COMEDY

POLITICS 113they could not gag, a modern appropriation of clown who dares to saythe unsayable. This is presented as an authentically working-classposition, dispossessed by the uptight nanny state: ‘Can’t stop uslaughing can they?’, he says in an aside, ‘It’s the only thing we’ve gotleft’ (Manning, 1993).THE END OF LAUGHTER? THREE HOLOCAUSTCOMEDIESThe self-evidently inappropriate proximity of the word ‘comedy’ to‘Holocaust’ raises a question: are there times when comedy and politicsmust not mix? While our instincts tell us that comedy has no place insuch appalling events, several attempts have been made to treatHolocaust themes within a context that is either structurally or tonallycomedic. The results are of course varied, but the interaction of twocategories that common sense tells us are diametrically opposed can beextremely interesting, both in terms of what possible benefits, if any,comic elements bring to an understanding of history, and also where thepracticable boundaries of comedy’s much-vaunted freedom to flaunttaboos might lie. Allusions to the Holocaust have been used by anumber of Jewish comedians as an emblem of the limits of bad taste orwrong-headedness many times, suggesting that even thinking about it isfraught with guilt and difficulty. The comically abysmal musical‘Springtime for Hitler’ at the heart of Mel Brooks’s film The Producers(1968), devised to defraud the insurance company with a failedBroadway show, suffers a reversal when it turns out that the theatregoingpublic love Nazi-themed musicals. The fraudsters, the critics, andthe Broadway audience are all shown to be appalling philistines. Anepisode of Seinfeld saw Jerry censured by his parents and hisgirlfriend’s father after they were spotted kissing in the cinema duringSchindler’s List (1993). In Annie Hall (1977), Woody Allen’s characterAlvy refuses to see any movies other than the four-hour documentary onNazi-occupied Paris, The Sorrow and the Pity, because ‘everything elseis such garbage’ (Allen, 1977). With this comment he demeans its forceby putting Marcel Ophüls’s film in the same category as the averageHollywood blockbuster, appreciable according to standard popularcriticisms by, for example, the credibility of its plot, the thrillingness ofeffects, and so on. In all three of these examples, the Holocaust is usedas the absolute signifier of seriousness contrasted against lightheadedconcern for entertainment, daily life, and diminutive but naggingdesires. The Holocaust acts as a grave reminder against which the