Satire is dead, and that's a really bad thing.

Banning books, Twitter panics and why it's not Trump's fault.

(5 minute read)

This week in the death of satire.

Last week UK comedian Joe Lycett posted a fake leaked report on Twitter about the PM hosting Christmas parties for Tory MPs during lockdown. It contained the phrases “pass the arsehole” and “human centipede”. It was a joke. At Downing St, MPs were running around worried it was real.

A Tennessee school board recently banned ‘Maus’ a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the Holocaust ostensibly because it used the phrase “God damn” and had nudity in it (a dead woman in a bathtub).

In Australia, the biggest scandal of the week was a woman not smiling in the presence of the Prime Minister.

As we say in comedy, you cannot write this stuff.

Once people cannot tell the difference between satire and reality, I believe it’s time to put satire away for a while. Ideally we’d put reality away, but that’s not really an option.

What is the purpose of satire?

Satire is just one of the many metaphorical dam walls that hold society in a safe space, by showing how terrible it could be. Once it already is that terrible, you don’t need to mock your society, you need to repair it.

Satire has failed in its job and needs to be substituted out for strong, unambiguous language and action about what is and isn’t acceptable. A less subtle, less funny tool for a less subtle world.

What is satire? And what kills it?

Without getting too technical, satire is essentially exaggerating the ridiculousness of some aspect of society for the purposes of pointing out how stupid it is.

Once enough people either (1) don’t notice you’re exaggerating, (2) that what you’re saying is ridiculous or (3) that you’re saying it as criticism, that’s a big problem.

What’s the BFD?

Satire’s death itself is not the problem. It’s what satire’s smushing into reality represents, which is the death of fundamental consensus. About our values, our institutions and our commonalities.

Once consensus fails, two groups of people listen to an ironically racist joke: one group see it as mockery of racists, the other see it as an example.

When America laughed at Hogan’s Heroes, everyone knew who the good guys were, who the bad guys were and who America was.

Consensus vs Fundamental consensus

I’m not saying everyone needs to agree on everything. A lack of consensus on the President or the PM isn’t a catastrophe, that’s politics as usual.

But disagreements about whether the king was appointed by God, corruption is or isn’t rife in the church, if private property and capital are exploitation, a country’s benefits belong to certain class or group of people, whether cancel culture is real and undermines freedom of speech or whether it’s okay to be white?

These historical and current issues go to the heart of what it is to be a citizen. Or previously a subject. And that’s why politics hasn’t been politics as usual for a while now.

Donald Trump killed satire, but he’s not guilty of the crime.

Remember before Trump got elected, during the Republican primaries. Satirists worldwide were preparing for a golden era.

That euphoria was short-lived. Everyone eventually realised that you couldn’t satirise Trump. Because he’d beat you to it. Any ridiculous words you put in his mouth, he’d just drop another ‘Draw 4’ on you.

Forget the persona, the narcissism, the ego. That’s just window dressing. Its that the figurehead of the nation was loudly saying things that half the country vociferously disagreed with and half thought were long silenced truths.

Only a deeply split country could elect Donald Trump. And Trump wasn’t the problem. The problem was and is the belief (rightly or wrongly, held genuinely or as victims or a sustained right wing propaganda campaign) of large parts of America that it was unstoppably and irreversibly drifting towards a liberal consensus.

Enough of the country believed it was so irreversible that they elected the only lunatic who’d scream loudly enough for them to be heard.

As always here at Joined Up Thinking, it’s important to look a bit closer at matters.

A LIBERAL

“I don’t understand how anyone could vote for Trump!! He’s an idiot! He cheats on his wife! He said the only reason we’re finding so many COVID cases was because we were testing too much.”

A TRUMP VOTER

“When I was born, my father had a job for life in the coal mines. My grandfather did too.

I hardly met a black person, I got nothing against them but all I hear when I turn on the news is that what’s important is which word someone called a transsexual or a lesbian. I’m sure that’s important to them, but right now half the people I know are sick, unemployed or addicted to painkillers.

Now you can tell me that I’m wrong for feeling this way or that the things I believe aren’t true, but my life and my friend’s lives have been getting worse in slow motion for the last thirty thirty years.

So you can keep screaming about “progress” and “reality” but as a victim of both I’m not a big fan of either. So the guy who gives them the finger to the point of absurdity? That’s my guy.”

‘Reality’

Now when I say that the conservative in the previous section is denying ‘reality’ please don’t take it as me saying that conservative beliefs are wrong. That liberal consensus IS reality.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m speaking only of political and economic facts. Namely.

• Those mining jobs aren’t coming back.

• Bricks and mortar stores are going the same way.

• Automation will make most blue-collar jobs even more redundant than they already are.

• The Internet is reshaping the world a-la the Industrial Revolution, but in a third of the time.

• You grew up in a small town and knew ten people. Your kids grew up online and know people worldwide. They will never see the country in the same way you do.

These things are all true, they’re technologically driven. And you can scream and shout, but that genie isn’t going back in the bottle, and it’s not even half way out yet.

This is why the right are still clinging to Trump running in 2024, and every Republican has to kiss his ring. Because this damaged man is a beacon reflecting the broken centre of the country.

And that part of the country is saying “If you want our vote, you need to be as uncompromising about reality as this guy.”

It’s a law of human nature as old as Adam. Once rationality leaves people behind, they leave it behind.

Trump has given people permission to be completely unreasonable, and emotionally led. In fact, he’s made people demand it of their leaders and it’s reshaping the Republican Party into something resembling the later stages of a house party. Full of those in denial, who don’t want to go home because it’s terrible there and are happy to keep on drinking. I’ve been that guy at that party. Many times. It doesn’t end well.

I’d like to announce the cancellation of my new sitcom.

I had this idea of writing a black satirical sitcom called “Til death do us part.”

It’s about a couple. Two men: one conservative, one liberal. They don’t know it, but they’re about six months out from a messy divorce.

They’re still together, but the mask has slipped. One of them has accused the other of cheating loudly to everyone they know. Friends are preparing to pick sides.

There’s been too much said and the whole thing’s broken beyond repair. One fateful night after a dinner party, the whole thing degenerates into chaos and they both end up murdering each other.

People in the early readings saw the tragedy of the whole thing. But recently, too many people have said that one or other of them deserved it, had it coming and was ‘on the wrong side of history.’

It’s gotten to the point where it feels wrong even when the people I agree with say it. So I’m going to shelve it. It feels like we’re past that point. What I’ve written feels too plausible.

I think we’ve gone to DEFCON 3, and satire needs to be taken offline. Let’s hope we can get the situation under control before jokes stop working full stop.