Racism 'as rife as in the Seventies'

British comedy is as bigoted and racist today as it was in the Seventies, academics have claimed.

Experts at a comedy conference yesterday said that after a wave of political correctness in the days of alternative comedy, jokes are again targeting minority groups.

And they dismissed arguments that postmodern irony makes the gags acceptable.

‘Pleasure is derived from the expression of aggression against a target,’ Guy Redden of Lincoln University told the seminar in Salford.

He said that Britain had moved from a ‘stereotype comedy with unflattering gags about social types where the white nation was working through the meaning of immigration’ to a new era of ‘post-PC comedy’ where the targets may have changed, but the sentiment is the same.

The cruel humour of Little Britain came under attack; in particular the character of mail order Thai bride Ting Tong was considered an example of the insidious racism.

Presenting a joint paper, Susan Becker of the University of Teeside and Lloyd Peters of Salford University argued that stereotypes are perpetuated and compounded by comedy.

‘Comedy is utilising stigma,’ they said. ‘A sign or mark which designates the bearer as less than normal people [lies] at the heart of the joke.’

Redden accepted that ‘unlike the discriminatory humour of the Seventies, [today’s] performers are aware of the power and meaning of the taboos they choose to break’, but argued that did not make the humour acceptable

However, Nigel Mather of the University of Kent suggested that when Ting Tong turns her husband Dudley’s flat into a Thai restaurant at the end of the series, it could be seen as empowering. ‘It could be seen as positive in terms of her characterisation,’ he said.

The conference continues at Salford University today.

Published: 1 Jun 2007