I blame Peter Sellers.
Before inflatable hunchback disguises and accosting Parisian beggars and their “minkeys” he was a Goon. One of four subversive comedians in post war Britain providing irreverent comment on the state of a nation through observing the idiosyncrasies of ordinary people in extraordinary times. The country was hooked, it was a staple of the week for people seeking light relief and counterbalance to the weight and worry of rebuilding a country seeking a post-Imperial future.
It was a time of change. Young listeners included David Frost, Peter Cook, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Marty Feldman, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. They of course, became the founding fathers of the British satire boom of the 60s - they frequently blamed Peter Sellers too. He showed them a way of thinking and interpreting the world around them by celebrating absurdity and questioning the social and cultural norms of the day. He changed their paradigm and as a consequence a part of our cultural landscape.
Satire was nothing new though – shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement through constructive social criticism, is seen in Ancient Egypt and the Greco-Roman world.
Later we can see Swift, Defoe and Dickens providing social commentary on individuals, institutions and inequalities. They were using wit, irony and metaphor as tools for change.
Later still, Huxley, Orwell, H.G. Wells and Joseph Heller with Catch 22.
But to what end? They provided the criticism and not the answers many argued, and still do. Did they change anything, our behaviour, attitudes and societies?
It may depend on your point of view. To me they have. They raise our cultural and societal awareness, highlight folly, expose hypocrisy, injustice and shake us out of apathy. Theirs is bloodless revolution, suggestive and telling, not violent or didactic. They encourage us to question and consider.
I also think that at best, like good actors, writers and orators they hold up a mirror for us to see ourselves – our foibles, prejudices and conceits ? and question our behaviour and that of those around us. It is powerful.
Satire resulted in social change in America recently. The American comic strip Doonesbury satirized a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a passcard in the area; the law was soon repealed with an act nicknamed the Doonesbury Act.
Closer to home, in emphasising the political expediancy of the three main parties in the immediate election aftermath and the subsequent frantic deal making behind closed doors , Nick Clegg listened to Rory Bremner (a loyal LibDem) satirizing Hague, Brown, Mandelson and Cameron and asked “can you do me?”, to which he retorted, (probably with the disillusioned voice of millions)
“No… can you?”
