Comedy

Question 1

Comedy Primary Literature

Summarise the key findings of Viz

Answer 1

• Magazine founded in 1979 by Chris Donald from Newcastle. Parodies Beano, Dandy; but w/ vulgar language, toilet humour, black comedy and sex jokes
• Recurring characters: Roger Mellie, the Man on the Telly, Nobby’s Piles, Sid the Sexist, Sweary Mary, Finbar Saunders and His Double Entendres
• Hooray Henry - plays on class, pulls on what sociologists had discovered as repulsive - the snob; later would be embodied by likes of Tim Nice But Dim.

Question 2

Comedy Primary Literature

Summarise the key findings of TW3

Answer 2

• TW3 - satirical show; 1962-3. Presented by David Frost. Racial violence mocked - ‘where the Mississippi mud merges from the branches of a nigger hanging from the branches of a tree’. Though mocking, still not-PC. Consumer guide to religion caricatures; asking questions lie ‘what you get out of it’, ‘what it takes to be a member’, and ‘how easy it is to get a divorce’. CofE is the ‘best buy’. Third -> sketch mocking the Royal Academies standards of art. Then mocks Westminster, finally is a w/c painter, mocking a housewife sexually exploiting council workers.
• Show did not return in 1964, as it thought it would violate impartiality during election year.
• Criticism from Boy Scout Association (mocked the sexuality of founder Lord Baden-Powell) and government of Cyprus, for mocking Archbishop Makarios.
• Historically seen as groundbreaking comedy. Graham McCann said it challenged the “convention that television should not acknowledge that it is television; the show made no attempt to hide its cameras, allowed the microphone boom to intrude and often revealed other nuts and bolts of studio technology.”

Question 3

Comedy Primary Literature

Summarise the key findings of BBC Variety Guide 1949

Answer 3

• 1949; written guidelines. Strict guidance on how to approach social taboo, in a traditionally Reithian manner, though under William Haley at this point. Risk averse - ‘when in doubt, take it out’. BBC still bound by moral mission to Educate, Inform and Entertain. Things censored give a clear indication of establishment desired norms; esp. On sexuality (at all costs free of crudities), crude jokes, religion (‘jokes built around Bible stories… must be avoided’), and banning impersonations. Also provides distinction between English and British.

BBC - formed in 1922 as independent radio broadcaster - 1926 became crown-chartered organisation - neutral, to provide all points of view. This is interesting, as it explicitly filters out specific voices (Gay, atheist). 1926 GS was real turning point.

STARK contrast to TW3

Question 4

Comedy Primary Literature

Summarise the key findings of Mass Observation - Jokes 1939-47

Answer 4

• Source Information (Type etc.): Mass Obs. Report, 1939-47. Handwritten report; capturing one-liners and making recommendations on post-war humour, with emphasis on regional audience.
• Provenance: Mass Observation; Wartime morale, government interest
• Contentions: Authority, gender stereotyping (ATS girls), nationalism, American influence (American soldiers in London), personal hygiene and presentability.
• Silences: Race

Points to Write About

• Anti-authority - location of comedy in deviance. Strong militaristic focus, draws to attention the polarisation of us vs. Them - Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA).
• Discuss the role of MO and its surrealist interest in cultural facets of the everyday - locate in the first phase
• Comment on the written report - how long it took; the male eye, etc.
• Role of race?

Question 5

Comedy Secondary Literature

Summarise the key findings of Gavin Schaffer, Till Death Us Do Part and the BBC: Racial Politics and the British Working Classes 1965-75,

Answer 5

• Focuses on Till Death Us Do Part - written by Johnny Speight and featuring the anti-hero, Alf Garnett. Found an opponent in Mary Whitehouse, but support among the working class. Speight’s ongoing willingness to write Till Death can only be explained by his thinking on working-class racial sensibilities in the 1960s and 1970s. After the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968, Speight told a journalist that Alf would certainly have agreed with Powell’s stance on immigration: ‘If the show were on air now, he’d be agreeing with every word Powell said … All Enoch Powell has done is prove my point: the country’s full of Alf Garnetts.
• The character’s name has become a standard description of anyone ranting at the world in general, and has even found its way into politics, Oswald Mosley dismissing Enoch Powell after his Rivers of Blood speech as “a Middle Class Alf Garnett”, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson also criticising Powell for making Alf Garnett ‘politically articulate’ and conferring upon him ‘a degree of political respectability’. Denis Healey accusing Margaret Thatcher of possessing “the diplomacy of Alf Garnett” and more recently has been used in criticism of politicians such as Ken Livingstone and John Reid.

Question 6

Comedy Secondary Literature

Summarise the key findings of Brett Beber, ‘The short life of Curry and Chips: Racial Comedy on the British Television in the 1960s’

Answer 6

• Johnny Speight and Spike Milligan, the programme’s creators, believed that forwarding vulgar racial epithets and bigoted humour put English attitudes to immigration under examination. But the programme proved popular because of its appeal to white workers, who viewed depictions of the challenges of integrating non-white workers in a comedic context with some pleasure. Under the thin guise of political satire, the programme recirculated ethnic stereotypes and racist discourses to make its humour apparent.
• Audience research and letters of complaint also reveal that Curry and Chips appealed to audiences sympathetic to the racist attitudes forwarded by the programme’s characters and failed to change white Britons’ perspectives on migration and integration. Because of the debate it caused about the appropriateness of its humour, Curry and Chips lasted only a single series before being banned by the Independent Television Authority.

Question 7

Comedy Secondary Literature

Summarise the key findings of David Nash, Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History, section on ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’

Answer 7

• Life of Brian was outright blasphemous to Christianity. Inspired cult following. Followed the Holy Grail - which mocked el cid and Ivanhoe - medieval epics. Iconoclasm was played with long before blasphemy.
• EMI, producers of Brian, followed the Gay News case - regularly imploring the team to be ready for changes.
• Whitehouse v Lemon is a 1977 court case involving the blasphemy law in the United Kingdom. James Kirkup’s poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name was published in the 3 June 1976 issue of Gay News. The poem, written from the viewpoint of a Roman centurion, graphically describes him having sex with Jesus after his crucifixion, and also claims that Jesus had had sex with numerous disciples, guards, and even Pontius Pilate. Case was brought by Mary Whitehouse, and acquitted by the ECHR in 1983.
• Film took calculated swipes at religion. Pythons held that the film was infinitely more sophisticated than it ostensibly was. Brian’s ministry offers a cutting critique.
• That the Festival of Light admitted that Brian was damaging to Christianity - which would’ve pleased the Python team.