Comedy is crucial to how the English see themselves. This book considers that proposition through a series of case studies of popular English comedies and comedians in the twentieth century; ranging from the Carry On films to the work of Mike Leigh and contemporary sitcoms such as The Royle Family; and from George Formby to Alan Bennett and Roy Chubby Brown.Relating comic traditions to questions of class; gender; sexuality and geography; A National Joke looks at how comedy is a cultural thermometer; taking the temperature of its times. It asks why vulgarity has always delighted English audiences; why camp is such a strong thread in English humour; why class influences what we laugh at and why comedy has been so neglected in most theoretical writing about cultural identity. Part history and part polemic; it argues that the English urgently need to reflect on who they are; who they have been and who they might become; and insists that comedy offers a particularly illuminating location for undertaking those reflections.
#2804652 in eBooks 2005-01-01 2005-01-01File Name: B000SK5692
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy RubeGood resource for designers and mosaicists.