The Serious Business of Being Funny

Power likes to be taken seriously. Satire's job is to remind it that it shouldn't.

There are many ways of challenging an uncomfortable truth. You can write an editorial, deliver a speech, organise a protest or file a petition.

Or you can make a joke.

The last may sometimes be the most dangerous.

Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Winston Churchill and Piloo Mody belonged to different countries, centuries and political worlds. Yet they understood a common truth: humour is not an escape from serious matters. It is one of the sharpest ways of confronting them.

Lichtenberg, the eighteenth-century German master of the aphorism, asked:

“When a book and a head come into collision, and a hollow sound is heard, is it always the book's fault?”

The joke is ostensibly about books. It is really about intellectual vanity. The reader is invited to blame the book, only to discover that the head might be the empty object.

Another Lichtenberg gem says:

“When an ass looks into a mirror, you cannot expect an apostle to look out.”

The satirist cannot improve the reader merely by holding up the mirror. The reader brings his own face to it.

That is the difference between satire and propaganda.

Propaganda says: Look at those fools.
Satire says: Look at those fools…and be careful. You may recognise yourself.

Mark Twain understood this instinctively. On conformity, he wrote:

“We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.”

And the sharper warning:

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

His great gift was to make us laugh and then realise that the joke was directed at human nature….and therefore, quite possibly, at ourselves.

Shaw was more intellectual and deliberately provocative. His definition of democracy was devastating:

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

Then comes the wonderfully earthy saying often attributed to Shaw, though the attribution is uncertain:

“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it.”

Whether Shaw said it or not, the satirical wisdom is difficult to improve upon. Some arguments cannot be won because the argument itself is the opponent's playground.

And then there is the modern aphorism:

“When a clown sits on the throne, the kingdom becomes a circus.”

It needs no political theory. It merely reminds us that institutions may survive a bad ruler, but cannot remain entirely untouched by the character of the person occupying the throne.

Weaponised Ridicule
This brings us to a useful contemporary contrast: Donald Trump.

Trump has demonstrated that crude humour and political insult can themselves become weapons. “Crooked Hillary”, “Lyin' Ted” and “Low Energy Jeb” were not satire in the tradition of Twain or Shaw. They were compressed insults, designed to stick, repeat and diminish.

That distinction matters.

The great satirist turns the mirror towards society, including himself. The political insult turns it towards an enemy.

One says: Look how absurd we are.

The other says: Look how ridiculous they are.

Trump's humour can be politically effective because it is direct, theatrical and repetitive. But its purpose is often not to expose the absurdity of power; it is to exercise power through ridicule.

Satire challenges power. Insult is used to reinforce it.

Piloo Mody understood the difference instinctively. He could turn Parliament itself into a theatre of satire.

When accused of showing his back to a minister, he replied:

“Mr Speaker, Sir, I have no front, no back, no flanks. I am round all over.”

On another occasion, accused of being a CIA agent, he reportedly arrived in Parliament wearing a placard declaring:

“I am a CIA agent.”

When ordered to remove it, he did so and announced:

“I am no longer a CIA agent.”

And when a minister complained about having to respond to every “barking dog”, Mody pointed out that the Treasury benches contained the “pillars of democracy”; if the opposition were dogs, he added, “everyone knows how a dog treats a pillar.”

The target, in other words, supplied the ammunition.

Churchill belonged to a different category. His humour was forged in political combat, where a sentence could wound more efficiently than a speech. But his wit also restored proportion. Politics has a tendency to make every disagreement historic, every policy revolutionary and every politician indispensable. A good joke brings everyone back to earth.

There is an amusing modern problem with Churchill: the internet has made him the posthumous author of almost every good sentence.

If a quotation is sufficiently sharp, somebody eventually puts “Winston Churchill” underneath it.

Perhaps the internet has created a new literary profession which can be called “quotation laundering”.

Democratic Corrective
The deeper point is that humour performs a democratic function. It deconsecrates power.

Every society creates sacred cows….politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, institutions, ideologies and experts. Satire takes a pin to the inflated balloon.

That is why authoritarian societies have always been nervous about jokes. An argument can be banned. A newspaper can be shut down. A speaker can be silenced.

But a joke whispered in a corridor can travel farther than a manifesto.

The genuine satirist is an equal-opportunity offender. Twain mocked the majority. Shaw mocked democracy and social pretensions. Lichtenberg mocked intellectual vanity. Mody mocked politicians, including opponents. Their loyalty was not to a party or ideology.

It was to incongruity.

Whenever there is a gap between what people claim and what they do, satire smells blood.

The boss preaching austerity while travelling first class. The businessman preaching capitalism while seeking protection. The bureaucrat demanding innovation while insisting on the correct form in triplicate. The intellectual defending free thought while becoming furious when someone disagrees.

These are not merely contradictions.

They are satirical opportunities.

Perhaps that is why a society needs humour almost as much as it needs laws.

Laws tell us what we must not do. Satire tells us how ridiculous we look when we do it.

A society incapable of laughing at itself eventually becomes incapable of correcting itself. Once leaders become too sacred to mock, institutions too prestigious to question and ideologies too holy to ridicule, self-correction becomes difficult.

Humour breaks that spell.

It says to the emperor: perhaps you are not wearing as many clothes as you think.

It says to the intellectual: your book may not be the only hollow object in the room.

And it says to the rest of us: before laughing at the fool across the room, check the mirror.

The best satirists do not destroy society.

They disinfect it.

And occasionally, when the infection is particularly deep, they do it with a joke.