After a mini Easter break, David Mitchell’s Soapbox is back with vengeance.
This week David takes a wry glance at how time has a habit of making tragic events seem funny.
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Did the blue cow ever go raping and pillaging? Whenever I hear your voice I think of that damned stupid blue cow…
I’ve always thought it was weird and unsettling how lightly the term “rape and pillage” was bandied about, when I was younger I didn’t know what pillage meant and so assumed/hoped that when it was coupled to “rape and” it made rape mean something else.
Maybe that’s part of it - maybe it’s because “rape and pillage” is a phrase it’s lost its meaning, so when people say it they aren’t thinking of the indiviual words, like when people say “head over heels” when anyone who stop to think about it for a second could see that it should be “heels over head”. When they say “rape and pillage” they’re thinking “boisterous tomfoolery, wild shenanigans, free flowing ale and high spirits”.
“The First World War is due to go hilarious in 2040″
“a spoonful of sugar to help the rape go down”
Is the phrase “rape and pillage” funny? I spent the whole video in a state of scepticism. I like your videos and columns David but sometimes I just can’t see where you’re getting your material from.
Heh, I already think the bombing of Pearl Harbor was funny.
“It’s a Sunday. No one bombs on a Sunday.” Only the non-Christian Japanese, maybe?
“Let’s put all our airplanes in one big airfield, to make it easier to guard” … and easier to bomb all at once, it turned out.
When I heard this stuff during a film screening at the museum at Pearl Harbor (just before visiting the Arizona Memorial), I guffawed out loud. Good thing the room was dark.
Do you think that’s why the Queens guard wear the bearskin hats (not busby’s as is popularly assumed)?
Their hats are SO silly, anyone with the balls to wear one must be hard as nails.
It just goes to show, you can’t be too careful.
You’re right, David. Such things are regarded as amusing due to the passage of time.
However, nowhere near as amusing as your pitiful attempt at an air of menace in the line “Well, not pillaging anyway.”
You saying “I’ll be bound.” though *sigh* 
Why is it never Pillage and rape? Because they didn’t want to start off with a pillage, they wanted to be fresh for the raping. And then, as an afterthought, maybe wander around plunder and burn everything to the ground. But only if there’s time. Priorities, it’s all a matter of priorities. And what about murder? I’m sure the villagers did stand around passively and watch all this mess. So they would have fought back and been murdered. Why not Rape, Pillage, and Murder? I guess the rape and pillage were the established goals and the murder would have been more a side issue.
For more historical hideousness one can stand in awe of the persecutions of those suspected of witchcraft in Europe especially Germany. That was a total free-for-all for perverted “witchfinders” and assorted sadists.
Great work, David.
I think events only take about a quarter of a century to become funny; not a full one. Take AIDS. Mentioning AIDS out of context is funny because longer than 25 years has passed since it wasn’t. In 2040, any jokes about World War I will have nto be explained by a series of lectures.
Still not convinced? Hitler’s comic appearance in everything from The Simpsons to… well, The Simpsons again; a ridiculous comic book villian who is funny solely for ‘being Hitler’.
Or imagine Monty Python’s Spannish Inquisition sketch with the Inquisition replaced by the Kaiser. I think it’d work.