See something, say something, do something
Madeleine Albright came to Amsterdam last Friday and I was lucky to be in the audience to hear her speak. She’s incredible: witty, articulate, clear, direct, with a huge amount to say about the state of the world today. She’s written a book called Fascism: A Warning, and why yes, I did just link to that on Hive, because you don’t go listen to Madeleine Albright speak about fascism and then pop up a link to Amazon. I haven’t read it yet but if she writes the way that she speaks, I feel total confidence in making the recommendation. The book is not only a history, but also a call to action.
Albright insists on the importance of not taking our democracy for granted, of not lying down with our heads under our collective pillow and waiting for this all to pass. We - by which I mean the centre / left / liberals I assume are sharing this filter bubble with me - may not be in the majority now, but true democracy is both about the power of the majority and also the rights of the minority. When we abandon the fight, we allow things to move closer and closer to the winner-takes-all system of autocracy; of fascism. Her slogan, she says, is: see something, say something, do something. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been trying to avoid doing all three. The news is best viewed in short doses through splayed fingers, and as a writer my ‘saying something’ is my ‘doing something’, but through the medium of comic fiction, can I say / do anything with impact?
Enter Hannah Gadsby, whose ‘Nanette’ I watched on Netflix last night. Framed as an explanation of her desire to quit comedy, Hannah deconstructs the nature of the joke: the skillful comedian creates tension and then relieves it, but there are some forms of tension that should not be relieved. At a time when voices that have long been silent are finally speaking up in anger, should we still be seeking out the soothing panacea of laughter? Most funny people know that we learned to make people laugh as a way of making difficult situations easier, of popping balloons of anger or unhappiness in a sad home, a hostile school. We make the joke and the discomfort goes away, but where does it go? We swallow it, and it lives in our bodies. And in the outside world, nothing changes.
But, as Gadsby’s show perfectly illustrates, comedy can also be a constructive way of making the unpalatable palatable. It is the jam in which you can conceal a very bitter pill. Comedy writers need to ask ourselves: who is the butt of the joke, what is the reason for the humour, are we bringing people closer to necessary discomfort or are we taking the tension away too easily, so that they don’t have to face up to the darkness any more - the darkness outside and the darkness within.
Albright and Gadsby have challenged me to make sure I am taking full responsibility for the things that I write, not just going for the joke in the hope that it will make everyone feel better, that it will make me feel better. In their different ways, they have emphasised the importance of sitting with discomfort and engaging with it, not just trying to make it disappear.
And writing this piece is not enough. It’s what I do next, and next, and next.
