There is a tendency nowadays to pass off the puerile and the crude as satire or comic humour and then hope for some free publicity as the brickbats rain down.
Satire is an art form that comes from an insightful and profound understanding of human nature and situations. You could see it in the pages of Punch when they took on the high and mighty of British politics. When you scanned through the antics of Spy vs Spy in the pages of Mad, you chuckled at the paranoid cloak-and-dagger world of the Cold War. Even today, Private Eye gives its readers a quirky and irreverent take on current affairs, be it Brexit or the latest sex scandal. The same goes for the Borowitz Report, now part of The New Yorker, or Charlie Hebdo.
Lampooning Helps See Through One’s Weaknesses
Good satire, lampooning, comic parody – call it what you will – works because it is closest to reality and the truth. It holds up to the public light the foibles and weaknesses of the rich and famous. It takes a looking glass to those society holds in awe, exposing them as only too human with the same frailties as the rest of us. Instead of blind idol worship or pure adulation it enables us to view them with a balanced perspective. It exhorts us not to take this world too seriously.
Satire is genuinely funny. Always irreverent, often ironic, it does not need to rely on profanities or bathroom humour. The powerful and the popular are caricatured but it does not need to insult people to get a reaction out of them. Personal traits like a feared statesman cowering before his wife or the toothbrush moustache of a feared dictator are mercilessly exploited to the hilt.
Good Sense of Humour
It is absolutely all right to ridicule; but a bunch of swear words are just that – a bunch of swear words. Where is the craft, the skill, in that? Or for that matter in morphing someone’s face? Not only is it juvenile and in poor taste but it also demonstrates an absolute bankruptcy of creativity.
How is it different from taunting a homeless man on the street for his misfortune or a handicapped person for their disability? Where is ingenuity in that? Where is the comedian’s craft? ...and most importantly, where is the humour?
Many would say, pointing at the publications listed above, that it is a class issue and satire does not resonate with masses in India the way slapstick does. But Indians have long been appreciative of quality satire. Urdu comic verse, the earlier cartoons of the late Bal Thackeray or Bengali magazine Byangochitra all enjoyed loyal readership across class and political divides.
Comedian Cyrus Broacha has been steadily chipping away at the establishment in his inimitable way for years now and has been flanked by a new breed of young talent. Be it recent ventures like Unreal Times, cult classics like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro or even an interpretation like Shashi Tharoor’s Great Indian Novel, Indians at different times have been mature at accepting criticism and even at being the butt of jokes.
Cheap Gimmickry Not Acceptable
It is absolutely all right to be mischievous, even offensive. But cheap gimmickry, like the one in the midst of the present controversy, insults public intelligence and more importantly, the work and contribution of the serious professionals bringing much joy and laughter into our wearied lives.
Insult is added to injury when they try to pass off the public censure and outrage they deserve as censorship and muzzling a free voice.
In today’s polarised world, where everybody is rapidly forgetting the ability to laugh at themselves, satire enables us view shades of grey in everything.
India desperately needs people who don’t take the world too seriously. What we don’t need are people who insult and spread animosity for their petty personal motives – there are already enough of them around.
(The writer is a journalist and communication professional based in Kolkata. He can be reached at @AbirPalTheQuint)
Also read:
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