Arts view: The importance of satire in turbulent times

Obviously, I had heard about it over the years, particularly in relation to Peter Finch’s legendary final performance (which won him a posthumous Academy Award for best actor) as veteran television news anchor Howard Beale, a man on the verge of a breakdown. Set in a fictional network news station in New York, the film is a sophisticated satire which sees Beale fired because of declining ratings and then reinstated when his threat to commit suicide on air and his subsequent no-holds-barred opinion pieces boost ratings. The way the plot plays out, with a clearly ill man being exploited for the sake of high viewing figures, is chilling to say the least. What I hadn’t expected was quite how shockingly prescient it was or how brutally relevant to today. Watching it in the wake of Brexit and Trump, Beale’s anguished cry “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”– a mantra which in one amazing scene in the film is shouted fervently by people out of their apartment windows – certainly struck a chord. Most discomfiting of all was that what appeared outrageous forty years ago is all too commonplace in television these days. That’s quite aside from the fact that there is an actual reality TV star in the White House. I wasn’t surprised, then, to hear that there was a new stage production in the offing starring Bryan Cranston as Beale. Adapted by Lee Hall from Paddy Chayefsky’s film script, it opened at the National Theatre last week, runs until March and is already sold out. In uncertain and turbulent times there appears to be an increased appetite for satire and one of our greatest satirists, Armando Iannucci, was speaking at an Ilkley Literature festival event earlier this week.

The creator of the wonderfully scathing political comedy In the Thick of It and most recently the darkly hilarious movie The Death of Stalin, he said that while he realised satire couldn’t change the world, it was a powerful way of commenting on it. I was reminded of that wonderful quote from Peter Cook who, when he founded the satirical venue the Establishment Club in 1961, said he had modelled it on “those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.” No, satire, like other artforms, won’t necessarily change the world but it sheds light, exposes, questions and encourages debate, all of which we need now more than ever.