That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

What is rightwing humour? I don't mean conservative comedians telling innocuous jokes, but nor am I referring to explicitly political comedy - i.e. topical satire. Rather I define humour as rightwing when it embodies a conservative temperament and a way of seeing the world that supports rightwing politics, albeit sometimes obliquely. Boiled down to its conservative essentials, this type of humour is either punching down - the comedy of hierarchical contempt that includes misogyny, racism and ableism - or the ridiculing of those who threaten the existing order by imagining a different society - the comedy of derision at "do-gooding" and the slapping down of people who get above their supposed station. In other words, it is defensive rather than offensive (in the sense of challenging), resting on a fundamentally misanthropic and pessimistic view of the world. This doesn't mean rightwing comedians can't tell funny jokes, or even jokes that are empathetic and optimistic, but that what defines them as rightwing is a tendency to punch down, not up. 

As we all know from experience, whether in school playgrounds, pubs or workplaces, there is plenty of that first category of rightwing humour - contempt - in circulation, and little sign of it going out of fashion. The problem for the comedy industry (which includes not only those who make a living as comedians or writers but also the media institutions that host and promote comedy) is that this is invariably offensive (in the sense of giving offence), often stepping over the line into hate-speech. This was (just about) tolerable in the Britain of the 1970s, when TV programmes like The Comedians and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club were aired on ITV, but the evolution of social mores since, together with the development of technology, means that this kind of humour is now largely restricted to informal channels such as WhatsApp and YouTube. Even Roy Chubby Brown's DVDs now look like the artefacts of a bygone age. 

The BBC wouldn't have touched shows like The Comedians at the time, but that was essentially for reasons of snobbery, not the "wokeness" they are now routinely accused of. If already a parody (the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club inspired at least a quarter of Vic Reeves' act), the Northern workingmens' club was still a reflection of lived reality in the 1970s. The BBC preferred cosy, pseudo-highbrow panel shows that displayed the nostalgic wit of Frank Muir, or standup so polite that it sat down. The latter ranged from The Two Ronnies, a classic example of a show that would work as well on radio as TV (that's a compliment), to Dave Allen, who succeeded by dressing the anarchic humour of Flann O'Brien in a three-piece suit. Just to prove that the BBC weren't wholly disapproving of the popular mores of the period, The Black and White Minstrel Show ran till 1978.

Since the mid-70s, the political right has been engaged in a détournement of the modes and practices of the left: notably presenting the neoliberal shift under Thatcher and Reagan as revolutionary and progressive. Central to this programme was the invention of a liberal establishment, latterly an "elite", that was accused of patronising ordinary people and restricting their freedom of choice. As neoliberalism triumphed in the economic sphere, the focus of attention increasingly moved to the social and cultural, culminating in the claim that politics is now a matter of values more than material conditions. The Conservatives' erosion of the BBC for both ideological and commerical reasons started in the 1950s, but its current strategy reflects this more recent development, with the focus of "reform" having shifted from consumer choice to the spectre of political correctness. In the field of comedy, this détournement has seen the emergence of rightwing comedians who claim to be "punching up" at the liberal establishment, which is about as convincing as decrying censorship from the pages of national newspapers. 

It's not true that contemporary professional comedians in Britain, and particularly those who get TV gigs with the BBC, are notably "leftwing". Politically, most are clustered around the centre. This is the simple result of affinity in an business based on personality. You'll find it easier to advance your career if you share the same values as the white, middle-class centrists with socially liberal views and a preference for free-market economics who dominate the industry. Like will promote like. This became all too evident in recent years when the issue of a second referendum on Brexit allowed comedians with a nominally progressive persona to criticise the Labour leadership as much as the Conservative government. What was notable was not the fact of the criticism but the language, which was the traditional, conservative vocabulary employed to deride the left: unreliable, unrealistic and with dubious foreign loyalties (the irony of the last of these, centring on Russia and Venezuela, was lost on those simultaneously eulogising the EU).

By its very nature, comedy biases towards raillery and disrespect. The comedy industry prevents this going too far (see its difficulty in accommodating genuinely original comedians like Bill Hicks or Jerry Sadowitz), but there is a reward for "edginess" in the frisson of transgression against traditional shibboleths, hence the popularity of those who dabble in "black comedy", such as Frankie Boyle, Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais. That those shibboleths should still include the Queen and the NHS is indicative of the essentially sentimental and conservative nature of both British society and British comedy. The constraint of dissent is not just a matter of selection by TV producers or festival promoters, it is part of the format of comedy itself. The standup routine is hierarchical and pedagogic - though the model is the Calvinist preacher, not the Stoic philosopher - giving rise to its own sub-genre of ironic deconstruction by the likes of Stewart Lee, while panel-based gameshows are a competition in conformity and the acceptance of one's lot (the magnanimous winners, the rueful losers).

What conservative critics mean by "leftwing" in the context of comedy is simply that low hum of dissent: the hint of raillery and disrespect. A demand for an adjustment in tone is a dead-end because that can only produce either the comedy of hatred - the punching down and derision - or the comedy of mindless optimism, which is temperamentally un-conservative. Both hatred and optimism tend to produce poor comedy because they artificially narrow the range of human emotion: the one rejecting empathy and thereby steadily alienating the audience's sympathy, the other rejecting cynicism and demanding faith from an audience that secretly yearns for the thrill of nihilism (optimistic comedy is not unlike Christian Rock). Conventional comedy acknowledges that full range of emotion, but situates and constrains it in such a way that the social order remains unthreatened, mostly famously in the format of the sitcom: people trapped in antagonistic relations but where resolution is always blocked by humourous circumstance.

Ultimately, rightwing comedy is a rare breed not because the comedians just aren't funny, as some illogically claim, but because centrist comedians already provide plenty of the conservative comedy of derision aimed at those who would seek to change the world, from barbs aimed at vegans to skits about excessively "woke" teenagers. This means that rightwing comedians are obliged by the market to pursue the comedy of outright social contempt if they want to be both true to their temperament and distinctive, but so much of that comedy is socially off-limits that they are reduced to peddling jokes that are either borderline racist, misogynist or ableist (the sort of naughty schoolboy humour that distinguishes the likes of Jeremy Clarkson), or indulging tirades of resentment against a political correctness that actually reflects the centrist dominance of conservative humour. When rightwing comedians punch left, they just sound like liberals.