Jerry Seinfeld is not just a practitioner of comedy, he’s become a philosopher of the profession and he’s arguing that Wokeism is ruining the humour business, with racial stereotypes, gender fluidity, Islam criticism, and domestic violence now all taboo, to name just a few topics.
The strength of comedy is to point out underlying truths, to expose pride, to say aloud what everyone thinks but is too frightened to voice, or to help us clarify our fuzzy thoughts.
When a man is wearing fake extended eyelashes and has dressed himself in pinafore, comedy gives us permission to acknowledge that he’s still a man.
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the ‘Party’ required people to believe that 2+2=5. After Orwell’s character Winston is tortured for incorrect answers, he sits defeated at dusty table and writes with his finger, 2+2=5. In such a world, or one heading in that direction, it is the comedians who can turn such absurdity into a biting humiliation of the enforcers.
That’s why comedians are silenced and if that’s not successful, disappeared or outright murdered. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein famously had his satirists killed. Stalin had high-profile satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko harassed.
It was not so long ago we saw Islamic puritanical extremists perpetrate cold-blooded murder of the comic writers of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The satirists’ crime was to publish caricatures of Muslim prophet Mohammad.
So far, our present-day Woke enforcers in say, the haven of the taxpayer-funded ABC, have focused resources on cancelling the supply-side of the comic business; those who proactively write social media posts, stand-up comedians who perform at venues, and those who give speeches to public audiences. This has been highly successful as judged by the degree of self-censorship now prevailing.
Even powerful Hollywood no longer makes funny films because producers are forced to thread a path of political acceptability, not one of truth.
What’s interesting to me is how long will it be before Woke enforcers move onto the demand side of the comedy business, to reprimand those who enjoy and express pleasure at hearing something taboo. This will become increasingly pressing because anonymity on the internet and social media means comedians and truth tellers are finding ways to disseminate wrong think and avoiding detection by the Woke enforcement machine.
Therefore, to continue the campaign against ‘wrong-think’, Wokeists will progress from focusing on cancelling the supply-side to expanding their domain to include the demand-side, those who hold wrong views and consume wrong-think.
Attacking both supply and demand is what governments do in tackling the crack cocaine market, making illegal both production and consumption.
There is, of course, a fundamental problem of evidence gathering when punishing the demand-side. It is easy to get recordings of stand-up comedian routines and force venues to cancel their shows, but not so easy to identify those in the citizenry whose thoughts are in agreement with the comics’ sentiments.
There have been some tentative steps in this direction. We’ve seen examples of white men losing their jobs for simply ‘liking’ posts on Facebook or X. This is an example of sanctioning the demand side, because ‘liking’ indicates your thoughts but does not involve actual production of wrong-think.
And don’t forget there is already a reliable network of grass roots informants to report transgressors. We saw this little army at work during Covid, a patriotic enthusiasm emerged among many to dob in lockdown violators.
How big a step would it be for bored, civic-minded do-gooders to start listing and publicising fellow citizens for laughing at jokes which make fun of Woke doctrine?
I’ve twice been judged harshly for laughing. The first time was when I responded hysterically when told this story (apparently true).
A hard-working, yet hard-drinking Australian banker was working in Hong Kong. His wife stayed at home but had maids and played tennis. His lifestyle increasingly angered the wife and she became convinced he was sleeping around.
Early one Saturday morning, he crawled into bed drunk and exhausted from big night of revelry. Normally his wife would turn away disgusted, but this time she jumped out of bed to lampoon him.
‘I’m absolutely sick of this,’ she screamed. ‘You are an unfaithful pig.’
Rather than cower as usual, this time he also jumped from the bed also and they confronted each other across the mattress.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I know you’ve been f’ing other women,’ she yelled back.
‘That’s bull! You always say these things and I’m sick of it! How do you know what I’ve been doing?’
She then, apparently, pointed towards at his crotch and yelled ‘you’re still wearing the friggin’ condom.’
My response to hearing this story was deep rooted, unconstrained laughter. Yet, one of the people in our group who observed me was mortified by my response and called me ‘sick’ for finding it so amusing.
The one I recall was when reading a short story called the Blind Man by French author Guy de Maupassant.
Thankfully the incident is fictional because it describes appalling cruelty in rural France in the 19th Century. Back then, those unable to contribute work were seen as parasites and treated terribly.
Maupassant illustrates this through the horrendous treatment of an orphaned blind man by his brutish brother-in-law who was irritated at having to feed the nuisance.
Dinner time was when everyone had their fun. The blind man was reproached for every mouthful of food, called a drone and a clown. He became a figure of entertainment, with neighbours invited over to observe the practical jokes played on him.
Maupassant writes: ‘After this they got tired even of these practical jokes, and the brother-in-law, angry at having to support him always, struck him, cuffed him incessantly, laughing at his futile efforts to ward off or return the blows.’
For some reason, it made me laugh.
I gave the story to a work colleague to see if she also would find that nugget of humour. She did not and, in fact, called my response ‘disgraceful’.
The thing about genuine laughter is it’s an honest response of the body, it’s a very clear indication of how someone perceives something. As such, it is a physical sign that gives the tyrant useful information about what’s happening in the citizen’s brain.
Do they believe the tyrant’s truth that 2+2=5, or does their laughter indicate they believe it to be four?
I think it inevitable that laughter will become a flashpoint in the culture war.
Nick Hossack is a public policy consultant. He is former policy director at the Australian Bankers’ Association and former adviser to Prime Minister John Howard.
