The Persistence of Satire

Last Friday night I went to Letterkenny watch a live recording of the Blindboy Podcast.

Blindboy's book of short stories, The Gospel According to Blindboy, was a best seller the first winter we lived in Ireland. He started the podcast to promote the book, and read one story each week. I loved it, even though I missed many cultural references. Soon his publisher told him he couldn't give the book away by reading it on the internet, so now he spends the hour talking to us: about music, art, psychology, Irish history and culture, and his analysis of all of it.

In a recent podcast he shared a hot take that the Chinese industrialists/government are creating a god for an atheist society that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Because every authoritarian government needs a god. 

Sometime last year he started doing live podcasts, with guests like Bernadette Devlin McAlisky and Roddy Doyle and Spike Lee. Guests have also included HIV activists and housing justice activists who important in Ireland but not celebrities. 

I never thought he'd come up to little ol' Letterkenny.

Blindboy is half of Rubber Bandits, a band who became famous with a song called Horse Outside. If you watch that video, or others, you may wonder why a middle-aged Californian lesbian feminist is listening to someone who so clearly appeals to young men. The podcast has nothing to do with mid-00's Irish hiphop, and early on he explains why he wears a bag on his head. (It's a good idea to listen to them in order from the beginning.)

The audience at the podcast event was half women, and all ages. They must like him for the same reason I do. He's funny, he's smart, and he's not afraid to take chances with art. He's not always right—he doesn't know that Second Wave feminism was intersectional for instance—but he seems willing to learn.

I listen to the Blindboy podcast to learn about current Irish culture. Here's a story he told about how Irish people give directions, which explains a lot:

As I mentioned before, there's so much more for me to learn about Irish Culture. I read the /ireland subreddit, for example, to get a slice of what younger people think of their country's current events. Even though most of the posters are young men, they've explained much that I didn't know I didn't know. Eventually I get the jokes. 

For instance, I heard about the Hardy Bucks on /ireland, and I will ever stop loving it. My favorite episode is King of the Town, where Uncle Mick gets the boys to form a team competing for the title of King of the Town. The prize is money, glory, and a horse collar. 

The events are:

Yard of Stew
The Enduro Cups
Best Pub Chat ("Mother was related to Ché Guevara")
The Sex Factor
Sex Mountain
Pint Spill Kickoff ("How many times a man will spill your pint before you blow your top.)
Something about running through tires while drinking a pint
Teams of men pulling tractors

A sean nós singer gives us the story of the King of the Town:

since time began

when I was young

they talk of this here day

men would come from near and far

to celebrate in May

healthy men [???? ???] fight

disappeared into the night

the tough times never got us down

the hardy bucks from Castletown

feats of strengths is how it goes
and before the sun goes down
a man will take the his title home
and be crowned king of the town

Here's the last 15 minutes of the episode. Give it a lash: 

"Feats of strength"? Where have I heard that before? The tales of Cú Chulainn! Cú Chulaine is young warrior in a pre-Christian Ireland, the hero of stories known as The Ulster Cycle. 

Cú Chulainn performs feats, showing all the other young men he is the best warrior in the land.

Cúchullainn arrived without further event at Scathach's fort. There he quickly completed his training: the apple feat - juggling nine apples with never more than one in his palm; the thunder-feat; the feats of the sword-edge and sloped shield; the feats of the javelin and the rope; the body-feat; the feat of Cat and the heroic salmon-leap; the pole-throw and the leap over a poisoned stroke; the noble chariot-fighter's crouch; the gae bolga; the spurt of speed; the feat of the chariot-wheel thrown on high and the feat of the shield-rim; the breath-feat, with gold apples blown up into the air; the snapping mouth and the hero's scream; the stroke of precision; the stunning-shot and the cry-stroke; stepping on a lance in flight and straightening erect on its point; the sickle chariot; and the trussing of a warrior on the points of spears. (source)

Before watching Hardy Bucks, I would have thought these feats were the events of an Irish Iron Age Track and Field competition, but now I see the entire list is meant to be ridiculous. 

Or is it? Maybe I'm misinterpreting and getting it wrong?
At the end of the Blindboy show, I asked him what he thought of my hot take.


As Blindboy suggests, I will finally get around to reading At Swim Two Birds. I will also read more of the Ulster Cycle, but read it as a satire rather than a Greek myth.

Wait. 

Maybe all heroic stories are meant to be more Hardy Bucks than Clash of the Titans? Maybe every ancient tale is a send up of serious story no one bothered to copy down? What about Genesis and Leviticus? What about The Book of Revelations? 

Very little ancient literature came down to us. What if only the massive lies survived?