Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The world needs satire more than ever. We have come to a crossroads in which the act of satire is decried by many as cruel, in which it has no place in a more caring society; and yet parody, wit and caricature have a place when it comes to expertly showing that the world, its political and spiritual leaders and every single one of us who inhabit this world have come to a point where we deserve to be sent-up.
It is not through the act of cruelty, the device of the quick laugh aimed at those who cannot fight back but instead the art that flows when we realise we have all been taken for fools, even those who saw the clowns appearing on the horizon, of all political colours and doctrine because we allowed it to happen and we need satire to give us the injection of belief that we can turn the world around.
The problem lays in the mediocre excuse that have for media now, with some notable exceptions, it has come to represent the shallow excuses of celebrity rather than the investigative sole of humanity and we react with eager anticipation of the baying crowd surrounding the guillotine when there is a chance to bring down anyone for the slightest mistake that they may make if it gives us a chance to vent our misplaced anger.
Jonathan Pie, the splendid alter ego of Tom Walker, has caught the mood over the last four years, a raging inferno who leaves no political figure untouched, and who in his Fake News Tour shows just how a figure of created importance can be brought down to the point where mockery and pseudo outrage have become the news, and not the clowns who have taken political discourse to the arena once frequented by those overseeing the fall of Rome.
We have all become experts thanks to social media, our opinions, once relegated to the drunken tirade behind the closed doors of friendships and the smell of beer fermenting inside the local pub, has now created its own vacuum, the space where even the news will justify itself with the phrase, “…And Twitter is up in arms, and furious with this”, as if social media was a viable resource, or even a physical entity.
We don’t deserve cruelty, but we sure as hell justify the need for satire, we need to be reminded of the beauty of the well versed wit, the power that can bring down the unstable power mad politician and the narcissistic leader that comes from satire, and see it as a force for good. A force that Jonathan Pie’s Fake News Tour shows with absolute fury and grace.
Ian D. Hall