“If I start laughing, it’s no longer funny, I know that,” confides Diane Morgan to Los Angeles Times. It is therefore with great aplomb that the British actress and comedian embodies the character of Philomena Cunk, a fake BBC journalist who meets the finest thinkers and scientists of the Anglo-Saxon world to ask them “some of the deepest questions you can ask with your mouth.” Understand: the stupidest possible questions, mixing approximations, fake news and (very) poorly digested knowledge.
The character has already appeared, for more than ten years, in a series of parody documentaries produced by Charlie Brooker (the creator of the series Black Mirror). Since January 2, the journalist has been back on Netflix, in Life according to Cunk. Philomena Cunk, who had already investigated Shakespeare, Christmas, the history of the United Kingdom and that of planet Earth, this time discusses the meaning of existence.
A “very contemporary” arrogance
This led him, for example, to meet Douglas Hedley, professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge, to ask him if, God being supposedly everywhere, we can also find him “in our cupboards”. This researcher, in this case, has already participated in other investigations of the lady, and knows enough about what to expect to remain calm.
Other academics, less informed, sometimes struggle to hide “their indignation and exasperation”, raise it Los Angeles Times. And that’s part of the fun of the program, decrypt The Guardian. “To see his growing perplexity in the face of the questions and assertions that Cunk makes (‘only 40% of people have a skeleton’; ‘Knees are a scam, did you know that?’), Prokar Dasgupta, professor of surgery at the prestigious King’s College London, is either very naive or the best actor since Laurence Olivier.”
In these exchanges, the false journalist embodies something “very contemporary”, explains Charlie Brooker to Los Angeles Times. “People today no longer dare to say to a specialist: ‘Yeah, that’s right, you may have studied the subject for twenty-five years, but I just saw a YouTube video and I can tell you that your life’s work is the m… I’m going to explain to you why man has never been to the Moon, and why vaccines don’t work.’ We see in the proponents of the alternative truth a form of madly arrogant self-assurance.”
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