British comedy, global resistance: Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066115586816 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Author | James Brassett |
European Journal of
International Relations
2016, Vol. 22(1) 168 –191
© The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1354066115586816
ejt.sagepub.com
E
JR
I
British comedy, global
resistance: Russell Brand,
Charlie Brooker and
Stewart Lee
James Brassett
University of Warwick, UK
Abstract
The article provides a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of comedy as a form
of political resistance. Taking a cue from recent critiques of mainstream satire — that
it profits from a cynical and easy criticism of political leaders — the article questions
how comedy animates wider debates about political resistance in International Political
Economy. The case is made for developing an everyday and cultural International
Political Economy that treats resistance in performative terms, asking: what does it do?
What possibilities and limits does it constitute? This approach is then read through a
historical narrative of British comedy as a vernacular form of resistance that can (but
does not necessarily) negotiate and contest hierarchies and exclusions in ‘particular’
and ‘particularly’ imaginative terms. In this vein, the work of Brand, Brooker and Lee is
engaged as an important and challenging set of resistances to dominant forms of market
subjectivity. Such comedy highlights the importance and ambiguity of affect, self-critique
and ‘meaning’ in the politics of contemporary global markets.
Keywords
Britain, comedy, International Political Economy, International Relations, market
subjects, resistance
Introduction: Satirical market subjects?
An interesting facet of the austerity period in mainstream British politics has been the
rise (or return) to prominence of an apparently radical set of satirists. Comedians like
Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee have consolidated already strong careers
Corresponding author:
James Brassett, University of Warwick, Gibbett Hill Road, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: j.brassett.1@warwick.ac.uk
586816EJT0010.1177/1354066115586816European Journal of International RelationsBrassett
research-article2015
Article
Brassett 169
with a new tranche of material that meets a widespread public mood of disdain for the
failure and excess of ‘global capitalism’. This can be seen through Brand’s use of tropes
of revolution in his Messiah Complex and Paxman interview, Brooker’s various subver-
sions of the media–commodity nexus in Weekly Wipe, and Lee’s regular Guardian com-
mentaries on the instrumentalisation of the arts and social critique.
While radical comedy is by no means new, it has previously been associated with a
punk/socialist fringe, whereas the current batch seems to occupy a place within the
acceptable mainstream of British society: BBC programmes, Guardian columns, sell-out
tours and so on.
Perhaps a telling indication of the ascendancy of these ‘radical’ comedians has been
the growing incidence of broadsheet articles and academic blogs designed to ‘clip their
wings’. For example, Matt Flinders has argued that Russell Brand’s move to ‘serious
politics’ is undermined by a general decline in the moral power of satire:
Out Paxo’ing Paxman might be one thing but it is quite another to make the leap from comedian
to serious political commentator. Russell Brand claims to derive his authority to speak out on
the state of democratic politics from a source beyond ‘this pre-existing paradigm’ which can
only really relate to his position as an (in)famous comedian. The problem with this claim is that
— as many comedians have themselves admitted — in recent years the nature of political
comedy and satire has derived great pleasure and huge profits from promoting corrosive
cynicism rather than healthy skepticism.1
While it is unclear whether Brand actually does aim to become a ‘serious political com-
mentator’ (whatever that might mean), it is fair to say that Flinders taps a nerve. On the
one hand, a tradition of political satire that includes the ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year
Award’ and Yes Minister, is experiencing something of a gear change with 24-hour news/
social media and the rise of snark (Denby, 2010). Well-thought-out and targeted political
satire has become a rare commodity since the broad success of Spitting Image and Rory
Bremner. Such shows represent the declining high-water mark of political satire as head-
line-grabbing, broadly based, cynical critique has increasingly predominated. On the
other hand, when the art of satire is retained — or even elevated — as in The Thick of It,
such work is made to wrestle with its own place in the very structures it seeks to subvert:
markets, celebrity, class (Thorpe, 2012). Indeed, when asked whether it was acceptable
to receive an OBE, Armando Iannucci remarked that it probably was not, but regardless,
‘it was really, really funny’.2
In these ways, the problematic of political satire goes to the heart of some ongoing
and broad dilemmas regarding how we might think about resistance. What is a credible
form of resistance? Does resistance have to change a context or situation in order to be
considered ‘serious’? Will resistance always be co-opted within the system it questions,
and would such co-optation render resistance futile or less worthy in some deeper ethical
or political sense? In short, can/should there be a universal standard of ‘correct resist-
ance’ against which all practices of resistance are judged?
The broad idea that I want to develop is that comedy is (serious) politics. Comedy
reflects the social and historical contingencies of our individual and collective impulses
to think (differently), both with(in) and against a particular set of hierarchies (and pathol-
ogies). Laughing at, subverting or otherwise undermining aspects of social existence can
To continue reading
Request your trial