Putting the Mock in Democracy

Political humour has an ancient lineage and a vigorous and generically varied present. The idea that there is something inherently ridiculous about the political class as a group, along with many of its activities, has been articulated in widely different historical and geographical contexts, quite apart from comical perceptions of specific deficits at the level of persons, processes, policies and structures. In Britain, and maybe elsewhere, it can be seen at work in the old joke ‘don’t vote – it only encourages them’, a phrasing in which a symbolic hit back at elite management is only achieved by a degree of (ironic) withdrawal from a core form of democratic participation. Or there is Homer Simpson, taking comfort from the benefits of representational democracy in a manner which revealingly departs from enshrined principle – ‘That’s why we have elected officials, Honey – so we don’t have to think.’ Among other things, this illustrates the ambivalence or ambiguity surrounding many forms of political humour which, as Tsakona and Popa suggest in Studies in Political Humour, often complicate its relation to political opinion and political action. Where no democratic structures exist at all, as in some of their examples, humour mostly works vigorously and often darkly in the space of that overarching deficit. Where there is a system of formal democracy, but some doubt about its effective operation, the gap between ostensible and real provides rich territory for shared ironies and critique, variously inflected. It is not the idea itself that is being ‘mocked’ but the limited modes of its implementation. Media systems work not only to circulate political humour. They are also, of course, a major site for its production, the mainstream routes now being joined by an increasingly wide range of online traffic. Political humour can still be generated at ground level clearly, but it has also become a staple strand of the entertainment industry in many societies, a matter of professional recipes and performances and a strategic sense of the 459454 MCS34810.1177/0163443712459454Media, Culture & SocietyBook Reviews 2012