political comedy: year of the ostrich?

With the UK facing a year in which education, jobs and the health service are all under attack while the government encourages greedy tax-evaders to laugh as they piss all over the rest of us, plus the prospect of a royal wedding (Jesus, I've got millions of parasites living in my large intestine but I don't throw a national celebration just because two of them might reproduce) here's a little quiz about political comedy.

The best answers to the following questions will win a prize which will be either a mention in my next blog, or a guided tour of Britain's historic Royal Mint affording a rare glimpse behind the scenes and a chance to take home a souvenir ingot of solid gold worth at least a thousand pounds. Ok, here they are:

1. Can you name three comedians under 40 who are currently using comedy to challenge perceptions with the intention of promoting an agenda of comprehensive social and political change?

2. Do you really believe that bit about a gold ingot?

3. What if that last question was a trick, and if you say "no" you lose the chance to win the ingot? And what if this is also a trick question?

4. Can we stop the Jesuitical metaphysics and get on with the quiz, please?

5. Okay. Can you name three comedians over 40 who are still doing political comedy with the same commitment they displayed when they first began performing?

6. What do you like most about neoliberal economic policies being imposed on third world countries, and, purely coincidentally, what makes you most uncomfortable about oppression, torture, famine and dictatorship?

8. How do you rate Nick Clegg's integrity on a scale of one to motherfucker?

9. What is too good for the bankers whose selfishness and incompetence caused the financial crisis that totally screwed the world yet who still imagine they deserve to be obscenely rich?
a) decent human society
b) hanging
c) underwear.

10. Will you forgive Ben Elton the cultural atrocities he's committed in the form of the musicals We Will Rock You and Love Never Dies, and the books which make you want to tear out your own tongue in shame because it formed words in the same language that he desecrates so horribly, for the simple reason that once, long ago, he stood up and did unashamedly political comedy, even though it wasn't very funny?

All right, that's enough. At a time when inequality and injustice are increasing, reactionaries of every type are on the rise and the planet faces environmental disaster caused by greed, here's the only question I really want to ask: is political comedy dead? Or has it just been very busy for a while, doing a series of corporate gigs to make some money now that it's got a family and a mortgage?

Maybe political comedy never makes a difference. Did "Alternative Comedy" bring down Thatcher? Not from where most people are sitting. Maybe art and entertainment can never cause political change. But in a recent interview (The Guardian, Saturday 1st January) here's the musician Billy Bragg describing how and why he became involved in Rock Against Racism: "But it wasn't the Clash that changed my world. It was the audience. In the office I was working in at the time, there was a lot of casual racism. I didn't like it, but I wasn't big enough to say anything. But then I went along to Victoria Park in Hackney one afternoon, and there were 100,000 kids there who felt exactly like me. So I went back to work on Monday morning, and I knew I wasn't alone. My world hadn't changed, but my perception of it had. And that's the role of a musician."

Even if the only thing that political comedy can achieve is to challenge perceptions, and provide a comic expression of opposition to the political status quo, that's better than burying your head in the sand. (Actually, whoever first proposed burying your head in the sand as a strategy for ignoring something unpleasant obviously never tried it. They probably just saw an ostrich doing it and didn't think it through. Or maybe they saw the ostrich doing it and wrote it down just before being killed by whatever the ostrich was ignoring, leaving behind a mangled corpse and a misleading tip in a battered notebook.)

Anyhow, soon there will be another series of demonstrations by students, all over Britain, against education funding cuts. And when those students get home after the next big demo, and they switch on the TV, or go out for some entertainment, will they find the voices that echo their own, that tell them they're not alone, that help to channel their anger at injustice into political expressions and movements? Not unless there are some comedians out there who aren't embarrassed to have political beliefs and to use comedy to express them. Have we given up on the idea that comedy has a place in the front line of the battles that are currently being fought to determine what kind of world we're going to live in? It would be a pity if a whole generation grows up without realizing that the revolution can be funny.

NOTE: About those prizes. If you feel like leaving a comment, and it makes a point (I'm not asking you to agree with anything) then I'll draw attention to it. As it happens I have some names in mind for the answers to questions 1 and 5, and I'd be interested to see if anyone comes up with any, and if they're the same. But I was lying about the Royal Mint. However, if you do ever happen to find yourself inside that venerable institution, please burn the fucking place down.