The Joke
Lyrics
Go back go back
to your diseased-hut-control room
Don't be don't be
nice about it
just spit it back
Why don't, ward off
why don't you be mature about it
in your grey raincoat
Off ward, ward off
The Joke
Violent food
descends over you, huh
Off ward, ward off The joke
Ward off, off ward The joke
The Joke
five years in a PC camp (2)
Multicoloured sweets
in bottom of white sweet pack
The realization burns into my back
The Joke
Five years in a PC camp
The Joke
Violent food
descends over you
The Joke
The Joke
Five years in a PC camp
The Joke
Five years in a PC camp
The Joke
Five years in a PC camp
Notes
1. This may be a vague screed against political correctness, but maybe there's more to it. In any case MES, as usual, has the virtue of not making sense just when you think things are getting too banal.
Junkman:
"MES had this to say:
'People are very afraid to say things in England at the moment if they're not PC. It's getting very American. It's being pushed on us, I think, through the media. Y'know, food and everything has to be green related and all that. It's quite funny seeing British people adapt to that sort of thing as we've always had really shitty diets. We eat worse than the Australians and New Zealanders' (Rip It Up Issue 215, Jul '95)."
Reformation has the following to say:
The title is possibly taken from Milan Kundera's book of the same name, published in 1967. The Wikipedia entry for this book says: The novel was referenced in The Fall's song "The Joke" on the album Cerebral Caustic. The song's refrain is, 'The Joke! Five years in a PC camp - The Joke!', linking humorless Eastern Bloc authoritarianism to political correctness." This may or may not be accurate.
2. In Kundera's The Joke, Ludvik Jahn finds himself in trouble after writing a joking postcard to a girlfriend in the 1950s. I haven't read the book, but according to Wikipedia:
Since Ludvik believes she is too serious, he writes on the postcard, "Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!" His colleagues and fellow young-party leaders did not see the humor in the sentiment expressed in the postcard. Ludvik finds himself expelled from the party and college and drafted to a part of the Czech military where alleged subversives form work brigades and spend the next few years working in mines.
More Information
Comments (16)

- 1. | 03/07/2014

- 2. | 07/01/2016

- 3. | 19/01/2016

- 4. | 15/02/2018
"People are very afraid to say things in England at the moment if they're not PC. It's getting very American. It's being pushed on us, I think, through the media. Y'know, food and everything has to be green related and all that. It's quite funny seeing British people adapt to that sort of thing as we've always had really shitty diets. We eat worse than the Australians and New Zealanders."
Rip It Up Issue 215, Jul '95.
Is "multicoloured sweets in bottom of white sweet pack" something to do with immigration, like the multicoloured sweets are immigrants on the bottom rungs of the white sweet pack, which is the UK?

- 5. | 17/02/2018

- 6. | 17/02/2018

- 7. | 19/02/2018

- 8. | 24/02/2018

- 9. | 22/03/2018

- 10. | 22/11/2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiL06yHiMwo

- 11. | 11/01/2020

- 12. | 06/05/2021

- 13. | 08/05/2021

- 14. | 18/09/2021
If the pack is white, then the all-white packaging of multi-coloured sweets is just as hypocritical as the white-washing of the true diversity of a diverse people. By being PC about everything, you're just covering up the reality of diversity with a fake equality that isn't real. The Joke is that a bunch of white people are saying they're respecting diversity, but they're doing it in a way that, in actuality, cancels it out. The whiteness (being PC) is covering up the diverse reality inside. The Joke. (Additionally, this kind of treatment keeps the coloured folks on the bottom. Another unintended consequence in political correctness. Another joke.)
MSI #2:
If it's the candy that is white, not the pack, then the smallest objects will fall to the bottom of a bag of stuff with enough time and shaking. This indicates that the multi-coloured sweets are in fact the core insides of all the sweets, and the white sweets are the ones that still have their extra coating on them. Another representation of artificial white-washing? I don't know. I'm leaning to the first interpretation here. Thanks, cool-guys.

- 15. | 25/02/2022

- 16. | 24/04/2023
it goes like this:
"Violent food descends over you, huh
Off ward, ward off
The joke
Ward off, off ward
The joke"