As 2020 went from shit to worse, an emergency committee of satirists and comedians was urgently convened to consider the crisis. The year was bad, the government was mad and the comedy was good but just not heavy duty enough to reach the needed levels of lampooning. Once upon a time The Thick of It, Amando Iannuci’s subtle piss-take of New Labour and the Coalition years, tickled the need for a chuckle at the politicians expense. But as politics overtook fiction in ridiculousness, poor Amando was forced to search history for a time that was less depressingly bonkers: the death of Stalin. Nowadays Michael Spicer’s The Room Next Door, Meggie Foster’s lip-synching & Munya Chawawa’s news reworking could force a smile from the hardest audience. But this was the year of Boris, Brexit, global pandemics, Trump’s attempt to railroad American democracy… Something more was needed. ‘Could we un-mummify Chirs Morris of Brasseye fame?’ the comedy crisis committee mused. ‘We’ve already re-calibrated Frankie Boyle from mocking the Queen’s privates to feminism with Sarah Pascoe.’ But it wasn’t enough. Then an idea occurred to this dark council of piss-takers, parodists and caricaturists. A dark, twisted, felt covered idea buried in the caverns of comedy history. The sacred keys were unearthed, the locks unlocked and the dark cupboards opened…. For the first time in two decades… they reached into the shadows and pulled out for the world to see….
FUCKING PUPPETS.
That’s right folks, the inglorious return of Spitting Image! The satirical puppet show that skewed the 1980s and roasted the early 1990s. It would go after the most powerful politicians and the cream of celebrity culture. Everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Mick Jagger was immortalised and destroyed in grotesque puppet form. Whether its return is a much needed injection of comedy or an ultimately doomed attempt to plug streaming site Britbox, we shall see. For now we can chuckle away as Boris; his ninja Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab; dominatrix, Priti Patel and; alien adviser, Mr Cummings himself, do their best to ru(i)n the country.
For those who feel that there is a deeply unfair left wing bias in comedy, fear not! These puppets aren't just a threat to your educational privilege, decades in political power and tax avoiding millions, there's some poking of the lefties too. Greta Thunberg tries to save West Ham Football Club and Speaker Pelosi appropriates every voter bloc and their culture she can.
As the United Kingdom turned to puppets, the USA also looked for a heavy duty comedy tool to cut through the political boulders tearing through society. We can imagine the Vice-Presidents of the Federation of America’s Comedians casting around for the comic equivalent of black and decker. What could blast away the bullshit of an election where everyone is rooting for one sex pest because the other is so much worse? And there, presumably conducting a vuvuzela and kazoo orchestra in an abandoned theatre, the producers of Saturday Night Live found Jim Carrey.
As SNL’s Joe Biden you get what Carrey is needed for, the patented Carrey grin. “That’s why we are going to win in November’ grin; “that’s why the American people back us”, grin; “Oh shut up Mr President “ grin. Complete with classy shades, Carrey is just your regular Joe served with a smile and a story about the good old days (2009-17). In some ways that does make for more nuanced satire, at least compared to the self satirising Donald Trump. The addition of some bubbling anger management issues or an audience sing along are the equivalent of adding a subtle vanilla pod to Joe Biden’s home-made custard recipe.
Parts of these shows do feel crude. In Spitting Image you might only wince once when Priti Patel appears as a dominatrix but pity the poor craftsman who was asked to sow together the puppet for Trump’s penis. Some of the classic Jim Carrey stage antics feel a little out of place for sleepy Joe. It is these moments that might make us nostalgic for the good old days of nerdy wit and wordsmithing rather than grotesque caricature. Sure Carrey and celeb puppets might hit a broader audience but what about the laughter conjured by Kate Mkinnon’s Hilary Rodham Clinton, Ha. Ha. Ha. Hah. Or the angry outburst of Malcom Tucker as he loses control, “it’s like the Shawshank Redemption but more crawling through shit and no redemption”.
But maybe we are just nostalgic for a time when these impressions echoed a different class of politicians: a chatter of mildly baffling incompetents, only deadly in any sense if you were a poor person caught by austerity or an Iraqi. Now Covid-19 and climate change are set to ravage the middle classes from Hampshire to the Hamptons too, dry wit doesn’t really cut it. And of course there’s always the risk of the ultimate act to kill satire, President Trump launching nuclear war against twitter user @BasildonBernieFan4eva96. Maybe satire fans of an earlier era could have done something about this, got out from behind their ivory streaming service and tried to have a non-patronising conversation with their fellow citizens. Who knows, perhaps it’s not too late. In the meantime, at least we’ll all have a laugh together.
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