Keywords

Introduction

Stephen Fry is a satirist, and like many comedians he makes fun of things around him that he sees as absurd: the army, the Church, the social class system (especially the pretensions of the upper class), and the idea that cruelty can be justified in the face of an all-powerful God. He would question God if he ever met him just as he questions the ultimate purpose of the above-mentioned institutions of power and authority (hereafter, just “the institutions”).

It’s all well and good to elicit answers. But for what purpose? Like Socrates, Fry examines the world around him and finds it absurd. The odd thing, though, is that Fry is part and parcel of this absurdity; he is a member of the upper class. This makes his critique difficult to clarify. Now when watching comedians, it is common to take into account their social and political outlook. For example, it is not difficult to identify one of Fry’s peers, Alexei Sayle, as a Marxist-leaning comedian because he criticizes the institutions and government with a keen eye on social and political concerns and clearly implies that radical change is needed. Sayle’s working class credentials and ideology match his comedy. Fry’s objective is more elusive, however. He has a middle-class background and his comments and his jokes don’t lean toward Marxism, which might indicate that Fry is up to something other than bringing down the social and political system. So, is he supporting the system he mocks? Does his satire indicate that he merely wants to reform the outdated institutions and a dowdy notion of God rather than replace them?

To answer this, this chapter will look at Fry as a Socratic wanderer – one that is on a mission to point out the absurdity of the contemporary world. Caution is needed in such a quest, however. Sayle wants the system radically changed, but Fry does not make jokes that hint of the need for radical change. So, what does Fry want to happen? It might turn out that Fry is a conservative reformer whose comedy supports the status quo more than it detracts from it. This may sound like an odd use of satire, but one can imagine a teacher that mocks a student’s work with the intention of improving it instead of destroying its author. Likewise, Fry’s Socratic quest might reveal criticism for something while also supporting it in principle – just with some reform, which is still quite reasonable of any reformer to ask.

Summarizing Stephen Fry

Before addressing this chapter’s argument, it would be helpful to say something about Fry’s personal history. This will be best done by referring to his character as a comedian. One of the first things that viewers will note about Fry the comedian is that he has a scholarly sense about him. Film studies editor and writer Richard Porton likens Fry’s erudition to that which made Oscar Wilde famous many years ago. He is an expressive individual who, like the “Crown Prince of Bohemia,” knows what it is to be creative in a world that prevents such freedom. Indeed, Fry played the title role in the 1997 film Wilde, saying in an interview in the magazine Cineaste that he was born to play it. Like Wilde, Fry wants to express himself, read, and discuss the greats of philosophy and the myths of Greece. He feels that modern life is geared too much toward making a living and not enough toward being interested in philosophy, art, and literature. People often want to conform and just get on with life, but, for Fry, this leads to a very humdrum way of living. For both Wilde and Fry, being authentic is important. All told, Fry gives the impression of being very genuine and concerned with the plight of himself and other people in the modern world.

As part of the middle class, Fry’s early days were blessed by the benefit of education and good taste. This is the class between the limited social expectations of the working classes and the excesses of the upper classes. It is like a social no-man’s land, where the minefield of social norms and mores might blow up in one’s face at any moment. There are behavioral expectations that, when violated, lead to social trouble. Fry noticed this in his school days. Though his manic depression was not diagnosed until later, it first showed itself when he failed to successfully navigate the school rules.

Although Fry has appeared in a number of films and is a prolific writer, he is probably best known for British sketch comedy shows like A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Blackadder. But in one of his earlier comedic roles, Fry mocked the very same privileged, yet socially fraught life of a university student that he also enjoyed. He appeared with Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson in an episode of BBC’s The Young Ones (“Bambi”) in a spoof of University Challenge: a British quiz show on which Fry had actually competed in 1980 for Cambridge University’s Queens College. The sketch was a satire of the class privilege found in university education. Fry played the part of Lord Snot, an entitled, half-witted undergraduate on a team called “Footlights College.” The sketch is a double spoof of both his time at Cambridge University and his membership in Footlights Dramatic Club, an “elitist” comedy club where Fry’s satirical awakening began. The critique of social class is a defining factor of this sketch – something that fits Fry’s later comedy. He played a part satirizing the absurd privileges of “class,” and he is part of the class he is mocking.

This sort of winking, class satire would become a model for his comedic career. Fry, Laurie, and Thompson continued closely working together – to the point that they gained the reputation in the media and general public of being a bit “clingy” toward one another. Admirers and detractors alike began calling the group “luvvies” (along with other, similarly publicly effusive actors). Their relationship is seen in both intended and unintended parody in the film Peter’s Friends and later in the satire Bright Young Things. Yet, this closeness perhaps proved too suffocating for Fry, who disappeared to Belgium in 1995 in an emotional panic – abandoning a play (Cell Mates) in the middle of its run, even though he was both the co-writer and the co-star.

Sadly, this event was not Fry’s only encounter with emotional turmoil. He was diagnosed later with bipolar disorder, or manic depression (hereafter the phrase “manic depression” will be exclusively used). The documentary The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive makes it clear that Fry suffers from this illness but also sees it as a benefit to his comedic method. On the one hand, he has bouts of sadness that can appear without notice. He has made two suicide attempts and is often thrown into deep depression by comments made by others and situations he hears about. Indeed, while media and others speculated on the reason he dropped out of Cell Mates, Fry would eventually admit that his flight was motivated by ceaseless pressure he received from press coverage, including a negative early review of the play. Once diagnosed, he would go on to attribute much of the ordeal to his manic depression. On the other hand, much of Fry’s comedy and commentary on the institutions is driven by his mania – an attitude sometimes apparent in the persona he publicly adopts.

Taken together, these snippets from Fry’s life may help the reader to see him as very much like a manic Socrates. He is someone who seeks to educate and better himself, who walks alone (as when he fled London for Europe), who asks provocative questions of the institutions around him, but also has no ambition to take over and provide alternative leadership. But to what degree is this Socratic comparison accurate?

Socrates as a Guide to Fry’s Social Criticism

The Oracle of Delphi might not have called Fry the wisest person around, as she did with Socrates. Yet, Fry is respected as a learned media guru who asks lots of questions that serve an important social purpose. But this is not enough to make him a contemporary Socrates. If Fry is to be compared to one of the most important thinkers in the Western world, it needs to be shown that he is the Socratic gadfly that attempts to wake up the metaphorical lazy horses of his society.

As is depicted in Plato’s Apology, Socrates was charged with worshipping false gods and of wittingly corrupting the youth of Athens. Curiously, Socrates spends most of his “defense” questioning the jury and his accusers rather than actually defending himself. For instance, Socrates says that it was not he who has corrupted Athens’s youth, but the elders of Athens, who are not suited to teaching their children. Moreover, Socrates says that he should be thanked and not blamed for his attempts to enlighten the Athenian people. In the end, Socrates was executed by the Athenian state. His death is shown in Plato’s Phaedo, where Socrates drinks hemlock in the presence of his friends.

Throughout the Apology, there is more than a hint of sarcasm and mockery of those in power. The jury held ultimate control over Socrates’s life, just as many of his accusers held important positions in the Athenian state as political figures, poets, and artisans. Socrates would argue that this is too much power for ordinary people to have. They are not skilled in the administration of justice because they are ignorant of what justice really is. So, Socrates mocks them by calling them “men of Athens” and not the accepted title of respect: “gentlemen of the jury.” He falls short of calling them morons but more than hints at their lack of ability.

But is Fry’s mockery as subversive as Socrates’s, or is Fry just making trouble? Socrates was seen by his first group of accusers as a busybody who went around Athens annoying people. This fits Fry very well. He is a satirist, rather than a stand-up comedian, lambasting his targets in sketches, speeches, interviews, and other kinds of work – and nothing and no one is off-limits. For example, in his documentary, Last Chance to See, Fry goes through a list of New Zealand bird names, such as the Kākāpō or the Pūkeko, claiming that they have been named by 7-year-olds. Even those who name birds are targets of criticism. Socrates was in search of knowledge and, like Fry, heard that certain groups had this knowledge. Fry is keen to seek out those who think they know about justice. He approaches politicians who claim to be wise, but upon closer examination they not only prove themselves ignorant, but they are not aware of this ignorance. Showing up politicians as ignorant can lead to Fry being perceived as a busybody, too, but of course today this would not lead to capital criminal charges. At any rate, there is a parallel here to the image of the gadfly conjured up by Socrates that is needed to wake up the lazy horse of Athens and its people. For Fry, the “lazy horse” that needs to be roused from its stupor is a combination of social, political, and religious institutions.

Satire as Socratic Questioning of the Absurd

Like Socrates, Fry wants to put his audience in a position to question themselves and the prevailing opinions of their society. To do this, Fry’s comedic tool of choice is satire. But what type of satirist is he?

In a comment that is widely attributed to one of Fry’s many TV interviews, he claims that comedy should be experienced with an obvious vocal response. He said that to simply say that something is funny without laughing is like saying something is sexy without “getting a stiffy.” Jokes aside, though, perhaps one does not need to laugh out loud to appreciate the joke. There is more to comedy: it encourages people to think. Fry knows this, too, and it shows in his satire. By provoking the audience to both laugh and think, comedy can be more effective than dryly presenting an argument. Fry points out something that is apparently absurd in a way that makes it obviously absurd. For instance, Americans are frequently mocked by the rest of the world for both a tendency to rush into armed conflict and an ignorance about the rest of the world’s affairs. So, on his quiz show, QI, Fry quotes Ambrose Bierce, saying that “war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”

Like a leading question from a skilled attorney, the exposition of the absurdity involves the audience as though they are going through the thought process – which they are – but it is Fry that leads them. They laugh because they have come to a new understanding. Fry is aware that thought-provoking comedy is difficult, and that the particular satirical tool to elicit a thoughtful response needs to be chosen carefully. He rarely uses less sophisticated humor, like slapstick, and his sexual references are kept to a minimum. When he does include them, they have a purpose, such as to expose sexual hypocrisy. Case in point: in the documentary Out There, Fry interviews Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who holds a clinic to “resolve the conflicts” that he thinks cause homosexual attraction. Fry appears contemplative throughout the interview but closes by suggesting that Nicolosi looks very “Metro-sexual” – hinting that the good doctor is repressing some of the very sexual preferences he seeks to “resolve.”

Among the classical types of satire, Horatian satire best describes Fry’s comedy. This does not mean, however, that Fry does not keep Juvenalian and Menippean satire in his toolkit, too. But what are Horatian, Juvenalian, and Menippean satire?

Horatian satire differs from other types of satire because it attempts to get people to laugh with the use of dead-pan humor that playfully mocks that which the speaker finds absurd. His derision of Dr. Nicolsi is one example as is his later interview in the same show with a man who coaches gay men to cover up their gayness to get acting jobs. As Fry says, “maybe hiding your sexuality is warranted in Hollywood, because the audience wants to believe that the romantic lead, or action hero, is the real straight deal.” The goal is to show the absurdity of Hollywood and its contradictions. It is supposed to be a place where gay men can be openly so in what is supposed to be the free and expressive profession of acting. This is a kind of sarcasm. While sarcasm has been described as the lowest form of wit because it is seen as impolite, sarcastic humor also engages the audience’s intellect. One has to think to get the joke, and that thinking involves understanding the intellectual predicament that the speaker presents. The audience is not merely laughing; they are being enlightened.

This fits in nicely with Fry’s mockery of social conventions and people’s malicious religious, political, and social attitudes. In a sketch on the BBC’s A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Fry plays a Christian called Arnold who wants to discuss the Book of Genesis with his friend, Glen (“Naked Bible Study”). Glen, instead, wants to discuss the size of Arnold’s girlfriend’s breasts. This is a satirical prodding of the way that ordinary people might weigh the importance of religion when compared to their sexual desires. Glen, probably like many people, finds sex much more interesting than Arnold’s analysis of Genesis. Ignoring Glen’s questions and pressing on, Fry plays Arnold with a peculiar lilt in his voice and an awkward, almost creepy presence. The sketch, of course, is making fun of an uptight and out-of-touch Christianity but not particular Christians, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that many practicing Christians find the sketch funny and not offensive.

At other times, Fry’s satire takes a more aggressive tone. This is a hallmark of Juvenalian satire, where indignant anger is used to alert the audience of a serious wrongdoing. In a 2015 interview with the Irish TV host Gay Byrne, Byrne asks – as part of his regular set of questions for guests – what Fry would say in a meeting with God. His response? “Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil.” For his part, Fry describes how he would hold the deity accountable for the evil in the world.

Here and elsewhere, Fry savages divine power and authority, at least as it is seen by others, with his fierce criticism of theists and sexual moralists. Even the Fry and Laurie Genesis sketch, referenced above, could have a bit of Juvenalian bite. The passage from Genesis that Arnold quotes notes that Adam would not have realized his nakedness “unless you have eaten the fruit of the tree whereof I said thou shouldst not eat.” As presented in the sketch, the fact that God withholds knowledge (like nakedness) would imply that God wants people to be ignorant – and worse, that the Church cultivates this belief. So, Fry sometimes gets angry and appears to actively want to upset people with his ideas. In these situations, Fry’s aim is less on being funny and more on making a serious point.

At times, Fry invokes a third type of satire – Menippean satire – where character faults and personal obsessions are satirized. Despite a focus on these character flaws, Menippean satire still tends to broadly criticize ideas, attitudes, and dogmatisms rather than the specific individuals who hold them. The use of Menippean satire can be seen in another Fry and Laurie sketch (“Censored”) through the overbearing personality of Sir William Rees-Mogg, later Lord ReesMogg, the real-life chairman of the “Broadcasting Standards Council” and one-time vice chairman of the BBC. In the sketch, Fry explains that Rees-Mogg did not like a previous version of the sketch that included excessive sex and violence, so a new sketch was produced. (This is part of the joke: there probably really was no specific earlier sketch that Rees-Mogg rejected; Fry and Laurie claim, for instance, that the refused sketch involved the two actors “going to bed together…violently.” Instead, the present sketch is likely just a wider dig at British censorship). Laurie, seen on a television screen mounted beside Fry, then states that this kind of censorship is not “so sweeping as to be a kind of government thought police.” Rather, the concern is merely with “standards…for the sake of our children.” Of course, Fry and Laure do in fact see this kind of censorship as “government thought police,” and Rees-Mogg is ridiculed for foisting his views onto the viewing public, who are assumed to be unable to decide for themselves what is appropriate to watch. As indicative of Menippean satire, the sketch is really a general message against the harmful effects of censorship, despite referring to Rees-Mogg specifically.

Hell Is Emma Thompson

Challenging institutions of power through sarcasm and satire is certainly a form of troublemaking – but it is not true subversive activity, as subversion aims at drastic change rather than just the personal satisfaction of the troublemaker. Additional work is to be done before Fry can be said to be authentically subversive, like Socrates. In fact, it needs to be established that Fry is authentic in the first place. To be authentic is to think in a way that is not created by others. For someone so closely involved with other “luvvies” like Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, this may have been difficult for Fry. To belong to any group, one often has to adopt that group’s way of thinking; it is necessary to get along. This is certainly a handicap for the authentic thinker.

As a lover of philosophy and literature, Fry might well have been aware of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (No Exit, in English), wherein Sartre presents the claim that individuals should not be emotionally dependent on others for reasons of individual authenticity and freedom. Sartre was an existentialist philosopher who argued for authenticity in all matters, especially relationships with other people. According to Sartre, individuals usually view themselves as an object through the gaze of others; and to view oneself through the gaze of others is to accept their view. So, if a person is told that she is “a scholar who likes pizza,” then that is a view she will have to accept if she is going to be friends with those defining her. To tell them that they have got her wrong will cause them to resent her. Therefore, she – and everyone, to Sartre – has a choice: either remain inauthentic and keep her friends, or live authentically, define herself, and have few or no friends. This is not an easy dilemma to resolve. As a public celebrity, Fry’s sense of viewing himself through others is arguably even greater, as there are many more people attempting to define him.

Recall that Fry was also viewed and characterized in a certain way by his fellow “luvvies.” Take Emma Thompson. Fry was put in the position of accepting Thompson’s view of him or rejecting that view. (Whether Thompson’s view of him is problematic or not does not really matter; the point for Sartre is simply that it is up to Fry to accept this view – unauthentically – or construct his own, authentic self). To accept Thompson’s view would allow a relationship with Thompson, but would diminish his own authentic self-awareness. On a Sartrean view, one way to understand Fry’s disappearance to Belgium is that he was rejecting others’ views of him while at the same time presumably looking for his true self. However, according to Sartre there is no essential self; if that is right, making such a quest is likely to end with Fry finding a self that is still defined by others like Thompson. The compulsion to accept Thompson’s view of him is there – and if he did accept it, he would be doing what Sartre calls in Being and Nothingness “acting in Bad Faith.” To Sartre, though, it is always Fry’s own responsibility to choose whether to reject or accept the characterizations that people like Thompson make. Authenticity demands that he reject the characterizations of others; this will lead him to nothingness but it is where he will be free to choose for himself who he will be.

Fry’s predicament is much like the predicament of the three characters in Sartre’s play, No Exit. They are locked in a room in the afterlife, seemingly waiting to be admitted to Hell. But the characters soon find out that, in essence, the room is Hell, because the company of the others is gained only at the cost of their authenticity. For example, one of the characters, Garcin, finds a way to escape but decides not to leave until he convinces another character, Inèz, that his pacifism in life did not make him a coward. This indicates that Garcin lacks self-worth, and indeed all three captives are in some way dependent on each other for their self-worth. This lack of self-worth leads to lack of authenticity and dooms them all to eternal “punishment.”

As was observed above with Fry, authenticity is important for the examined and worthwhile life. This is because people tend to desire the emotional support or admiration of others. They are social beings and as such feel a need for others to like them. But to have someone like you comes with the baggage of why they like you – not to mention that you are confined by how they define your character and your “self.” This is why one of the characters in No Exit declares, famously, that “hell is other people.” For Sartre, each individual – both in the play and the real world – is trapped by the way that other people perceive and define them. In his personal life, Sartre’s long-term romantic partner Simone De Beauvoir constantly encouraged him to have an open relationship so neither was dependent solely on the other.

Fry was depressed when he went to Europe. This existential crisis would presumably include doubt about who he is and about people wanting him to be something he is not. In many of his interviews after this emotional episode, Fry said that he felt like his friends and fans wanted him to be available to them. To read Fry’s escape to Belgium through a Sartrean lens, Fry believed that others, including friends like Thompson, were projecting their views of Fry as an object – an object of love, emotional support, a source of laughter, etc. – onto him. To accept these views would be in Bad Faith. Acceptance would make Fry into a socially created object. It is, of course, wrong to turn someone into a socially created object simply because it will deny them the authentic, examined life of an independent subject. Socrates often discussed the need to live an “examined life.” This is an examination of every aspect of one’s daily conduct and thought. Part of living this “examined life,” then, involves self-reflection and the building of an authentic self. To be a contemporary Socrates, Fry’s departure to Europe may have been entirely necessary so that he could examine himself and develop this authenticity in solitude.

Praising the Institutions with Faint Mockery

Like Socrates, Fry is self-aware and craves authentic freedom. One of Fry’s most frequent comedic targets remains the absurdity of the class system and the institutions that sustain it. This is seen in another sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, where Laurie wants to join the British Army Secret Armed Service, or SAS (the sketch is also called “SAS”). The recruiting officer tells Laurie that the SAS is no longer a fighting force but is instead just “a masturbatory aid for various backbench MPs.” In the United Kingdom, “backbenchers” are members of Parliament – MPs – who hold no real government office. So, the sketch argues that the military’s role has been reduced to something that props up and preserves the hollowest of political appointments.

Today’s social classes were not in place during Socrates’s time, but Socrates was certainly critical of the power of the state and those who held their authority within the state, just like Fry. Indeed, Socrates was so critical of the state – and so committed to exposing others to this critique – that he was willing to be put to death for it. In the Apology, Socrates outright refuses lesser sentences like exile.

Obviously, Fry has not followed Socrates to this radical endpoint. But even if it can be established that Fry is an authentic person, it is not clear whether his comedy calls for genuine change in the institutions he criticizes. Could it be that Fry actually wants to preserve the very institutions he mocks – the government and civil branches, universities, the judiciary, the military, and of course the Church – because he benefits from them in some way? For example, in the above sketch on SAS recruitment, Fry is not saying that the army needs to be abolished, just that it needs to be more self-aware and examine its purpose as an institution. Examining Fry’s strange relationship with such institutions is both illuminating and confusing.

Despite his mockery of it, Fry’s celebrity at least suggests he has been granted a kind of guest membership to the upper class; although he was not born into it, Fry was given access to it by his work in the media, and then was not kicked out of it by other (born) upper-class members because of his acceptable conduct. That he attended Cambridge University, an expensive and privileged institution, likely plays a major role in this. That is perhaps how he became a member of the Garrick, a theatrical gentleman’s club in London that has a 7-year waiting list to which one can only be admitted as a member if one is proposed by an existing member.

Still, Fry mocks the upper-class. For example, Fry (seemingly intentionally) calls the Garrick, “The Garrick Club,” which is considered a faux pas. But generally, Fry’s mockery of upper-class elitism resembles the good, old-fashioned style of British mainstays like Monty Python. For instance, a sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie includes Laurie as a university physics teacher who, while filming a lecture, makes the mistake of getting his figures wrong (“Open University Bloopers”). When the director points out the error, both of them begin laughing out of control. Of course, the teacher’s mistake is not something that would be recognized by most people – and that is the point. As part of an elite group that understands the mistake, the teacher and director have a good laugh at something that ordinary people would find dull, at best.

And yet, he also actively enjoys the advantages of upper-class life and is allowed to remain in that social group. Is there a reason why the upper class allows this mockery? Perhaps the upper class and the institutions are getting something out of it. Indeed, it might be that the kind of mockery that Fry offers helps bolster and reinforce the existence and role of the upper-class and its institutions. How so?

The Marxist philosopher and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s perspective on socioeconomic class shows how individuals such as Fry engage and identify with their respective social class. Bourdieu argues that class membership is not maintained by money alone. Its status and credibility are also maintained by social capital – features of society such as education, fashion, and personality – that also give the individual class member their role and purpose. As the group “on top,” members of the upper class obviously benefit the most from class hierarchy. So, part of the “role” of upper-class people will be to maintain the institution of class. Fry’s role as a comedian belonging to the upper class is twofold: he is expected to be funny, but he cannot mock the upper class so fiercely that he gets kicked out of it.

To see how Fry’s comedy fits his social role, consider this: a normal turn of phrase is to say that a person “damns” something “with faint praise.” This means that the person is making a remark that seems praiseworthy when it is actually intended to mock the target in some way. Most students know such remarks well, such as when a professor says that an essay is “well written and interesting” before picking it apart for its lack of insight and other errors. But if we invert the concept of faint praise, we might think in terms of faint mockery – where something is seemingly mocked, but the actual intention is to praise.

With this in mind, one might think that Fry is engaged in faint mockery when he makes fun of the institutions, given both that the institutions tolerate his mockery and that he afterward seems to participate in and benefit from those same institutions. When Fry takes part in sketches like the University Challenge spoof on The Young Ones, he is clearly damning the elitism of upper-class schools like Cambridge; yet, as a Cambridge alumnus, he also has a certain fondness for the very same sort of privileged education he criticizes. Although university education and privilege are mocked, they are mocked so lightly that the people who attend places like Cambridge are also “in on the joke.” In this way, faint mockery helps to perpetuate institutions like elite universities.

Why would Fry do this? Whichever class he inhabits, Fry lives by a process that Bourdieu calls “habitus.” This is the socially ingrained disposition of attitudes, habits, and skills that individuals gain as members of their social class. It takes a lot of effort to maintain the attributes and physical appearances needed to keep one’s class membership. In order to maintain membership of a class one needs to express certain beliefs, speak with a certain accent, and even walk and present oneself in a way that is similar to other members of that class. And Fry’s wit and scholarly outlook fit him into a class where he feels comfortable and other class members are comfortable with him.

And yet, Fry also seems to mock the habitus of social class as arbitrary and quite absurd. This happens regularly on A Bit of Fry and Laurie, where social class is often mocked for the mannerisms and quirks needed for a person to belong. For instance, consider the recurring appearances of the two businessmen characters, Peter and John, who utter phrases such as “the Boardroom and the Bedroom are two sides of the same agenda.” In between downing many tumblers of scotch (already something associated with their social position), the two are seen as mocking the mores and attitudes that make them acceptable in the class of businessmen.

At the same time, these are the very same class mannerisms that Fry maintains in his own field as a culture critic. Granted, like Peter and John, Fry would find belonging difficult without buying in to the “stock” of social norms and mores of his class. But he also criticizes them. One might argue that Fry is perhaps in a better position to meaningfully criticize the institutions by accepting their rules and “speaking their language,” but one does not necessarily have to belong to a group to criticize it. And so there seems to be a bit of hypocrisy in Fry’s mockery of upper-class habitus. And certainly, simply pointing out the absurdities of the rules of social conduct in, for example, the business class does not genuinely disrupt that class or challenge the class system as a whole.

But perhaps that is the point and Fry’s mutual class membership and mockery is not so odd, after all. Perhaps he is not trying to destroy the idea of class and the institutions that support it or even undermine them significantly because he wants to “have his cake” (by enjoying the advantages of his class) and “eat it, too” (by calling attention to its failures, problems, and silliness). This might make him seem less “cutting edge,” but it may also be a more accurate representation of him as not only a comedian but as a person.

As a critic, Fry’s support of institutions of power and class can be seen by delving deeper into Richard Curtis and Ben Elton’s Blackadder Goes Forth. This is a BBC historical sitcom based in the trenches of the First World War. In it, Fry plays the childish and incompetent General Melchett and Hugh Laurie plays Lieutenant George. As others have commented, by applying Bourdieu’s analysis to Blackadder, it is clear that social class is presented in the series as something natural, when in practice it is kept in order by military custom and expectations (Webb et al. 2002). Adherence to values and beliefs is aggressively enforced while the soldiers are not aware that these beliefs are largely arbitrary.

For instance, Captain Blackadder, a middle-class army officer, fulfills his duties as an officer without realizing that they are carried out mostly unconsciously, given Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. In order to get out of actual combat, Blackadder secures the position as the new illustrator for the King and Country – a propaganda paper printed in Paris – by stealing Lieutenant George’s painting and claiming it as his own work (“Captain Cook”). The King and Country appointment is revealed to be a ruse; however Blackadder is instead supposed to illustrate the defenses across the enemy’s line to better help the British soldiers prepare for their next assault. In another attempt to avoid the fight, Blackadder – with help from Lieutenant George – produces a falsified image showing immense enemy fortifications, up to and including elephants. When this plan also fails, Blackadder ultimately avoids charging “over the top” by posing as an Italian chef for General Melchett.

Through each of these increasingly outrageous plots, Blackadder’s focus is always on saving himself; it does not seem to occur to him to try and stop the war or usurp the chain of command. Indeed, the hierarchical, officer structure is still respected and maintained in peculiar ways. Despite its ridiculousness, consider the rigid and order-like manner in which Blackadder responds to Lieutenant George’s question about what to do when stepping on a mine: “Well, normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump up 200 feet into the air and scatter yourself over a wide area.” For Blackadder, the war (and the roles of officer and subordinate) must go on – just not with him getting killed.

So, the class customs and expectations he abides by are real only in a social sense. This is to say that they are not real in the same sense that food is needed for nourishment or heat is needed to stay warm. Rather, they are fabricated for the purpose of identifying social class membership. It is like playing a game, but the game is deadly serious, and the players have interests in power and politics that motivate them to act the way they do. Deviation is deemed unreasonable or unthinkable because those in power wish to retain their power; the status quo is to be kept at all costs.

Fry’s performance as the silly General Melchett illustrates the notion of habitus and Fry’s acceptance of it in his daily life. Different members of the British Army in the Great War – WWI – are in a state of constant anxiety about orders to “go over the top,” a suicidal strategy that saw soldiers charge out of the trenches and straight into a line of enemy fire. Social class differences are made clear in this scenario. General Melchett and his sidekick, Lieutenant George, are clearly upper-class people. Their many antics and rituals, from a shared school background, are incomprehensible to Captain Blackadder (who is middle class) and Private Baldrick (who is working class). General Melchett is enthusiastic about the war and is not aware of the real dangers it poses; he might be excused because he is not in the trenches and does not see the death and maiming first-hand. But Lieutenant George, who is in the trenches and should know better, is equally enthusiastic. His obliviousness toward the impending carnage is both hilarious and scary.

Yet, Lieutenant George throws off his upper-class habitus and questions whether the war is actually just when it is time to go over the top. George momentarily enters the habitus of Blackadder and Baldrick and he sees the war and what it demands of its rank-and-file soldiers as absurd. The notion of social “stock,” once seen in objective terms, is now useless in explaining that the War has objective meaning for all Britons. Despite this, however, George also has no intention of stopping it or changing the plan of action and returns to the habitus of his own class.

Knowing Lieutenant George’s relationship with his habitus helps us better understand Fry’s situation and intentions. Just as George both understands the horror of war for the average soldier (however briefly) and still accepts his role in the war, Fry’s criticism of his class just serves to reinforce his class membership and what he perceives as the importance of the institutions. He has no reason to reject them. He is aware that the rich kids ran the schools he went to as a schoolboy. It was also the rich kids who ran Cambridge. He knows that his access to the upper class is limited, and that his participation is based on his education in their schools and universities; yet he also knows that he can make fun of them while still participating in the game that they have created (because his staying in that class is contingent on him playing the game). He praises the institutions with faint mockery in a way that might appear insincere, but it is satire that even the ruling class needs and even expects in moderate amounts. It’s part of the language. Like his permanent membership at the Garrick is based on his previous good conduct, his guest membership in the upper-class would be revoked with immediate effect if he were to be more radical.

Fry definitely plays the “game” of social class and wants to avoid professional estrangement. The only way to do this is to take part. This is shown in an episode of BBC’s adult puppet satire program, Spitting Image. Stephen Fry and the other “luvvies” like Laurie, Thompson, and others, sit at a dinner party with Anthony Hopkins as their guest. Hopkins is asked where he went to university and replies that he did not attend university, to which Laurie amusingly says, “Oh how droll, you went to Oxford!” Hopkins responds, clarifying that he did not go to any university at all. Hearing this socially devastating news, Fry promptly instructs Hopkins to serve drinks once he’s cleared up the dining table. One’s social class is contingent and Hopkins’s membership has just been revoked – as would Fry’s if he had not gone to Cambridge and did not praise the institutions with faint mockery. Keeping full membership of any class takes effort. “Treason” is out of the question because the game must go on. Which means that the social class system might need reform but only a bit at a time. And as long as Fry – unlike Socrates – knows how much dissent is socially acceptable, and it never turns into treason, this dissent may be a hallmark of his class membership. Light mockery is tolerated because it keeps social class, and the institutions that support class, going.

By Job, Theodicies Are Silly!

Fry treads carefully in matters of dissent in some social institutions, so it might be thought that his treatment of the Church would be done with even more care, so as not to offend the powerful too much. Yet, Fry has also publicly referred to himself as an atheist on more than one occasion, such as during a 2009 Spectator Lecture for the Royal Geographical Society. Although Socrates was not an atheist – he considered doing philosophy to be a service to the god Apollo – Socrates did challenge the prevailing religious institutions of his time. In fact, he was in part executed on the charge of “impiety” toward the gods of the state. In this way, Fry’s criticism of the Church and the notion of God more generally seem to be perfectly Socratic.

Fry certainly sees theism as philosophically problematic, mostly because many theists accept God as perfect despite the fact that God allows evils like cruelty to children. Explanations of why God allows evil are called theodicies, and most of Fry’s critique of religion manifests as an attack on such arguments, especially as they are applied to what is known as the “problem of evil” – the argument which suggests that the evil of the world entails that God does not exist.

Fry states this clearly in his interview with Gay Byrne on RTE, the Irish Public Broadcast station, when Byrne asked Fry what he would say if he ever met God: “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?” Fry’s point seems to be that there is great evil and wrong in the world – and so God (an omnipotent deity out for the good of all creation) must not exist; if he did, there would be no such evil. Of course, one might argue that whatever God does is good, by definition. But Fry makes it clear that this would mean that God could decide on a whim what is right or wrong (and then even change his mind about it later), and that Fry would not want to get “into a heaven” on terms that would require him to accept a God that would allow such things as good. Such a God “is, quite clearly, a maniac – utter maniac, totally selfish.”

Fry’s interview with Byrne evokes shades of another Platonic dialogue, Euthyphro. In it, Socrates has a discussion with a priest named Euthyphro about the nature of piety. Famously, Socrates presents what has come to be called the Euthyphro dilemma: is something called pious just because the gods love it, or do the gods love the pious thing because it is already pious? In more contemporary philosophy of religion, the Euthyphro dilemma is used to illustrate problems about God’s relationship to moral goodness. Is an act morally good because God commands it, or does God command the act because it is morally good? The worry with the second horn of the dilemma is that it suggests that there is a moral standard outside of God’s control. God is bound to call that which is good by that standard, “good.” This would entail that God is neither all-powerful nor the final arbiter of right and wrong, and that is contrary to the traditional definition of God as a “perfect, all-powerful” being.

But the worry with the first horn of the dilemma – that an act is good just because God commands people to do it – is that it makes morality arbitrary. This is like Fry’s criticism about God being a capricious, selfish maniac. Infant murder couldn’t and wouldn’t suddenly become good if God commanded it. Of course, one might argue that God would never do that, but there are two problems with such an argument. First, he does in the Old Testament (Hosea 13:16, 1 Samuel 15:3, Psalms 137:8–9). Second, the only way it is true that God would never command such a thing is if there is a moral standard, outside of God’s control, that entailed infant murder is bad that God would always adhere to. And that brings right back to the “there is a standard outside of God” problem again.

But at the heart of Fry’s criticism is the problem of evil. In a televised Intelligence Squared debate in 2009, on whether the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world, Fry argued for the negative. When his opponents made the argument that the Church was a kind of moral model for the world, Fry retorted by pointing out that it is anything but. “[The Church,] for example, thought that slavery was perfectly fine, absolutely okay, and then they didn’t. And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says ‘Oh, well we couldn’t know better because nobody else did.’ Then what are you for?” Likewise, one could argue, if God is not willing to step in to prevent evils like the suffering of children at the hand of bone cancer – and indeed, since he is the author of the laws of nature, which seem to entail that such things are necessary – then, like Fry, one might rightly ask of God: “Then what are you for?”

What Fry demands, then, is an explanation from believers – an explanation for how an all-good God could allow (or even author) such evils – and this is precisely what a theodicy offers. The Biblical book of Job is the traditional target of many theodicy arguments, where God attempts to prove to the devil that his faithful worshiper, Job, will maintain his faith no matter what afflictions are cast upon him. God allows the death of Job’s children, among many other ills, but still Job does not stop worshiping God. Just as Fry asks why God would permit bone cancer in children, one might wonder why God would allow such horrible suffering for even his very faithful, like Job and his family.

Among the many theodicies proposed over the years to answer questions like this, two of the most popular involve the notions of free will and character building. In terms of free will, Richard Swinburne (1978) argues that God permits evil to preserve the free choices of human beings. Even natural evils like bone cancer must be permitted so that freely chosen moral evil is possible – such as the choice to steal in order to pay for expensive cancer treatments. It is only because of natural evil that the moral choice presents itself in the first place. Dovetailing nicely with this idea, John Hick (1966) posits a “soul-making” theodicy rooted in the beliefs of the Greek bishop Irenaeus, whereby the adversity of dealing with moral and natural evil builds character.

Given how he responded to Byrne and others, though, it is unlikely that Fry would accept these theodicies. Perhaps, for instance, Fry might be willing to call his mania a “gift from God,” as he has admitted it makes him very productive and contributes to his comedy. He has, in a sense, built much of his own character through the adversity of manic depression. But even setting aside the suicidal ideations with which he frequently battles, Fry would likely say that manic depression is one thing, but terminal bone cancer in children is another entirely. This does not improve the character of dying children, and their tremendous suffering is no excuse for the potential character-building of the family members who endure the deaths of their loved ones. Likewise, if such is the cost of “free will,” one can expect Fry to say that it is too highly bought.

So, just like Socrates, Fry maintains a robust skepticism of religious institutions and their adherents. Primarily, this is because the adherents too often do not think critically about what they are being asked to believe. For Socrates, this “belief” came in the form of widespread acceptance that the gods were just as petty and jealous as ordinary humans – as he challenges in Euthyphro. To Fry, this “belief” is in inadequate theodicies and inconsistencies between God’s supposed goodness and the evils of the world. As Socrates would, Fry pushes the faithful to question their beliefs. This is not a demand that the religious prove God’s existence to him, as Fry’s fellow comedian Ricky Gervais makes. Rather, Fry asks theists to think for themselves.

Conclusion: Socrates’s Voice, Fry’s Mania, and the Comforts of Moderate Reform

In the Apology, Socrates talks about an inner “voice” that cautions him against doing wrong. To Socrates, this voice is a kind of divine spirit. Given Fry’s comments about his manic depression, perhaps the suggestion in the previous section is not too far off: that his mania is also a sort of divine gift. It helps him do his comedy. Still, the lows and highs of manic depression are no laughing matter. Before his diagnosis, Fry has made fun of the disorder on at least one occasion. On an adlib BBC radio program called Whose Line is it Anyway, Fry had the task of improvising current affairs as someone who suffers from manic depression. As part of the bit, one moment he was joyous and the next he declared “who really cares.” Fry’s mania is ever present, and it is a vital motivating force for his comedy and view of the world. This is shown in his documentary The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive, where he is now aware of his condition and is thankful that it is what drives him as that person who asks so many questions.

Fry’s medium is certainly different from Socrates. Although the Greek philosopher was at times sarcastic, he was no satirist or comedian. The point is the same, though: in the asking of questions that challenge authority, Socrates and Fry both hope to bring others to reflect on themselves and their societies. But he can only call for this kind of societal self-examination because he also examines himself, in an authentic way.

Perhaps Fry really is a manic Socrates – but with a restraint that Socrates never had (nor wanted). Fry’s desire for change is genuine, but it is also limited to a conservative, incremental reform that the ruling class can accept and Fry can still say is just. There will be no radical change, but that is Fry’s intention. After all, he benefits from most of these institutions, too. In this sense he is a modern-day gadfly to the establishment, its underbelly often exposed for Fry to see. His bite is enough to cause annoyance but not enough to summon a call for his execution. The Democratic and Christian establishment rarely puts its enemies to death, anyway (at least, any more). Should Fry ever be charged with impiety and corrupting youth, the jury will be heavily in favor of acquittal. No hemlock for Stephen Fry! They will restore his freedom to stroll through the hallways, streets, and chambers of the establishment to remind them of what they are doing wrong and that what they say is nonsense, but with little consequence.