Elites despise us

For decades TV comedy and drama have relied on characters which are caricatures we recognise, caricatures to be lampooned, vilified, cheered, despised, admired and so on. We are all familiar with characters we never really encounter in real life because they are fictional caricatures specifically crafted for their roles in comedy or drama.

Alf Garnett, Frank Spencer, Hyacinth Bucket, Terry of Terry and June – the list goes back a long way because the caricature has always been a backbone of TV sitcom and drama. Dad’s Army was hugely popular yet it made fun of the Home Guard in World War II. It made fun of ordinary people – the bank manager, the butcher, vicar, undertaker, ARP warden, housewife – ordinary people being courageous and patriotic.

The whole gamut of working class and middle class caricature seems to infest BBC culture. It appears to foster a perception that its hordes of caricatures are more than fictional, that this is how ordinary people really are – limited, absurd, even contemptible and easy to despise.

There are many more of course. A vast number of caricatures are figures of fun but also the kind of people who would never have landed a job at the BBC. Ordinary people seem to be despised by the BBC – that is to say ordinary licence payers. It is an interesting memory game, totting up how many situation comedies poked fun at characters who would also be BBC licence payers.

Elites and those on the elite fringes despise us for being easy to manipulate, have done for decades and show it in many ways apart from TV. Woke culture is remarkably akin to a monstrous sitcom inserted into real life – a whole range of caricatures designed to make fun of ordinary people leading ordinary lives. Too far fetched? Look at Prince Harry – he’s a right laugh isn’t he?

Or take the coronavirus pandemic – what a laugh that has been. Making millions of people stay indoors while a heavily hyped infection fails to rampage through the land. As a demonstration of government power, government ineptitude and the power of propaganda it was almost inspired. Drama and comedy rolled into one vast sitcom and still we aren’t allowed to see the joke.

It isn’t only situation comedy though. How about climate change, the game show where ordinary people are supposed to believe that driving their car causes irreversible changes to global weather. Not only that but they have to hand over lots of money to pretend it can be stopped. What a laugh eh? Imagine wanting to be a contestant on that show.

How about Boris Johnson’s government? Is this one of the worst UK governments since WWII? No? Bzzzzz wrong answer. Or the absurd elevation of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour party leader, or our ludicrous inability to manage immigration or our difficulties in leaving the EU.