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Humour and the English DiseaseIf Majority Rights can be said to have a defining characteristic, then that would have to be the earnestness of its contributors and commentariat. That observation is not intended in a pejorative sense, indeed many blogs with a political orientation share that characteristic. What is somewhat perplexing though is the extent to which (over-)earnestness prevails, given the nationality of its proprietor and a goodly proportion of its readership. This particular exegesis has been prompted by an exchange in a currently-running marathon thread in which the topic of British humour was briefly introduced. This involved two estimable contributors, neither of whom are English, as far as I aware, who raised cogent points about its psychological interpretation. So, rather than creating an unnecessary diversion I have attempted to provide some minor insight into that question here, and perhaps stimulate some lively debate in the process. British humour or, more precisely, its English strain, is a peculiar beast, often mystifying to continentals and colonials alike. For the latter, exposure to the genre has consisted in the main of an unleavened diet of Benny Hill and Monty Python, both of which were correctly viewed as being untranslatable yet superficially accessible exemplars of broad slapstick and high pantomime, respectively. Most other offerings along the wide spectrum of English comedy, from the likes of ‘Til Death Us Do Part’ to ‘The Office’, when not confined to cultural ghettos such as PBS and BBC America, have had to be ‘localized’ to render them palatable to a mainstream audience. Some (much?) English humour is neither translatable nor transportable, especially that which is really critical social commentary or touches on awkward sensibilities. An example of the latter can be seen in the following clip from the hugely popular ‘Spitting Image’ series. Many will be familiar with a similar parody from Monty Python in which Mr. Hilter together with chums Reggie Goering and Heinrich Bimmler are discovered in a Cornish boarding-house planning for a surreptitious invasion of the resort-town of Minehead. But the encounter here between Frau-Führerchen Thatcher and Herr von Wilcox is much darker in tone and typical of the Spitting Image oeuvre, being by design overtly political, borderline libelous and often, as here, merciless to sacred cows. To my knowledge Spitting Image has never found an audience in the US and is still unavailable on home video there. Sound Advice from Herr von Wilcox
Such efforts as are made to homogenise and sanitise an alien and perhaps vaguely troublesome cultural artifact merely serve to obscure from external view a central aspect of English life: the dominant role that humour plays in all social interaction and cultural affairs generally. A few years ago the sociologist Kate Fox, daughter of noted cultural anthropologist Robin Fox (now at Rutgers), set out to study the English in the same manner in which a classical cultural anthropologist might approach a newly-discovered stone-age tribe in Amazonia. She wanted to determine if there were rules of behaviour which transcend class, age, gender and other social boundaries (but not, however, race), and which together serve to define national character and identity; in short, Englishness. In her book Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour she claims to have done so and in the process has defined ten what she terms ‘defining characteristics’ of Englishness. In addition, she states her concurrence with Orwell’s proposition that this identity is ”… continuous, stretching into the future and into the past; there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature.” According to Ms Fox, the central ‘core’ of Englishness revolves around the concept of ‘dis-ease’ (not disease).
She synthesises the overall conclusions in the following diagram, in which the ‘Central core’ of ‘Dis-ease’ is associated with the other ‘defining characteristics’. And with regard to the present theme, here is Kate Fox’s explanation for one of our most ‘deeply-ingrained impulses’, a ‘default mode’ of behaviour, a ‘culturall equivalent of the laws of gravity’:
So there we have it. English humour, defined as a coping reflex against the English Dis-ease, can be considered to be a bio-culturally-derived defence mechanism against over-earnestness and, by extension, continental-style philosophy, especially when the latter has mutated into novel forms during its journey west across the Atlantic.
Posted by Dan Dare on Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 03:18 PM in Humour Comments:3
Posted by Guessedworker on March 06, 2010, 05:24 PM | # I’m surprised you found the exchange on the Heidegger thread without comic elements, Dan. PF asked me on that thread what kind of comedy I like. When one gets away from the obvious answers, one of the candidates is an obscure and uncelebrated 6-part comedy series written by Jack Pulman and starring Michael Elphick and Ian Richardson - all three of them now dead. It is Private Schulz, and it was aired for the only time in 1981. “Humour drier than an Arab’s throat on a hot day in Summer,” wrote one of the commenters on YouTube. I’m not holding it up as definitively the funniest offering ever placed before a British audience. But it does contain most if not all of the elements identified by Ms Fox as particular, one might say peculiar, to the British, and I thought it might illuminate the subject of your post. It certainly typifies the darker aspect of intelligent British humour. It has never been released on video, and only the first episode is available on YouTube, plus one or two clips from later on. Here is that first episode, which sets the whole thing up, chopped into 10-minute segments as usual: parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. 4
Posted by Blakey on March 06, 2010, 05:38 PM | # I remember Private Schultz well. 5
Posted by Dan Dare on March 06, 2010, 05:42 PM | # Good news, GW. Private Schulz is available on DVD. I’d completely forgotten about it, a good one as you say. 6
Posted by Guessedworker on March 06, 2010, 05:53 PM | # Thank you, Dan. Is it English humour or British humour, by the way? 7
Posted by Guessedworker on March 06, 2010, 06:00 PM | # And would you place anything in the genre above Fawlty Towers and Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister? 8
Posted by Dan Dare on March 06, 2010, 06:02 PM | # English, I should have thought GW. I think the Celtic Fringe has its own distinctive form (or forms). Another missing jewel btw is the 1991 miniseries adaptation of Robert Harris’ Selling Hitler, the true story of the diary forgeries and the Stern affair in which David Irving plays a key part. The adaptation was played strictly for laughs and includes delightful cameos from, amongst others, Alan Bennett as Hugh Trevor-Roper and Barry Humphries as Rupert Murdoch. To my knowledge it has never been released in the UK on video, although it was released by HBO in the US on VHS sans about 50 minutes. I have a Dutch DVD which I believe is a direct copy of the HBO tapes. And talking of Alan Bennett ... 9
Posted by Selous Scout on March 06, 2010, 07:33 PM | # I get it. But I always found Spitting Image terribly unfunny, overrated, far too political. I prefer the old A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Blackadder, The Fast Show, and League of Gentlemen, some of which must have some fans in the colonies judging by all the DVDs for sale there. 10
Posted by Al Ross on March 06, 2010, 08:17 PM | # The co-writer of that English classic Yes Minister, the Jewish Jonathan Lynn, is the nephew of the late Israeli statesman and former ambassador to UK, Abba Eban. Eban was one of the very few Cambridge students to be awarded a starred Triple First. The other two were, I believe, also Jews - viz., Neal Ascherson and Maurice Zinkin. In one episode involving a Middle Eastern storyline, the Prime Minister sensibly accepts the advice of the Israeli Ambassador, ignoring the warnings of the wicked ‘Arabists’ in the Foreign Office. 11
Posted by Armor on March 06, 2010, 08:42 PM | #
Not really. Americans of English stock seem normal enough. I think it’s partly in the genes, and partly in the culture. Maybe a long holiday in the USA could act as a cure. In fact, there’s no need to go to England to find awkward people. Usually, people who are socially awkward find a way to go about life all the same. What happened in the English case is that an entire nation developped a special culture for awkward people. Very strange!
There is no question that the English are more crazy than the European average. But most Europeans are somewhat like the English if you compare them with immigrants from the third-world (maybe Chinese immigrants are a particular case). According to the far-left, what makes the third-worlders so great is precisely their naturalness, their confidence and lack of self-awareness, that is to say, their unenglishness. Personally, they make me cringe. They have no place in white society, and England looks like the last place where they can harmoniously integrate into society (not that their integration would be a good thing anyway). The far-left could also be described as un-English, as it seems they would like to ban normal, healthy, right-wing humor. On the other hand, I suppose a show like Spitting Image was mostly for the leftists. Personally, I like good-natured humor: I would rather read a book like PG Wodehouse than watch Spitting Image or Monty Python. Not all humor has to be sarcastic. 12
Posted by Al Ross on March 06, 2010, 09:05 PM | # “Not all humor has to be sarcastic” wrote Armor, referring to the utterly brilliant style of PG Wodehouse. The following example of Wodehousian non-sarcasm comes from one of the Blandings Castle confections and refers to Lord Emsworth’s notoriously grouchy, Glaswegian head gardener, McAllister : “It is seldom difficult to establish the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine”. 13
Posted by Guessedworker on March 06, 2010, 09:26 PM | # There is no question that the English are more crazy than the European average. Mon ami, quel dommage. And I thought nine hundred years of clobbering the French should elicit at least a little sympathy from a latter-day Conan Meriadoc. 14
Posted by PF on March 06, 2010, 09:58 PM | # Thanks for writing this, Dan. No doubt that Albion sprung the Comedic Master Race. Represent! 15
Posted by Wandrin on March 06, 2010, 10:20 PM | # I think the English are by nature extremely violent and i think a lot of the excessive self-control and other coping mechanisms like constant humour are a form of pressure relief. Looking from a distance i feel the Japanese are very similar in this. Perhaps it doesn’t show so much here because the sort of issues discussed revolve around a kind of postponed violence that doesn’t require that self-control and therefore by extension the coping mechanisms that usually go with it. Also some of what is called British humour isn’t really. Monty Python is a mixture of British and Jewish humour. I also very much liked Private Schultz.
I’ve joked with people many times in the past that les krauts were superior to us in every way except the most important - sense of humour. 16
Posted by Lurker on March 06, 2010, 11:23 PM | # Private Schultz - great stuff, would like to see that again. Subjectively Welsh/Irish/Scots here seem to buy into English humour as far as I can tell, so British humour seems an applicable term. Australians are on board too. 17
Posted by Lee John Barnes on March 07, 2010, 03:25 PM | # The old ones are the best ; Steptoe and Son Till Death Do Us Part Rising Damp Porridge Dads Army Blackadder Black Books Father Ted
Withnail and I Carry on Frankenstein Carry on up the Khyber The Ladykillers The Life of Brian Monty Python and the Holy Grail Hot Fuzz Shaun of the Dead 18
Posted by BGD on March 07, 2010, 05:21 PM | # 19
Posted by Dan Dare on March 07, 2010, 05:40 PM | # I hadn’t anticipated that this would evolve into a paean to Golden Oldies, but since we’re at it, what do we make of this, psychologically speaking? What does an appreciation - nay, a love - for such absurdity say about the national character? Could a people who laugh at such things ever embrace National Socialism? Will even the Cap’n be able to suppress a titter? 20
Posted by Q on March 07, 2010, 06:26 PM | # http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ehJZJIkPk&feature=related 21
Posted by Q on March 07, 2010, 06:30 PM | # 22
Posted by Guessedworker on March 07, 2010, 07:40 PM | # Seriously, Dan, I think it’s pretty obvious that the comedic trend which bridged Milligan, Bentine, Sellers and Secombe to Python was a product of the social and psychological stress of war. In The Goon Show it was at its purest - a flight into the delirium of laughter not that different from the flight of American audiences into the delirious fantasy of those old black and white Dick Powell musicals complete with flowers and waterfalls made of beautiful, beaming girls. In Python something else had entered the equation, an anger and disruptiveness that rejected the safe broadcast comedy that had filled the intervening years. But to watch the Goons or Python was to be invited into the delirium of accepting all their propositions, and to lose one’s critical faculty. They both demanded everything. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the greater the listener’s love of either, the more he has given up his power of critique. 23
Posted by Desmond Jones on March 07, 2010, 08:07 PM | #
Stress yes but not of war, but of those forces that are debasing. Notice the earnestness of Laurie [@~2:50] retelling the lies of his father to Letterman. 24
Posted by Desmond Jones on March 07, 2010, 08:19 PM | # A song from Monty Python’s Spamalot:
25
Posted by Guessedworker on March 07, 2010, 08:23 PM | # No, Desmond. Hugh Laurie is from a different generation. He was born in 1959. The Goons were born in the 1920s and the Pythons in the war years. You will have to try a different tack to prove whatever point you are trying to. Would Darwin help? 27
Posted by Guessedworker on March 07, 2010, 08:35 PM | # They were all amateurs in those days, Dan, as you can plainly see. 28
Posted by Dan Dare on March 07, 2010, 09:12 PM | # That’s not a picture from the 1936 Olympics GW, although it is the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. It was taken during the playing of the German national anthem before the match between Germany and England in 1938 (the England team is on the left). Hitler was not present on this occasion, but if was ever a time when he would have been likely to storm out of the stadium this would have been it. England won 6-3. 30
Posted by Wandrin on March 07, 2010, 10:14 PM | #
I think the only thing that would kill more people than an English version of National Socialism is a jewish version of National Socialism. 31
Posted by Desmond Jones on March 07, 2010, 11:25 PM | #
And we’re told the English don’t do NS. Too funny. What’s the matter Guessedworker, still smarting from the beating a dead man gave you? 32
Posted by PF on March 08, 2010, 01:29 AM | # - side note: Richard Dawkin’s delivers an interesting lecture on how our evolution determines perception of reality: http://freeonlinedocumentary.com/the-universe-is-queerer-than-we-can-suppose/ 33
Posted by Guessedworker on March 08, 2010, 05:08 AM | # What on earth are you talking about, Desmond? This? 35
Posted by Al Ross on March 08, 2010, 08:51 PM | # Is Britain the only country which has a Justice Minister who lacks any legal qualification whatsoever? Never mind, this towering Paki intellect, Shahid Malik, has a diploma in Business Studies from South Bank Polytechnic. Thank you for the link, Friedrich. 36
Posted by FB on March 08, 2010, 11:47 PM | # Al, he’s not even a law school graduate? That is truly remarkable. Britain has become such a stupid banana republic. But look at the indoctrinated lemmings froth at the mouth like trained seals when they see the BNP. I guess they’d rather get Islamified, dispossessed, replaced, and wiped out. Watch Labour win again. It seems even Cameron’s wife doesn’t care. 37
Posted by Al Ross on March 09, 2010, 01:24 AM | # As you noted, FB, it’s certainly not far - fetched, to imagine Labour’s winning again. The Paki who runs UK’s Justice Ministry, and knows as much about English jurisprudence as I do about Etruscan hieroglyphics, probably sees himself as a Minister of Social Justice, a desideratum which, for indigenous Brits, might only be effected by the wholesale emigration of his, and not only his, racial cognates. 38
Posted by Dan Dare on March 09, 2010, 02:24 AM | # Al I’m surprised that no-one has popped up already to correct your misunderstandings about the Justice Minister in the Labour government. It is is not Shahid Malik and never has been, no matter how much he was wanting to big it up in front of his fellow wogs. He was a PUS in the Ministry of Justice until his fall from grace over the expenses scandal, what is politely called a junior ministerial post, but really a glorified gofer, and in his particular case a meaningless sinecure. The Minister of Justice (actually the Secretary of State) is and always has been Jack Straw. Not that I hold any sort of candle for Mr. Straw, but he is a qualified barrister having been admitted to the Bar from the Inns of Court Law School. Just thought you’d like to know. 39
Posted by Al Ross on March 09, 2010, 02:40 AM | # Thank you for correcting my error, DD. I read the youtube screen guff and was somewhat shocked at this person’s apparent rise without trace while mistakenly taking the nonsense at face value. Still, one might be forgiven for thinking that any member, however junior, of the government who is appointed to that particular Ministry would be in possession of a law degree. That is, of course, not to say that every appointee to the Health Ministry should be a doctor. 40
Posted by Al Ross on March 09, 2010, 02:56 AM | # Your mention of Jack Straw, Dan, reminded me that his political origins lie in the National Union of Students, a body which the late great Enoch Powell gently mocked by enquiring under which circumstances and to what end would Mr Straw withdraw his union’s labour. 41
Posted by The Observer on March 09, 2010, 06:09 AM | # Apparently Winston Churchill himself was pro-white: 42
Posted by 'I'll Have Half' on March 09, 2010, 06:22 AM | # I’m surprised no one’s mentioned ITV’s classic from the 1970s ‘Love Thy Neighnour@ which concerned the humorous antics of a black immigrant (Tory voting!) family moving next-door to the disconcerted Labour voting class warrior Eddie Booth (Jack Smethurst). Next entry: Linda Carty, the Reprieve lie machine, and the bleeding heart of Clive Stafford Smith Previous entry: True Science is Barbaric |
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Posted by Captainchaos on March 06, 2010, 04:01 PM | #
Humor as overcompensation for stodginess; moralism as rationalization of race betrayal.