Further Thoughts On Dr. Strangelove
Steve Coogan Mouths Bland Nonsense About The Foreign Policy He's Supposedly Satirising
On BBC One’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” a couple days ago, our Laura introduced the story of Dr. Strangelove accurately - it's about an AMERICAN General who goes mad and sends nuclear bombers into Russian airspace - but then she launches straight into questions about the threat from RUSSIA.
The respondents were Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, my two comedy heroes from youth and who I still love - but no longer for their political acumen.
Steve Coogan responds to Laura, saying that Putin won't use nuclear weapons.
I don't wanna sound like a Putin-hater - Heaven forfend, I have my orders! - but it recently emerged that in 2022 the CIA officially estimated a 50-50 chance that Putin was about to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Coogan goes on to assert that the real threat is from rogue "individuals" who might deliberately detonate a nuke. One of them might actually be Volodymir Zelensky, if he gets his way to acquire either NATO membership or nuclear weapons - but, of course, no one is going there.
Indeed, Coogan's whole focus on rogue individuals rather raises the question: if the Americans aren't gonna nuke anyone, then doesn't that make the play's satirical target redundant?
Similarly, Coogan says that American politics is "beyond satire". Erm... didn't you just make a f***ing satire about it?
Iannucci assures us that nuclear war is still relevant because it's a "metaphor" for AI, climate change, and a general fear that those in charge "might just get it wrong". FFS. Might they just, indeed?
I have always adored Coogan and Iannucci. And I have no problem with the entertainment value of Dr. Strangelove, which I saw on opening weekend in London and enjoyed. But by Christ, the show's politics is so tepid it makes me blanche.
There's surely a satire in the current international situation but not while our best comedians are laying all the blame at the feet of Putin, Musk, and Trump, utterly unable to see even a chink of light beyond the mainstream/MI6 framing of geopolitical issues.
“Satire is a lesson, parody is a game,” said novelist Vladimir Nabakov - it requires a deeper moral and social critique. Where is this, exactly, on our screens and stages?
Every "satirist" in Britain seems to just say The Tories, The Tories The Tories and it is as dumb as it is boring. Where are the cultural producers out there who, like Stanley Kubrick, will call this country out for what it is?
Longer VIDEO INTERVIEW: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ww1W1wREgM