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Identity Crisis

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However, it is definitely controversial and no doubt would be offensive to some readers in relation to both its themes (identity, pronouns and online rage) as well as profanity (the 'c word' is used a few times, consider yourself warned). The posthumous prosecution of Samuel Pepys as a serial sex offender is the only exception – it was sufficiently far fetched to be in the same country as satire, if not in the same county or town. No target is safe in this very-near-future world of Elton's and he fires shots seemingly indiscriminately.

You only have to look back 1000+ days to the pre-Brexit Referendum and the absolute garbage posted daily to people's feeds by both sides to realise that social media manipulation is the be all and end all for any movement. Ben Elton’s Identity Crisis is a dreary, unentertaining and uninspired “satire” - confirmation bias in book form for the olds that modern stuff is rubbish. The UK is a few years into its post-Brexit position and another referendum is on the horizon – this time England wants independence from the union. While most politicians have made up names it's obvious who is being sent up, for example, Bunter Jollye and Plantagenet Greased-Hogg - can't imagine who they are modelled on .I don't think there are too many groups who Ben has missed out on insulting/praising here, depending on which particular fence you're sitting on today. Identity Crisis is a 2019 satirical novel about Brexit, cancel culture, Love Island, Cambridge Analytica, Putin, MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, trans rights, gay rights, multiculturalism, Twitter, popular feminism, incels, and a bunch of other shit that I probably forgot about because this book was at least 100 pages longer than it needed to be. A series of apparently random murders draws amiable, old-school Detective Mick Matlock into a world of sex, politics, reality TV and a bewildering kaleidoscope of opposing identity groups.

I generally find Ben Elton's satire better than his plot (other than Two Brothers which is masterful). There’s Brexit, there’s Johnson and Gove and Rees-Mogg, there’s Yew Tree, there’s MeToo and there’s Love Island; isn’t that just the most 2010s book you’ve ever heard of? However, its depiction of life is a little too on the nose and realistic, rather than exaggerated, ironic or ridiculous as satire demands. Ben Elton has once again crafted a great satire which questions what has become of our society today and how this controls every single thing we do now.Set a little in the future, Detective Mick Matlock investigates a series of murders whilst trying to tiptoe safely around an ever-changing identity landscape, which he just doesn’t understand. Almost instantaneously after the press conference his social faux pas is trending number one on twitter. There were times when I felt as if he was mocking the whole idea of social justice, others where it seemed he was mocking those who couldn't keep up, or reactionaries who fly into an outrage at the slightest provocation.

I think we can also agree that at it's worst it is manipulative and clogged with lies and misinformation designed merely to instigate a reaction. I can even include the rabid TERF third wave feminazi who hates trans women into the group of characters that are obviously drawn to be problematic. However to suggest that all identity and gender politics are that way, or that we shouldn't bother to respect people's choices, or that there isn't a problematic trend of the patriachy talking over women and of white people talking over people of colour would be disingenuous.The parts of the story that wasn’t too much to my taste was around the ‘Love Island’ reality TV show. I think it's really important that people's pronoun choices are respected and that people have the opportunity to claim their gender and sexual identity and have that choice respected regardless of whether you can imagine being asexual or nonbinary.

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