There is a problem with political writing.

There is too much of it.

People write essays explaining why the world is insane.

Others read them and nod solemnly because they already know the world is insane.

Then somebody writes another essay explaining why the first essay was important. 

If the goal is to convince people that modern society is worryingly unhinged, we sometimes need strategies that bypass ‘respectable’ essays and debate to reach people through absurdity, satire and humour.

Activists, writers and artists have often used humour to make a point. Satire pokes fun at serious things using irony and exaggeration to show what’s wrong with them, while absurdity takes something totally crazy and drops it into everyday life to make us rethink how things work.

The Onion and The Daily Mash use deadpan absurdity to make political and social points. A headline about a corporation patenting fresh air might get across the basic idea of enclosure more quickly than a long explanation of property rights. Activist groups have used giant inflatable figures, mock ceremonies and other theatrical stunts for similar reasons.

The instinct to make everyday life or the powerful look ridiculous is hardly new. In medieval and early modern England, festivals and popular entertainment sometimes played with turning the normal social order upside down, with figures such as the ‘lord of misrule’ presiding over deliberately chaotic celebrations. Satire and mockery provide a way of making authority seem less untouchable.

Today, the village green has become the screen, but the basic impulse has not disappeared. This is where the irreverent world of Nuzz Prowlin Wolf and sites like it fits in. Although the site has not been updated for some years, it mixed political rants and working-class social commentary with underground punk music, basic digital graphics and deadpan satire.

It made little to no attempt to adopt the tone of conventional political commentary. It was popular because a reader who would never seek out a serious political piece might be more likely to check out a strange image or a biting piece of commentary.

Because, let’s face it, standard political arguments can leave people cold right out of the gate. Readers spot the usual talking points in the first two paragraphs, check out and click away before they even get to the point. Or in an age of fleeting attention spans, they just get bored and move on.

Absurdity puts an idea into an improbable situation, and the reader may encounter it without immediately recognising it as an argument before they have decided what side they’re supposed to be on. They might be less inclined to scroll and so an idea arrives ‘sideways’.

Many writers, zine makers, meme accounts and small presses know how to use absurdity to smuggle arguments past readers’ defences, and the strategy of sneaking serious points through ridiculous setups is a classic storytelling trick. Through absurdity, people don’t necessarily realise they are absorbing an argument until it’s already landed.

In Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s novel, the initial impression is that of a black comedy full of illogical rules, self-serving officers and surreal episodes. Underneath the jokes, though, is a serious argument about the dehumanising machinery of war, the moral absurdity of military bureaucracy and the way institutions protect themselves at the expense of ordinary people. Heller lets the ideas emerge from the ridiculous situations his characters are forced to navigate.

A similar albeit less sophisticated move happens in Count Digby of Heswall and the Siege of Space 42, a deliberately ridiculous story used to introduce Gerrard Winstanley and the English Diggers movement of 1649. The Diggers’ central proposition was that the earth should be held in common rather than claimed for private gain. A serious idea is placed inside a ridiculous setting and in front of a reader who might otherwise never encounter it.

In this type of writing, though, there is no guarantee that the message survives the ‘joke’. Whereas one reader may enjoy the absurdity and completely miss the point, another looking for serious historical analysis may find the whole thing irritating or trivial.

But being ridiculous isn’t just a gimmick. The powerful depend, to some extent, on being treated as powerful. Satire takes away some of that solemnity. It makes the powerful look stupid, the supposedly natural look strange and what appears permanent look temporary.

Absurdity refuses to play by the rules of ‘respectable’ debate, using wit and mockery to get vital messages across and show that oppressive systems are not some natural order but little more than a deadly heist.

(Talking of satire and absurdity, see Monstersanto Cola from 2014. Not perfect, but the idea was sound enough)

Colin Todhunter’s work can be accessed at Figshare.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Visit the author’s substack, https://substack.com/@colintodhunter.

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