Americans often think of Britain as a whimsical, Monty Pythonesque place that is full of innuendo, mischief, and people who cannot take anybody, least of all themselves, very seriously. Even the stiff, stodgy upper classes, in American eyes, have charming, Wodehousian absurdist qualities. This is hardly surprising. British comedy is among our successful exports. John Cleese of Monty Python has said the group are treated as “minor Gods” in the United States.
Americans might be surprised, then, to hear of the stir that Cleese provoked recently by saying that London is “not really an English city any more.” The backlash was so swift and furious that one might think Cleese had outed himself as a neo-Nazi or voiced his cheerful support for the practice of throttling kittens. “The only thing damaging British culture here,” said the journalist Jon Stone, “is John Cleese turning out to be a bigot and thus spoiling the enjoyment of his back catalogue.” Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, butted in and said, “Diversity is our greatest strength.”
How Cleese is a “bigot” when he voiced neither dislike nor disdain for anyone and made no judgment of “diversity” — which, in London, includes a population that is 37% foreign born, a dizzying array of multicultural shops, restaurants, places of worship, and a financial district stuffed with the gigantic forts of international banks and corporations — remains a mystery. Rather, he simply said that it was not English as he had understood the term, and not for him.
Such a furious response to an old comedian’s grumbling reflects a sad truth about British society, a product of insecurity rather than strength. British people are proud of their sense of humor, and other nations — except, perhaps, Ireland and India — associate us with our jokes. From Jane Austen to Evelyn Waugh, British writers have been known for their comic qualities. It was only in the 20th century, though, that this feature came to dominate our national self-image. It is now declining.
Once, it would have been absurd to claim that humor was the most prominent British characteristic, as if we archly established the world’s biggest empire, wittily squashed revolutions, and humorously prevailed in two world wars. But after World War II, as the Empire declined, faith receded, and counterculturalism spread, the British sense of adventure, martial discipline, paternalistic idealism, and Anglican belief became unsustainable aspects of Britishness, irrelevant abroad and regarded with growing cynicism at home. Humor came to the fore.
An important milestone was the 1960 stage revue Beyond the Fringe. Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore, and Alan Bennett satirized politicians, vicars, the police, and even British attitudes toward World War II. In an unprecedented impersonation of Harold Macmillan, for example, Cook portrayed the British prime minister as a foolish, senile man who mumbled about how Britain could become an “honest broker”: “No nation could be more honest … no nation could be broker.”
In an article on “British culture and the end of empire,” Stuart Ward wrote that the satire boom that followed Beyond the Fringe, introducing the world to the talents of Monty Python, The Two Ronnies, Barry Humphries, and David Frost, exposed “an ever-widening gap” between Britain’s imperial pretensions and its weakened, ineffectual postwar state. The old establishment clung to power, but without the Empire it seemed rather absurd, feasting on nostalgia, going through ritualistic motions, and replacing its old colonial duties with labyrinthine domestic bureaucratic endeavors. Britons found comfort in mockery and laughter.
The satire, though, was not generally driven by a revolutionary impulse but a “deep sense of ambivalence.” Satirists found the establishment absurd but the alternatives obnoxious. A Beyond the Fringe sketch, for example, mocked the British Foreign Office for “capitulation” rather than for imperialism, while also describing African independence activists as violent men who shook a British ambassador “warmly by the throat.” Cook might have made fun of Macmillan but was in fact a self-declared “great Macmillan fan.” While arguably the greatest talent in the satire boom, he was under no illusions as to the power of jokes, and enjoyed comparing his act to the cabarets of 1930s Germany, which “did so much to prevent the rise of Hitler.”
Much of the comedy of the period has become unbroadcastable. Spike Milligan, the grand old man of British comedians, fired off racial jokes in Q and Curry and Chips that make the mild-mannered Cleese seem like a latter-day Mandela. Monty Python thrust the ample bosom of Carol Cleveland into scenes for no reason other than to give their viewers something to look at. Cook and Dudley Moore recorded the Derek and Clive albums, which included such lurid and violent fantasies that Quentin Tarantino might turn pale listening to them.
Much of this material was bad, but in its creators’ defense, no one emerged unscathed from their comedy. Milligan described Prince Charles as a “grovelling little bastard” on TV. Monty Python portrayed women as being vacuous and shrill but also portrayed men as being sex-mad, repressed, pompous, and cowardly. Derek and Clive was so indiscriminately hateful that it included jokes about Moore’s father’s colorectal cancer. Satire, which high-minded commentators had imagined might become a sharpened tool to wield against the establishment, had become a form of equal-opportunity lampooning, in which the only commitments were to humor and its toleration.
It did not last. British comedy and Britain became more politically correct in the 1980s. The rise of the National Front led to comedians with race-based jokes, such as Bernard Manning, being perceived as right-wing propagandists and not as comics. It’s all very well, Britain’s intelligentsia decided, to believe anybody can be the butt of jokes, but racial, religious, and sexual minorities are more vulnerable than white, straight, and Christian people. There was cause to evolve out of the laziest stereotypes, but as Britain diversified and its progressives acquired greater cultural power, its rhetorical code of conduct became increasingly extensive and increasingly rigid. This reached its bizarre apotheosis when insulting radical Islam was still held to be “punching down” as militants were executing cartoonists in Paris.
Simultaneously, Britain became a more corporate place as it relaxed into its role as a center for international finance. In business and in politics, British public life festered with the smooth absurdities of marketing and management. The self-deprecation of a declining power was replaced with the posturing of a modern economy. Tony Blair and David Cameron, with their aching sincerity and limitless platitudes, epitomized this trend. When Cleese insulted London, the furious response was not just due to his alleged “bigotry” but due to him insulting Britain’s golden goose.
Americans have been following the same path, only quicker. Just 10 years ago, the likes of Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle would mock everyone and everything as American military and economic optimism sank in the wake of Iraq and the financial crash and left a hungry audience for cheering cynicism. The rise of Donald Trump, fueled by a reaction to political correctness, has nevertheless accelerated politically correct cultural trends as every form of media is dragooned into the culture war. Now, even the good-natured ribaldry of Friends is often looked back on as homophobic and transphobic, and we are expected to welcome the mirthless hectoring of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette as the ideal of 21st century stand-up.
It has often been suggested that the British desire for Brexit has been driven by imperial nostalgia. I think Brexiteers are more nostalgic for its decline — for that little period of history where the establishment was strong enough to maintain order but weak enough to seem essentially comic. A time when Britons were not powerful enough to be imperial but self-assured enough to make fun of others as well as themselves. Looking back to when the market was strong enough to offer people comfort but not pervasive enough to have a stranglehold on life.
Americans voted for the brash, arrogant, ambitious Trump with his lofty promise to make America great again. British conservatives have rallied around the bumbling, mischievous, and jokey Boris Johnson. They certainly want Britain to be rich, successful, and unapologetic, but they also want it to be irreverent, cheerful, and economic. The rancor and bitterness that have marked the years following the Leave referendum suggest that quite the opposite is in store for us. Once people start to oppose rather than disagree with one another — in Britain and the U.S. — it becomes hard, if not impossible, to laugh together.
Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in Poland.
