Isis karaoke: satire’s answer to hate preachers with microphones
NB - We should try this out on some of our motormouth fanatics..DS
The Twitter users behind @ISIS_karoake delight in putting
song lyrics into jihadis’ mouths – and they aren’t the only comedians who have
found the courage to openly mock Isis
Peter Cook summed up the power of satire pretty well when he
claimed to have modelled his comedy club, The Establishment, on the Weimar
cabarets of Berlin, “which did so much to stop the rise of Adolf Hitler and
prevent the second world war”. Satire isn’t a way to change injustice, it’s a
way to live with it.
If you’re satirising Isis, it can also be a difficult
pursuit. Isis doesn’t do much that is immediately comic. Even your audience may
not be prepared to see the funny side of a repressive, murderous terrorist
state. While Isis is certainly a deserving target, it’s still an easy target to
miss. Brutality is hard to make light of, and mockery of Isis sometimes comes
bundled with generic anti-Islamic, ham-fisted, unfunny jokes out there.
In light of this, no small amount of credit is due to the
Twitter account@ISIS_karoake,
which has been up and running for the past few weeks. The premise is simple –
pictures of hate preachers and Isis fighters, usually armed with microphones,
are captioned with song lyrics – but the juxtapositions are pitch perfect,
instantly turning something sinister into something very silly. Taken
cumulatively, they reimagine the whole of the Islamic State as one big karaoke
bar.
It’s by no means the first attempt to satirise Isis by
appropriating its material. YouTube user speissi takes soundtracks
from Isis recruitment videos and matches them with the kind of images one more
readily associates with YouTube: cats, video games and haywire appliances. The
one called Allahu
Akbar Washing Machine is perhaps the most representative of the genre.
Taking the piss out of Isis also requires courage – they
tend not to have a sense of humour about themselves – especially if you’re
doing it rather closer to the front line. The comedy series Selfie, which
launched on Saudi TV network MBC in June, featured an episode that mocked
Isis openly, earning its star, comedian and actor Nasser al Qasabi, mixed
reviews – a combination of plaudits and death threats. One tweet read, “I swear
to Allah that you will regret everything you have said. The Jihadists will not
calm down until your head has been chopped off.” Nasser was also declared an
apostate by a Saudi imam, who later apologised.
Last year, Iraq state television aired
a comedy series called State of Myths, set in a fictional town that has
come under the control of Isis. The show was broadcast across the country, and
therefore readily accessible inside Isis-controlled regions. Quite apart from
the challenge of producing a family-friendly comedy about the caliphate, the
programme faced serious security issues: the writer remained anonymous, and
several cast members kept their names out of the credits.
We still tend to make grand claims for the power of satire,
and Isis seems pretty immune to ridicule. But when you’re faced with an image
of a jihadist holding a microphone and belting out a Bee Gees cover, you
realise that satire only really has to be funny.
