COMEDY

POLITICS 101presides over a poetical contest between Euripides and the older poetAeschylus, and on balance, the high-minded, old-fashioned verse ofAeschylus is preferred over the newer style of his opponent, and soAeschylus is reinstated to life. Frogs therefore insists upon theimportance of literature to the spiritual life of the nation and affirmsconservative poetical values. We can see this as an assertion of thecentrality of drama to political and cultural discourse, with comedy asthe only literary form able to enlist fantasy and disregard boundaries asa means of retrieving lost ideals.Even though Aristophanic comedy is immersed in political themes, itis not necessarily a vehicle for dissent and political change. Criticism isdivided between those who read his comedy as a profound engagementwith the issues of public life and those who see him as a professionalcomedian getting laughs from the humiliation of authority figures. Tosupport this latter argument, critics point to the context of comic dramawithin the two annual dramatic festivals, the Lenaea and the Dionysia.Adopting an approach familiar from new historicism, the argument citesthe loosening of manners and mores during festival time, and theritualistic centrality of raillery and abuse in the kômos as the principalmotivation for apparently political humour. The insults of Aristophanesare therefore part of the same formula as phallic worship and farce, andtheir political relevance is a secondary effect. In Stephen Halliwell’swords, this ‘is not an evasion of standards, but rather an institutionalizedand culturally sanctioned exemption from them’ (Halliwell, 1984:19).According to this view, comedy is by its very nature as politicallyimpotent as it is apparently permissive.The question of whether or not comic form automatically reduces thepolitical potential of comic content was raised by the scandal involvingthe broadcast of a Brass Eye special about the media treatment ofpaedophiles. The programme, shown on Channel 4 on 26 July 2001, cowrittenby and starring Chris Morris, was a parody of a current affairsprogramme. Each episode in the series satirized media sensationalism,poor journalism, and the Irresponsibility of tabloid practices in a jadedmedia market. To expose the culture of sound bites and ubiquitouscelebrity comment, politicians and media figures were asked tocondemn fictional issues or make on-camera appeals in support ofinvented campaigns. In this episode, the singer Phil Collins was filmedwearing a ‘Nonce Sense’ campaign T-shirt, while the radio DJ Dr Foxwas seated in front of a dead shellfish, saying, ‘Genetically, paedophileshave more genes in common with crabs than they do with you or me…it is scientific fact’. Reactions to the programme were fierce. Culture