That's Not Funny.

Britain is a huge comedy heaven. Stand-up comedy is enormously popular, and the British are good at it. American comedians typically go out for more sketch comedy, like in Saturday Night Live. While there are some brilliant American stand-up comics (Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Jeff Foxworthy and co, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock) most of the are either dead or making shit TV sitcoms or movies. (Eddie Murphy, you died to me long time ago.) The pinnacle of success for an American comic is making a movie or having a tv show with your name on it. Thus, most Americans are not exposed to a lot of stand-up comedy, especially if they don't watch Comedy Central late at night. Sketch Comedy is where it's at.

In Britain, however, stand-up comedy has not faded gently into that good night. It is alive and well, as shown by the prevalent TV show format of "quiz-com". These are generally trivia games where the individuals collect points which are dutifully tallied up at the end and winner declared. Americans will most likely relate this to "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" hosted by Drew Carey (another stand-up turned sitcom star turned host) where "the points don't matter". Drew Carey regularly awards a million points to his "contestants" which are really the same three or four people every week. Add to this the British addiction to trivia (witness the ever-popular "Pub Quiz"), and you can see the quiz-com is the bastard child of WLIIA and Jeopardy. (Or, perhaps their parent. I don't know.)

So the quiz-com is the best place on TV to see comedians in Britain. Every city also has their own comedy clubs, and comedians regularly do stand-up shows stadium style, as demonstrated on "Live at the Apollo" and the Edinburgh Festival. But as most people just see the quiz-coms. And it is here that accusations of racism and sexism are most strongly demonstrated.

The Guardian asks "The black comedy circuit is booming, with packed crowds and a host of stars. So why aren't there more on TV or at mainstream venues?" Last year, host of quiz-com "Mock the Week" was forced to say that quiz-coms aren't sexist. Yet when you look, most of these quiz-coms have few ethnic people of any gender and few women whose names don't begin with "Jo" and end with "Brand", as comedienne Victoria Wood said.

To me these are valid observations and valid questions. But I feel the fault lies not with Dara O'Brien (for one) or even the producers of these various shows and formats. It is the British culture itself.

Comedy works best coming from the underdog. Who was the last comedian you say whose act was based on the wealthy, the well-to-do, the posh ones? Perhaps Monty Pythons "Upper Middle Class Twits" sketch, and David Mitchell (Guardian commentator extraordinaire) and Marcus Brigstocke ("Argumental") often base their acts upon their posh upbringing, but by far the most popular character is The Working Man. Example: Al Murray's "Pub Landlord" character who is loud, drunk, sexist, racist, etc. etc. etc. In the US we likewise do not see upper class comedians. Instead, we treasure the black comedians, the blue collar comedians, the anarchist comedians. To be middle class (in the American sense) might be ok, but to be upper class (British: middle class) would mean career death.

But it is the very inequality that gives rise to great comedy. The Guardian comments:

Comedy is, or is perceived to be, an art form rooted in recognition and shared cultural references. Its audiences – far more so than those for music, films or fiction – are wary of artists whose experiences may not resemble their own.

 Britain is a very splintered and schizophrenic nation: it thrives on inequality. Inequality between genders, inequality between races (by which I include all ethnic groups such as "English", "Scottish", "Irish", etc.), but above all, inequality between classes. It is imperative that everyone know their place. Add to this the fact that there really is no middle class the same way that there is in the US, and you have a vast proportion of the population that feels like the underdog. This gives way to reception to comedy. You like comedy more if you feel like the comedian understands what's hard about your life.

And yet, the inequalities are still maintained, not broken. In areas of high unemployment, it's quite common for others to hold you back, discourage success and effort. Parliament still reflects the high and mighty, not the every man. Southern English accents are more common on the news, but broad regional accents (like Yorkshire, Lancashire, Scottish) are more common in commercials (as my husband says, "to inspire trust"). The people in Britain have no desire to lead, "Mary Dejevsky: We already do too much. Don't expect us to govern, too." At best, the British person just wants to be left alone. But that's no revolution. And it isn't equality either.

Things I don't understand about Britain #431

As this Economist article so eloquently puts it:

In America these people would be called what they plainly are: middle class. They are around the middle of the national income distribution. They have jobs of middling status, perhaps in retail or self-employed manual trades. Their nondescript semi-detached houses are neither in the inner cities (from which they, or their parents, often migrated) nor in the kind of suburbs conventionally described as “leafy” (to which they aspire to move).
In Britain, though, “middle class” has come to refer to people who are actually well off, in part, perhaps, because a small aristocracy notionally occupies the top spot socially. Middle-class professions are taken to include medicine, teaching and the law. One newspaper columnist thinks a typical middle-class family might have a “combined income of £100,000”, or $150,000; in fact it is probably closer to £30,000. Rising school fees are supposed to be a middle-class worry, though only 7% of British schoolchildren are educated privately. And the term is just as misused in politics. Advocates of cutting inheritance tax say it punishes the middle classes; yet it is only charged on estates worth at least £325,000, fully £100,000 more than the price of the average home. The 40% rate of income tax is also said to affect them; in fact, it catches just 3.8m of Britain’s 31.7m income-taxpayers. 

My husband is guilty of this as well: The Middle Class is well-off; everyone else is working class.

If you can't beat 'em, wee on 'em.

The headline: "Don't keep up with the Joneses. Beat them." (Independent, opinion) The article is actually talking about the recent research that says that making a million pounds doesn't mean much if all your friends make two million.

My first thought was, yeah, but she doesn't mean literally!

My theory of Britishness is not "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." British society is all about class and status. It doesn't really matter what people do, just if they are better or worse than you.

But different sections of British society have different ways of dealing with people who succeed [at anything].

The English, I feel, like to mock and humiliate things that are better than them or that they perceive to be better than them. They see something nice, and they want to wee on it. That's all, just to make a statement that it doesn't matter to them and they sincerely don't care that it's nice.

The Scottish, by contrast, when they see something nice, they want to destroy it.

I feel like in most parts of England, if I had a nice greenhouse in my garden in a crappy neighbourhood, the locals would mark it with grafitti, maybe nick some stuff, but it would be relatively undamaged. The Scottish, however, are more likely to put a brick in. Not cause they want what's inside, but just cause they don't want you to have something nice.

It's the one thing that's holding the underclasses back -- peer pressure to be, um, the same shit as everyone else. How dare you be better than us! How dare you think that an education and reading are going to improve your life! Your role in life is not to work hard, learn, get ahead, or improve anything. Your role is to reinforce the fact that I have nothing in my life and neither will you!

Why the Guardian sometimes drives me nuts.

Usually I read, in order, the Scotsman, the Independent, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Economist and the Onion's AV Club. Each presents a slightly different view on matters, and each discusses things on a different level. Except the AV Club, which I use for Savage Love and my film reviews. But, man, the Guardian sometimes drives me nuts!

The Guadian is a left-wing broadsheet in the UK, recognised around the world. Sometimes their opinion articles feature in the New York Times (and vice versa), but the Guardian is far more frustrating than the New York Times, if only because of the readers.

The Guardian, like the other British newspapers, allows comments on the articles posted online. It is this haven of what they like to consider freedom of speech where my ire is usually directed.

Like this recent opinion article about the new dog law. As the Scottish Libertarians report, the government is considering forcing all owners of some breeds of dogs to take out insurance in case their pet attacks someone. This legislation is aimed at the "vicious" dogs generally owned by the underclasses which they own either for protection or to look tough. (Which can be a protection in itself.) It would be costly and would effect far more of the underclasses than of the middle and upper classes.

The Guardian hosted a nice piece by a 23-year-old woman with a cane corso, a "dangerous dog". She makes a nice case for why she got her dog (she lives in a rough neighbourhood, so she trained it to growl at groups of young men in hoodies), how harmless her dog really is (burglars get licked instead of bitten?) and how she feels discriminated against just because some people can't (or don't) control their dogs.

But it's the comments that pissed me off. Here is a good girl with a good dog making a case for discounted dog training classes instead of expensive insurance and microchipping, and the comments loudly reject her and her arguments.

There's no good reason to have a threatening looking 'status' dog.

How about state-funded, compulsory dog-training classes?

How about not?

Yes your personal experience outweighs all the vast evidence and everyone elses personal experience.

Did you get paid to write this?
As for the "attack dog" Jack Russell, a swift boot and problem over. Not so easy when its a pitbull, Doberman, Rottweiler, German Shepard, etc etc
As for prejudice.....yup am guilty of that, as soon as I see someone with a certain type of dog I immediately think, Chav. Am sure I am not alone in that either.

So let me get this straight. You think poor people should get subsidies to help them cover the costs of training dangerous dogs.

Okay. So perhaps we could also pay chavs to go on courses designed to teach responsible boozing, or how to enjoy a football match without wanting to beat up other people.
Funny how CiF commentators never talk about personal responsibility

I know I'm middle class, but Jesus Christ was a bunch of middle class tossers!!!

Pre-occupation with Class

I couldn't have said it better myself. Terence Blacker in the Independent looks very sharply at the truest and worst sterotype of the British: their snobbery. He lists a plethora of examples, which I shall not name here, and he does not address why class should be so close to the forefront of British thinking, but it is interesting.

In response to the section lower down in his article, I have not noticed "a plague of ladybirds" (ladybugs, for you Americans) in my Scottish garden. Two years ago, when our garden was a jungle, we had plenty. But since we've cleaned up the garden, re-laid the turf and started mowing the lawn on a regular basis, the ladybirds have been missing. I bought 25 online earlier this summer, May perhaps? to feast on an actual plague of aphids I had in my border. It was like putting a fat person in the middle of an all you can eat buffet. They stuck around for a while, while the aphids disappeared. Then they vanished. Lack of food? Found another source? I don't know. But I saw one yesterday on a leaf, a little red bead in the sun, so they can't have all gone.