Now that we’re approaching the second anniversary of Covid hitting Australia, and now that almost everyone is getting infected but only a few are hospitalised, and only a miniscule few are dying, can we please have a good old laugh about these crazy times?
As Brother Buffett so wisely said, “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” But in the politically correct environment in which we toil, one must also ask, is it too soon? I ask this advisedly, because it’s just over 20 years since finding humour in a calamitous situation was really put to the test.
After the tragic events of 9/11, the American entertainment community, and to a lesser extent entertainers all over the world, were trying to work out the taste boundaries of their new normal, in a similar situation to that which we find ourselves in now, although the death toll from Covid is more like the Jewish genocide of World War II than the 3000 plus toll from 11 September, which is to take nothing away from the shock and horror felt around the world.
About two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the first big comedy event to be held in New York since the tragedy was the Friar’s Club Roast of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. According to one account there were a few laughs but also “an air of hesitation”. That deepened when comedian Gilbert Gottfried got up to the stand to begin what has been described by many as a career defining moment.
“I have to catch a flight to California,” he told the crowd. “I can’t get a direct flight. They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.” There were gasps mixed in with scattered laughter. Then someone in the audience called out, “Too soon!” Others joined in the chant.
This might have been Gottfried’s career-ending moment, but he was quick to size up the situation. With no plan B, he launched into a double-shock strategy in the form of an old green room routine in which a man walks into a talent agency and tries to get work for a “family act”. “Well, what does this family act do?” asks the agent. And that’s the last part that’s printable. The comedians would amuse themselves for hours trying to outdo each other with their anatomical descriptions of what the family act the dad calls The Aristocrats actually did, but no one had ever performed it on stage before.
Some of the audience walked out, but most just breathed a huge sigh of relief that they had avoided addressing the elephant in the room, and Gottfried’s get-out became the gold standard.
When the Covid pandemic began two years ago, there was a similar and understandable reluctance to find humour in a situation in which cruise boat tourists and aged care residents were dropping like flies. Which is not to say people didn’t try. In fact the cartoonists had a field day, but the savage attacks launched on whichever premier was on their dart board that day were cruel but seldom funny.
The lame puns and one-liners that did the rounds of social media were mostly old gags recycled with a couple of changes. Here’s a couple you may have missed:
Back in my day, you would cough to cover up a fart. Now, with Covid-19, you fart to cover up a cough.
Ran out of toilet paper and started using lettuce leaves. Today was just the tip of the iceberg, tomorrow romaines to be seen.
And a personal favourite from last year: Covid in Australia is like the Spice Girls. Everyone is doing their best but Victoria is ruining it for everyone.
And it’s still going on. Our own prolific letter writer Margaret Wilkie offered this a few days ago: “The guv’mint doesn’t give a RATs.”
After two years Covid-interrupted production and post-production timelines have finally allowed pandemic storylines to enter the popular culture via the myriad broadcasting and streaming platforms, but not very much of it is funny. Perhaps that will come, but right now we find ourselves surrounded by unscripted Covid comedy on the nightly news, albeit often with a tragic edge.
Take the angry truckie incident for example. Did everyone see the footage? Actually, I shouldn’t call him a truckie because it’s an insult to all the fine truckers I’ve had a beer with over the years on the backroads between Cunnamulla and the Cape. So it’s morning in Murarrie and presumably no one in the car queue to get tested is yet drunk, so we can discount that as a factor. But everyone is frustrated because men in high vis are turning the cars around because the swabbery is not going to open. And one woman in a town car is not getting the message.
It soon becomes clear that English is a second language for the lady and she is anxious and confused. She needs some consolation and a quiet explanation, but Rambo on wheels behind her has his own preferred methodology, which is to mount the kerb and ram her from the side, while screaming at her to perform anatomical impossibilities.
This is great. You can’t script this. And then, the punchline. As Rambo flees the scene of the crime, and the shaken woman sits sobbing at the steering wheel of her crushed car, the hi-viz idiots stop Rambo, not to get his details for the cops but to apologise for holding him up. Gold.
Of course you could write not a joke but a full-length comedy feature about the Djokovic and friends vax exemption fiasco, but since it’s before the courts as I write I’ll leave that for another time. And I reckon there’s another 90 minutes of laughs in the Brisbane Heat pulling old hacks off fishing charters and kids off holiday jobs to make up a half Dad’s Army/half club thirds 11 to get thrashed by the BBL wooden spooners after most of the real squad got Covid.
But I’ll leave you with a confession. Although I’ve rubbished the Covid conspiracy theorists several times in these pages, I’ve actually become a convert to the vaccine liquid microchip theory. As I’ve discovered during my own Omicron couch potato time this past week, I can sit double-vaxxed on my couch watching the cricket and transfer my thought waves to both commentators and players.
“Next one’s short on leg, Uzzie, pull him for six,” I say to no one in particular. Uzzie’s brain receives the message and he belts it over the fence. “Give them three more overs to punch it around and call ‘em in,” I mumble. Mark Waugh says: “I don’t reckon they need anymore, give them three more and call ‘em in.”
“Okay Pat, now’s good.” Out he comes and calls them in.
The power is a little frightening, I admit, but I can’t wait for the elections. I’ll be boosted by then.
