National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identity

Description

National Joke investigates the Englishness of a century of English comedy, examining its components and asking what makes it English, and how comedy reflects and participates in ideas of Englishness. From the music hall tradition to contemporary sitcoms such as The Royle Family , Andy Medhurst considers how English comedy reflects national concerns with class, race, gender and sexuality, and traces the recurrence of themes and structures, such as male duos like Morecombe and Wise to Reeves and Mortimer, and camp comedy from Kenneth Williams to Julian Clary. Arguing that comedy plays a pivotal role in the construction of cultural identity, Medhurst presents case studies of comic traditions and representations, and examines key figures in English comic history, including Mike Leigh, Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood.

Andy Medhurst works in the Department of Media and Film at the University of Sussex. He has been teaching and writing about issues of identity, representation and popular culture since 1982. He is the co-editor of Lesbian and Gay Studies and the author of a forthcoming book on Coronation Street.

'In A National Joke, Medhurst...uses comedy to pin down that most elusive of things, the English national identity.' The Guardian 'This is an excellent study of a popular comedy that links it into a variety of English cultural identities. Unusually for a book classified as cultural studies, it is clearly written, and by an author who enjoys humour... a splendid account' - The Times Higher Education 'Most of the best scholarly work on comedy in the UK that has appeared during the last 25 years has come from Medhurst... At last there is an engaging but serious study of what makes English comedy both English and funny.' - Critical Studies in Television