National Post (National Edition)
So this virus walks into a bar ...
WE REALLY NEED TO LIFT THE LOCKDOWN ON HAVING A LAUGH,
I’m in the corner store enjoying as much banter as one can through medical-grade facewear when I notice the woman. She’s standing, unsmiling, two metres away, as the cashier jokes about the unruly lockdown curls that have left him “looking like the Queen.”
When the snipe comes, we’re both expecting it: “You should be thankful you don’t have anything more serious to worry about,” the woman says. After a flash of guilt and a slump of the shoulders, the cashier silently rings up my order.
I’m guessing the hard-working, middle-aged cashier feels as thankful to be in good health right now as anyone. Then again, neither the banter-killer behind me in line nor I know much about his life. It’s possible he has sick, elderly parents or family members in hospital with COVID-19, but that like the rest of us he’s just trying to get through the day.
It’s also possible this woman’s being touchy because of circumstances in her own life that we know nothing about.
But tragedy and laughter have never been mutually exclusive — just ask the friend of mine who got through the month-long period in which she nursed her corona-hit 86-year-old mother back to health only “by sharing the odd belly laugh with the nursing home staff.” And one thing is certain: If we’re to get through another month (or more) of this, the humour lockdown is going to have to be lifted sooner.
There may have been a self-declared easing-up on regulations out there, but the crackdown on humour has only become more pronounced as the weeks go by. The jokes and memes doing the rounds on social media lessened as the death toll rose, with people thinking twice about sharing silliness. Those I continued to be sent came with disclaimers: “In terrible taste, but …” and “I shouldn’t laugh, but …”
With Twitter and even lighthearted Instagram increasingly patrolled by snarling schoolmistress types keen to assert their moral superiority, TikTok — the video-sharing app once favoured by prank-tastic teens — became the underground media of choice. Only it wasn’t government conspiracy theories being shared, but nurses performing dance routines in a bid to boost their own morale, as well as other people’s.
It fell to media personality and self-appointed arbiter of good taste, Katie Hopkins, to reprimand self-evidently the least work-shy people in Britain today: “Could you just stop pratting about in wards, in hospitals, in full PPE and just focus on trying to be a professional?”
Police officers were similarly condemned for posting videos of themselves dancing and lip-synching to pop songs while in uniform or on duty. Crime may have fallen by more than a quarter since lockdown began, but with Priti Patel allegedly taking “a dim view” of the antics and Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, the national lead for digital engagement, warning forces that “we’ve got more important things to do,” any kind of levity was deemed “inappropriate” and “offensive.”
At a time when hugging our loved ones is “inappropriate,” I’d argue that the value of that word has been punctured, along with the grotesquely overinflated notion of “offence.” That if those putting their lives on the line to tend to the sick and dying aren’t “offended” by a little dance, others should probably put their delicate sensibilities to one side and reserve their outrage for when it’s due: the group of nurses who decided to post a clip of themselves dancing with a coronavirus bodybag, for example.
We should remember that both world wars were humour booms, with the flood of satirical radio programs, films, cartoons, songs and practical jokes providing a release from the horror of death, boredom and the separation from loved ones. Women sent enlisted sweethearts the jokes being told back home while nurses slipped books by their favourite humorists beneath the pillows of recuperating soldiers.
Besides genuinely being the best medicine (laughter boosts the immune system and fires up infection-fighting antibodies), humour’s at the very root of Britishness: It’s who we are. Italians battled COVID-19 with song, the French rioted and some in the U.S. — spurred on by Donald Trump — defended their Second Amendment right to kill themselves and each other in large numbers.
Meanwhile, we were … what? Appropriate? “Suitable and proper within the circumstances”? Well, that’s not going to get us to the end of the day, let alone the end of the month.
I once asked celebrated comic Ricky Gervais about the notion of propriety in humour. Needless to say, he laughed. But then he grew serious: “I think offence often comes from people mistaking the subject of the joke for the target.”
Right now the subject of any joke worth making isn’t, of course, its victims, but the virus that has reduced our lives to this. And until we find a vaccine, laughter’s the closest thing we’ve got.
CRACKDOWN ON HUMOUR
HAS ONLY BECOME MORE PRONOUNCED AS THE WEEKS
GO BY.