What is 'bad taste' in satire?

The attack on stand-up comedian Agrima Joshua shows how anyone can claim disadvantaged status

The accusation of ‘bad taste’ against politically loaded humour is not a new one and politics is a bit like religious faith in that people do not like the objects of their beliefs publicly mocked.

I recollect that in the 1970s, a piece in the British comic magazine ‘Punch’ dealing with Karl Marx — who is interred in a London cemetery — coming back to life when an anarchist blows up his grave. Marx walks around and finds a hippie smoking a pipe.

When he enquires what the man is smoking, the hippie replies, “Opium, man, it’s the religion of the people.” Marx is puzzled because the statement sounds ‘vaguely familiar.’ I recounted this joke to an avowedly Marxist friend at the time — and there were plenty going about — and his response was that it was “in bad taste”. Satirical comedy, by its very nature, is offensive to its targets and the targets invariably find jokes about them in bad taste.

This piece is prompted by the recent social media attack against stand up comic Agrima Joshua threatening her with rape for poking fun at the proposed statue for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Looking at the actual clip, one finds the humour forced and wishes for more intelligence, but there is nothing even faintly exceptionable in the utterances.

Stand up comics in India are a sad lot and usually get laughs by using swear words and, to see what great stand up comedy can do, one should watch African-American comic Chris Rock on YouTube. Agrima Joshua got instant fame because the Shiv Sena (as expected) took umbrage and demanded her arrest. Politicians take umbrage at such things because it becomes an occasion for them to address their constituencies and they act very angry.

The more violent their political utterances, the more famous the utterer becomes — especially since the dividing line between fame and notoriety is absent in India.

Shubam Mishra also benefited since he was arrested for his comment, which means that he also attained immediate fame. It may be expected that he is already out and has earned himself a host of admirers.

There is no doubt that attacking a satirist for practising his or her trade in public is a deeply regrettable happening but I would ask if this is not to be associated with the decline of satire in the West with the rise of political correctness.

The popular platforms for satire — ranging from Punch to Mad Magazine — have all shut down and satire in cinema is virtually non-existent. Why else would the Oscar Winner Parasite (by Bong Joon-ho), even while being satirical, conclude on an optimist note when the director admitted that such optimism was patently misplaced?

Political correctness is the avoidance of forms of expression or action perceived to exclude, marginalise, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against, and virtually any group can make such a claim to disadvantage today.

My own understanding of the origins of political correctness is that its wide acceptance coincides with the commercialisation of education in the US, when it was not only necessary to bring in paying students but also necessary to keep all of them engaged in some kind of pseudo-thought that did not make intellectual demands on them.

Political correctness as a philosophy not only makes few intellectual demands but also allows its practitioners to feel good about themselves, that they are engaged in meaningful and moral action. The most advantageous thing about it is that it has absolutely no effect upon state policy, since it is all about ‘individual responsibility’.

The upsurge in ‘cancel culture’ and the demand to demolish statues of historical figures from a few centuries back is essentially not different from the Shiv Sena’s utterances about Agrima Joshua’s stand-up comedy. Both are examples of intolerance where something is taken exception to because it will hurt the supposed sentiments of other people.

Satire was valuable precisely because it hurt people’s sentiments — how else does the concerned artist attempt to reform society peacefully if not by hurting some people though verbal or visual barbs?

For a long while, Indians were tolerant of barbs against them, and one recollects the fake holy men in Hindi comedies. Now, it seems, a large number of Indians, of virtually every political hue, are seeing the advantages of extending the domain of political correctness to include themselves and their kin under the ‘disadvantaged.’

Everyone is disadvantaged in some way, somewhere or another, and it is only necessary to find the right arguments to claim it. Free speech would be ideal, but an enormous number of people would stop feeling good if free speech were allowed since they would then need to abandon sanctimony.

(The writer is a well-known film critic)