Some disordered thoughts about 'Satire' vs 'Political Comedy'

[Pink Gregory]

Just a few thoughts on the topic that came in my head.

First, I feel that, deep down, all 'political' comedy desires to be considered satire, when all it ends up being is comedy about politics (Boris Johnson did this, that's like if I did *this* and such and so on).  Yer Fatt Mordes, yer John Olivers, yer Andy Saltzmans, yer Nish Kumars (much as I like him on podcasts I don't think his standup really eacapes this).

I think certain types of people, and they're usually centrist or centre left at best, who aspire to satire as a higher form of comedy because it's perceived as having a cultural worth above jokes or clowning.  But actual satire is quite hard to pin down, more often then not it's either parody or, again, comedy *about* politics. 

I would also make a distinction between satire and what I'm going to describe as 'allegory'.  The Thick of It comes to mind, in which Malcolm Tucker is so obviously meant to be Alastair Cambell that the imaginative element of satire is somewhat traded in for what is basically an impression, in as many words (not seen it, can't really expand further). 

So what is genuinely satirical? 

I think true satire anticipates the zeitgeist and presents it before it fully develops.  I think it's easier to do in writing than performance.  I think satire and parody are distinct, but often cross pollinate.

Probably a load of bollocks.  Fuck it, post.

[BritishHobo]

I think you're right, and I think The Thick of It is a better example than Malcolm Tucker makes it seem. The key thing I notice is people are so used to satire just being jokes about a specific politician doing things they've already done, that anything fictitious but still inspired by real-world politics is treated like it's mind-blowing prescience.

It's why it always annoyed me when people said Trump was beyond satire, and it was impossible to write satire about that whole situation. Sure - if your satire is solely based on the surface-level details of a specific politician. If all you want to do is ridicule an existing politician, Trump was beyond parody. He's orange lol, he says crazy things. But if you wanted to satirise the state of American politics to elect a man LIKE Trump, then there's a wealth of material there.

[bgmnts]

I don't think I could effectively differentiate between satire and politically based comedy, it's all vague to me. I suppose you could class Thick of It as a parody rather than a satire as the comparisons to real life people are so overt and it's just mimicking real life politics purely for laughs, I dont think it's trying to say anything about politics.

[Pink Gregory]

I suppose you could class Thick of It as a parody rather than a satire as the comparisons to real life people are so overt and it's just mimicking real life politics purely for laughs, I dont think it's trying to say anything about politics.

I think, following Ianucci's variously offered opinions in the last 4-5 years, this rings true. 

Granted I may be reading too much into the premise of a podcast/radio show, but seemingly given the imagination of any political system possible, he still can only imagine Parliament and (presumably) the House of Lords as a political system for Britain. 

I think the 'political comedian' label, when accepted, ossifies the imagination, possibly because you've hyperfocused on one system for material, then it becomes impossible to imagine an alternative.

[buttgammon]

There's definitely a distinction. In a way, the old divide between Horatian satire (didactic and often gentle mocking) and Juvenalian satire (more pointed and with more of a social purpose) still rings true here. The best satire actually endures surprisingly well, because it's not entirely tied to references to specific politicians. There's also the idea of challenging the audience - while a lot of political comedy pats the viewers on the back, the best satirist from Jonathan Swift to Chris Morris are willing to make their audience uncomfortable and even implicate them.

[ajsmith2]

 I know it's a fact that Tucker was based on him, but I've never been able to see the Malcolm Tucker/Alistair Campbell thing: mainly because Tucker comes across as cool, charming witty and you like him despite yourself and Campbell just seems like an entirely charmless spod in comparison. If Tucker = Campbell, it's the kind of flattery job that a 16th century royal portrait artist would be proud of.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I think true satire anticipates the zeitgeist and presents it before it fully develops.  I think it's easier to do in writing than performance.  I think satire and parody are distinct, but often cross pollinate.

Could you say more about this, something like a personal definition of or distinction between satire and parody? Do you have any examples in mind, in writing or performance? What you wrote reminded me of one neutral or positive description I read of 'parody' as 'the use of forms in the epoch of their impossibility' because your idea of satire anticipating the zeitgeist suggests an opposite (but sympathetic) idea of a kind of comedy using new forms shortly before they become 'possible' and that people might find confusing (rather than recognisably out of place). Unless you mean familiar forms with advanced ideas.

Norm Macdonald was a proponent of 'parody' and opponent of 'satire':

Candide is a satire. Satires are never very funny.

So isn't that a sign that it can be good when things change?
But comedy — I don't know. Comedy has a specific thing about it. I don't really like satire. I think it's very minor; I think parody is very major comedy. Like, Nabokov to me is the highest form of parody. But that stupid Jonathan Swift thing that everybody talks about — I read that. It sucked.

Gulliver's Travels?
Yeah, it's horrible. So I don't like satire that much, and also these guys [contemporary talk-show hosts] are nightclub comics. They're not Bob Dylan. They're just guys, and they get talk shows and suddenly they're telling me how I shouldn't be sad because of the Manchester bombing and I can escape the horrors of life because they're going to interview someone from Two Broke Girls or whatever the fuck they do. When I was a kid, if I'd heard Red Skelton talking about the government I would've thought, This is fucking weird. To me, it hurts the comedy any time anything real creeps into it. I know people have different thoughts. I keep hearing how great Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks and Mort Sahl are. People have their own taste, but to me, all three of those people are just shit. They're not comedians in my mind.

I doubt MacDonald's interpretation of 'parody' was exactly the same as Adorno's but I think the above definition of parody as 'the use of forms in the epoch of their impossibility' works well as a gloss of Macdonald's incongruous use of old fashioned language and joke styles - his innocent roast for example but all of his humour really. I find it interesting that he was so opposed to 'satire' manifested in the modern conversational/political American comedy - Bruce, Sahl, Hicks, and further his idea of pointedly 'critical' anti-comedy - where in his case the old language and old innocent joke forms from pre-'modern' American comedy have to be revived and performed 'parodically' from the 'impossible' vantage point of the modern comedy/world and inevitably mixed with modern attitudes and language. Sometimes it's like a trade-off to be able to reintroduce old forms of humour almost directly, sometimes he shifts into a more knowing attitude and uses the old forms of humour because they're so out of place.

[Pink Gregory]

@Smeraldina Rima to be honest I'm not sure I'm quite equipped to think of a response at the minute, I'm not familiar with Norm McDonald at all at all but I can see his point about satire not usually being comedic, and perhaps not a useful vehicle for comedy. 

I think I broadly agree with BritishHobo's assessment of past/future above.

You could say that a lot of speculative fiction is satirical in nature - yer Brave New World, yer High Rise, yer Nineteen Eighty Four; focusing on the 'speculative'.  You could say that Brass Eye and the Day Today fit into that model - antcipating the hysteria of current affairs programming and news.

Parody is less so.  It can still be speculative in that it takes a figure that is current (or a figure that is allegorical) and takes them to their logical conclusion, but it's still reverent of past events, the accuracy or verisimilitude of the parody is more important than the speculation, or indeed, the comedy.  Parody is, as McDonald suggests, more compatible with jokes.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Thanks for the response, Pink Gregory. I think I understand how you see both words better now, and the importance of creative speculation in satire here. I only brought in Macdonald's seemingly incommensurable preference for some version of parody over some other version of satire because of the superficial similarity between his distinctive use of dead traditions of American humour and Adorno's more politically active definition of parody as reappropriated old forms, which seems different from your (and most people's) imitative/exaggerating definition of parody anyway. Although here, within the exaggeration to logical conclusions it has to stay accurate. It's interesting that you add that, in parody, accuracy or verisimilitude is not only more important than speculation but also more important than comedy.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think, following Ianucci's variously offered opinions in the last 4-5 years, this rings true. 

I think sadly this applies to a lot of 90's satirists, certainly the Armistice lot. Morris is also frequently called a satirist yet he seems to keep his own politics privately guarded, leading to speculation he might be a tory. Although I suppose he was a 'media satirist'.

Slightly earlier might be similar as well really; I'm mostly thinking of John O'Farell because a housemate encouraged me to read his book of Blairite apologia.

[Astronaut Omens]

I know it's a fact that Tucker was based on him, but I've never been able to see the Malcolm Tucker/Alistair Campbell thing: mainly because Tucker comes across as cool, charming witty and you like him despite yourself and Campbell just seems like an entirely charmless spod in comparison. If Tucker = Campbell, it's the kind of flattery job that a 16th century royal portrait artist would be proud of.

Can't find a quote for this as it was in a radio interview, but Iannucci has specifically said that Tucker being Scottish was part of making him not exactly a  Campbell analogue, and that in comparison to the fairly well-known Campbell, Tucker was supposed to be a man who was influencing events without being known to the general public.

(That said, there were a few moments in the series that seemed to more subtly making a link with Campell- there's a scene where Malcom's with a bunch of journalists who are drinking wine and he's drinking orange juice, seemingly referencing Campbell's alcoholism)

[Astronaut Omens]

There's definitely a distinction. In a way, the old divide between Horatian satire (didactic and often gentle mocking) and Juvenalian satire (more pointed and with more of a social purpose) still rings true here.

Isn't it quite likely that anyone whose work has survived from Roman times was almost certainly an insider rather than a true outsider-dissident?
(I don't know, I'm going to listen to this In Our Time on Roman Satire to find out):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00s0gwd
In the same way, isn't it quite unlikely that anyone who gets their stuff on TV in an entertainment slot is going to be a genuine outsider-dissident?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

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