With a paradoxically destructive optimism, satirists, from the age of the Roman poet Juvenal and since, have been driven by an almost childlike conviction that the world can and should do better. And the satirists of today, apostates as they are from the modern religion of political correctness – an orthodoxy that (despite professing to be both) is neither moral nor intellectual – need set their sights no further than their own milieu for the necessary targets.
A little over a year ago, at the close of the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I presented the Defining the Norm Awards, an Oscars-styled lampooning of stand-up comedy banality and the predatory entertainment industry which fuels it. My intent was to unveil a satirical blueprint of how the mundane is cynically transferred from open mic to telly screen. And of all the sacred cows I have sought to slaughter in my twenty-year career as a satirist – from modern psychiatry to Islam – the current state of Western comedy was by far the most fanatically defended, if only by its practitioners.
What resulted was a tidal wave of social media whinging, suspicions cast upon my mental well-being, and a blacklisting that continues to this day from live bookers all the way up to the BBC comedy department. (“We can’t use Will Franken,” is the word from staff insiders on those rare occasions when my name is put forward for a project. “Remember, he’s the guy that did those awards.”) One thing, however, that was not in evidence in the wake of my mockery was anything resembling a satirical counter-response from the comedy collective. A point, I felt, had been painfully proven.
Because the disquieting truth in our present age is that those least qualified to understand, let alone appreciate, satire are too often comedians themselves. And to attack those who make false pretence to satire is to simultaneously attack a multitude of unquestioned shibboleths – be it lazy reliance on identity politics, Donald Trump’s presumed unfitness to be president, or even the sanctimonious mourning over Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Yet leaving aside, for example, the sheer repetitiveness and predictability of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump putdowns, what makes such political targets ultimately ineffective as contemporary satirical fodder is simply this: Farage and Trump are funnier than most comedians. Both figures, after all, managed to accomplish, in quick succession, major acts of geopolitical subversion against the status quo. Once in the not-too-distant past, this would have been the objective of comedy.
Though such an observation remains anathema to current entertainment establishment, such is the short-sightedness of effective satirists that rarely do they think ahead in terms of people-pleasing career advancement. Rather, he or she is compelled by an attribute especially repulsive to today’s current crop of entertainers: morality.
For amidst all the speculation amongst comedians as to why I decided to hold those in my field up to ridicule, the simple – and therefore baffling – truth was that I ridiculed them because I believed they needed to be ridiculed. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Battle of Ideas 2017″ use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.battleofideas.org.uk%2F|||”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_column_text]A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 28 and 29 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Political activism and protest today
Recent years have seen something of a revitalisation of political protests and marches, but just what is protest historically and today?
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Can satire survive the era of fake news? Will the ‘fake news’ era irreparably damage the satirist’s ability to effect any kind of societal change?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Censorship and identity: Free speech for you but not for me?
Is identity politics the new tool of censorship and, if so, how should we respond?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”96059″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]In a rapidly changing world, debating ideas matters more than ever. The Battle of Ideas festival, at The Barbican in London, provides a unique forum to discuss the big issues of our time.
Index on Censorship will be participating in panel discussions: CEO Jodie Ginsberg will discuss censorship and identity politics on Sunday 29 October from 2-3:30pm; Assistant editor Ryan McChrystal will debate political activism and protest on Sunday 29 October from 12-1pm.
We’ll also be manning a booth in the main hall. Stop by for a tattoo and talk to the friendly Index staff about our organisation’s work defending freedom of expression.
Battle of Ideas 2016 A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 22 and 23 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.
Comedy and censorship: Are you kidding me? Is the fear of offence killing comedy? Jodie Ginsberg, Timandra Harkness, Will Franken, Tom Walker and Steve Bennett with chair Andrew Doyle.
From hate speech to cyber-bullying: Is social media too toxic?
What of the free speech of those harassed into silence by a stream of abuse? And what of the abuse itself, consisting, as it so often seems to, of fantasy punishments and name-calling? Is that speech worth defending?
I remember the happy clowns of my childhood when the family would sit in front of the TV during the festive holidays to delight at the magnificent performances of the colourful pranksters in Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus.
This sensibility of the clown as the fool, the butt or object of ridicule, loveable but sad, hiding a deep melancholy beneath the exaggerated forced smile was prevalent throughout the twentieth century and was a muse for poets and artists such as Picasso, Bruce Nauman and Uno Rondinone.
The image of the clown changed as I grew older. With glam rock in the 1970s came Leo Sayer’s clown phase and David Bowie’s Lindsay Kemp phase, which re-surfaced in his video for Ashes to Ashes.
But why has the clown now leapt from the realms of the circus, pantomime and contemporary art into our everyday reality? It may the lead up to Halloween but in suburban America the craze of the “creepy” or “killer clown” has reached hysterical proportions. Unsettling, scary individuals dressed as clowns are reported across the media in the USA terrorising the public.
According to Time the craze began in South Carolina in late August where clowns were allegedly spotted trying to lure children into the woods. These reports were unsubstantiated but through meme culture and the media, the frenzy has now gripped the UK. The hysteria has led to lynch mobs hunting down clowns and the banning of clown suits. I have friends and family who told me that school authorities have sent letters, emails and texts to parents warning them about clowns. A policeman even came to visit a school asking secondary school pupils to be on alert.
With the school authorities and the law further whipping up a moral panic about psychotic clowns on the loose, it’s no wonder that children with highly fertile imaginations are spooked and parents are feeling anxious. One twelve-year-old girl daren’t leave the house and sleeps in her parents’ bed. This story has become a familiar one. The panic has even led to the cancellation of a theatre group, The Clown Doctors (the actors wear red noses), who were due to perform in a children’s hospital in Newcastle because “the hospital security said they had been placed on a local hit list for the killer clown craze”.
Fancy dress shops have been asked by the police not to sell clown costumes to anyone suspicious and the NSPCC’s Childline received more than 120 calls from worried children. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and online news services are awash with impending doom that killer clowns are on the rampage in our communities. What the hell is going on?
Of course, young people love playing pranks on each other but any adult trying to scare children out of their wits by chasing them, or lurking in dark areas, shouldn’t be surprised if they get a punch on the red nose. However, proactively hunting down creepy clowns is stretching the horror narrative a step too far.
Clowns are ambivalent figures where sadness and humour intermingle, but as with most romantic dispositions, there is a dark side to the persona. French Romantic Poets such as Theophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval and Charles Baudelaire imagined a dark transformation from the happy face/sad visage of the Pierrot to a more tragic figure: “The mask began to give way to reveal a skull beneath, the presence of death.”
The transformation of the clown into the grotesque is indicative of the times we live in. We increasingly feel powerless, disconnected, anxious, paranoid, traumatised, in need of being protected, triggered by certain books, films, art and speech that make some people feel uncomfortable. In this world the clown has become the bogeyman, the outsider, the anti-social, anti-establishment figure of imminent doom, rather like Heath Ledger’s mesmeric portrayal of the nihilistic, terrorist Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
This clown’s performance of terror in our everyday lives reveals the growing breakdown of public space as civil, social space. Sociality, the sphere of social intercourse, and sodality – the sense of fraternity and belonging to community in deep and multiple ways – are eroded and replaced by narcissistic attention seeking, exhibitionist tendencies.
The “killer clown” meme is the extreme selfie, demanding that we look at them, that perhaps beneath the grotesque clown mask he or she may have some hidden depths of quality, but sadly that is not the case. They are simply creeps.
Having said that, social media and public space should allow for a multiplicity of expressions. The tiny minority of extreme, aggressive clown’s performing outside of the frameworks of art, theatre, film, circus, the internet and Halloween cannot scream victimhood if they are given a hiding for being deliberately anti-social. However, most of the menace seems to be hyped up via meme culture, the media, hearsay and unsubstantiated stories. It’s how urban myths are created and the craze will eventually die down and fade away.
The greater question we should be asking ourselves is how is it that children, young people, adults and the authorities alike have come to be gripped by this public performance of perceived terror?[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1485724639176-d1dda485-42a7-8″ taxonomies=”8826″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Battle of Ideas 2016 A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 22 and 23 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.
Comedy and censorship: Are you kidding me? Is the fear of offence killing comedy? Jodie Ginsberg, Timandra Harkness, Will Franken, Tom Walker and Steve Bennett with chair Andrew Doyle.
From hate speech to cyber-bullying: Is social media too toxic?
What of the free speech of those harassed into silence by a stream of abuse? And what of the abuse itself, consisting, as it so often seems to, of fantasy punishments and name-calling? Is that speech worth defending?
Earlier this year, Labour MP Yvette Cooper kicked off #ReclaimTheInternet, a cross-party campaign against misogynist abuse online.
The reception was mixed at best. Many people were excited and thankful for the initiative, and it isn’t hard to see why when you look the racist abuse and threats of violence being thrown at people for expressing an opinion online. Right on cue, the MPs behind the campaign have been subjected to a barrage of abuse (some legal, some not).
The impact of online abuse is poorly understood, and perhaps most poorly understood by those who do it, but the harm it can do is unquestionable. Research by The Guardian into abusive comments included interviews with journalists who spoke about an emotional and physical toll, though this can only scratch the surface. It isn’t difficult to find examples of people who have taken their own lives after campaigns of online harassment. Tragically, it is when the person subjected to abuse doesn’t have the platform to speak out against their harassment that we tend only to hear about it when headlines become epitaphs.
But for many, there was something sinister about #ReclaimTheInternet. The thought police were back. It’s one of the internet’s favourite narratives. There is a strong libertarian tradition online, particularly on social media, always watchful for attempts by overbearing states to impinge on free speech online.
One well-followed advocate for free speech on Twitter, @SkipLicker, was vehement in his opposition. “Free speech means freedom from Government censorship,” he tweeted. “Not freedom from ridicule because you talk bollocks.”
The thing is, he’s absolutely right: social media as a public forum has a vital role in our democracy. It is a public forum for debate, where hundreds of thousands of British citizens engage in politics. It is a platform for users to voice their political opinions, whatever the shade. It is a channel through which those who govern us can be taken to task. If you need more evidence about the democratic role social media can play, take a look at the countries which suppress it.
Ridicule, though. Not harassment.
A favourite cartoon that emerges whenever someone mentions abuse online is of a woman shovelling manure over a wall and then complaining when manure comes the other way. It’s quite funny, but it misses the point because frequently it isn’t an eye for an eye. If only it was: if for every opinion somebody saw online that they disagreed with, they responded in kind, the internet would be an (even more) brilliant place. But death threats aren’t responding in kind, and death threats aren’t “trolling”.
Over the last couple of years, the “internet troll” has emerged as a catch-all term for unpleasantness on the internet. Everything from sustained, sexually aggravated harassment to posting atheist arguments in a Christian chatroom is lumped together under an evocative, easily digestible insult.
This wasn’t always the case.
Plenty of the most dedicated trolls themselves lament the good old days when trolling was really trolling. Cleverly crafted images or phrases – offensive, controversial, but legal – stirred up horrified reactions. Trolls might work for weeks at a time, lurking in a forum or comments section, perfecting the perfect taunt that might start the biggest argument, then sit back and watch the carnage unfold. The very word emerged in the early 1990s from the idea of “trolling” a line with some juicy bait and seeing who bites.
Trolling is, in many ways, a firmly established British tradition. An episode of Brass Eye or a copy of the Private Eye should be enough to convince you of that. Nobody does satire like us Brits, and there’s still plenty of it online.
The examples of clever trolling are endless. In 2010, a neo-nazi march in Bavaria found themselves being “sponsored” for their walk with all the money going to anti-extremist organisations. Bananas were served as refreshments: “Mein Mampf! (My Munch!)”.
More recently, supporters of Bernie Sanders found themselves facing placard-touting trolls raising money for the victims of socialism at one of his rallies.
I have previously writtenin defence of trolling. It might be satirical. It might be expressing a controversial opinion or offensive remark, hoping to provoke a reaction. It might be Sunderland fans flying a 30ft banner over St James’ Park gloating at their rivals’ relegation.
I spoke to Old Holborn, one of Twitter’s longest-standing and most highly-followed free speech advocates once described by the Daily Mail as “Britain’s vilest troll”. Trolling, according to Old Holborn, “is the (not so) gentle art of carefully selecting an irresistible morsel of bait to seduce a willing prey into breaking their own freedom of speech censorship or personal values of good taste. It exposes hypocrisy, self-denial and the inner soul and values of the individual. If your opinions are laughable to some, expect some to publicly laugh at them.”
But trolling isn’t rape threats.
“Threats are not trolling,” writes Old Holborn. “Rape, violence and murder remain the basis of intimidation and are designed to silence. We worship robust banter, not the cold, obedient silence of terror. Laugh a little, prod, poke and provoke. We’re all the richer for genuine trolling.”
What happened to the trolls of yore? They’re still out there and they still play an important role in reminding us that offensive or unpleasant opinions that test the limits of free speech are vital in a society that prides itself on free public debate. In an age where students are demanding safe zones from opinions they disagree with and algorithms ensure we only see content we like, it’s vital we encounter stuff we don’t agree with.
But we have plenty of people who don’t deserve the title of troll. Hangers-on – wannabe trolls, perhaps – whose recourse to crude threats of violence or recourse to racist or misogynistic abuse bear no resemblance to the trolling of old. It’s a shame that trolling has come to mean this because it has muddied the waters on what is OK to say online and what isn’t. I would be surprised if those trolls who do look to provoke, ridicule and satirise didn’t feel the same, particularly as I know some have been the subject of death threats and threats to their families and children.
Free speech has been debated for centuries but it has never been an absolute right. Even the First Amendment, the Holy Grail, has limitations on what you’re allowed to say. Our own British law says that the standards of an “open and just multi-racial society” has no space for racially-aggravated abuse.
The free speech absolutist is out of step with the society they claim to advocate for.
And yet what do we do about encroachments? What do we do when justified criticism is silenced as “bullying” or “abusive” or “offensive”? How about when an epidemic of safe spaces outgrow any pretence to protection and become tools of censorship and suppression? Or when sharing a platform with somebody is suddenly tantamount to endorsing them, perhaps the most ludicrous and contradictory charge levelled at public figures lately?
We must call it out. We ought to continue to push against the borders of acceptability, embrace the offensive and celebrate the satirical. We must seek out and confront opposing viewpoints, ever more difficult in a world where algorithms and laziness drive us into echo chambers of consenting views.
But we ought to pick our battles.
We live in a world where the young are less comfortable than ever with free speech. Convincing them that we need to be allowed to racially abuse people online is a waste of breath and it risks alienating them further.
Instead, we need to speak to them of the importance of dissenting opinion. We need to explain how it differs from abuse. We need to stress the importance of the offensive and being offended. We need to encourage them to actually engage with something they disagree with and reject it, not stifle it before it speaks a word. Rather than reacting angrily to any attempt to make the internet a better place, those with libertarian beliefs might do well to pick their battles, to protect that which is most important.
We need to stand up for satire, for controversial opinions, for being offensive, for the good trolls. We don’t need to stand up for rape threats.
Alex Krasodomski-Jones is a researcher for the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media CASM at Demos, a British cross-party think tank.[/vc_column_text][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1485724379379-f195b0d0-ae74-5″ taxonomies=”8826″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
