Room for comedy?
Googling ‘comedy in climate change’ produced just one result: this 2015 piece from Australian comedian Andrew Denton. ‘Comedy about climate change’ produced over 21,000 – still low, but we already knew there’s not a whole lot of laughs in the reality. But if you get one hit for a search you’d really better read it, and I enjoyed Denton’s article.
Mel Brooks: ‘Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.’ And one I hadn’t heard before: “When comedian Peter Cook set up the Establishment Club in London, a satirical club, he was asked, ‘What difference do you think this is going to make to British politics?’ … ‘Well, I think it will affect British politics in the same way as German cabaret unseated Hitler’.” We can overstate the value of satire. But “comedy can become a useful tool to speak across the gap” if, as Denton suggests, both activists and denialists “have motives that stem from a similar place … an incredible fear about the almost incomprehensible task of trying to face up to an existential threat … Ultimately, it’s inviting people to attend their own funeral procession.” Which, as dark humour goes…