[Spiked] It was George Orwell who pointed out, in an analysis of the goose-step, that it could only flourish in countries where people were afraid enough not to laugh at its silliness. Indeed, it’s very absurdity was a demonstration of power: ’Yes, I am ugly, and you daren’t laugh at me.’One could put into the same bracket Caligula’s naming of his horse as senator, Colonel Gaddafi’s dress sense, or Manchester University Students’ Union’s recent decision to ban clapping. Power expresses itself when it not only gets away with foolishness but also makes you behave foolishly ‐ nodding along with its asinine choices.
Orwell was optimistic about the UK. The goose-step could not, he guessed, be introduced in Britain, because people would double up in mirth. Yet the powers-that-be ‐ whether at a students’ union, government or media level ‐ have been doing some goose-stepping of their own of late. And it seems that the UK is now cowed enough to have lost its sense of humour.
Monty Python wrote one of their best sketches about silly walks, set in a ministry in which bureaucratic idiocy was so ramified that even this eventuality is covered. But calling silly walks by their proper name is out now, and so is Monty Python: the BBC head of comedy recently said they were ’six Oxbridge white blokes’ who would never be commissioned today.
Interestingly, Monty Python have been damned at the exact moment that their jokes have become more topical. Look at those writers and artists that an era claims to have no use for and you often see the people we need the most. Their view is simply the most dangerous to those who tyrannise us. Here is a choice snippet of Python, from Life of Brian: