Whose laughing now?

A stimulating and thought provoking speech by Armando Iannucci on culture, media and politics.

Comedy to the rescue

What is wrong with our politics? And why is it that Have I got news for you probably has a better commentary on our political life than anything else?

politicians have stopped speaking to us properly, the media has stopped examining their actions in anything like a forensic way, and broadcast culture has become so watered down, so scared of fact, that people are less inclined to turn to anything other than entertainment for information.

Broadcast journalism today promotes itself not so much on what it talks about but on the method it uses: "Broadcasting 24 hours a day, correspondents in over 50 capital cities, giving you all the headlines every 15 minutes, up to six generations of journalists gathered in one newsroom, making you feel all the news you want to feel, even on Christmas Day." Hi-tech software and speedy transmission makes everything instant news, but we lose sight of the skilled individuals who can process this random unstoppable flow of information and somehow construct a meaningful examination of it. We need narrative.

So why has comedy a role to play? Because

That's why I find myself stepping into that gap. Not just me, but many other humorists, satirists, comics, artists, people who make a virtue of the fact they distort logic for comic effect, but who still feel compelled to analyse that logic because no one else will. Everyone has analysed the result of the Hutton inquiry. But no one has analysed all the evidence given during it. Because the result, not the evidence, was deemed to have been the story.

But how can we expect the media to want to do anything more when the political debate they are meant to be reporting has become restricted to the point of non-existence? When politicians themselves want to debate image, postpone policy to the last moment, defer content until style has been sorted and sold, then there's a decreasing pool of ideas and arguments to analyse.

There is a depressing logic to this speech - you look at the display of political leaders in our country and you wonder if any of them are worth voting for? Politics is about ideas than help better shape our world and societies. We do seem a bit short on them at the moment.

Or perhaps its platforms like Current TV that will side step the mephisto waltz of politics, that will help us all rethink and play a part in the world we want to live in. And also read Culture lock down, freedom of speech lock down - what's going on?

Perhaps therefore we need to rethink how we engage and discuss politics? Do we the people actually have a role to play outside of election time. And are politicians just too mediated and too funny "ironically" for their own good?

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