EVE BARLOW: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
That was one of the most quoted jokes from The IT Crowd. A British series written by Graham Linehan, who is a comedian from the Republic of Ireland and was once considered a national treasure. He is still a national treasure, I imagine, to many people too afraid to say so. The IT Crowd is a show based around an IT department as the internet implemented itself in everyday working environments, and it first aired almost 20 years ago. In the show, the more committed geeks of the IT department were ignored in favor of Roy, played by Chris O’Dowd, who hated the job and would regularly offer: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Or “Is it definitely plugged in?” These running jokes summarize Linehan’s humor. He dryly mocks societal roles and stereotypes, in a way that challenges their core identity. Which in this day and age is dangerous, I guess. Because self-imposed identity has demanded serious treatment by non-serious people, to such an extent that there is no more poetic license to make jibes about people’s behavior without it being a crime.
Prior to The IT Crowd, Linehan was one half of the team that created Father Ted. The latter series, which aired in the mid-90s, was a beloved satire about the Catholic priesthood, and is often cited next to Fawlty Towers in the canon of British TV. Father Ted was full of impolite jokes. Father Jack repeatedly shouts “Feck! Arse! Drink! Girls!” at inappropriate moments. There were Nazi jokes, racist jokes, sexual innuendos surrounding the milk man, and not to mention The Lovely Girls Contest, which was a spoof on a beauty pageant, and intended to expose misogyny, not condone it. However, in doing so necessarily aired sexism. Breaking taboos in humor is necessary to make light of the hypocrisy of authority – of humans. Irreverent jokes bring the absurdity of our lives to the surface. That’s why making an example out of someone who is celebrated for writing comedy cuts to the soul of free speech issues.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury famously says:
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
The story of Graham Linehan is appalling. And it has had me asking earnestly for days: what are we doing to each other? Can we reset the system? Should we try turning it off and on again?
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