David Mitchell, Hitler, and laughing at foreigners

In this Sunday’s Observer the wonderful David Mitchell wrote about how one of the things that makes him most proud to be British is our national propensity to laugh at Adolf Hitler. The article was occasioned by a complaint by some Israeli tourists about some young British people taking photos of each other next to a wax statue of history’s most horrendous man in Madame Tussaud’s inexplicable celebrity stroke evil-people and oversized-candlestick stroke shit-simulacrum emporium while making Nazi salutes with one hand and simulating a small, square, strange, and silly moustache with the other.  Unfortunately, the upset Israelis thought these young people were being gigantically anti-Semitic.  As the excellent Mitchell pointed out, however, the moustache simulation was the really big clue that these people were just larking about, as opposed to signalling any sort of support of Nazism and the Holocaust.  And, as the National Treasure* also said, laughing at Hitler makes us recall that Hitler was small, stupid, and pathetic, which he was, while in no way diminishing our sense of the despicableness of what he did or in any way disrespecting his victims.  And, furthermore, laughing at him helped people survive the bombs he dropped on the cities, on the people, of this country, and thus helped the Britons of those times to live to fight another day and indeed, with a little bit of help from our friends, defeat Hitler and destroy his hideous regime.  Anyway, why am I trying to represent David Mitchell when you can read his article for yourself?  To try to justify my writing what follows, that’s why.  But if you want to read the full Mitchell piece, and you do, here’s the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/28/hitler-madame-tussauds-david-mitchell 

* Hmm. Is David Mitchell, a mere boy of 35, too young and new to be a National Treasure?  On the one hand, I don’t think so.  He seems perfectly suited to the role to me whatever his age—clearly clever and very funny, yet nicely self-effacing in a perfectly under-statedly British way.  The thing that worries me is that such a status might put too much pressure on him, as he seems the sort of nice person who takes his responsibilities to others tremendously seriously, and so, while that’s part of what makes him deserve the status of National Treasure, it also ought to make us have the mercy to spare him the role.  A dilemma.  But I digress.   

David Mitchell’s article put me in mind of German and Austrian friends who get understandably tired of what they see as a British obsession with World War II and Nazism, or disturbed that we associate their countries with those things and none of the good things they do, like sausages and yodelling.  (Or is that the Swiss?  Don’t get me started on the Swiss, mind!)  There may be some considerable validity in at least the first of those two concerns.  After all, 1945 was pretty much the last time the British were any good at anything significant.  But there is also more to it and, correspondingly, less to it than that.  Part of it is just harmless laughing at foreigners.  Now, yes, I can almost hear some people spluttering, saying, what? it’s okay to laugh at foreigners?  Well, of course it is, as long as it’s based on friendship and fondness, and not on hatred and xenophobia, and as long as you know where to draw the line at offending others’ sensibilities too much.  Or at least are prepared to apologise if you make the mistake of doing so.  It can be done.  I’ve had plenty of practice over the years.  Of course, one can easily offend others, certainly Germans, Austrians, Israelis, and perhaps all Jewish people, when it comes to Hitler.  It is easy to go over the line, and I’ve no doubt that it happens too often and that it hurts.  But it is also, I think, easy to see that there is an inside of the line, however tricky it may be to see exactly where the line is located.  It is easy, I think, to see that not all laughing at the Germans is bad, even in relation to Hitler.  Take perhaps the most famous instance of Brits laughing at the Germans (but not actually laughing at the Germans at all, as argued below): the “Don’t Mention The War” episode of Fawlty Towers.  Clearly, Basil Fawlty is a stereotyped Englishman who is not to be admired.  As if to emphasise that, in that particular episode he has a pratfall and has to go to hospital with a head injury.  Against medical advice, he discharges himself and returns to his hotel, with bandages still conspicuously wrapped around his head, and it is that condition that he does all the goose-stepping, moustache simulating, and mentioning of the war.  The Germans, meanwhile, are portrayed sympathetically as nice and reasonable people.  One of them even cries at Fawlty's antics because, as a German, she or her family suffered in the war.  I can’t remember the details, but they made the point that not all Germans were Nazis.  In other words, “DMTW” did not reduce all Germans and their history to Nazism.  It satirised a certain type of British person who remains ridiculously obsessed about World War II. 

If done with self-awareness, whether doing it yourself or watching John Cleese perform it, there is something inherently hilarious about reducing people of another nationality, in all their diversity and complexity, to a single silly aspect of their culture or their history.  To laugh at others in this way, is really to laugh at yourself and your own human propensity to be absurdly reductive and unfair.  It may even therefore serve a salutary purpose, reminding us that such thought and behaviour is ridiculous and should never be taken seriously, and should definitely not form the ideological basis of any country's foreign policy.  Whatever the case, laughing at foreigners is simply one of the funniest of all funny things, and being laughed at by foreigners is even better because the latter, while merely equally funny to the former, has the added bonus of teaching us something about ourselves, at least sometimes, or at least about what others think of us, which is interesting.  One time when it did both of these things for me, for example, was when American stand-up comedian Reginald D. Hunter observed that “Britain is the only country in the world where a friend will introduce you to a friend of his by saying: this is my mate Barry.  He’s a bit of a twat, but he’s alright.”  This made me *Proud to be British*.  I didn’t realise before how unique our British habit of casually insulting each other in this way is, and it puts in another perspective our propensity to laugh at Hitler and at foreigners generally.  

Sometimes, though, admittedly, laughing at foreigners and being laughed at by foreigners is just plain funny for nothing but the heck of it.  At university in the US I played in a multinational football team in Baltimore (Americans being genetically unable to play football—not “soccer”, football).  During one match I was running up the left wing with the ball and saw our Iranian centre forward, handsome chap, calling my attention for a cross with arm raised and shouting (Dick van Dyke-style), “Ma’e... ma’e... ma’e...”.  It’s hard to cross a ball with the left foot while running and laughing at the same time and I sliced it hopelessly wide of the post.  Our captain and manager was not well pleased.  He, by the way, was a French Johnnie, decent cove nonetheless (in fact, I now remember regularly introducing him to others by saying “This is Philippe: he’s French, but he’s okay”), which led to never-tiresome recitations of such phrases as “Ah em lucking furgh a bowl”.  One training session ended in an early bath for me when le capitaine forgot the English word for a certain body part and had to ask the team “What is the word for this, le coude”, pointing at his elbow.  Our Greek right-winger replied, “It is your dick.”  Yes, that was you, if you happen to be reading this, my old friend, paediatric pulmonologist Dr Harry Opsimos [insert kebab joke here].   

"Ah em lucking furgh a bowl".