The Unbearable Smugness of Being Comic

Good to see someone finally pointing out that Armando Iannucci may not be quite the genius that he, along with the rest of the UK media, thinks he is. Nick Cohen:

Whatever his comic talents, Iannucci displayed no originality in The Thick of It. Contempt for British politics is modern television's orthodoxy...

A great deal of the acclaim that critics lavished on The Thick of It, I thought, was because of the language. We'd just about got used to the idea of working class types swearing on screen, but it was Iannucci who had the bright idea of having middle class spin doctors and politicians starting every other sentence with a "fuck". The critics couldn't get enough of it: a daring breath of fresh air, apparently. Well, it certainly made a change from Yes Minister.

For me it worked for the first two series because Chris Langham is such a superb comic actor, but after he left to be replaced by Rebecca Front much of the humour left too, and it got increasingly unpleasant. It was more the scripts than Front herself, who's a perfectly fine actress. Somehow the inherent misogyny in the situation, with the foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker bullying the essentially decent female minister, started pushing out the laughter that derived from the bumbling incompetence of Langham's Hugh Abbott. It just got nasty, and relied far too much on the increasingly scabrous insults of Peter Capaldi's Tucker.

Also there's this permanent air of smugness that hangs around Iannucci. Indeed smugness is the besetting sin of so much modern comedy, especially on the BBC, and especially political comedy. I blame Have I Got News for You; now 22 years old, and at least 10 years past its sell-by date, in which smug comedians and media types parade their contempt for politicians, and their own moral superiority. In particular Ian Hislop remains non-pareil as the smuggest of the smug. Many have tried to be smugger, and many have concluded that it's just not possible. 

Of course a culture where open criticism of politicians is the norm is in every way preferable to a culture of deference. But when it becomes a culture of contempt for politicians - when a mainstream channel can put on, to critical acclaim, a programme like Charlie Brooker's The National Anthem, wherein a Tony Blair-like PM fucks a pig live on TV - then you wonder if perhaps it's all gone a bit too far.

No wonder so many commentators nowadays on Blair - one of the most electorally successful Prime Ministers of modern times - can't get past their obsession with seeing him prosecuted for war crimes.

Comments

[TDK]

...smugness is the besetting sin of so much modern comedy, especially on the BBC, and especially political comedy. I blame Have I Got News for You

I disagree.

In the 1980s the comedians from the Comedy Club et al basically replaced the whole set of existing comedians. A handful survived and a few changed their style.

The new comedians appealed to a mainly middle class audience and as such shared the world view of TV commissioning editors. Whilst they were initially genuinely "alternative" they soon became orthodox.

The smugness comes from the fact that urban middle classes who gravitate towards the Guardian and the BBC still imagine themselves to be outside the system challenging the status quo. They don't know anyone who reads the Daily Mail nor anyone who would challenge a "brave" comedian who invites you to laugh at those readers.

Have I Got News For You came along in the course of those events. It certainly helped but it isn't the sole cause. Think back to any programme with Marcus Brigstocke, David Baddiel (in fact the entire Mary Whitehouse Experience) or any comedy on Radio 4.

[sackcloth and ashes]

I find myself enjoying the series (even though I know it's a caricature), but the film 'In the Loop' stuck in my craw because - funny moments aside - it represented much of what was wrong with the chattering classes when it came to their emoting over Iraq. I have yet to hear Iannucci (or for that matter a host of individuals from George Monbiot to Alexei Sayle) actually specifically say what the USA and UK should have other than overthrow Saddam Hussein. Bearing in mind that the individuals concerned tended to be anti-sanctions in the 1990s, I can only assume that they were quite happy to let Saddam be, and to let him do to his people (and neighbouring countries) what he willed. If that's the case, then none of the 'Send Blair to the Hague' crowd have had the guts to openly say so.

One thing I noted about Iannucci was that in a piece in the 'Independent on Sunday' he said that he was 'uneasy about Tucker's hero-status: "Malcolm is representative of all that is poisonous and has caused so much disrespect for politics and politicians in the past 15 or 20 years. I don't understand people like Alastair [Campbell] who worship him."'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/omnishambles-the-thick-of-its--back-8100738.html

The thing is that Campbell is actually on record (in this interview with Mark Kermode) as stating the exact opposite. He regards Tucker as a caricature, and states that when he was in office he could not talk to Ministers the way that his supposed fictional counterpart could do. He also states specifically that Iannucci's style of comedy is actually destructive because it encourages cynicism rather than scepticism. If you basically believe that all politicians are lying bastards and that they're all the same, then why vote? Why get involved in politics in the first place? The net result of such an attitude is surely a collective apathy, which is hardly the kind of sentiment that will make a thriving democracy work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcFaizGw860

But as far as Iannucci is concerned, it's easier to take a cheap shot at Campbell rather than to actually find out what he's saying and construct arguments to counter him. Just as it's easier to shout the 'Bliar/War Criminal' slogans than it is to actually articulate an alternative policy on Iraq that would have been ethically justifiable, and also in the interests of the Iraqi people themselves.

[brian]

When Campbell mocked Iannucci for accepting the OBE, Iannucci's pathetic retort was "It's probably more establishment to order your army to march into other countries for no reason. Swings and roundabouts". Unimaginative, po-faced stuff and to believe it was "for nothing"!

[sackcloth and ashes]

'It's probably more establishment to order your army to march into other countries for no reason'.

Anyone familiar with the course of Iraqi history since 1979 might find the last three words of that sentence particularly contemptible.