Pity your poor Chinese nightclub comic. Not only do they have to make their audience laugh, but they also have to make officials at the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism laugh too. And, as we all know, bureaucrats, along with having no hearts, have absolutely no sense of humour. As anyone who has attempted to get a passport photo with a Hitler moustache accepted by the Internal Affairs Department will know (hey, I was 18).
To tell jokes publicly in China, you need a performance licence. To get a performance licence the comic needs to provide a video of themselves telling their jokes to camera. Anything political or ‘vulgar’ is rejected. This, along with tight internet controls, means the state, not the people, controls what jokes can be told in the ‘People’s’ Republic of China.
Not much of a revelation given it is a communist country with an authoritarian government that has banned, among other things, Winnie the Pooh, Bitcoin, Instagram, the letter ‘N’ (yes, really) and Richard Gere (well, they had to get at least one right).
But committed as I am to the superiority of the West over all things Oriental (typified in the infinite possibilities of our humble sandwich versus the narrow horizons of their bowl of noodles) I have to wonder whether comedy in the ‘free world’ is any less controlled. Not by agencies of the state but by the orthodox political and cultural views of the comedians themselves.
Take the current New Zealand context. Unprecedented government controls that are becoming increasingly unpopular. A leader and government of growing incompetence whose façade of ‘kindness’ and goodwill is starting to crack. Surely this should be fresh meat to the professional joke maker? Prime time for a political satirist or some other clever mick taker to step up and tell the truths that we can all see, but in a more tolerable comic form. But, regarding this government’s performance, it’s comedy ‘crickets’.
In a rigorous scientific test of my thesis, I decided to examine the political leanings of our current crop of funny people. I started with a Google search of ‘New Zealand Comedians’, and then culled those whose politics were already known to me. So out went Guy Williams, whose partner is Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, and who once tweeted a ‘joke’ about running over Don Brash in his car. Out too, went Michelle A’Court who seems to have a problem with Judith Collins. For the rest, whose politics were unknown to me, I chose five at random and investigated their Twitter feeds (which they all have and update frequently) to try and get a sense of their politics, if any.
Jeremy Corbett: Probably one of the better known New Zealand comedians. Host of 7 Days. Twitter highlights: Several tweets encouraging vaccination. One recommending ‘Untold: the Bruce Jenner Story’ a doco on the (brave, brave, very brave) trans celeb, and a retweet of a Graham Norton exhortation to pay your taxes. Edgy stuff.
Paul Ego: Corbett’s fellow ‘star’ of 7 Days. Several tweets urging vaccination and one against lockdown protests. Don’t fight the power.
Ben Hurley: Cricket tragic (I sympathise) and stand-up. On the cricket theme, a tweeted pic of the Black Caps ‘taking the knee’ over the non-issue of racism in cricket and a suggestion that Afghanistan cricket be boycotted until it includes a women’s team. Personally, I’d focus on getting them out of honour killings first. Oh, and a retweet about the importance of getting vaccinated.
Urzila Carlson: Jolly, ex-Yarpie stand-up. A tweet supporting the End Conversion Therapy bill and (yawn) several telling her followers to get vaccinated.
Angella Dravid: Youngish stand-up. Preferred pronouns in Twitter bio. Highlights: tweets about Auckland leaving level 4 too soon and bitching about all the people walking around outside without masks in Howick. Surprisingly she is rabidly anti-vax. Nah, not really… she retweets Siouxsie Wiles.
So from that random sample, I can conclude that as a percentage of… hey this isn’t a David Farrar column, so don’t expect sophisticated analytics, requiring more than my School C-level maths. Let’s just say that NZ comedians are overwhelming of the Left. Again, not earth-shaking news. But what is surprising (and evidence for my self-censoring argument) is how orthodoxly pro-government they are, scared to even make a joke about the Jacinda Junta.
Perhaps they have seen the attempts to cancel international comics who dare to stray from the Lefty party line. ‘Transphobe’ Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special caused heated protests, and last week Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam lost a directing gig at London’s Old Vic due to a joke about identifying as a ‘black lesbian woman’.
Or is it the fact that most of them owe a significant part of their living to ‘NZ on Air’, a government body unlikely to reward any jokes about their bosses?
In my youth, we had the great comedy duo, McPhail and Gadsby. I’ve no idea what their personal political views were. It didn’t matter, because they knew what their job was: to skewer politicians Left Right and Centre – McPhail’s Muldoon impression was iconic but I remember just as many jokes about the weight of his porcine opposite number, David Lange.
With our current comedians missing in action, it is left to offshore comics like Joe Rogan to take the piss out of our leader, on our behalf. And when Rogan did (with an atrocious Kiwi accent), Grant Robertson rewarded him with a smear, calling him an ‘extreme right-winger’. Needless to say, Rogan is no such thing (he supported Bernie Sanders last election) but such is the slander levelled at anyone not singing from the song sheet of Big Government.
The true spirit of comedy is not political, it is anarchic, finding humour wherever it is, in places both high and low, Left and Right. To tame it and make it serve a governing party, makes comedians into nothing but state cheerleaders.
Worse than that, it makes them cowards.
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