Professor David Peimer
Satire and Subversion, Part 1: Make em Laugh

Professor David Peimer - Satire and Subversion, Part 1: Make Em Laugh

- Okay. So I just want to thank Wendy and Lauren hugely. Lauren, thanks so much again for, you know, getting the clips together. I know it’s been a really busy week. Okay, so first of all, welcome to everyone and hope everyone’s well, and apologies to South African friends who accuse me of becoming very English, cause I’m talking about the weather a lot now. Okay, so the focus today is satire and subversion, and I just wanted to talk a little bit at the beginning briefly about what is satire and, and why do we need satire, especially now. And then I want to show quite a few clips, some which are well known, some less known, and just, you know, to enjoy them and to see, you know, how they’re actually working and what they’re doing. And then pick up with that, pick up with the same topic next week, which will be quite a different set of satirical clips and different kind of comedic film and performance experiences. So for me, to make a bit of a bold statement at the beginning, I think satire is one of the most remarkable and profound qualities of the human imagination. And that sounds like a big phrase, but I really mean it. The ability to laugh at oneself and the ability to laugh at suffering of one’s self or pain, and to make intelligent, or at least a certain wit and humour, which does involve some offence or insult in different ways to different people, and at different times in history. It’s not by chance that Stalin and Hitler and so many going through the last few thousand years of recorded history, that it’s always the satirists who get arrested or imprisoned or threatened first before the so… well often, anyway, before the so-called serious writers, if you like.

Certainly in the history of literature and theatre and novels. And it’s always a fascinating question, why. And it’s obvious in a way when one looks at the relationship between fiction and literature and power. And here I’m talking about fiction, not non-fiction, obviously. And because what satire does is to me so important in terms of human rights, in terms of some sense of democracy and tolerance, ultimately. Ultimately it’s a plea for tolerance amongst human beings. You know, not to, you know, sort of love everyone or be happy, happy or whatever, but at least tolerate difference, at a minimum, rather than kill people who are slightly different for whatever reason. They wear orange shirts, green shirts, blue eyes, brown eyes, whatever. I think underneath that is, the kind of plea, if you like, of the satirical writers. I think also that a lot of artists, and I really, I believe this quite strongly, are not only… some may be intellectually very aware, but they can intuit, they can intuit the zeitgeist, they will intuit just a feeling, a sense, of what’s going on in a culture in a certain period. What the surrealists, the futurists intuited at the early part of the 20th century wherever they were, Paris, Zurich, Vienna, Prague, wherever, Berlin, London, New York, in the big cities, I’m talking about in the West. Intuiting something, having an instinctive sense of what may come. And I think artists do that, whether consciously or unconsciously doesn’t matter, but they do that. And in that context, every satire needs to be seen in context, I really believe. For me at the moment, we are 75 years from the second World War. For me, it’s the end of the past.

What we are living through now is what Gramsci used to call the interregnum, you know, where the old is gone, but the new is yet to be born. To use WB Yates’s phrase, For what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem. Well, it’s what rough beast is slouching towards the 21st century, in a way. And I’m not saying that it’s anything to do with Stalin or Hitler or any of all that. I think that we are in that strange phase where the past has been eroded, there’s an erosion, and the future is yet to be fully born and fully articulated. And I’m not only talking about immediate political situations in different countries, but a feeling. Is the enlightenment coming to a watery end? Is it the end of the past, after 75 years, of the values that the second World War was fought over. Human rights, democracy, fascism, good, bad, evil, et cetera. Fairly clear sense of what the causes were, without going into intricate detail now. That’s 75 years ago. Something new is taking over. Something new, in my instinct. And I think some of the remarkable writers of our time, Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Very contemporary British and other writers throughout the world, have a sense of intuitively, and I’m going to talk more about those in January. And this idea. What the artists saw at the beginning, and the satirists, and they came out of the satirical tradition at the beginning of the 20th century, not only in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, but elsewhere. They saw that the Victorian ideal of a central unifying principle, whether it be around God or imperialism or civilization or a certain sense of what is right in the world and good, was going. And they had to literally cut it up.

They had to literally pull it apart, if you like, not knowing what may come or what it would be born, but something, they sensed. And when you take away a central unifying idea and a culture, which may be God, it may be a religion, it may be a certain sense of integrity, morality or even an economic centre or a spiritual, whatever it is, you know, a tribal identity. Things start to fracture. Fault lines emerge, which are buried but emerge. And I think that’s what the satirists touch base on. And in that way they are subversive. In that way, they subvert the expected status quo. What is the status quo? It’s just the inherited propaganda of childhood. It’s the inherited belief system of childhood, or, you know, any family, community, school, the larger culture, the nation and so on. You know, it’s the fashion or the dominant ideas which, you know, become inculcated in all of us and are thrown up, you know, for questioning. At least question, at least challenge. Satirise, to ridicule power, to ridicule human foibles, to ridicule and mock and play with things that are cherished and held Bob Dylan’s great line, even the president of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked. And I think it’s about the values shifting and changing. The end of the past. 75 years, you know, and those ideals held cherished, obviously and incredibly suffered for and died for after the war, during the war, the second World War. And yet where do they play now?

And I’m not only talking about current, you know, number of clowns around the world pretending to be politicians or political leaders or whatever. But there’s a reason why a certain sense of values are, I think, shifting and being subverted. In Pinter’s Birthday Party, which is, you know, it doesn’t have much comedy in it, but it’s a satire because all the people, the characters, believe that it’s the one character, Stanley’s birthday. And the two invader outsiders, if you like, Goldberg and McCann, just the two tough guy characters who come and stay overnight in the boarding house and say, no, it’s Stanley’s birthday, we’ll have a party. Everybody knows it’s not Stanley’s birthday, but because the dominant characters say it is, everyone decides, in a kind of mass adulatory, and mass addictive way, cause we can have a party. Yeah, let’s have a party. Of course it’s Stanley’s birthday, It’s classic theatre of the absurd and classic idea of satire. It is not reality, but it is flipped into a reality, if you like, in a surreal way. Everybody believes it, goes along with it. What is truth? What is fiction? What is real? What is imagined? Goes out the window. Distinctions are more than blurred that are subverted in the dominant culture. And that’s what the satirists will then subvert and will play with and tease. There’s nothing, neither right nor wrong, but thinking makes it so.

One of the great lines, greatest lines of all of Shakespeare’s. There’s nothing neither right nor wrong, but thinking makes it so. And we all know that great line from Hamlet and I really believe that it is so profound, that line, cause even in the midst of a dictatorship, Hamlet sees it. He sees philosophically something real about the human condition, eternally. And what do, what will we say? There’s nothing, neither right nor wrong, but thinking makes it so. Therefore, what is the thinking, of any time, any era in history? I want to say also that being a satirist involves risk to one’s own self and obviously risk offending or insulting. Brilliant speeches, which one can find online, by Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, many of the other great satirists of the last period. And you talk about the necessity to insult, the necessity to offend, go back two and a half thousand years, Aristophanes wrote the same. And he was given the freedom, you know, in Aristophanes in ancient Greece. He was the original great, if you like, father of satire, not just comedy, satire. To ridicule power, to mock, insult, offend. Which meant he was allowed to name leaders, political leaders, business leaders, other artists, other writers. You know, he ridiculed Euripides, not only, you know, his own political leaders in Athens and his 11 plays that survive are full of absolute insult, attack, and offence at the leaders of his time. From the military, to the business, to the political, to the other artists and writers.

They’re all in his plays, if you look at them closely. And that’s part of the origin of it all. Aristophanes, because 11 of his plays survive, and because they’re so good. Just to add, that during his time, you know, it’s reckoned that from the fifth century BC in ancient Greece, it’s reckoned about 800 plays survive. And research shows that that’s believed to be only about 1% of all the theatre done in the 120, 130 years of the kind of remarkable period of original Greek, ancient Greek theatre. It’s extraordinary for a tiny little community in Greece, in Athens and elsewhere, et cetera. Small, you know, going off to the et cetera for a couple of weeks every year the festival of Dionysus and they can write about anything. And what they call the comedy and what the Romans, the word satire comes from the Latin word, later the Romans called satire. And they can write anything about anyone and you will not be imprisoned, arrested, or killed. In fact, if you win the prize, you’ll get money for a year and you’ll get what we would regard as the Booker Prize or the Nobel Prize of ancient Greece. You get money, status, fame, and power. You’d be a hero. So they worked pretty hard and wrote to win while the audience got completely drunk cause they watched four plays a day and then voted at the end, which was the best and go on, et cetera.

Over usually a 10 day, two week period. I’m not going to look at Animal Farm cause everyone knows it so well. Catch 22, the remarkably brilliant satires, we all know it so, so well and studied it. Lysistrata, of Aristophanes, probably the most famous play, which set the tone for satire to come. And it’s based on the, it’s the kind of satire idea where it’s the women of Athens. There’s a war between, you know, between the two city states, Athenians and Spartans, et cetera. And the women of Athens say they will not have sex with the men anymore unless the war is stopped. And it’s a comedy, it’s a satire, and the men freaked and then the woman get, you know, they get frustrated, and the different characters sneak off into the night and have a bit of sex, then come back and et cetera. Lysistrata is the female leader of the women who demands, yeah. So it’s, then all the little bickerings happen and all the other little fun things happen. But the idea has lasted two and a half thousand years. “What if” is a simple question every satirical writer will involve and play with. I’ve mentioned Rhinoceros and some of the other amazing satirical plays written, you know, post Second World War, post the kind of mass hysteria of fascism, which a lot of those writers captured in the fifties, into the sixties. Dario Fo is a fascinating playwright from Italy who won the Nobel Prize and one of, not many playwrights win the Nobel Prize. Very, very few.

And the main play of his was called Accidental Death of an Anarchist, which is about anarchists being imprisoned and interrogated by the police in Italy, in Milan or, you know, other cities. And then somehow sort of falling out of windows, which as South Africans, we know the use of that phrase only too well. And that’s the Accidental Death of the Anarchist. Fell out of the window, et cetera. Anyway, what Aristophanes does, what Aristophanes started and then got lost over many centuries after the Shakespeare period and after, where often the comic character, in so-called serious drama was the fool, or the stock character on the side. Who had intelligent insight into human foibles and the ridiculous absurdity of power. And people dressed in a little bit of authority but didn’t have agency, didn’t have power to affect events, could only have insights and comment. And what Dario Fo brought back, and Gogol in Russia, and some of the other satirists, they brought back making the main protagonist of the play the fool. Who had agency, who could act, and influence and in fact determine events and change events. Milos Forman in The Firemen’s Board, one of his first great films, brilliant, picks it up, that idea. Is the main character is the fool, is the trickster. The trickster becomes central, not the intelligent monkey character on the outside. Dario Fo made it so powerful in the 20th century, that character. Gogol did it in, you know, in Inspector General and others before.

So I want to just give you a bit of a context, some of these approaches and ideas about satire and for me why it is so important. Because if we lose the ability to laugh at power, to laugh at very accepted beliefs, I think we lose something that is so profoundly human and we lose something that is so profoundly part of a society we might want to live in. Because once we start to say you can’t laugh at A, B, C, D, where do you draw the line? Who draws the line? Who stops it? And I’m talking whether it’s the right or the left, whichever. Whether it’s in religion, in politics, or in other things. And satirists are always going to walk the razors edge between the two. That’s the danger, that’s the risk. What I would say is that in order to understand it and give it a kind of Hyde Park corner in the world, in world consciousness, is to say that the risk, that the satire has context. And one needs to look at the context of the culture, the context of the people, the context of how it’s being done.

And I’ve done a lot of work looking at satire from Iran to, obviously to Israel, obviously South Africa, you know, obviously the West English speaking countries, but also, you know, some of the eastern countries and what is accepted, what isn’t, what was and what is, and it’s fascinating cause you can see, you can see shapes and trends and momentums in cultures, in history. When you look at the satire, not only the comedy. Bob Dylan said that art, the aim of art was to inoculate the world against despair. Kafka said the aim of art is to take an axe to the frozen heart, let it bleed. John Lennon. God is a point by which we measure our pain. I want to suggest that satire is to inoculate the world against pain and suffering. Underneath everything, there is suffering obviously in humanity, in adversity, in what happens with life. And what satire and comedy can do is let us laugh at our own pain. Yes, at others. And through that, understand it quickly. Trevor Noah, for me, one of the most fantastic satirists of our times, you know, took over from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, brilliant South African comedian, brilliant, Born a Crime. I’m sure everyone knows his book about his life. He talks about lift the burden of thought through humour. Because we get it so quickly. We can lift the need to overthink. We just get it. Of course, it’s ridiculous.

Of course it’s absurd. Of course it’s silly. Why is there this rule? Why is there this idea? Why do we have to do this and not that? Why do we believe in this or that? Why can’t we accept that 26 people can believe in 26 different letters in the alphabet? Metaphorically. Why can’t we? Short, tall people, grey hair, ginger hair, blue eyes, grey, whatever. And the differences go on into beliefs and all the rest of it. Just tolerate. And after phrase of Trevor Noah’s, I think is wonderful. Lift the burden of thought. Because with comedy we get it so quick. And we’re laughing because we see ourselves in the mirror at the same time. Okay. The only difference I think at the moment is that it’s not a game. And the satirists, I don’t think ever intended it to be a game. I think they intended it, as I said right at the beginning, a plea for a little bit of tolerance, a few moments of reprieve, of tolerance that maybe that we can help that. And that’s what I mean by inoculate against suffering. That we can just get a glimpse of it for a moment, you know, and defrost the heart slightly perhaps, you know, it’s idealistic. But that’s what the satirists, I think, would go for. What’s fascinating about social media is that so-called jokes and satire on social media don’t have a context. That’s one of the reasons I think they’re so addictive and dangerously powerful. Because there’s no context. You can take anything what anybody said or wrote at any time in history of their life or wherever, and you can put it together with them and there’s no context. So the risk is exaggerated and heightened and whatever comes out, it just hits in the moment. And the danger to what satire can achieve is profound because context is lost.

And that goes back to what I was saying at the beginning. We live in this period where at the end of the values, you know, post Second World War, what values are coming. Lack of values, lack of central unifying value system in any way that most people, sort of can subscribe to. Social media, I think helps drive the folk line because there’s no context. There’s no context for the joke, for the comment, for the satire, for the peace. You know, you can just have an immediate emotional and excessive zealous reaction and go out and do things. Which is, I think, a very interesting way, it’s part of the way of looking at social media. Of course social media does amazing things as well. You know, you can learn so much about medicine and the world and connect with people, et cetera. We always got to look at the curse and the blessing, for me, of everything. Okay, I want to show some pieces now, which I hope to illustrate a little bit of what I’m saying. And these are quite varied, what I’m going to show this week and next week, quite a few short varied clips from very different kind of satirical pieces. And the first is from one of the all time great writers of satire. Yes, Minister. Yes, Prime Minister.

CLIP BEGINS

• I suppose the origin of this criticism is this rumour about another big scandal in the city.

• How did you guess?

• Oh, Humphrey, I’ve decided to respond to all this criticism about a scandal in the city. The press is demanding action.

• What are you proposing to do?

• I shall appoint someone.

• And when did you take this momentous decision?

• Today when I read the papers.

• But when did you first think of it?

• Today when I read the papers.

• And for how long, may I ask, did you weigh the pros and cons of this decision?

• Not long. I decided to be decisive.

• Prime Minister, if I may say, I think you worry too much about what the papers say.

• Only a civil servant could have made that remark.

• I have to worry about them, particularly with the party conference coming up. These rumours of a scandal just won’t go away, you know?

• Well, let’s not worry about it until it becomes something more than the room. I’d just like to show you the cabinet agenda.

• No, not just now, Humphrey. This is rather more important.

• With respect, Prime Minister, it is not. The only way to understand the press is to remember that they pander to their readers prejudices.

• Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

• And Prime Minister. What about the people who read the Sun?

• Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, a very short clip. Brilliant writing, brilliant acting. You can see, they know it’s so funny. They’re corpsing as they’re acting it. But not only a satire, obviously, of newspapers and readers, but you know, what are the fashionable or popular ideas at any moment in a culture? How do the politicians in a democracy deal with it? And what really do they listen to? What really do they do or not to? Okay, brilliant, short little moment. Taking a huge leap into another world completely from one of my favourite filmmakers of all time. The most wonderful, well, I think, one of the most remarkable filmmakers, Stanley Kubrick and his incredible satire, Dr. Strangelove, that we all know with Peter Sellers. And this is the scene where Peter Sellers comes out with the idea of how to deal with nuclear annihilation in the world. And what’s important to me is that Kubrick, as a Jewish filmmaker, is also taking on the incredibly complicated subject of the Jews, obviously, and Nazi Germany. Which is an area for huge debate, which would be fantastic to debate, you know, about what is satire and what isn’t. Again, context, I think is so important. As I was talking about earlier. When the satirist walks the razor’s edge.

CLIP BEGINS

• I would guess that the dwelling space for several hundred thousand of our people could easily be provided.

• Well, I, I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down.

• Further. That would not be necessary, Mr. President. Could easily be accomplished with a computer, and the computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and the cross section of necessary skills. Course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Actually, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time and little to do, but with the proper breeding techniques and the ratio of say, 10 females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product, within, say, 20 years.

• But look here, doctor, wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?

• No, sir. Excuse me. Also, when, when they go down into the main, everyone will still be alive. There will be no shocking memories. And the prevailing motion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity.

CLIP ENDS

• One of the most amazing scenes, not only of acting of Peter Sellers, but it’s disturbing even decades, decades later, since he made it. You know, and when you watch it again and again, the acting is extraordinary. But the disturbing qualities of everything from the war, from the Holocaust, from Nazis, and contemporary, the threat of nuclear annihilation, you know, the fantasies on offer, all of these things. How they are recurring themes in a disturbingly, dark satirical way. A very different kind of comedy or satire to Yes, Minister, obviously. Okay, this piece is from a very different gentleman who I’m sure many people will know. Tom Lehrer. Need one say more? Remarkable mathematical brilliant mind and the ability to write his own songs with words and music. This is, again, a different take. And also from a Jewish performer and writer. Kubrick is, you know, taking on this little song. I’m not going to do Poison Pigeons from the Park. We all, everyone knows it too well.

CLIP BEGINS

• Well, speaking of bombs, what is it that makes America the world’s greatest nuclear power? And what is it that will make it possible for us to spend 20,000 million dollars of our taxpayers money to put some idiot on the moon? Well, it was the great enormous superiority of American technology, of course, as provided by our great American scientists such as Dr. Wernher von Braun. ♪ Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun ♪ ♪ A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience ♪ ♪ Call him a Nazi ♪ ♪ He won’t even frown ♪ ♪ Nazi schmazi says Wernher von Braun ♪ ♪ Don’t say that he’s hypocritical ♪ ♪ Say rather that he’s apolitical ♪ ♪ Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down ♪ ♪ That’s not my department says Wernher von Braun ♪ ♪ Some have harsh words for this man of renown ♪ ♪ But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, ♪ ♪ Like the widows and cripples in old London town ♪ ♪ Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun ♪ ♪ You too may be a big hero ♪ ♪ Once you’ve learned to count backwards to zero ♪ ♪ In German or English, I know how to count down ♪ ♪ And I’m learning Chinese says Wernher von Braun ♪

CLIP ENDS

• I think it’s extraordinary. This is so, this is from the sixties, so many decades ago. But the intelligence of the words, you know, the subtlety of the catchy tunes that he wrote in so many of them, Tom Lehrer, as we know, and being, you know, this remarkable mathematician at Harvard and elsewhere, you know, and the ability to take this and turn it. And this is around the time of the landing on the moon. So it’s in this time of extraordinary national, global pride, achievement of humanity. You know, he doesn’t knock the landing. I mean, he talks about how much money was made. But to have this satirical attitude at that time, the risk he took, the razor’s edge that he walked to write that and to sing that, that to me is brilliant satire. And look at it in the context of when he is doing it. And even now today. Would this be allowed? I’m not sure. The second thing for me, because he’s Jewish, Tom Lehrer, he’s also saying, well, how are Jews going to take on that period? You know, the most horrific period in human history. Well, to be able to find something to satirise, to be able to find something, to look at it coldly in a way is also saying, no victim, no more. No victim. And I think that’s inside him, but in a subtle, gentle, highly intelligent way. That’s inside, for me, part of the brilliance of Tom Lehrer’s spirit. Okay, then to go into a very different thing, which is looking at Jewish humour as well. We could look at it from one perspective tackling, you know, the really tricky subjects contextually and with risk. And this tackling it in a completely different way from the great Robin Williams.

CLIP BEGINS

• I’m talking about the time Moses said to Pharaoh, let my people go, and Pharaoh went, in your dreams. And Moses yelled going God, they need some help. And frogs fell from the sky. Maybe they fell from the sky or maybe they were Jews with catapults going, no, and thank God it was the Egyptians and not the French. Cause the French would go lunch, okay. Why should we let you go? You are great caterers. I can’t let you go, you crazy people. But frogs fell from the sky. But that’s what they dropped in. And even then Pharaoh was not blessed. He said please David Copperfield, no. And then boils, and then firstborn dies. That’s it! Hebrews get out! And everybody everybody. Hello, let’s not wait for the bread to rise. Take the crackers, we’re going through the desert. And then they get the 10 commandments would be adjusted by certain presidents. That happens later. And they get to the Red Sea there, the sea, the sea, and they go, what now, Mr. Magic? What do we do now? And he calls to God again and the sea parts and even the most doubting Jew is going, you are good. Let’s go everybody, come on everybody, let’s move. Don’t eat the shellfish. I’ll tell you why later, let’s go. And then the Pharaoh comes and the sea closes, and he calls to his cat-like God, but his cat-like God’s afraid of water. And people say to me, they say, Jesus wasn’t Jewish, yes of course he was Jewish. 30 years old, single, living at home with his parents, come on. Working in his father’s business, his mother thought he was God’s gift. He’s Jewish, give it up. It’s an old tradition. And if he was Jewish and many of his disciples were Jewish for the Last Supper, would they have not have gone out for Chinese? I think so.

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, what for me is brilliant here is that with being Jewish and looking at it from within, you know, the sense of Jewish irony and wit, but he’s taking on the, you know, the stereotype of the Jewish mama, thing about Jesus. And of course he went in, went into daddy’s business, 30 years old, still staying at home, you know, and his mama thought he was God’s gift. You know, I mean, playing with these things, playing with the Passover, which is above slaves coming out of Egypt. Let’s not forget, you know, Exodus and all of that. And the echoes of Exodus and the ship exodus after the Holocaust and the war, et cetera. You know, what happened with the Exodus ship, and so on. So he knows all of this, but he’s taking it and putting it in another context and trying to find the humour from within. And satirising, let’s be frank, religion. Satirising the deep belief in religion and certain cultural connotations, you know, of Jewish families and stereotypes. The ability to laugh at oneself from within. Very different to the other kinds of satire that I’ve tried to show so far. Okay. And his timing is brilliant, you know, and his attitude when he talks, when he acts Pharaoh and acts, you know, some of the others, you know, or you’re good, you know, that he’s saying to Moses, making it in a very contemporary way.

But if you look at what he’s really doing underneath, it’s for me, brilliant satire. Not only brilliant acting in such a short piece. Okay, the next one is one of my contemporary favourites. Trevor Noah, the South African I mentioned. For those who don’t know, perhaps, his mother was Xhosa from the Eastern Cape, and, is rather, and his father Swiss German. So white and black growing up. And the title of his book, growing up in South Africa, the title of his autobiography Born a Crime cause obviously, you know, born mixed race in today’s language. But as we know, he then went on to take over from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in New York City and has become absolutely huge. But battled in the beginning. For me, one of the great satirists of our times. The way he talks about his own personal experience and others. Now this piece is when he came to England, he’s come quite a few times, and this is where he talks, and I think it’s a brilliant satire, of not only British colonialism, but colonising as an activity of, you know, of human endeavours. Colonising, but perhaps the history of the world is the history of colonisation.

CLIP BEGINS

• When you think about colonisation, it is the strangest thing you can think about. Because conquering is one thing. You go to another country, you take what’s theirs, you want more, you take the land, you know, you take the resources. You kill the people, that I understand. But colonisation… I don’t condone. I understand. But colonisation is strange because you go there and you don’t just take over, you then force the people to become you. That is such a strange concept when you think about where the British did it. I mean, they, you know, they did it in Africa. They, you know, they did it in Asia. And think about it, in India, those cultures could not be more diametrically opposed. And out of nowhere, the British just decided to roll up. Imagine what the Indians must have felt like on that day, minding your own business. Walking through a field. Next thing you know, the British showed up on horseback. Hear ye, hear ye. By order of her majesty the Queen, we have arrived. You over there, what is the name of this land? This land over here? This is called India. Well, my good man, I am here to tell you that India is now under the British Empire. And I’m glad that I can tell you that India is exactly where it was yesterday. No, no, no. I feel you’re not understanding what I’m saying. I’m letting you know that we are here to colonise you by order of the queen. Who is the queen? The queen, the queen of England, the ruler of Great Britain. She who was ordained by God. Which God? God, the one true God. There are many gods, my friend. What is the name of your God? There is only one God and his name is God. And you too shall worship him. You want me to worship a God, but you don’t want to tell me his name?

What are you talking about? There are many gods, okay? There is Shiva, there is Lakshmi, there are many gods. What is the name of your God? His name is God. You don’t know the name of your God? It’s just God. Is it like mommy or daddy? You want me to worship your God, but you don’t want me to tell me his name? Huh? How am I going to pray to him? What do I do? Every morning I go to wake up and I pray like, oh, dear God, dear God, I was hoping that maybe God, you could help me. No, no, sorry, not you other God. No, no other God. No, no, not, wrong God. No. God, I was trying to talk to other. No, no, no, you’re right. I should have asked for her first name. No, no God, No other God, please no God behind that God. Not you today, God, other God, you’re right. He told me, you know, I was talking to and I don’t no, no other God, please, that God on the no, no that God, you. When I wonder why my prayers are not getting answered, ah! How dare you speak to me like that. Do you know who I am? No, because you never introduce yourself. I have come here representing Great Britain. And I have never heard of Great Britain. Who gave you that name? Well, well, well we did. You called yourselves great? Isn’t that a little presumptuous? Shouldn’t you wait for other people to tell you how great you are? Huh? Shouldn’t you just go around the world and just do good things, good things, good things? Then people go, oh my God, Britain, look how great you are. And I beg to differ, I believe we could do it because we knew instinctively we are Great Britain. Well, in that case, welcome to Great India. No, no, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work like that. How dare you speak to me like this. Look, you are the one who dares to speak to me, okay? I was here minding my own business in my land. You came over here riding on your skinny cow telling me that things are going to change. I don’t know who you are. All I know is you are really crazy, okay? You are not feeling too, right?

And I didn’t want to say anything, but you look like you are going to faint. In fact, it looks like you have died last week, okay? Something is very wrong with your skin. You are not looking good my friend. Maybe you should come down. We have a curry, we talk about this. What are you talking about? I look quite normal. You do not look normal, my friend. I’ve never seen anybody with that complexion in my life, okay? You look like you are playing hide and seek with the sun your entire life. I don’t know what is happening, but that is not our person should look up. is pumping through your skin right now. You’re not creepy. That is pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping. If I was your doctor, I don’t need x-ray machine. I just go about this problem. It is your kidney. How do I know? Because you’re translucent. That is how I know. Damn you, we are going to run this country whether you like it or not. We are not going to do anything you tell us. You are a mad man.

• We are going to take it. You are not taking. We are going… She is all yours. Take, take. Don’t play nice.

• Don’t play nice. Okay, for me, I mean, if we really look at what he’s touching, you know, the Great Britain, the name, colonisation, what is it? Take over, in such a satirical way, you know, pressing buttons of a very powerful kind. And of course, you know, religion and God and so on. And people don’t laugh quite so easily at the beginning and then get into it more and more as it goes on. But again, it’s done in a context, it’s done in a context of, you know, this is the one of the fascinating, slightly new approaches, which is, it’s a little bit more the Tom Lehrer approach of being a little bit philosophical about what is colonisation in the beginning or what does it mean to send a man to the moon, little philosophical and then go into, go into the satire and to take it on and to play with it in this kind of way. I think he is walking a razor’s edge and I think he is, you know, and obviously about British colonisation of India, but colonisation as a notion, you know, throughout. Okay, I’m going to go back to Yes, Minister to a very different kind of piece that they wrote. Brilliant writers. And this is about a very contemporary topic and it’s amazing that this was written decades ago about the EU.

• Don’t the foreign offices realise what damage this will do to the European idea?

• Well, I’m sure they do. That’s why they support it.

• Well, the foreign office is pro-Europe, isn’t it?

• Yes and no. If you’ll forgive the expression, the foreign office is pro-Europe because it is really anti-Europe. The civil service was united in its desire to make sure that the common market didn’t work. That’s why we went into it.

• What are you talking about?

• Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years. To create a disunited Europe. In that cause, fought with the Dutch, against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it’s worked so well?

• Ancient history, surely.

• Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside, we tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside, we can make a complete pigs breakfast of the whole thing. Except the Germans against the French. the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch, the foreign office is terribly pleased. It’s just like old times.

• Surely we’re all committed to the European ideal,

• Really, Minister?

• If not, why are we pressing for an increase in the membership?

• Well, for the same reason. It’s just like the United Nations, in fact. The more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up. The more futile and impotent it becomes.

• Appalling cynicism.

• Yes, we call it diplomacy, Minister.

CLIP ENDS

• For me, brilliant writing and acting of course as well. And gives a whole insight into obviously a very contentious topic in the UK and Europe at the moment, or has been probably pre-Covid. But the brilliant, what they’re bringing as well is the understanding of what is diplomacy, what is foreign policy, how to work it. Brought in, in a couple of lines, in a short two, three minute little clip to satire, a momentous political event, which has split families, has split people, you know, certainly in the UK and possibly maybe elsewhere, but you know, it’s caused serious division and could be really serious in the country and yet able to turn it in this way. That for me is classic, brilliant, brilliant satire in the writing. And then going on with the other thing, of course is satirising who rarely rules foreign office, i.e. civil servants, bureaucracy, and so on. You know, so how democracy needs the power of the institution on the one hand, absolutely. Separation of powers, judiciary, executive, parliament, and so on. But also these are all supported with hidden roots of massive bureaucracies. So who really runs who? Played with here in the modern democracy as we looked at the first piece about media, who really runs who? Here, who really runs it, bureaucracy. The next clip I’m going to show from Yes, Minister is about exactly that and could be applied, perhaps to policies of some countries around the world with relation to vaccine or Covid, sadly, and other things.

CLIP BEGINS

• In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

• Stage two, we say something maybe going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

• Stage three we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.

• So it’s what we say. Maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.

• A very short piece, but for me remains brilliant. I mean it’s literally less than a minute of writing and acting. The four stages of policy decisions, how bureaucracy works in relation to power, separation of powers, where’s the power really lie. And the ability to do it in such a short bit of writing through satire and through making us not only laugh, but it’s a quick moment. Yeah, of course it’s absurd. Of course it’s ridiculous, you know? So we have that quick reaction always for me in great satire and comedy. Okay, This is from one of my favourite pieces, Blackadder. And this is not from the mediaeval Blackadder or during Elizabeth’s rule, just after mediaeval times. This is first World War stuff. And to use the great phrase, what they’re playing with is lions led by donkeys during World War I.

• General Melton will be here at any moment. When he arrives, leave the talking to me, all right? I like to keep an informal trench as you know, but today you must only speak with my express permission, is that clear? Is that clear? Permission to speak.

• Yes, Sir. Absolutely, Sir.

• Attention! Dug out. Attention!

• Excellent. At ease. Now then Blackadder. Where would you like me to sit? I thought just a simple trim of the moustache today. Nothing drastic.

• Sir, have you heard about the paintings?

• Oh yes, of course. Oh, George, how are you my boy? I said, how are you?

• Permission to speak.

• Absolutely. Top holes are with a yang and a yang and a yoobadidoo.

• Splendid! And your uncle Betty sends his regards. I told them you could have a week off in April. Don’t want you missing the boat race, do we?

• Permission to speak?

• Certainly not. Permission to sing boisterously, Sir?

• If you must. ♪ Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream ♪ ♪ Belts off, trousers down, isn’t life a scream ♪

• Fabulous, university education. You can’t beat it.

• Enough. Now what have we here. Name?

• Permission to speak.

• Baldrick, sir.

• Oh tally ho, yippadee dap and zing zang spinach. Looking forward to bullying off for the final chucker?

• Permission to speak. Answer the general, Baldrick.

• I can’t answer him, sir. I dunno what he’s talking about.

• Are you looking forward to the big push?

• No sir, I’m absolutely terrified.

• The healthy humour of the honest Tommy. Don’t worry my boy. If you should falter, remember that Captain Dowling and I are behind you.

• About 35 miles behind.

• Britain has the finest trade, the finest armies, the finest navies in the world. And what do we have for royalty? A mad crowd sausage sucker and a son who can’t keep his own sausage to himself.

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, that goes on to another piece afterwards. There’s a compilation of some of the Blackadder pieces. What’s happening in the World War I piece, obviously looking at class, at military structure, you know, the madness of the trenches, the madness of that war, the insanity of it all. Completely ridiculing, you know, and taking also the perspective of Baldrick who actually is, of course, the most sane of them all. Everyone else is playing the game and caught up in it. Okay, so these are some of the pieces to show, which for me, a very different kind. There are philosophical approaches. There are, you know, the quick wit humour, there’s the, if you like, the more verbal intellectual. I’m going to show next week some more of the physical type comedies from Groucho and from many, many others. And I want to end with the final piece, which is a very, which is a different kind of piece. But I think it’s, even though it is decades later since it was made, it’s one of the most powerful pieces, not only of film, but of satire I think ever done. It’s so profoundly disturbing and chilling in the most subtle, sensitive, intelligent way that it still sends chills, I think through everyone.

And you hear the voice of the little boy, the beauty of the voice singing and the horror to come, the different faces that you’ll see. But it is satire most brilliantly put together. It’s a smile of recognition. It’s a smile of knowing. The ridicule, the absurd, the attack, the trying to pull apart, you know, something that has been so extraordinarily powerful in human history. ♪ The sun on the meadow is summery warm ♪ ♪ The stag in the forest runs free ♪ ♪ But gather together to greet the storm ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ The branch of the linden is leafy and green ♪ ♪ The Rhine gives its gold to the sea ♪ ♪ But somewhere a glory awaits unseen ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes ♪ ♪ The blossom embraces the bee ♪ ♪ But soon, says a whisper, arise, arise ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Fatherland, fatherland show us the sign ♪ ♪ Your children have waited to see ♪ ♪ The morning will come when the world is mine ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Fatherland, fatherland show us the sign ♪ ♪ Your children have waited to see ♪ ♪ The morning will come when the world is mine ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪

• Okay, I want to end with that piece for this session next week will be very different type of satire and comedy because to me it pulls together everything. Even though it is so long ago since this movie was made, the satire, the effect in its beauty and chilling horror, walking that razors edge of the Jewish and the Holocaust, of walking the razors edge between idyllic village, idyllic little atmosphere and yet inside such burning hate and prejudice. The idea of what I was saying at the beginning, that satirists always walk a line of risk, you know, but to understand it in its context is what’s necessary. There’s also in this mass hysteria versus these characters who see it for what it is. The old man who, you know, puts his hand on his head, sees what it is. These contrasts, these juxtapositions set up to, for me, make it ultimate satire. It’s so brilliant cause we can laugh and smile to a degree, but we are also stunned. And part of when, when you look at Lysistrata, it was really originally done and performed for the great laughs, et cetera. But it was also to try and stop the Peloponnesian Wars, which had been killing Greeks for years and years in the most gruesome, horrific ways. Wasn’t only just you know, a play about, you know, the women saying no to sex until the male soldiers stopped fighting. Underneath it, there was serious war going on and Aristophanes seeing the pain and the suffering and to inoculate against it used absurdity, satire, comedy.

Play with it in these gruesome ways and in these horrific funny ways. The very dark comedy, if you like. When you really look at what Aristophanes was doing and some of the other ancient Greeks, going all the way through the centuries. When you look underneath, what is compelling these writers to ride the horse of humour and satire? What are they really trying to share with us? Who does tomorrow belong to? You know, in this moment for me, at the end of the values post Second World War, who does tomorrow belong to? Where are things moving and shifting? You know, also innovation obviously to the enlightenment. You know, where are the values? Where are the new things emerging? And artists intuit, I believe, and this scene captures it. Do you think you can control them and the other guy shrugs, who knows, who cares, who cares? What are the values coming now? What are the, not only in the immediate day-to-day politics, but in the broader feeling of what’s going on. And we all sense something huge is changing not only with Covid, but something huge in cultures everywhere. And that to me is what the artists touch. They touch it in a profound way, imaginative and intuitively, maybe intellectually as well, consciously doesn’t matter.

And that’s why the work struck such a chord. And my last thing is to say all of this is only possible in a liberal, in western democracies and democracies elsewhere in the world as well. If there weren’t, none of all what we’ve watched tonight would ever be allowed to happen. So of course there’s an enormous amount that this is happening in these countries compared to the obvious dictatorships in the world. But these things can be eroded only too quickly as we all know. Okay, so thank you very much everybody. Really appreciate. And yeah, should I take some of the questions, Lauren?

• [Lauren] Yeah, we have time for a few.

• Okay.

• Thanks David. That was outstanding.

• Thank you Wendy. Thanks so much. And all the best to you and your family.

Q&A and Comments:

• Thank you. Thank you.

Q: Okay, Romaine, does satire speak to an underlying morality other than humour as morality?

A:Oh, that’s brilliant. It’s a great idea. I think it speaks to an underlying plea for tolerance. I think that’s what it really does. Whether it’s class difference, whether it’s racial, religious, it’s all about superior, inferior hierarchy, colonisation, whatever. I think it speaks to underlying intolerance.

Q: Elliot, can we distinguish between satire and sarcasm?

A: I haven’t even got there yet, which I’ll touch on a bit more next week. Sarcasm and irony. Absolutely. So I’ll get into that more next week, Elliot.

Thank you. Margaret, just listened to the Dead Ringers satirical radio programme in England before this. Thank you for that. Yep, they do, Dead Ringers.

Tom, Charlie Hebdo. Yeah, cartoons is another whole world of satires. We could have a whole session just on that. Is it satire? Absolutely. Okay, it’s laughing at others. The ability to laugh at ourselves and laugh at others. We accept, again, context with risk. It’s the context knowing it’s a cartoon, so it’s up for grabs for satire. Where does the line get drawn and who draws the line? That’s a whole different question. But coming from the arts, I would argue, you know, for as few lines as possible.

Okay, Simi. It’s the Yiddish for satire. Thank you. You’re taking me right way back, great.

Joe, Trevor Noah may know satire lacks the wisdom to understand Israel, Hamas Garza. Yeah, I mean, you know, very good point. I’m not saying every satirist will agree with anybody else’s political opinion, but may still be a great satirist or a great writer in various ways. These are end endless debates to have. The poems of TS Elliot, but TS Elliot’s antisemitism is huge as we all know, and many others. So, you know, or anti different religions, different cultures. That’s a huge debate about the role of the writer in culture, absolutely. And to have. Gene, Lysistrata offers the solution to the new Texas abortion law. I hadn’t thought of that. Great idea, Gene.

Q: Romaine, can we sustain satire with all the PC stuff?

A: Well, as I said at the beginning, satire, ironically, is under subversive attack from the left and the right equally, I would say. Equally. The PC stuff and the right stuff, you know, satire is under attack, you know, it’s becomes harder and harder to be satirical again, risk in context and to be able to make humour and wit out of, you know, tricky, complicated subjects.

Q: Can we sustain satire?

A: I honestly don’t know. I think there’s an erosion of notions of democracy, human rights, constitutions, parliament, executive powers. There’s an erosion that we are part of it that’s the zeitgeist of our times. You know, the blurring of boundaries, which for me is really the fault lines, which are already deep in the culture just coming out again, you know, the boogeyman always comes out in the dark at various times at night, you know, the monster. Which is already in us, in our culture anyway. Can we sustain satire? I think that it is under danger, you know, of being eroded. I really do. By the left and the right PC and the right stuff.

Sandy, Randy Rainbow was brilliant during the Trump years. Yeah, absolutely.

Indie, remember while seeing Tom Lehrer you’re still at university. Ah, got a standing ovation. We spent summers at camp singing his songs.

Okay, Herbert? Yeah, I’m going to show more of Tom Lehrer next week a bit as well. John Lithgow has written a wonderful set of short book with illustrations of the Trump era in limerick. Great. Heather, Jerusalem Post listed Trevor Noah as one of the 10 anti-semites of today. Quite possible. And I’m not saying he’s not, but I think one also has to see, you know, the multi-facets of any individual, whether they’re satirists or others as well.

• [Wendy] But you’re not saying that he is either, David.

• No, I’m not saying yes.

• [Wendy] You’re saying neither.

• I’m not saying…

• [Wendy] You’re saying I don’t know.

• Exactly Wendy. I’m simply saying you know, that he’s trying to poke, in this piece, poke humour at colonisation.

Okay, Neville. Half my joy listening is watching your reaction facial expression. Okay, well thanks Neville. Leslie, thank you. The Trevor Noah clip, you liked. Okay, Margaret. Yeah, it does, it sums up colonisation in a…. Okay, thank you.

Q: Ron, are you sure Robin Williams was Jewish. I thought he was Episcopalian. They said he was an honorary Jew.

A: I always thought he was Jewish. If I’m wrong, I put up my hands in apology.

Q: Leslie. Is Robin Williams religion relevant to his humour?

A: I think it is. I think he understands it so well from within, but it’s complicated, I agree.

Ron, to remind you, some of the great political and social satirists, the fifties and sixties were Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, both Jewish and many others. Absolutely. You know, the Jewish thing is, it’s fairly, in a one way, I suppose it’s obvious, alienated, marginalised, outsider, persecuted, you know. Of course it’s going to have an outsider perspective. And of course it’s going to be able to see irony, wit, satire. It’s again, inoculated against pain and suffering. You know, if you think about it, what the Jewish satirists are doing from a very marginalised, persecuted history. Thank you. Context is all tolerance. Tony Kushner talks about tolerance in Angels in America. Absolutely. And the poverty of Hannah Arendt.

Julie, thank you, appreciate. Monty, thanks very much for your kind comments.

Judy, thank you. It’s interesting about the internet, Judy, because I think it does lack context and because of that, where it skates that line is that any phrase can be taken up in any way by anyone. And that’s one of the ways in which mass hysteria can be evoked through social media. And I’m not criticising, I’m not trying to attack social media cause it does amazing things in many other ways. Obviously, obvious. We always got to look at the blessing and the curse of everything, I think.

• David, can I just jump in quick, just a second. We’ve just got to be so… We, I think it’s, we’re living through such controversial times right now, and it’s going to be, it’s very hard for comedians to, now that everybody has to watch what they say. You can’t make jokes about anything or anyone. Not about colour, not about religion, not about sex, not about, who knows? I mean, we already going through very torrid times and I just wanted to say we just have to be careful what we say generally, even now because you can be held to ransom, you know, you don’t know who’s who’s, who’s recording you.

• Absolutely. Okay, Wendy, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I also think it’s fascinating speeches given by Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese, John Cleese saying that he could never write some of Fawlty Towers now. Monty Python could never have done what they did now. People know the history of how the Life of Brian was made, you know. The BBC pulled the money four days before cause they were scared of, you know, the religious context of the Life of Brian four days before. The money was there, the actors were all in, the sets, the design, thousands were already there ready. Contracts signed, you know, jobs. And four days before one of the Monte Python team just, they were desperate cause the BBC pulled the money and they phoned George Harrison and George Harrison with about two and a half days to go put the money and financed it. Without that, we’d never have the Life of Brian. So it can be at any time interventions happen and that’s why, I know it’s such a complicated topic, satire. So I was hesitant to even take this on at the beginning. But I think it is essential in the context of the brilliance, Wendy, of what you and Trudy have set up to have debate and respectful discussion and thought about these things. Not to try and offend at all, ever. But to have, you know, an honest sharing of ideas in a calm, respectful, educational context. Should we keep that, you know, Salman Rushdie you know, satanic verses… there are so many things that we could go on and on about. And it is a dangerous, tricky time. And I think that lends to a broader picture of a dangerous, tricky time in general.

• [Wendy] That’s right.

• Not only because of the left and the right, but you know, how cultures are changing and the erosion of the values of the post war. And that for me is the greater sadness.

• Well you know, in the art world, a white art, well I’m not going to go into that, but there was a huge controversy about a white American or about who is qualified to paint what scene.

• Yeah.

• Are you, as a South African, now living in England, qualified to talk about somebody else’s experience if they’re English or French or German?

• Right.

• So, you know, to the extreme. So irony and satire, you know, it’s really, I think there’s going to be a capturing a moment in time.

• I think so. Wendy, thank you for that, really. It’s such complicated issues at the moment. Important to have discussion, debate, in a respectful educational context to use that word again, you know? Okay. Absolutely. But there’s a reason why we have humour and satire going thousands of years back, you know, and I mean, it wasn’t always the festival of Dionysus and all the satirists celebrated and often they got the heads chopped off and many other things. And happening in our time as well and other times.

Okay. Melvin. Surely Robin Williams was plagiarising Mel Brooks. Yes.

Okay. And I’ll look at Mel Brooks a bit next week. Monica, the name of the movie is Cabaret.

Ron, I never thought of The Future Belongs to Me as comedy or satire. Seems a chilling warning. It is, it’s absolutely a chilling warning. But I think underneath it, there is an element of ultimate great satire. Precisely because it is, it has an innocent beauty and a grotesqueness. And I think there is a smile of recognition in what is inside. And I’d love to debate whether it’s satire or not, but I don’t think these boundaries are quite so, you know, I think satire has many, many, you know, branches to that tree. I do think it’s one of them.

Elaine, the film is Cabaret and brilliant writing, yeah. There’s quite a few questions on that. Richard, not sure I see satire, only horror. Yeah, I see. I do see some of the satire in it, you know, because of the other faces involved.

Okay, Marilyn, thank you. Carol. Martin. Amy, thank you. The Trevor Noah clip, you’ll find it, you should find it on YouTube, I think. Otherwise I can get it maybe sent through lockdown. Thank you.

Okay, Ben. Satire cannot be fed into artificial intelligence. Ah, I’d love to talk about artificial…. Stephen Hawking said the greatest threat to humanity is artificial intelligence. And number two, climate change. I find it a fascinating thought. Highly provocative as well, you know. And third, he said a nuclear holocaust. You know, I share that for whatever it’s worth, but I think it’s fascinating. Because artificial intelligence can influence the fundamental genetic, I think, I think Stephen Hawking was saying the genetic makeup of the human being. And that’s a massive shift. Satire is very alive not only in West, but much happened. Yes. The communists were the Czech. Absolutely. And because I lived in Prague for five years, knowing something of Czech culture and Czech theatre and Czech history and culture, you know, the person voted the most popular Czech is a fictional character from a work of fiction who never existed but is regarded by the Czechs as the most popular Czech person in their history. Isn’t that extraordinary? In England, it was Churchill, if I remember right, you know, who is the greatest English person, you know, and in other countries, et cetera, South Africa, you know, et cetera. But in the Czech Republic it was Yara Timmerman who never existed. It was an entirely fictional character. Talk about irony, wit, and satire. And I think the Czechs have it from being under the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 400 years. Where the cliche joke was, the Czechs were the servants, the cooks, the cleaners for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So always under the hammer, you know? And between the two big countries of Russia and Germany. So anyway, enormous comedy and satire, brilliant stuff has come out of Czech theatre and Czech literature, you know, and I would see Kafka as part of that too. It’s extraordinary. Thank you for mentioning that about the Czech Republic because it certainly has it. Indie, Tom Lehrer when he translated Yiddish German names, yep. Rochelle, how to differentiate between satire and insult. Next week, I want to get into insult, irony, sarcasm, in relation to satire as well. You know, that’s fascinating debates happening fairly recently between John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, and quite a few others also. Interestingly, John Cleese said, you have to be able to insult or offend. Groucho said, yes, you have to do the same, but never use an ethnic context, an ethnic group. And it’s a fascinating, an interesting, you know, sharing of thoughts. You go back to Aristophanes, he threw them all together.

Okay, Devora, thank you. Mona, Stanley, Roger Waters. I know, I know he’s similar. His politics are completely off the… Yeah, I agree. Eric Clapton is an anti, you know, is an anti-vaxxer. What does it mean about, you know, Eric Clapton as a guitarist. Mira, under the Nazi’s noses.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Arlene. Robert Williams was not Jewish. Then I have to apologise. Okay. I thought he was.

Devora, wish it would happen at Toronto Board of Education when a Jewish trustee was criticised for freaking out about Jewish hate. I don’t know anything about that, Devora. Rosalind, there’s a wealth of satire in English literature.

Yes, Jane Austen. Absolutely. Jane Austen is classic satirising class, hierarchy, comedy of manners, all of that. Oscar Wilde satirising, you know, the end of the Victorian era, you know. What is love? What is class? What is wealth? What is aristocracy? You know, it’s the family. I mean, Oscar Wilde, one of the great satirists of all time. But I’ve purposely stayed away from Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, you know, some of the really well-known ones because I think they’re just so well known.

Marilyn, thank you. The Simpsons, brilliant for satire.

Yeah. Thank you, Antoni.

Q: Yolandi, can satirists be sued for libel or defamation?

A: It’s a really interesting comment. I’m not that up on law. I’d need to ask Dennis or somebody to help with that. Maybe, I think it’s about if you actually quote their phrase, I’m not sure if you quote their phrase or something. You know, again, it’s context.

• I’m trying to be very careful cause I know this is being recorded. I’m being recorded here.

• Yeah, I’m going to hold you to ransom, David.

• I know, I know, I know. I’m making a plea. Ultimately that satirist is about asking for a little bit of tolerance in the world. That’s all, tolerance of any kind. And I think that’s what going back 200,000 years all the way to now is what the satirists are really saying. You know, come on, gimme a moment of a little bit of tolerance for tolerance.

• And forgiveness.

• And forgiveness. Exactly.

• [Wendy] Okay.

• All right. I think that’s it. Thank you so much.

• David. I liked something. Sorry, just go further down. I was going to say.

• Oh, there’s more. Sorry, I didn’t see them.

• Yes, no, pass off. I was going to say pass off. But wait, there was, I liked something that I read. I really do. I’m sorry to, just, towards the end there was something. Where is it? Sorry. Lecture, further down.

• Comments?

• A comment, yes. Who was it? I’ll find it. Maybe we can comment on it next time. You know.

• Fiddler on the Roof. Brilliant satire, yep. I’m trying to find which one was that, Wendy?

• I’m just having a look here. I don’t remember. You know, I’ll find it. You know, I think it was something like, I think someone said something like, isn’t it sad that woke? I think he said it was, isn’t it sad that woke versus satire equals cancel? Exactly. That’s exactly what. A hundred percent.

• That is a perfect satirical line. And remember satire has to be subversive, otherwise it’s not satire.

• [Wendy] Exactly.

• There has to be an element of subversion, you know, and the ability to have a little tiny laugh at ourselves, perhaps somewhere, sometime.

• Pride and Prejudice.

• Pride and Prejudice. That’s it exactly.

• Thank you very much. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks, David. It was great.

• Thank you. Thanks everybody. Hope you have a great rest of the weekend. Wendy, thank you. All the best to your parents with their recovery. And Lauren, huge, huge thanks again.

• Always. Thank you, bye.