You haven’t got us on the run! We grew up watching an Army of old blokes, poke fun at a hysterical little man with only one testicle. We chuckled at Knights with coconut sound effects, armed with killer one-liners. So COVID19, I fart in your general direction, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. What you’ve handed humanity is just a flesh wound! We are the Knights who say...COVID19 is just a sick Joke?
Black Humour Rules OK! One thing you can count on in a time of crisis is for black humour to turn up in peculiar places. Coronavirus has spun our lives out of our control. Forcing us to distance ourselves from mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, friends and relations. Making them smile, at a safe distance puts our hand back on the tiller for a split second. Connecting us once again, as Mastercard would put it. Priceless.
Your funny bone’s connected to your tragic bone! Tragedy and comedy, it seems don’t live very far from each other. In fact, they’re always exchanging tit-bits over metaphysical garden fences. Social media is a perfect example, with the facts and terrible figures of COVID19, mingling closely with memes of heads of state, wearing a cap ‘n’ bells. Pointing out the complete dog’s dinner most of them have made of a situation they were voted in, to deal with. (Guilty as charged.)
Ancient Greek Punishment or Facebook Jail? I’d be right in the brown stuff, if I’d been born in Ancient Greece. They took laughing at figures of authority very seriously. Taking a swipe at big wigs would land you in more trouble than being banned by Zuckerberg’s minions. Although not a Greek, Goethe nailed it, ‘Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.’
Joking is Poking. In so called democratic countries, we lap up programmes designed to give those we voted in, a good hard nose-tweak. Saturday Night Live, Have I Got News For You and Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell, are three that span three continents. The writers on shows like this have a political figure's career in the palm of their hands, far more than a formidable political opponent. In this case, the laptop is definitely mightier than the sword.
Die Laughing? We use expressions like ‘Laugh, I could’ve died’ all the time. Laughing at something that’s deadly, adds to our defensive walls, that keep it out. Armour plating us from an invisible enemy with sinister names. Something in our psyche reminds us that laughing is a whole lot better than crying. It unites us with a social vocalisation that binds us back together. Just when that horrible microscopic ball of red nodules, has tried its very best to tear us apart.
Look at the COVIDIOTS! Laughing at the Great Coronavirus loo-roll shortage, allows us to point fingers at hoarders, as if we’ve come to the monkey house at the zoo. Isn’t it amusing that we’re like them but we’re not actually them. There are differences, we wouldn’t do that, now would we? Yeh right. But at the end of the day, do whatever it takes to come out of COVID19 still breathing and with a similar amount of marbles, as you went into lockdown. Peace and love. x
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