After the first round of Ukraine’s presidential elections, a comic actor named Vladimir Zelenskyi obtained 30% of votes, with the current leader Petro Poroshenko trailing him with only 16%. He is poised to become the next president of Ukraine. In Italy, M5S founded by another comedian, Beppe Grillo, became the largest party in the Italian Parliament and entered government in 2018. In Guatemala, a former comedian, Jimmy Morales, won the presidency in 2016. Is this a simple coincidence or is the political success of comedians a symptom of some more profound transformations in the way politics is conducted?
Parody, satire and irony have been present in politics throughout history, but only as an accessory to the existing order – in the form of a court jester or joker – a presence located by anthropological studies in numerous primitive societies in different parts of the world, and well-documented in medieval European kingdoms. Jesters had an exclusive prerogative to desacralize the existing power through various forms of transgression of the rules, often with obscenity and savage violence. But this was only to reinforce its sacred character. They performed a cathartic function of diffusion of tensions and disputes; as French ethnologist and sociologist Georges Balendier in his seminal study of theatrical elements of politics has argued, the jester’s role was to show what a society would look like if norms, taboos, codes were to dissolve – a regression to savagery.
It has widely been argued that a recent rise of candidates from outside the traditional political establishment is a symptom of a growing dissatisfaction of voters with political elites. The entry of comedians into politics seems to signal even more profound changes – a desecration of the political, its transformation into a show, with citizens becoming primarily spectators and consumers of entertainment.
