THE YOOKAY AS COMEDY A short collection of images from Modern...
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩@kunley_drukpa
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Apr 05, 2025
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THE YOOKAY AS COMEDY
A short collection of images from Modern Britain AKA ‘The Yookay’ which capture the tragicomedy of a rapidly changing Britain 🧵
A short collection of images from Modern Britain AKA ‘The Yookay’ which capture the tragicomedy of a rapidly changing Britain 🧵
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COMING SOON
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CARD ONLY
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ETHNIC CUISINE
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STOWAWAY
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GOLGAPPAS AND GUPSHUP
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THE PECKHAM WEAVE SHOP INCIDENT
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FAITH
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OVERWEENING AMBITION
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JIHAD
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THE SWAN-SNATCHERS
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
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BRITISH VALUES
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STORIES OF BETRAYAL
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GOOD MORNING BRITAIN
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THE ULTIMATUM
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
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CARDS FOR ALL OCCASIONS
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THE MADHI
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THE SUMMIT
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ANXIETY
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HOLY WAR FOR THE STREETS
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NEW FRIENDS
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JUSTICE
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DJINN POSSESSION
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FOREIGN CUISINE
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ENGLISH LESSONS
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THE FUGITIVE
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THE CRASH
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About Yookay’s Uniquely British ‘Terry Gilliam Authoritarianism’
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩@kunley_drukpa
BRITAIN - WORLD LEADER IN NEAR FUTURE DYSTOPIA AESTHETICS
Something about Britain (now The Yookay) and British Culture that lends it so readily to the dystopian near future aesthetic. Children of Men, 1984, Clockwork Orange, Brazil, V for Vendetta, Third World Britain… etc. Which is, Authoritarianism on a silly gimmicky theme or ideology as well as a certain kind of grimy aesthetic and tweeness and then occasional touches or glimpses of high culture interspersed through all the absurdities. You couldn’t do direct Cult of Personality Stalinism in Britain. You couldn’t buy ‘Britain but it’s North Korea and has totalitarian military parades’ but you could buy ‘Britain where everyone is forced to clap for the National Health Service on the orders of bureaucrats in top hats and then fill out a series forms to certify that they have done so’. It’s authoritarianism but not in a traditional Caudillo ‘Evil Dictator’ type way - it’s more psychological. In many of those examples, it is the British state that’s the source of horror. It isn’t a kind of more primal, immediate and palpable folk horror
There is an under-explored psychological phenomenon that comes from being in say Luton town centre, just almost ethereal in a horrible way. The walls that surround a country have caved in and what’s replaced it isn’t anything other than meaningless squalor and it is entirely the result of runaway top down ideology imposed by the state. And then the walls are festooned with NHS and ‘Have you paid you TV License?’ and ‘Don’t be a burden on your loved ones support Assisted Dying’ and ‘New BBC Series: The Black Tudors (They’re Black)’ posters. The horror is at the banality of it all… It’s a sort of ‘Terry Gilliam Authoritarianism’, the perennial puritanical curtain twitching streak in British Culture taken to an absurd extreme and now preoccupied with some squalid farcical comedy ideology that isn’t a comedy anymore because it’s real life
Something about Britain (now The Yookay) and British Culture that lends it so readily to the dystopian near future aesthetic. Children of Men, 1984, Clockwork Orange, Brazil, V for Vendetta, Third World Britain… etc. Which is, Authoritarianism on a silly gimmicky theme or ideology as well as a certain kind of grimy aesthetic and tweeness and then occasional touches or glimpses of high culture interspersed through all the absurdities. You couldn’t do direct Cult of Personality Stalinism in Britain. You couldn’t buy ‘Britain but it’s North Korea and has totalitarian military parades’ but you could buy ‘Britain where everyone is forced to clap for the National Health Service on the orders of bureaucrats in top hats and then fill out a series forms to certify that they have done so’. It’s authoritarianism but not in a traditional Caudillo ‘Evil Dictator’ type way - it’s more psychological. In many of those examples, it is the British state that’s the source of horror. It isn’t a kind of more primal, immediate and palpable folk horror
There is an under-explored psychological phenomenon that comes from being in say Luton town centre, just almost ethereal in a horrible way. The walls that surround a country have caved in and what’s replaced it isn’t anything other than meaningless squalor and it is entirely the result of runaway top down ideology imposed by the state. And then the walls are festooned with NHS and ‘Have you paid you TV License?’ and ‘Don’t be a burden on your loved ones support Assisted Dying’ and ‘New BBC Series: The Black Tudors (They’re Black)’ posters. The horror is at the banality of it all… It’s a sort of ‘Terry Gilliam Authoritarianism’, the perennial puritanical curtain twitching streak in British Culture taken to an absurd extreme and now preoccupied with some squalid farcical comedy ideology that isn’t a comedy anymore because it’s real life
