My Kind of Smiles, Wry Laughter, Thoughts, Feelings, and Responses to Ben Elton's 1980's Comedy Series Blackadder

I know Ben Elton and his ways of thinking very well, and I don't think that he is talking about medieval society in this country at all in the comedy series Blackadder, because all of his stand-up comedy routines very heavily suggest and state that he is very much talking about present-day British culture and society in his poking fun at people in religious, monarchy, and political and social authority, their infantile, regressive, psychotic hatred and jealousy of others, and their idiotic and most ignorant tantrums too epitomised in his portrayal of queen Elizabeth in Blackadder.

Ben Elton writes that sort of stuff in Blackadder for both very dull, ignorant, stupid coarse people, and for very intelligent people too, but I think that you have to be very intelligent to really understand it. Ben Elton is Jewish, and he uses a lot of irony in his humour like the Irish do, although the trouble with comedy series like Blackadder, is that very dull, stupid, coarse, ignorant people, tend to laugh at it because they think "Isn't this all good about British society and culture!", when they should be laughing and saying to themselves "Isn't this funny because it is all so terrible and very bad!", and so they completely fail to see the Jewish and especially the political critique and irony in Ben Elton's humour.

To quote the Socialist Proudhon: "To be ruled by beings without honour, dignity, loyalty, love, and without morality. That is government, that is authority!".

Peter H. Donnelly
2011