z
Five TV sitcoms to help get you through lockdown
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323606/original/file-20200327-146719-1vqvyvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C7%2C1194%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Never get's old: dad's Army.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a truth frequently acknowledged that laughter is the best medicine (at least when paracetamol isn’t available). A few months after the British government launched the <a href="http://www.socialprescribingacademy.org.uk/">National Academy for Social Prescribing</a> – whose aim is to refer vulnerable people towards <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7601051/Doctors-send-one-million-NHS-patients-singing-gardening-art-classes.html">cultural and community activities</a> to underpin their mental wellbeing – this truth has rarely felt more timely. Art may disturb and challenge us – but it can also console and inspire us in our darkest hours.</p>
<p>There’s something remarkably reassuring about the situation comedy. It embraces a homely nostalgia, an old friend to which we return time and again from the comfort of our couches, a pleasure to share with family and friends. It’s ingrained in our memories – its best lines as easily parroted as those of Monty Python’s parrot sketch. </p>
<p>Sitcoms offer more than the shallow pleasures of schadenfreude, with good humour borne out of resilience and camaraderie. The stubborn humanity of its emphatically ordinary protagonists reminds us of our own heroic capacity, <a href="http://www.love-poems.me.uk/yeats_upon_a_dying_lady.htm">as Yeats supposed</a>, to live in joy and laugh into the face of death.</p>
<p>But such satires upon Armageddon as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083502/">Whoops Apocalypse</a> or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4337894/">You, Me and the Apocalypse</a> may not be to everyone’s tastes at this time. I, for one, won’t be sitting down tonight to watch <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230454/">The Last Man on Earth</a>. My preferred small-screen security blankets tend to be less blunt as to our impending doom.</p>
<p>These aren’t necessarily the greatest sitcoms ever made – though they’re all very fine indeed. I’ve not included Friends, Frasier or Fawlty Towers because, works of genius though they are, they don’t present quite the foil to quotidian suffering or existential angst that these do. I’ve avoided Steptoe and Son because it makes Waiting for Godot seem blithe – and The Good Life and Outnumbered may hit too close to home. </p>
<p>My last two choices deliver reliable family viewing. The first three may provide an antidote to having too much of that.</p>
<h2>Seinfeld (1988-1989)</h2>
<p>The self-styled show about nothing is inevitably about everything. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098904/">Seinfeld</a> combined Jerry Seinfeld’s relaxed observational comedy with Larry David’s sharper and more anxious perspective upon the daily horrors of life (which we still relish in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264235/">Curb Your Enthusiasm</a>).</p>
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<p>As I suggested in <a href="https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-popular-television">a recent article</a>, Seinfeld “encompassed the aspirations of Generation X, then in the influential last throes of its youth”. And, in doing so, it addressed the nature of the human condition through its hilarious and sometimes hysterical portrait of the frustration of living in a world plagued by soup Nazis, interminable subway journeys and inescapable multi-storey car parks. </p>
<p>In Elaine and George, we find an everywoman and everyman equal to Leopold and Molly Bloom – those resolutely flawed souls in James Joyce’s Ulysses, struggling with all the impossible optimism of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus">Albert Camus’ Sisyphus</a> against the vicissitudes of modern existence. (We must, Camus finally reminds us, imagine Sisyphus happy.) And for British viewers it’s available for free online from <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/seinfeld">Channel 4</a>.</p>
<h2>Fleabag (2016-2019)</h2>
<p>What new can be said about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/apr/08/farewell-fleabag-the-most-electrifying-devastating-tv-in-years">Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s comedic tour de force</a>? A surprise international hit, this tragi-comedy doesn’t so much balance pathos and laughter as deliver them both simultaneously in gut-wrenching chunks. </p>
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<p>Yet somehow – despite its unsentimental knowingness – it remains uncompromisingly focused upon its faith in the redeeming quality of love. And it’s all <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p070npjv/fleabag">available for free</a> from the good old BBC.</p>
<h2>The Thick of It (2005-2012)</h2>
<p>This may seem a strangely stoical choice in a time when we must trust our lives to the decisions of politicians. Yet Armando Iannucci’s masterpiece <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459159/">The Thick of It</a>, even in its foul-mouthed candour as to the hypocrisies of power, remains firmly on the side of cheerful scepticism rather than soulless cynicism.</p>
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<p>There’s something gloriously vital in Malcolm Tucker’s remorseless streams of vitriol and in the resigned but resilient submission of his various victims to their verbal batterings. And there is something curiously life-affirming in the well-intentioned, deluded innocence of all its players – including even the monstrous but ultimately tragic figure of Tucker himself. It is as epic and truthful as War and Peace. (And, again, licence-fee-payers can <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b006qgrd/the-thick-of-it">find it for free</a> on the BBC.)</p>
<h2>Father Ted (1995-1998)</h2>
<p>Graham Linehan has, as I’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/demise-of-count-arthur-strong-signals-the-end-of-the-family-sitcom-82292">previously suggested</a>, almost single-handedly revived the glories of the family friendly situation comedy. But even more than the incandescent IT Crowd and the sublimely ridiculous Count Arthur Strong, it was this early collaboration with Arthur Mathews which not only sealed his reputation as a master-craftsman of the genre but which has also best stood the test of time.</p>
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<p>The gentle, innocent and truly loving friendship between Dermot Morgan’s Ted and Ardal O'Hanlon’s Dougal – like that between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy – beautifully counterpoints the utter pandemonium which they repeatedly let loose. </p>
<p>Available from <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/father-ted">Channel 4</a>, it’s a series which, even after multiple viewings, still rewards re-watching, either as a self-indulgent treat or as a joy to savour with your loved ones. That’s the miracle of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111958/">Father Ted</a>. However absurd things get, Ted make things seem better.</p>
<h2>Dad’s Army (1968-1977)</h2>
<p>As the world crashes down around our ears, let’s not forget that one day, maybe not such a very long time away, someone somewhere will produce a brilliant sitcom about all this. It’s happened before. Launched just 23 years after the end of the second world war, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062552/">Dad’s Army</a> remains the BBC’s most enduringly appealing family comedy. </p>
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<p>A Don Quixote figure maybe, but one who defends the nation against real enemies (and Nazis at that), Arthur Lowe’s Captain Mainwaring may be preposterously pompous but is also fundamentally heroic. (One forgets how often he risks his dignity, reputation and even his life for the sake of his platoon and their noble mission.)</p>
<p>If, as our media and politicians keep telling us, we’re now operating on a war footing, then Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s classic comedy (<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tlxv">still playing on the BBC</a>) can still teach us a lot about how we might best keep calm – or at least not panic <em>too much</em> – and carry on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alec Charles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In times like these, sometimes having a good laugh is the only thing to do.
Alec Charles, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Winchester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118784
2019-06-14T12:19:14Z
2019-06-14T12:19:14Z
Jon Stewart: journey from satirist to political advocate is no laughing matter
<p>When Jon Stewart quit the Daily Show, the satirical news and comedy show he hosted for 16 years until August 2015, he <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trevor-noah-jon-stewart-daily-show_n_5b1f3b35e4b0adfb826ced27">explained to his replacement, Trevor Noah</a>, that he was tired – and angry at the state of politics and political discourse in the US. As Noah reported:</p>
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<p>He said ‘I’m leaving because I’m tired.’ And he said, ‘I’m tired of being angry.’ And he said, ’I’m angry all the time. I don’t find any of this funny. I do not know how to make it funny right now, and I don’t think the host of the show, I don’t think the show deserves a host who does not feel that it is funny.‘ </p>
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<p>Stewart is clearly no longer tired. And he has channelled his anger into passion for a cause: he is now a fierce advocate for the <a href="https://www.911healthwatch.org/zadroga-bill/">James Zadroger 9/11 Health Compensation Act</a>.
On June 12, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/nyregion/jon-stewart-9-11-congress.html">appeared in front of Congress</a>, which was sitting to discuss the extension of the <a href="https://nnedv.org/content/victims-of-crime-act/">Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Fund </a> for 9/11 first responders and survivors. The committee witnessed testimonies from a physician, a firefighter’s widow, and Luis Alvarez, a retired NYPD detective, who was due to start his 69th round of chemotherapy after developing cancer from working at Ground Zero. </p>
<p>The testimonies offered a powerful insight into the health problems of those who were exposed to the toxic air where the World Trade Centre buildings collapsed. But it was Stewart’s impassioned speech to Congress that went viral.</p>
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<p>The media’s fixation with Stewart’s testimony isn’t attributed to his celebrity news value, but the symbolic capital he built since his time on The Daily Show. As chief news anchor, Stewart built a reputation as an important satirical voice and incisive social commentator to a generation that had grown tired of sensationalised news and vitriolic politics.</p>
<h2>Hitting the funny bone</h2>
<p>The essential ingredient of Stewart’s scathing political critiques was humour; it helped create a bond with the audience as he used his platform to comedically articulate citizen anger towards elite institutions. Subsequently, the humour acted as a form of relief, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/culture.2017.1.issue-1/culture-2017-0050/culture-2017-0050.pdf">offering the audience temporary respite</a> from the current political environment by inviting them to laugh at those in power. </p>
<p>It is was the inclusion of humour that made Stewart’s work a potent form of political criticism because it made the aggressiveness of the message more palatable to the satirical targets. This is why Stewart was able to land critical blows on air that journalists couldn’t – because he defied the conventions of traditional journalism while speaking to audiences in a language they identified with. </p>
<p>Stewart has always been quick to downplay his cultural impact, responding modestly that he just “writes jokes about the news” and that his role as a TV satirist was limited to criticising targets rather than building something positive. Perhaps that was why he decided to turn to advocacy when he quit nightly comedy.</p>
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<p>While Stewart’s advocacy role no longer affords him the comedic safety blanket he once had, it is the absence of humour, in his address to Congress, that made his message all the more powerful. What we saw was a visibly emotional man, holding back tears as he expressed his anger at the shameful way in which the political system has treated 9/11 survivors.</p>
<p>The role of emotion in politics has tended to be understood as the enemy of good citizenship. But in her book <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Emotions%2C+Media+and+Politics-p-9780745661049">Emotions, Media and Politics</a>, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen argues that emotion can enhance the power of political storytelling because of its ability to cultivate compassion, bring neglected stories to the public sphere and, in the process, call into being communities orientated towards political action. </p>
<p>Stewart’s powerful testimony certainly raised the profile of the Congressional hearing as the video clip spread rapidly online and generated hundreds of news articles. The following day, the House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/house-committee-passes-911-first-responders-bill_n_5d013a29e4b0304a1208e0cb">unanimously passed a bill</a> that would permanently reauthorise the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. According to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/nyregion/jon-stewart-9-11-congress.html">New York Times</a>, the bill will now go to the floor for a full vote in the House of Representatives, where it is likely to pass.</p>
<h2>A serious business</h2>
<p>Stewart’s transition, in recent years, from satire to political advocacy has not gone unnoticed by his late-night TV successors. In a paper, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1495573">Provoking the Citizen</a>, I documented how satirists Sam Bee and John Oliver have adopted advocacy journalism strategies to draw attention to US President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration and female healthcare. But while Stewart and American late-night hosts are reimagining the possibilities of their public platform, their UK counterparts are seriously lagging behind.</p>
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<p>The closest the UK has to a successful comedy activist is Mark Thomas and his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/sep/17/artsfeatures1">campaigning on the Ilisu Dam</a> in Turkey. Russell Brand was also a prominent political activist for a time, appearing on Newsnight and attending demonstrations including the Million Mask March and campaigning for better social housing. However, Brand <a href="https://www.joe.co.uk/life/russell-brand-on-what-went-wrong-with-his-foray-into-politics-143378">has openly admitted</a> his failure in politics was a result of believing his own hype, a consequence of his celebrity status. </p>
<p>While there are many instances of comedic activism I could mention – Eddie Izzard’s <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/curtain-rises-on-politician-eddie-izzard-kqz3hznjk">role in the Labour Party</a> and Ricky Gervais’ <a href="https://www.peta.org/living/entertainment/ricky-gervais-hunting-tweets/">work with animal rights groups</a>, comedy remains their chief currency and profession. What Stewart has shown us is that comedy and satire have limited capabilities. They can draw our attention to a problem, but the ability to create real political change is dependent on passion, tenacity and sustained engagement in the democratic process.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118784/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allaina Kilby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Jon Stewart insists he is just a comedian, but his comic barbs have always had a political edge.
Allaina Kilby, Lecturer in Journalism, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105626
2019-01-08T13:14:43Z
2019-01-08T13:14:43Z
Stan and Ollie: new biopic of the ageing comedy duo is a touching love story
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252825/original/file-20190108-32121-18bskn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of eOne</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (or “the boys” as they were often known) can, arguably, be regarded as the greatest double act that comedy has produced. If their star has waned somewhat in the past couple of decades, it is surely because of a lack of exposure rather than their humour going out of style. We can hope that this new film, which has harnessed the considerable comedic talents of Steve Coogan as Laurel and John C Reilly as Hardy will do its bit to bring their timeless brilliance back to the fore.</p>
<p>It’s a heartwarming yet bittersweet tale. By 1953, the year of their final tour (the tour that the forthcoming film Stan and Ollie is based around), their film career was over. It had been on a downward trend ever since they left the Hal Roach Lot (or the “Lot of Fun” as it was dubbed) to work for 20th Century Fox in 1941. The move curtailed Laurel’s freedom as the writer and de facto director of the films and, as a result, the quality declined, though they were still financially successful. </p>
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<p>Their last film, Atoll K (also known as Robinson Crusoeland and Utopia) appeared in 1951 after a seven-year gap but, owing to a number of factors (including Laurel’s ill health at the time) the film is thin gruel indeed compared to work they produced in their heyday in the 1930s.</p>
<p>In contrast to their on-screen personas, it was Laurel that was the brains of the operation – “Babe” (as Hardy was known to his friends) preferred to spend time on the golf course. “After all” <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/laurel-hardy-the-magic-behind-the-movies_us_582f2b92e4b08c963e343e29">he said</a>, “just doing the gags was hard enough work, especially if you have taken as many falls and been dumped in as many mudholes as I have. I think I earned my money”.</p>
<p>When he wasn’t in front of the camera, Laurel would spend his time writing, working out gags, and assisting the director and editor of their films. Indeed, even after Hardy died in 1957, Laurel found solace in writing sketches for the two of them that would obviously never be produced.</p>
<h2>Old stagers</h2>
<p>The pair had toured the UK in 1947 and again in 1952, though this latter tour had not included any London dates. The theatrical impresario Bernard Delfont who had brought Laurel and Hardy over from the US seemed more intent on promoting a new star – a fresh-faced comedian called Norman Wisdom. Indeed, Laurel and Hardy’s only visit to a London Theatre in 1952 was as featured audience members in Wisdom’s show at the Prince of Wales theatre before returning to the States on The Queen Mary in October 1952.</p>
<p>The 1952 tour had been a success, despite the failing health of the stars – in 1949 Laurel realised he was suffering from diabetes and Hardy’s weight had risen to well over 300 pounds (21 stones). </p>
<p>Delfont tempted them back for what turned out to be their final tour in 1953. They landed in the small port of Cobh, County Cork on September 9 1953 and although there had been no advance publicity of their arrival, clearly the news had reached the town. Not only was the dock filled with people, but as a special tribute to the duo the church bells played their “Cuckoo” theme tune. As Laurel <a href="http://www.visitcobh.com/index.php/2009/10/20/laurel-hardy-in-cobh/">later recalled</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All the church bells in Cobh started to ring out our theme song, and Babe looked at me, and we cried. Maybe people loved us and our pictures because we put so much love in them. I don’t know. I’ll never forget that day. Never.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was to be the high point of what would turn into a difficult and exhausting tour. Once again, the tour would not include a major West End London theatre, though they did play at venues in Finsbury Park and Brixton. On May 17 1954 they played the Palace, Plymouth. The Plymouth Evening Herald reported that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Laurel and Hardy … look a little older and are not so boisterous as they used to be – perhaps because Oliver Hardy was suffering from a chill and had to have penicillin treatment before the act last night – but all their old cleverness and that delightful craziness is still there.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252831/original/file-20190108-32151-1wqivcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Still from Towed in a Hole (1932).</span>
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<p>It was not a chill that had afflicted Hardy, but a mild heart attack. The tour was scheduled to continue for some months, but although they appeared on This is Your Life in December 1954 and filmed a small vignette for a 1955 BBC programme celebrating the Grand Order of Water Rats, (a charitable organisation consisting largely of showbusiness personalities) it was Plymouth that saw the curtain come down on their career. </p>
<h2>Final scenes</h2>
<p>Hardy’s health never really recovered and he died in 1957 at the age of 65. Laurel retired to an apartment building in Santa Monica with his wife Ida where he lived out a comfortable retirement. Amazingly, he was listed in the phone directory and fans regularly just rang him up. He also received visits from fans such as Dick van Dyke, Peter Sellars and Jerry Lewis before he too died in 1965.</p>
<p>Their influence lives on though – comedians such as Ricky Gervais, Frank Skinner and Stuart Lee as well as Steve Martin, Billy Crystal and Bette Midler have all professed their love for “the boys”. What comes through the screen is their unshakeable love for each other. No matter how they bicker or poke, punch and pinch each other, they – and we – know that their bond is unbreakable, and what could be more loveable than that?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David James does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new film tells the moving story of the twilight years of comedy’s most successful double act.
David James, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/95888
2018-05-01T13:21:27Z
2018-05-01T13:21:27Z
Michelle Wolf, the White House roast and the thin line of comedy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217041/original/file-20180501-135837-1oh56nk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erin Nekervis</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It wasn’t all the swearing in Michelle Wolf’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner “roast”. In the Trump era, four-letter words have long since lost their shock value – and, as the comedian herself said, who outside of the room would have heard them anyway (<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4727062/michelle-wolf-white-house-correspondents-dinner">unless they’d been watching C-Span</a>)? And it wasn’t the reference to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders’ “perfect smokey eye” – which, if it described her appearance, can <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/29/snowflakes-sarah-huckabees-perfect-smokey-eye#comment-115256966">only have been an object of praise</a>. </p>
<p>Nor could <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/business/media/michelle-wolf-white-house-correspondents-dinner.html">all the offence</a> have sprung from the notion that Wolf had allowed the mask to slip – that she’d strayed away from comedy into the realm of truth-telling. She came close, but she always managed, masterfully, to pull it back at the last minute. From first to last, she was telling jokes – and for anyone to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best. </p>
<p>She established this at the outset, saying: “I’m here to make jokes. I have no agenda.” The fact that she indeed had an agenda is irrelevant. On the face of it – and in terms of comedic convention, that’s all that matters – she was faithful to the time-honoured comedian’s fall-back position: “Only kidding, folks.” Nothing more was demanded by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlyUeUz1awU">Gary Cooper in The Virginian</a>, when Walter Huston started to call him a long-legged son of a bitch: “If you wanna call me that, smile,” he said. Wolf smiled all the way through.</p>
<h2>All in fun</h2>
<p>Indeed, she kept firmly within the guidelines carved into stone almost 100 years ago by the American philosopher and humourist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jm5QDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Enjoyment+of+Laughter+Eastman&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRxYuUlOTaAhWiBsAKHU3SAMAQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Enjoyment%20of%20Laughter%20Eastman&f=false">Max Eastman</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first law of humour is that things can be funny only when we are in fun. There may be a serious thought or motive lurking underneath our humour. We may be only “half in fun” and still funny. But when we are not in fun at all, when we are “in dead earnest”, humour is the thing that is dead.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wolf may have come close to transgressing Eastman’s “second law” of humour: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When we are in fun, a peculiar shift of values takes place. Pleasant things are still pleasant, but disagreeable things, so long as they are not disagreeable enough to “spoil the fun”, tend to acquire a pleasant emotional flavour and provoke a laugh.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But coming close to the line is not crossing the line.</p>
<p>Wolf certainly brought up some “disagreeable things”: Roy Moore’s alleged paedophilia; Michael Cohen’s reported payment of hush-money to Stormy Daniels – supposedly on behalf of the president; the presidential grabbing of pussy; the hypocrisy of loudmouthed anti-abortion politicians who are ready enough to get one for their “secret mistress”. She covered Kellyanne Conway’s lies, Sanders’ lies, Trump’s lies … but still, she smiled. She kept the right side of the line.</p>
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<p>Nothing she brought up was anything more horrific than <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm">Jonathan Swift’s “modest proposal”</a> to fatten up the starving children of Dublin in order to sell them as “dainties” to wealthy cannibals, thereby bringing in some revenue and eliminating the embarrassment of child poverty. Only the Nazis couldn’t see that Swift had been joking.</p>
<h2>Comedy with a conscience</h2>
<p>Of course, there were some very uncomfortable moments when the laughter dipped, when Wolf had to work the room a little harder, when perhaps she got too close for comfort to the thin line of comedy. </p>
<p>In this, she at least had Mark Twain as an angel on her shoulder. The edgiest moment of his comedic life was when he delivered a monologue on the occasion of a dinner in honour of the revered poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-greenleaf-whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a> (the “roast” had yet to be invented). </p>
<p>Twain had concocted a yarn about three filthy tramps in a mining camp attempting to pass themselves off as Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson – all of whom were in the room as Twain spoke. They, along with many – but not all – of their august Boston guests, sat in stony silence (much like Sanders and Conway). Twain’s close friend William Dean Howells was appalled, calling the monologue “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lj1Rc68iZ0YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=kaplan+mr+clemens+and+mark+twain&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKjsX5lOTaAhVRZ8AKHTlABk8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&%20amp;q=hideous%20mistake&f=false">a hideous mistake</a>”. </p>
<p>Twain himself wrote an apology to the three subjects of his joke, but that was in many ways a polite self-betrayal, for, as he wrote to a friend: “Nobody has ever convinced me that that speech was not a good one. My purpose was clean, my conscience clear.”</p>
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<p>In the days following Wolf’s roast, the calls and demands for her to apologise rained down on her head – even from journalists who have otherwise been hostile to Trump and Sanders. These included <a href="https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/990428993542414336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2018%2F04%2F29%2Fmean-girl-michelle-wolfs-response-to-criticism-of-her-bullying-sarah-sanders-at-whcd-is-infuriating%2F">Maggie Haberman</a> of the New York Times, MSNBC’s <a href="https://twitter.com/morningmika/status/990585968825597954?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Fwhat-did-michelle-wolf-actually-say-about-sarah-sanders-at-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner%2F&tfw_site=CBSPolitics">Mika Brzezinski</a> and NBC’s <a href="https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/990607447160164352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.salon.com%2F2018%2F04%2F30%2Fend-this-charade-donald-trump-michelle-wolf-and-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner%2F&tfw_creator=Salon&tfw_site=Salon">Andrea Mitchell</a>. </p>
<p>But jumping to Wolf’s defence was American writer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/30/michelle-wolf-sarah-sanders-whcd-critics">Arwa Mahdawi</a>, who declared in The Guardan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If anything, the likes of Haberman, Brzezinski and Mitchell owe America an apology. They’re all incredibly smart women with extremely important jobs. They’re supposed to be holding power to account, not sucking up to it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wolf’s response, in effect, has been: “My purpose was clean, my conscience clear.”</p>
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<h2>Topsy-turvy</h2>
<p>In the end, if Wolf has anything to apologise for, it is not for breaking Eastman’s first two laws of humour. Rather, it is for contravening the dictum of Russian philosopher <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y2qAU3-cq1kC&pg=PR11&dq=Herzen+Reader&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijnO68mOTaAhWrLsAKHY1QDs4Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=house%20serfs&f=false">Alexander Herzen</a>, who wrote over a century and a half ago: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>House serfs have no right to smile in the presence of their masters. Only equals can laugh amongst themselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One outraged Trump supporter, <a href="https://twitter.com/mschlapp/status/990425129019637760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhinterlandgazette.com%2F2018%2F04%2Ftwitter-savages-rich-lobbyist-matt-schlapp-tweets-left-white-house-correspondents-dinner-early-mockery.html&tfw_creator=hinterlandg&tfw_site=hinterlandg">Matt Schlapp</a>, stormed out of the dinner, tweeting: “Enough of elites mocking all of us.” </p>
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<p>Yet, Schlapp – the fabulously wealthy chair of the American Conservative Union and <a href="http://www.covestrategies.com/">political consultant</a> to the Koch brothers and a host of fabulously wealthy corporations – had proposed a bizarre inversion of Herzen’s dictum. To him, it was Wolf who was the “elite”, the “master”, while he and all the administration officials at the top table were, presumably, the “house serfs”. </p>
<p>But such topsy-turvy delusions aside, Wolf did her job as a comedian, telling truth to power while wearing the mask of Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Twain, and Lear’s fool: “Only kidding, folks” (even if she wasn’t).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will Kaufman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The comedian hired to do the ‘roast’ at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been criticised for going too far. Here’s why she didn’t.
Will Kaufman, Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of Central Lancashire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.