(Chiara Bucaria, Luca Barra (Eds.) ) Taboo Comedy

PA L G R AV E
STUDIES IN
COMEDY
TABOO COMEDY
TELEVISION AND
CONTROVERSIAL HUMOUR
EDITED BY CHIARA BUCARIA AND LUCA BARRA

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Chiara Bucaria • Luca Barra
Editors
Taboo Comedy
Television and Controversial Humour
Editors
Chiara Bucaria Luca Barra
University of Bologna University of Bologna
Bologna, Italy Bologna, Italy
Palgrave Studies in Comedy

ISBN 978-1-137-59337-5 ISBN 978-1-137-59338-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2
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CONTENTS
Taboo Comedy on Television: Issues and Themes 1

Chiara Bucaria and Luca Barra
Controversial Humour in Comedy and Drama Series 19
The Rise and Fall of Taboo Comedy in the BBC 21

Christie Davies
The Last Laugh: Dark Comedy on US Television 41

Kristen A. Murray
‘This Is Great, We’re Like Slave Buddies!’: Cross-Racial

Appropriation in ‘Post-Racial’ TV Comedies 61
Carter Soles
Phrasing!: Archer, Taboo Humour, and

Psychoanalytic Media Theory 77
Matt Sienkiewicz
v
vi CONTENTS
Taboo Humanity: Paradoxes of Humanizing

Muslims in North American Sitcoms 97
Kyle Conway
Controversial Humour in Variety Shows,

Commercials and Factual Programming 117
Dummies and Demographics: Islamophobia as Market

Differentiation in Post-9/11 Television Comedy 119
Philip Scepanski
Excessive Stand-Up, the Culture Wars, and ’90s TV 139

Evan Elkins
Tosh.0, Convergence Comedy, and the

‘Post-PC’ TV Trickster 155
Ethan Thompson
Crude and Taboo Humour in Television Advertising:

An Analysis of Commercials for Consumer Goods 173
Elsa Simões Lucas Freitas
Filthy Viewing, Dirty Laughter 191

Delia Chiaro
A Special Freedom: Regulating Comedy Offence 209

Brett Mills
Editors 227
Contributors 229
Index 233
Taboo Comedy on Television: Issues
and Themes
Chiara Bucaria and Luca Barra
MAPPING TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION

When Sex and the City and Six Feet Under premiered on the US cable
channel HBO in 1998 and 2001 respectively, they were saluted as ground-
breaking shows because of—among other reasons—their unconventional,
often-humorous, and explicit treatment of subjects such as sex, death,
homosexuality, and illness. Since then, the use of humour containing
taboo references has become more pervasive in Anglo-American television
programming. From Inside Amy Schumer and The League of Gentlemen to
Super Bowl commercials, stand-up comedy specials, and new generation,
single-camera sitcoms, forms of edgy, transgressive, dark, and even taboo
This chapter was prepared jointly by the two authors. However, Chiara Bucaria
is mainly responsible for sections ‘Mapping Taboo Comedy on Television’ and
‘Taboo Comedy and Humour Studies’ and Luca Barra for sections ‘Taboo
Comedy and Television Studies’ and ‘A Large and Complex Field of Study’.
C. Bucaria () • L. Barra

University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

C. Bucaria, L. Barra (eds.), Taboo Comedy, Palgrave Studies in
Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_1
2 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA
humour have in the last few years increasingly become part and parcel of
both television programming and the viewing experience. Even unsus-
pected network family sitcoms are slowly but surely pushing the envelope
of what constitutes acceptable material for comedy. Although, especially in
the USA, the divide between network and cable television remains a sharp
one, there is a noticeable trend towards a more extensive use of this kind of
edgier comedy even in more widely available programming, which at least
partially moves beyond the classic “least objectionable programming” and
“mainstream” imperatives and tries to better respond to ever-changing
media and television landscapes. From the heavy sexual innuendos of sit-
coms such as Mom to paedophilia and incest jokes in American Dad, from
late-night talk shows to Comedy Central Roasts, both traditional network
shows and more niche cable productions are now rife with humorous
references to subjects that were once reserved for comedy clubs at best,
which makes taboo comedy a topical and relevant object of study for both
Humour and Television Studies.
From a terminological standpoint, this kind of comedy has been in turn
referred to—among others—as ‘tasteless’, ‘outrageous’, ‘gallows’, ‘abu-
sive’, ‘gross’, ‘sick’, ‘cruel’, ‘edgy’, ‘transgressive’, ‘aggressive’, ‘dark’, ‘dis-
turbing’, ‘rude’, ‘offensive’, ‘politically incorrect’, ‘quirky’, ‘offbeat’, and
‘explicit’, to encompass a whole range of intensity. The number of terms
that are variously used both in academia and the press to refer to this kind
of comedy/humour is perhaps indicative of the many nuances that it can
take on and of its slippery and elusive nature. However, faced with the task
of having to choose a title for this collection, we selected taboo and contro-
versial as our two focal points. ‘Taboo’ is hopefully evocative enough to
immediately conjure up examples of and issues concerning the intended
subject, whereas the choice of the term ‘controversial’ reflects a conscious
effort towards terminological neutrality. As opposed to adjectives such as
‘offensive’ and ‘rude’, for instance, ‘controversial’ appears to allow for less
of a disapproving stance, thus mainly accomplishing a description of what
the effect of this kind of comedy usually is, i.e. creating controversy on its
appropriateness vs. inappropriateness. Although most academic literature
and even journalistic discourse on controversial comedy often mention
the ‘fine line’ between humour and offense and have sometimes veered
towards a call for a more responsible and ethical use of taboo humour
(e.g. Lockyer and Pickering 2005), we argue that a similar angle is beyond
the scope and intention of this volume. In fact, this collection is meant
to present scholarly research on issues concerning and arising from the
TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 3
use of controversial comedy in different forms of television programming

without necessarily offering value judgements on it. This specific intention
is reflected in the following chapters, which tackle taboo comedy from a
multiplicity of different approaches and points of view.
More specifically, under the umbrella phrase ‘taboo humour’ we mean
to encompass the whole spectrum of comedy themes and subjects with
which potential audiences might struggle because of its unconventional
and at times intentionally shocking nature. Partially based on Allan and
Burridge’s (2006) classification of taboo in language, these include the
following thematic categories:
– dark humour: humour about death, sickness, and disability;
– sexual humour: humour relying on explicit sexual references, situ-
ations, or practices;
– racial, ethnic, and minority humour, including sexist, homopho-
bic, transphobic humour, and humour directed at the elderly;
– gross-out/sick humour: humour relying on references to faeces
(scatological humour) or other bodily fluids, and other traditional
Western taboos such as incest and cannibalism;
– sacrilegious/blasphemous humour: humour targeting established
religious beliefs and dogmas, and the ministers of those religions;
– physical appearance humour: humour involving deformity and
other, non-normative traits, such as being overweight, short, or
bald.
The possible intersections of these categories are obviously theoreti-
cally infinite, as are the potential thematic overlaps among these spheres
of taboo humour and the gamut of linguistic modes used to express them.
However, albeit purposely broad, they represent a useful starting point to
approach the variety of taboo comedy in current television programming.
Beyond the themes that taboo comedy touches upon, an analysis of
the different forms of controversial humour on television cannot overlook
the fact that its production, appreciation, and reception are not stand-
alone occurrences, but need to be interpreted in light of specific cultural,
industrial, and even political tensions, e.g. the value attached to the appre-
ciation vs. rejection of taboo, edgy, and politically incorrect comedy in
certain cultural and political circles, personal sense of humour and taste,
and the contexts of production, reception, and distribution of comedy
based on controversial subjects and language. Also, how do the constant
changes in the media landscape—such as the existence of multiple and
niche platforms on which television content is available—affect the use

of taboo humour? Does niche programming necessarily correspond to a
greater use of taboo subjects and—potentially—comedy? Are controver-
sial language and themes necessary elements to achieve the status of qual-
ity television (Akass and McCabe 2007)? Furthermore, how does the use
of politically incorrect language for humorous purposes relate to the pos-
sible regulatory intervention of institutions or authorities in order to pre-
vent the use of this kind of humour? And what are the ways in which TV
production and distribution cultures position themselves and willingly or
unwillingly interact with such topics? What are the boundaries—if there
are any—between acceptable and unacceptable comedy?
In an attempt to discuss—if not provide answers to—the issues raised
by the subject matter in this collection, the next two sections will address
some of the themes and issues related to taboo and controversial comedy
from the points of view of the macro disciplines of Humour and Television
Studies, respectively.
TABOO COMEDY AND HUMOUR STUDIES

The potential for humour in a number of different contexts in human
life and society has in itself been responsible for a wide range of different
approaches to the study of humour and comedy, which makes Humour
Studies an exceptionally interdisciplinary field. While many of the chap-
ters in this collection delve into theories of humour and comedy in more
detail, it might be useful here to look in broader terms at the ways in
which some of those theories and concepts try to respond to the tensions
addressed by taboo comedy.
One way in which existing humour scholarship can be valuable is in
its contributions to the discussion of two central and recurring themes
in the discourse on controversial comedy in general: on the one hand,
the production and reception/appreciation of taboo humour and, on the
other hand, the tension between the unacceptability or inappropriateness
of taboo comedy and the legitimacy of humour addressing any sphere of
human life.
As far as issues relating to the production and reception/appreciation
are concerned—in other words, how and why people create and/or appre-
ciate taboo comedy—some theories of humour in general have been com-
monly used to illuminate the dynamics and the mechanisms at play in this
kind of humour. Two of the theoretical frameworks that have been most
commonly associated with controversial humour are superiority theory

and incongruity theory. Superiority theory—which is usually associated
with Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes—addresses the more negative and
aggressive components of humour, claiming that laughter is triggered by a
feeling of superiority experienced by people towards an object, a situation,
or a person. A further contribution of superiority theory to the theoriza-
tion of taboo humour, however, can be found in Plato’s description of
the ambivalent emotions originating from observing other people in dis-
tressful situations. Plato’s view is also often considered as a forerunner of
the ambivalence theory of humour, in which humour is seen as deriving
from the perception of two opposite emotions. The connection between
incongruity theory and taboo humour, on the other hand, seems to lie in
the fact that, similarly to incongruous humour in general, taboo humour
usually juxtaposes either content (death, disability, etc.) with a seemingly
inappropriate form (comedy, jokes, farce, etc.) or two contrasting situa-
tions (bad timing, inappropriate circumstances), with a typical example
being gallows humour, in which humour is created in stressful, oppressing
situations. Support for the incongruous nature of taboo humour is also
found in the Freudian concept of ‘displacement’ (Freud 1963), which
implies a shift of emphasis that allows the teller of the joke to disguise the
joke’s aim and to reveal it at the most unexpected moment, thus acting as
a subverter of expectations that is paramount for the dynamics of taboo
humour (Colletta 2003: 28–29).
Indeed, psychoanalytic theory has contributed a number of concepts
aimed at an understanding of the darker aspects of humour, with Freud
being one of its key figures. In terms of the production of jokes, Freud
identifies a number of different jokework techniques—such as displace-
ment, condensation, and unification—and further distinguishes between
innocent (or non-tendentious) jokes and hostile (or tendentious) jokes.
In non-tendentious jokes pleasure derives purely from the aesthetic enjoy-
ment of the cognitive technique involved, whereas tendentious jokes
express unconscious, aggressive instincts that are temporarily allowed
to be directed against someone or something. As Colletta notes, these
jokes allow individuals to successfully circumvent ‘the obstacles to desire
that society and education have erected’ (2003: 29) and serve to appease
what would normally be considered aggressive or socially unacceptable
desires. Colletta compares this function of tendentious jokes to that of
dark humour, which in a similar way allows for ‘rebellion against oppres-
sive circumstances and liberation from pressure’ (2003: 29).
As explored by research in psychology, key to an understanding of why

people produce and appreciate taboo humour is also the idea of humour
as a coping mechanism. Partially echoing Freud’s theory claiming that the
surplus energy that is not associated with negative feelings when people
find themselves in distressing circumstances is instead released through
humour and laughter, more recent empirical studies have explored the
function of humour as a moderator of life stress and as a tool to improve
the quality of life (Martin and Lefcourt 1983; Lefcourt and Martin 1986;
Martin et al. 2003). Although these studies mainly address the use of
humour in general, it isn’t difficult to hypothesize a more specific correla-
tion between coping and taboo humour. Particularly, some see the use
of dark humour in and by minority groups—for example among women
and ethnic minorities—as a device to overcome situations of distress and
oppression. Typically, some kinds of Jewish humour have been interpreted
as direct expressions of this function of dark humour, as have the so-called
disaster jokes (Smyth 1986; Oring 1992; Kuipers 2011), which in the dig-
ital age now appear in a matter of minutes after a catastrophe or calamity
and which according to Oring (1992) speak to notions of ‘decency’ and
‘unspeakability’ as they deal with situations that go beyond their content
and concern, more in general, their capability of conjoining ‘an unspeak-
able, and hence incongruous, universe of discourse to a speakable one’
(Oring 1992, 35).
Finally, similarly to dead baby jokes (Dundes 1979, 1987), disas-
ter jokes—the more recent incarnations of which appeared in the wake
of the 2015 and 2016 terrorist attacks in Europe—beg the question of
what factors affect the appreciation vs. rejection of dark or taboo humour.
Humour research has investigated a number of factors that seem to play a
role in individual humour preferences, such as gender, age, class (Kuipers
2006), and even mood at the moment in which the humorous stimuli
are provided (Martin 1998; Ruch 1998). For instance, with the help of
their Humour Style Questionnaire, Martin et al. (2003) have identified
four possible humour styles—‘affiliative’, ‘aggressive’, ‘self-enhancing’,
and ‘self-defeating’—which seem to indicate, both in terms of humour
production and appreciation, the existence of individual preferences.
Aggressive humour is the preference that would more closely resemble an
appreciation for taboo comedy.
The second of the two broad themes mentioned previously, the unac-
ceptability/inappropriateness of taboo comedy, is at the centre of a long-
standing debate when it comes to popular culture and one that concerns
the attempt to identify the fleeting boundaries of taboo or ‘offensive’ com-

edy. This debate, which ultimately comes down to the tension between the
appropriateness of taboo comedy and the legitimacy of humour address-
ing any sphere of human life and freedom of speech, can be framed in
terms of the pragmatics of humour. Similarly to all other forms of human
interaction, instances of humour do not occur in a vacuum but have a
context of delivery, which includes specific participants—who delivers the
humour/comedy? who is the audience?—and a specific communicative
setting. However, the crucial relationship between the content of comedy
and the context in which it is delivered is not always given the relevance
that it deserves as an interpretive tool. Often when we talk about the
inappropriateness of something, we fail to see that the concept itself is
relative, since it always implies reference to a specific context (appropriate
for whom? in what situation?). Inappropriateness as an attribute is relative
and not absolute, just like taboos tend to be relative and not absolute.
When University College London professor Tim Hunt made what was
perceived as a sexist joke at the World Conference of Science Journalists
in 2015, and when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and New York
City mayor Bill de Blasio engaged in a racially charged joke at a fundrais-
ing event in April 2016, controversy soon arose at the international level.
However, in denouncing the unacceptability of these attempted jokes not
many made explicit the importance of the context of interaction and deliv-
ery of the intended humorous content. In other words, while it might
have been acceptable for an African-American comic to deliver the same
joke on Coloured People Time (CP Time) at a comedy club, the fact that
two white, prominent, political figures used the joke at a public event
raises several issues concerning power and hegemony, which are only par-
tially mitigated by the fact that Bill de Blasio, who delivered the CP Time
line, is married to an African-American woman.
Particularly, in the interactional context of comedy involving in-group/
out-group and centre/periphery (Davies 1990) dynamics—such as, but
not limited to, racist/ethnic, homophobic, and sexist humour—it seems
crucial to take into consideration the directionality of humour, i.e. who
the sender and the recipient of the humorous message are, which can
significantly contribute to determining the underlying reasons why taboo
humour is perceived as generally inappropriate when delivered by a mem-
ber of a majority group addressing a minority group, whereas the opposite
is generally considered less problematic.
In the debate on the use or abuse of taboo humour, this tension has
recently been encoded in the ‘punching down’ vs. ‘punching up’ dichot-
omy, with the former ultimately implying an alignment with existing
hegemonic structures and the latter trying to expose socio-economic
inequality, or metaphorically punching the perpetrators and not the
victims. The concept of ‘punching up’ is similar to what Krefting refers to
as ‘charged humour’, the idea that ‘charged humour relies on identifica-
tion with struggles and issues associated with being a second-class citizen
and rallies listeners around some focal point be that cultural, corporeal, or
racial/ethnic similarities’ (Krefting 2014, 5). On the other hand, echoing
the sentiment of many detractors of ‘punching down’ humour, Krefting
sees the comedians who purposely use taboo content as merely employing
a rhetorical device mainly based on shock value and devoid of any political
or social critique, a generic ‘anti-political correctness’ stand in the name
of free speech. By contrast, many comics, including Jerry Seinfeld and
Chris Rock, have been vocal about the effect that political correctness
has had on the appreciation of their comedy routines, particularly on US
college campuses, where—in part because of the polemic involving trig-
ger warnings (Hume 2015)—a large portion of students seems to react
strongly to humour based on sensitive issues. The tension between the use
of taboo humour and the legitimacy of making fun of any facet of human
life and society is still very much at the centre of the debate, with come-
dians being scrutinized in their comedy routines not just on stage but
also on social media, and sometimes being forced to apologize for seem-
ingly ill-advised jokes. Furthermore, the discussion is complicated by the
subtlety and complexity of the intention of the speaker and their delivery.
Since, as Gournelos and Greene note, ‘we can never be quite certain who
is laughing, how they’re laughing, or why they’re laughing […]’ (2011,
xviii), one might legitimately wonder whether using politically incorrect
humour is an effective way of breaking taboos and exposing hypocrisy or
whether it simply perpetuates crass stereotypes on—among others—rac-
ism, misogyny, homophobia, rape, and mental and physical disability.
Lastly, we would be remiss if in an overview of the factors affecting the
perception of the appropriateness of taboo humour we didn’t mention the
significance of culture-bound aspects. Just like the appreciation of contro-
versial comedy may depend on factors such as age, gender, and personality
traits, the likelihood is worth mentioning that—for a number of historical,
political, and religious reasons—certain cultures may display a higher or
lower tolerance for humour based on subjects and language perceived as
taboo. For instance, Hofstede et al.’s empirical research (2010) seems to

point to the existence of recognizable national traits and values according
to categories such as uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and gender
roles, which, when applied to humour, in turn would explain why some
cultures have a higher appreciation for humour based on nonsense or
incongruity. Moreover, these categories, together with a country’s histori-
cal background, may also explain why certain kinds of taboo comedy are
more tolerated than others within the same culture.
TABOO COMEDY AND TELEVISION STUDIES

As mentioned above, humour always originates from a specific context,
and controversial comedy is no exception. Therefore, when taboo material
is included in a television show, the jokes—as imagined by performers and
producers, and then properly embraced by audiences—often need to take
into account not only the nature and structure of the wordplay or the spe-
cific references employed, but also the specific traits of TV as a language,
a technique, and a medium. In some ways, a clash is constantly developed
and managed between the ‘exception’ constituted by humour and the
regularity of ‘current’ television, often resulting in a stronger comedic
effect. Taboo comedy does not completely fit inside the small screen, its
rules and its schemes, and this conflict makes it more difficult and power-
ful at the same time. From a perspective grounded in Television Studies,
it is useful here to outline at least some of these challenges, irregulari-
ties, and (explicit or implicit) contrasts, highlighting three different con-
tinuums that have emerged as particularly relevant, both historically and
more recently. These contrasts define a complex field of relations where
controversial comedy can be positioned and, in fact, constantly positions
itself: a field that is incessantly modified by the stretching of boundaries or
by the changes occurring in the TV industry and in society at large.
The first continuum is the one between mainstream and niche. On the
one side, television has been—and mainly still is today—a mass medium,
offering its shows, series, imageries, and stars to the largest possible audi-
ence, and trying to build and engage a wide, invisible community made
up of different and geographically spread out people. The very nature of
broadcasting, in fact, implies the simultaneous transmission of its messages
to a wide, undifferentiated public. As a consequence, two of the staples
of television are, on the one hand, the traditional logic of L.O.P.—the
‘least objectionable programming’, a common denominator aimed at not
hurting the sensitivity of the majority of the audience—and, on the other

hand, the more general need not to exclude or leave out anyone from the
pleasures of television viewing for both editorial and commercial reasons
(Gitlin 1983; Mittell 2010). Controversial humour constantly struggles
and engages with such basic assumptions, pushing to expand the limits
of the medium, and at the same time adopting those limits as a major
device to obtain laughter and success. Consequently, the informal rule
that implies that the target of television is the largest possible audience
acts as a constraint that taboo comedy always has to abide by (or some-
how address), in some ways diminishing the power and extent of this kind
of humour. Moreover, this rule constitutes a shared and acknowledged
trait defining the medium, which performers must (and want to) accept,
adapting their comedic material to this specific kind of audience. At the
same time, once again, this rule provides controversial comedy with an
irresistible and unlimited tension to push these boundaries, to overturn
the general assumptions and expectations of TV audiences, to constantly
expand the limits of what it is possible to say, show, and perform on televi-
sion. Thanks to this tension, taboo comedy is able to follow the rules and
break them at the same time, to include fresh and original perspectives
into a common ground of habits and repetitions. Controversial humour
on network and mainstream television breaks boundaries, and in doing
so it also adjusts to them. On the opposite side of the same continuum,
cable, satellite, and digital outlets offer a wider space for taboo comedy. By
definition, they break and expand the limits of what can be represented,
redefine humour inside a logic of ‘quality television’ and premium pro-
gramming targeting specific niche audiences, and therefore are able—and
somewhat proud—to create distinction and to stimulate controversy. Even
in those cases, however, complete freedom is not possible and not allowed,
in part because boundaries and constraints constitute a fundamental part
of what makes taboo comedy work. Nevertheless, thematic and niche
channels become a prolific space for controversial humour, often normal-
izing it and using it as a positioning and promotional tool, as a rhetorical
and marketing device. However, in both cases—the breaking of a general
rule for mainstream networks and the more regular presence on targeted
platforms—the spaces dedicated to provocative comedy enjoy an excep-
tional status and a sort of ‘double-standard’, offering a hint of revolution
in a generally fixed context. Even in the most ground-breaking cases, TV
comedy is taboo only as long as it remains suitable to the medium it is
inserted into.
The second continuum involves the tension between reality and imag-
ery, truth and carefully built representation. Taboo comedy plays a role in
the perpetual television balance between the informative role of ‘showing
the truth’—e.g. in the news—and the symbolic reading and manipula-
tion of such reality—e.g. in entertainment genres or fiction. On the one
hand, controversial humour is a way to directly expose what happens in
the world, to engage with the truth, to confront and to respond to a
reality that is already in place. Here television breaks the fourth wall to
show a more complex, varied, and truthful depiction of aspects we are
used to hiding or forgetting. On the other hand, this kind of comedy
necessarily exaggerates, distorts, and deforms such reality—for example
through hyperbole, irony, detachment, and emphasis—thus highlighting
the inauthenticity behind representation. Television humour exposes the
truth, often recurring to artificiality. As it has been highlighted for comedy
genres (Marc 1996, 1997; Gray 2008), parody (Thompson 2011) and
satire (Gray et al. 2009; Meijer Drees and De Leeuw 2015), as a result
of its immediacy, familiarity, and liveness, television plays a double role in
strengthening the effect of the truth, while at the same time clearly reveal-
ing the tricks and production effects, the reality of its artifice. Moreover,
TV comedy—including taboo humour—often does not take a clear posi-
tion but indulges in a fruitful duplicity, seemingly able to provide both
a liberal and a conservative approach to reality and its changes. Taboo
humour can be ‘relevant’, opening the space of the small screen to unseen
and unnoticed social issues with a progressive stance, and can also be a way
of mocking and demonizing such issues, ridiculing the idea of a progressive
stance (Marc 1997; Mills 2005, 2009; Dalton and Linder 2005; Morreale
2003). In their long-lasting fight, both politically correct and controversial
humour on TV become ways to establish a point of view. These struggles
and negotiations between different perspectives—by comedians, produc-
ers, networks, and all the other parties involved—confirm this crucial
power of comedy to frame, shape, and present a ‘biased’ reality.
The third continuum contrasts long-term programming and one-off
events. The majority of TV shows are serialized, spanning over multiple
episodes across a single season and over multiple seasons year after year,
and furthermore expanding with spin-offs, sequels, remakes, collections,
reruns, and on-demand libraries. This is another fundamental feature
of television and broadcasting (Kompare 2005), and its result is a fre-
quent repetition of the same text, or at least of similar contents, models,
schemes, patterns, and jokes. While TV comedy in general is often rein-
forced by its constant reiteration, by consolidating the viewers’ affection
towards on-screen personalities and by introducing sitcoms and comedy

shows in daily or weekly familiar habits, such repetition constitutes a great
challenge for subversive humour. In fact, what appears to be innovative,
unexpected, and revolutionary when it is first shown on TV, ends up being
less powerful once it is inserted in a cycle of slight modifications and con-
stant reruns. The infringement of taboos—or the provocative challenge
of shared topoi, clichés, and stereotypes—is therefore incisive in its first
occurrences, but the unexpected divergence from the norm is soon dimin-
ished by repetition. The ground-breaking role of sharp sitcoms or stand-up
comedy shows follows here a process of domestication and accommoda-
tion, transforming ‘real’ taboo humour into a weaker—yet closer, more
familiar, and more immediate—form of comedy. Revolution becomes the
(new) norm, and the constant flow of programming plays an important
role in this transformation. By contrast, controversial comedy appears to
enjoy an easier and less compromised space in stand-alone events, one-off
shows or guest appearances, where the strength of taboos is not weakened
by everyday regularity. In this scenario, censorship, control, and polemical
discourse, both on television and outside the box, are a good way of ‘even-
tizing’ the linear and repetitive series of episodes, highlighting a deviation
from the norm and putting a single moment of television—‘worth watch-
ing’, or even impossible to watch—in the spotlight.
The three fields of opposite forces briefly outlined here encompass some
of the issues that arise when taboo/controversial humour is included in
television programming, thus following the rules, constraints, and the
strengths of this medium and its language. All these underlying topics chal-
lenge the definitions of taboo comedy: the obvious need to interact with
large numbers of people, the pressure to abide by certain boundaries and to
stress them, the tension between the effect of reality and its complex con-
struction, the always-present yet hidden framing of such reality, the repeti-
tion of episodes, seasons, and reruns, and the breaking of this usual scheme
with events and once-in-a-lifetime television bits. These can help under-
stand the complex, sometimes contradictory, yet very interesting presence
of taboo comedy across a large number of TV shows and networks.
A LARGE AND COMPLEX FIELD OF STUDY

This edited collection provides an exploration of the phenomenon of taboo
comedy and controversial humour on television. Throughout these essays,
the topics briefly addressed in this chapter—the definition and the status
of this kind of jokes and laughter, its roles and effects, and the complex
relationship with the medium—are deeply scrutinized and analyzed from

different perspectives, and with the help of a large number of examples.
Some chapters adopt a mainly historical approach, focusing on important
moments in television—as well as social—history, while other chapters
adopt a more contemporary stance, highlighting how current television is
permeated and shaped by multiple contradictory forces. The range of top-
ics includes different kinds of taboos, involving religion and sex, national-
ity and ethnicity, death and politics, gender and disgust; however, despite
the differences in the objects of analysis, as well as in research methods
and historical/critical approaches, some common traits emerge through-
out the book, including the role of public service, the responsibility of
commercial television, the space for regulation and censorship, excess and
its (im)possible limits, the specificities of comedic performances, comedic
stardom, and television’s layered relationship with its audiences.
To give an order to such rich and complex material, two main criteria
have been adopted. The first one is geographical. Although both the
book’s authors and approach are global, the majority of examples and
case studies refers to the US and UK television systems. It is a deliber-
ate choice, for a number of reasons: firstly, the wealth of these media
environments provides the most solid grounds and the best structural
conditions for the development not only of controversial humour on
television, but also of an on-going discussion of and debate on the vari-
ous issues involved; secondly, the global circulation and distribution of
US and British TV shows and stars provide an easier ‘common ground’
and a shared framework for readers, who will at least have some famil-
iarity with the examples provided and can engage with the case studies;
lastly, both the US and the UK television systems are important mod-
els for other countries in developing, modifying, and regulating taboo
humour. A second criterion has to do with TV genres, which constitute
the first level of organization and structure for these essays. The first
section of the volume features essays involving scripted programming
and fictional shows, especially comedies—including sitcoms—and dra-
mas; the second section focuses mainly on non-scripted and non-fiction
genres, with insights on stand-up comedy, variety shows, commercials,
and the vast category of factual programming, reality and life-style shows.
It is worth mentioning that we have adopted the traditional distinction
between scripted and unscripted shows, although we are aware that it is
indicative of specific industrial conventions rather than actual writing,
production, and consumption practices.
Part I of this book opens with an essay by Christie Davies, which criti-
cally and historically analyzes the ‘culture wars’ that took place in the UK
behind the scenes of the BBC comedy department. With constant refer-
ences to archival documents and TV scripts, Davies explores the oscilla-
tions of comedy programmes between censorship and creative freedom,
highlighting the internal and external forces at play, the slow emergence
of politically correct policies, and the constant connections between TV
comedy and secularization. Kristen A. Murray discusses the role of dark
humour and the different perceptions of death through television comedy,
as depicted in a large number of series and sitcoms approaching the end
of life in multiple ways. Death is a fundamental aspect of our lives, yet it
is a topic increasingly removed from general discourse. However, by jok-
ing about and laughing at funerals, corpses, hospitals, drugs, ageing, and
sanity, drama and comedy series help audiences to correctly and playfully
deal with this issue. Dark humour is also used by contemporary society
to express and hide its deepest feelings. The following chapter, by Carter
Soles, selects three US and Canadian TV series (Arrested Development,
Trailer Park Boys, and Party Down) as interesting examples of the constant
cultural appropriation of race by white-male-oriented comedy. Indulging
in the fantasy of a post-racial society, these cult shows actually exploit dif-
ferent races and cultures, adopt racist stereotypes on African-Americans
and Latinos, and project the weaknesses of the dominant group onto a
derisive approach to blackness. In the process of recognizing and expos-
ing racism, these shows contradict their own goals, and fall into a differ-
ent kind of racism. Matt Sienkiewicz adopts a psychoanalytical approach,
using US series Archer as a tool to engage with Freudian theory. Animated
comedies are able to include complex and subtle elements into a larger
pleasurable text, and become a good way to express the most repressed
elements of the human psyche. Archer, in particular, has set the oedipal
fixation as a constant background narrative, thus allowing viewers to read
the text and its context as dreams in the dreamscape, with both an author-
centred approach focused on producers and a reader-centred point of view
exploring the audience and its feelings. In the last chapter in Part I, Kyle
Conway explores Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie and its role
in humanizing Muslims through its characters and in erasing differences
within the national community. Following a critical production studies
approach, by means of interviews with professionals involved in the mak-
ing of the series, Conway reflects on how minorities sitcoms constitute
an entry point to television—albeit through a ‘narrow door’—in some
ways leaving out negative emotions and other parts of the human experi-
ence. Conway’s analysis of regulation, commercialism, and media logics
helps in understanding the different possible levels of multiculturalism,
and explains the on-going persistence of taboos and stereotypes.
Part II of the volume opens with a chapter by Philip Scepanski, which
in some ways acts as a link between the two sections of the book. Scepanski
investigates the comedic reactions that followed the 9/11 attacks and that
contributed to reinforcing the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, espe-
cially against Muslims. With an overview of animated sitcoms followed
by a meticulous analysis of stand-up comedy shows by Carlos Mencia
and Jeff Dunham, Scepanski demonstrates how the racist depiction of
the other, often with the excuse of laughing at the enemy, reinforces
cultural and political conservatism, justifies xenophobia, exploits fear for
commercial purposes, and works as a strategy for viewers and advertisers.
Evan Elkins analyzes the long-lasting conflict between politically correct
comedy and free speech, and investigates the appropriateness of joking
on taboo topics. Elkins explores the censorship of some stand-up com-
edy routines on US networks in the early 1990s, including Andrew Dice
Clay and Martin Lawrence on Saturday Night Live and the well-known
case of Bill Hicks’ performance which was edited out of the Late Show
with David Letterman. A tension between different logics ends up both
celebrating and chastising controversial and potentially offensive comic
material. Ethan Thompson selects a Comedy Central show, Tosh.0, in
an attempt to offer a better understanding of the relationship between
convergent television, younger male demographics, and the boundaries of
what is socially acceptable in comedy. Through an analysis of the structure
of the show, Thompson highlights the ‘post-politically correct’ approach
adopted by the programme, the multiple occasions for viewer participa-
tion (and ridicule, if not humiliation), and the recurring jokes on sexuality
and race/ethnicity. A figure of ‘contemporary trickster’ clearly emerges,
which accepts racial and sexual identities as unproblematic, and thus chal-
lenges and crosses traditional boundaries. The chapter by Elsa Simoes
Lucas Freitas focuses on television commercials and the ways in which
taboo humour works—or struggles—in advertising. After a close analysis
of the structural elements involved and of the similarities between jokes
and commercials, Freitas investigates how advertisers trade the viewers’
attention for the entertainment value of the ads. Through the examples
of Super Bowl commercials and Portuguese campaigns involving offense,
grossness, or sexual innuendos, it becomes clear how taboo humour is an
effective yet potentially risky practice. Delia Chiaro shifts the focus to
reality television, lifestyle and factual programming, and analyzes the UK
show How Clean is Your House? to discuss the various functions of laugh-
ter in response to shocking yet comical situations involving filth and dirt.
The ironic detachment and the funny reaction to embarrassing moments
are textual devices punctuating the narrative of the show and directly con-
necting with the audience, thus reinforcing the appeal of the programme.
Lastly, Brett Mills explores the difficulties for authorities to regulate and
recognize humour, as well as to apply the ‘special freedom’ granted to the
genre in specific circumstances. By commenting on examples from some
controversial episodes of BBC’s Top Gear, including jokes on race, nation-
ality, and sexuality, Mills highlights the complexities and contradictions
emerging in the reaction to live television banter, the conflicts between
professionals and in-production routines, the difficulty in making sense
of audience responses and complaints, and the unpredictable differences
between the jokes that are perceived as taboo and the ones that go unno-
ticed and do not stimulate further discussion.
By presenting a rich and complex set of examples, perspectives, topics,
television genres, ways of laughing, and objects to laugh at, this collection
and its chapters aim at defining and expanding the scholarship on taboo
comedy and on the television spaces devoted to taboo. The volume offers
an in-depth discussion of—among others—the boundaries of TV represen-
tations, the effects of comedy, censorship, and regulation, new and old ste-
reotypes, and the cathartic role of laughter. Hopefully, the issues raised here
will be a valuable stepping stone for further questions and research for the
benefit of scholars and students in both Humour and Television Studies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Gournelos, and Viveca Greene, vi–xxxv. Jackson, MS: University Press of
Mississippi.
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America, ed. Ted Gournelos, and Viveca Greene, vi–xxxv. Jackson, MS:
University Press of Mississippi.
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to Adversity. New York: Springer.
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Humour. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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———. 1997. Comic Visions. Television Comedy & American Culture. Malden,
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The Sense of Humor. Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, ed. W. Ruch,
15–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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of the Relationship Between Stressors and Moods. Journal of Personality and
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Syracuse University Press.
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Culture. London: Routledge.
PART I
Controversial Humour
in Comedy and Drama Series
The Rise and Fall of Taboo Comedy
in the BBC
Christie Davies
A historical account of the responses to questionable comedy within or in

response to the BBC can be divided into two very different eras of conflict.
The first of these, the internal ‘war against smut’, stretched from the very
inception of the BBC in 1922, when it was given a monopoly over all UK
radio, and later television, paid for by a compulsory licence fee, to 1960,
when Sir Hugh Carleton Greene became the new Director-General. His
appointment was a response to the crisis within BBC Television caused by
the ending of its monopoly in 1955, when the Independent Television
Authority began transmitting programmes funded by commercial adver-
tising. Before Greene’s appointment, the producers of comedy that might
offend were involved in an endless on-going internal fight with the BBC
bureaucrats who tried to repress anything they found offensive. Greene
gave the producers their freedom, but this only moved the conflict some-
where else, for the freer broadcasting of offensive comedy led to a culture
war with those outside who vigorously objected to it.
During the time of its monopoly, and for a few years afterwards, the
BBC operated almost as if it was a branch of the civil service when provid-
ing public service broadcasting. It was independent of the government,
C. Davies ()
University of Reading, Reading, UK

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_2
22 C. DAVIES
but the way its administrators were organized in a hierarchy, the outlook
that went with this and the enormous emphasis placed on enforcing policy
from the centre and on formal paperwork was that of the mandarins of the
British civil service. Censorship of comedy was rigorous, particularly in
relation to humour about sex or scatology, to the use of ‘bad language’ or
to the mockery of religion. An elaborate code of prohibitions was imposed
on radio and TV producers, and through them on performers and writ-
ers. There were even occasions in the 1940s when the Director-General
himself, rendered apoplectic by a single joke contrary to ‘policy’, would
intervene, firing off irate memoranda and demanding that those respon-
sible for it be chastised.
The situation changed radically when a new libertarian Director-
General, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, was appointed in 1960. Greene
unleashed the producers and the comedy writers, and they came up with
a series of comedy programmes characterized by bad language, smut
and irreverence to the Christian religion that caused great offence but
attracted exceptionally large audiences. The old-style administrative hier-
archy were so conditioned to accepting and implementing orders from the
top that they gave up ‘the war against dirt’ and became the enablers of
the new comedy. Some of them disagreed with the changes, but the party
line had changed and democratic centralism prevailed. The younger ones
among them, particularly those recently recruited to run the expanding
television service, welcomed the changes. It was anyway a time of very
rapid social change in the wider society, changes that had nothing to do
with the BBC, and the new generation saw the world very differently from
their elders. Thanks to Greene, the comedy producers could now defy the
administrators with impunity. The upholders of the old order still in office
were not always happy with this, but they were well aware that the tide
of social change outside the BBC was running strongly against them, and
it was easier to drift with it rather than fight the new Director-General.
Even so, John Arkell, Director of Administration, wrote to Greene oppos-
ing, in Tracey’s words, the new ‘untrammelled freedom of the producer’,
with the role of the layers above being not to control but to cushion the
pressure from outside. If this were BBC policy, Arkell added in an acid
aside, ‘then the TV service is being run by a staff with an average age of
twenty-seven’ (Tracey 1983, 219). However, the centre of the conflicts
had now moved from inside the BBC to being one between the BBC and
its external critics.
THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 23
Those who resented most this new wave of smutty and irreverent com-
edy were the people outside the organization who had loved the ancien
régime, the old BBC known as Auntie, precisely because it was prim
and proper, respectable and responsible. In particular, their indignation
was expressed through the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association
(NVALA) led by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse. They were quite unable to
accept the new comedies that Greene had enabled. They campaigned
strongly against them and with considerable personal hostility to Greene
himself. They fought a long war of attrition against the transformed BBC
and won several tactical victories, including the toppling of Greene him-
self (Thompson 2012, 87–88). But despite these victories, they lost their
war against the new permissiveness in broadcast comedy. They lost mainly
because the wider social changes that had enabled the BBC to change
direction continued, and the large and vocal minority who supported their
campaign shrank in size. The remnant lost confidence in its ability ever to
reverse the unwelcome shifts not just in the BBC, but in society at large.
British society had become more secular, freer in its sexual behaviour and
attitudes and increasingly tolerant of homosexuality. The critics lost the
culture war and failed substantially to curb BBC comedy in the ways that
mattered to them.
THE ERA OF THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK

From its inception, the BBC had strongly curbed comedy, which was eas-
ily done when radio programmes were made in the studio using carefully
vetted scripts, but tensions arose during World War II when outside radio
broadcasts became common, often with a live audience of men serving
in the armed forces, who were used to ribald humour. This led to trans-
gressions that provoked a series of vigorous interventions from as high
as the Director-General himself that could reduce the minions dealing
with comedy to a state of obsequious groveling. On 30 January 1941, the
comedian Sydney Howard introduced an unscripted off-colour gag into
a forces programme to the horror of the producer D. Miller and of Jack
Payne who was in charge of musical continuity. A badly frightened Payne
wrote a very angry letter to Howard, accusing him of doing it maliciously.
Payne was minding his back, for he also wrote demeaning letters of apol-
ogy and exculpation to Roger H. Eckersley, Organiser of Programmes, to
John Watt, Director of Variety and to the Director-General F.W. Ogilvie
himself, until he felt he was entirely in the clear and could write, ‘I am
24 C. DAVIES
glad to know, Director-General, that you don’t blame me’. The joke had
proved to be no laughing matter.1
At the end of the war, the BBC began codifying its censorship of com-
edy into a set of mandatory written rules. In September 1945, Michael
Standing, the Director of Variety, drew up a formal censorship code insist-
ing that programmes be entirely free of obscene and blasphemous lan-
guage. There was to be no use of ‘God! Good God! My God! Blast!
Hell! Damn! Bloody! Gor Blimey! and Ruddy!’ It was followed by the
Television Policy Censorship Code of January 1947. In 1948, Standing
produced the definitive BBC Variety Programmes Policy Guide for Writers
and Producers that came to be known as The Green Book.2 The little
Green Book stated sternly that:
There is an absolute ban on the following:
Jokes about—Lavatories, Pre-natal influences, Marital infidelity, Effeminacy

in men, Immorality of any kind (as well as) suggestive references to
Honeymoon couples, Chambermaids, Fig-leaves, Prostitution, Ladies
Underwear e.g. winter draws on, Animal habits, e.g. rabbits, Lodgers (and)
Commercial Travelers.
Like all such censorship codes, The Green Book was always being extended
to include new words and situations. Nothing was ever deleted, but new
forbidden items were added whenever there was unease at the top, making
it more and more restrictive over time. The comedy performer Nicholas
Parsons could still, decades later, ‘remember being told by one producer
when recording a stand-up show that I couldn’t use the word naked as a
punch line to a joke, it was a banned word in the little Green Book’s guid-
ance and censorship’ (Parsons 2008). The little Green Book was strict not
only on smut but also on irreverence:
Sayings of Christ or descriptive of Him are, of course, inadmissible for

light entertainment programmes […]. Jokes built around Bible stories, e.g.
Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, must also be avoided or
any sort of parody of them […]. Reference to and jokes about different reli-
gious or religious denominations are banned. The following are also inad-
missible:—Jokes or comic songs about spiritualism, christenings, religious
ceremonies of any description (e.g. weddings, funerals).
The absolutism of the code is emphasized by the instruction that

‘Warming up sequences with studio audiences before broadcasting
should conform to the same censorship standards as the programmes
themselves. Sample recordings should be submitted to the same censor-

ship as transmissions.’ In other words, the code was not just a means of
avoiding complaints from offended listeners but of upholding the inner
purity of the BBC, one of Britain’s sacred hierarchies, a special space
secluded from the vulgarity and commercialism of the outside world and
its laughter. Those responsible for this code of practice for broadcast
humour clearly felt that it might give rise to ridicule, should the general
public learn of its existence and detailed content, for the file is marked as
being only for reference and ‘not for circulation’, with a further note that
it must be ‘kept in the office and not taken away by outside producers’.
The files of the BBC reveal just how emphatically the rules were
enforced. They are full of edicts, memoranda, and denunciations from
senior officials directed against errant producers of comedy programmes.
Their missives tell us all we need to know about the internal tensions
within the Corporation. The use of capital letters to indicate shock-horror
is particularly revealing:
Cecil McGivern. Television Programme Director to producers. 11 August

1947
Subject. Over-runs and smut. URGENT and IMPORTANT.
SMUT
There have […] been examples in variety programmes lately of very doubt-
ful gags and songs. If a producer is not capable of deciding what is smut and
embarrassing to the average householder, then he should not be producing.3
Poor McGivern, a gifted enabler of new programmes, was under constant

pressure from above. On 8 December 1947 he wrote to his superiors in
the hierarchy: ‘You will see from the attached the constant war I wage
against dirt. The chief reason for the dirt is that our variety producers are
young and inexperienced in BBC ways. They must be trained. And are
being so. But alas! it takes a little time.’4 On 8 October 1952, Ronald
Waldman, Head of Light Entertainment, sent a missive to all producers,
saying: ‘Twice in the last five weeks we have been treated to the lavatory
gag in Light Entertainment Programmes. It is NOT funny and NOT suit-
able in television […]. I shall have to treat any further lapses of taste with
extreme severity and this must not be considered an idle threat.’5 On 24
March 1954, there was a broadside from the Director-General himself, Sir
Ian Jacob, to the Director of Television Broadcasting. Jacob complained
that the television service was seriously departing from BBC policy and
26 C. DAVIES
standards, notably in its indecent light entertainment programmes and

concluded ‘Unless action is taken soon to stop this kind of thing there will
very soon be no standards left and the drift downhill will go right through
the Corporation.’6
These splenetic letters are an indication of a guerrilla war within the
BBC between the administrators and those doing the creative work—the
producers and performers of comedy. The administrators waged a ‘war
against smut’, by which they meant sexual and lavatorial jokes, innuendo
and cross-dressing. Their use of angry phrases such as ‘despite orders,
remonstration and constant harping’, ‘serious outbreak of questionable
and suggestive material’, indicate how upset they were and their rage
was backed up by threats. To mark a memorandum URGENT and even
URGENT and IMPORTANT, in capital letters, when it deals with a
mere joke, indicates the extent of their bile. The administrators sound
like petulant schoolmasters haranguing their impudent charges as when
they say ‘dirt and nastiness’, ‘it is NOT funny and NOT suitable’. The use
of terms like these is guaranteed to produce smirks and sniggers among
those thus admonished. In 1947, Cecil McGivern, Television Programme
Director, complained that ‘variety producers tend to smile behind their
hands whenever I complain of smut in variety shows’.7
The administrators saw themselves as part of a strict hierarchy imbued
with moral purpose, what they would have called the BBC ethos. Obedience
was for them a key virtue and directives from above were responded to
with great deference partly because the administrators’ careers depended
on obeying orders, and partly because they strongly believed they should.
The BBC officials were alarmed by ‘smut’ in comedy, not just because
it might lead to complaints from the public and more alarmingly from
the politicians who ultimately controlled the organization’s finances but
because of the very nature of their employment, which narrowed their
minds. They lived in a world of rigid, fixed, hierarchically arranged cat-
egories, as we can see from their compound titles built round the words
‘Director’, ‘Head’, ‘Controller’, and known by complicated acronyms as
Tel.P.D., H.L.E. G. Tel, S.P. Man AC(OS), A/ADV. The head of it all,
the Director-General, would be referred to in conversation as ‘the D.G.’
even though everyone knew his name.
In such a world, ambiguity is suspect and irreverence to authority even
more so, but these two things are the very building blocks of comedy. The
senior officials of the BBC hierarchy were part of the Establishment and
linked in sentiment and social background to the senior persons of other
hierarchies, those of the armed forces, the civil service and the church.
They had a shared outlook that rejected the commercial world with its vul-
garity and the ‘anarchy of the market place’ and upheld traditional author-
ity of all kinds.
They were particularly likely to be worried about jokes that seemed to
mock religion or were indecent. Religious creeds tend to be suspicious
and fearful of sexuality and hold up ‘purity’ as an ideal, with pollution as
its antithesis. Smutty and scatological humour cuts against such an out-
look. As they entered Broadcasting House on their way to their offices,
the senior BBC officials would every day pass a dedication plaque that read
(in the classical Latin, which they would all have studied in their youth):
This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first
Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director-
General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good har-
vest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house.
It was perhaps rather strange that a pagan temple of the Arts and the Muses
be dedicated to the Almighty God of the Christians and the Jews. Purity
was to be upheld except perhaps when the high seriousness of art required
that it be suspended. Comedy did not qualify, and the rules about the
use of ‘bad language’ on the air were stricter for comedy than for serious
drama. Expletives such as Hell! God! and Damn! were rigorously excluded
from light entertainment and replaced by Heck! Gosh! and Darn!, whereas
they were allowed in drama to give verisimilitude and there was a reluc-
tance to bowdlerize the serious and sententious classics. On 29 April 1954,
the Head of Drama Michael Barry wrote to all Drama Producers:
URGENT. To be read today. This department has in the last four days trans-
mitted a performance using language that it had been agreed should not be
used in comedy and used only after careful consideration in serious plays.
Far from having a ‘special freedom’, comedy was bound by special restric-
tions that did not apply to other kinds of programme that the high-minded
mandarins saw as heavily earnest. Only earnestness was important enough
to justify wild language. It was forbidden to refer to ‘marital infidelity’ or
to ‘immorality of any kind’, ‘except in plays’. There could be no joking
about it and certainly none about that most outrageous of vices, ‘effemi-
nacy in men (or impersonations)’.8 Comedy could never contain the kind
of redeeming purpose that would make the portrayal of transgression licit.
28 C. DAVIES
The producers of the comedy programmes were by virtue of their trade

not part of this world of high seriousness. Unlike the comedy performers,
whose relationship with the BBC was temporary, commercial and con-
tractual, the producers were part of the BBC staff and had organizational
responsibilities, but an individual producer was not, as the higher BBC
bureaucrat was, ‘chained to the activity by his entire material and ideal
existence […] forged to the community of all the functionaries who are
integrated into the mechanism’ (Weber 1948, 228–229). The producers
worked closely with performers, men and women whose main concern
was to amuse an audience, often a live outside audience, with whatever
material they could get away with. These last were entertainers, a class
about as far removed from the senior BBC bureaucrats as could be. The
entertainers’ main strength in the marketplace lay in their popularity and,
so long as this held up, they had high earnings and were not dependent on
employment by the BBC. The salaried producers were stuck in the middle,
but even though they were forced to obey the officials, their sympathies
were likely to be with the entertainers with whom they worked on a regu-
lar and intimate basis.
The conflicts over humour during the 1940s and 1950s were, then,
mainly internal ones, a conflict of producers and performers versus the
BBC’s senior bureaucrats. But even within the ordered hierarchy doubts
and cracks were emerging. On 23 July 1963, Graham Miller, the Head
of Northern Regional Programmes who was not happy with an explicit
ban on jokes about the Profumo sex scandal, wrote in disagreement to
R.D.A. Marriott, the Assistant Director of Sound Broadcasting, ending
his letter with: ‘But orders are orders and they are being obeyed’.9 One
suspects he is being ironic for the year is 1963, Carleton Greene is the
new libertarian Director-General and the old order is crumbling. The war
against smut was beginning to be lost. The situation was soon to change
radically, with greater internal freedom leading to intense conflict with
those outside determined to uphold the old taboos.
THE GREAT CULTURE WAR

The patterns of censorship of comedy in the BBC changed rapidly after
Hugh Carleton Greene became Director-General in 1960. The Green
Book gave way to the Greene book. He unleashed the producers of ribald
and irreverent comedy and they made many outrageous series such as That
Was the Week That Was (TW3) (1962–1963), Steptoe and Son (1962–1965;
1970–1974), and Till Death Us Do Part (1965–1968; 1970; 1972–1975)

for television, and Round the Horne (1965–1968) for radio. They were
all immensely popular. The audience for TW3, a satire programme that
was shown very late in the evening (Hoggart 2005), rose from three and
a half million when it began to six and a half million by the beginning of
1963 (Tracey 1983, 207) to 12 million just before it was taken off. In
1966, Harold Wilson, when Prime Minister, successfully demanded that
the BBC show a repeat of Steptoe and Son later than usual in the evening
on election night, well after the polls had closed, lest he lose votes (Tracey
1983, 266), because Labour supporters would see watching a couple of
comic rag and bone men as more important than voting for socialism.
Later, Labour was to get Harry H. Corbett, the younger rag and bone
man in the comedy, to take part in the Labour Party’s official political
broadcasts. Till Death Us Do Part was for a time the most popular show in
Britain and even the second series had 16 million watching it (Tracey and
Morrison 1979, 115). Even in 1986, an old and familiar repeat drew an
audience of 12.5 million. When shown in Australia, Till Death Us Do Part
became the most popular programme ever seen on Australian television.
They were all hugely popular programmes and viewers voted for them
by turning them on week after week. People wanted bad language, smut,
irreverence and ‘racism’. But those who disapproved of that kind of thing
were enraged. A Roman Catholic paper told its readers ‘to switch off when
TW3 comes on’ and an Anglican priest called That Was the Week That
Was ‘a poisonous conspiracy against all that is good in British life’ (That
Was 2012). Indeed, within two months of its inception TW3 was ‘begin-
ning to give some people indigestion’ notably the item ‘Consumer Report
on Religion’, which ‘described each of the main religions as if they were
goods on offer’ (Tracey 1983, 209).
The widespread indignation led to a substantial protest movement,
the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association led by Mrs. Mary
Whitehouse and dedicated to cleaning up TV (Whitehouse 1967), which
at its peak had 150,000 members. Its main objections were to the use
of blasphemous and indecent language, to salacious humour and to the
humorous mocking of the Christian religion. Thousands attended its
inaugural meeting in 1964, and the following year a petition with nearly
half a million signatures supporting its manifesto for cleaning up television
was presented to Parliament (Whitehouse 1971, 68). It was a very rapid
and hostile response to the new liberties being taken in the BBC. NVALA
had very considerable support, particularly from traditional Christians of a
30 C. DAVIES
puritanical disposition, of whom there were many. But it represented only

a moral minority, a large and important minority but a minority far smaller
than the numbers choosing week after week to watch and enjoy the pro-
grammes that were giving so much offence.
The television programme that gave most offence was Till Death Us
Do Part, written for the BBC by Johnny Speight and produced by Dennis
Main Wilson, perhaps the most celebrated and successful of all the BBC’s
comedy producers for both radio and television, the man also responsible
for The Goon Show, Hancock’s Half Hour, Here’s Harry, and It’s Marty.
It was a satire directed against its central character Alf Garnett, a foul
mouthed, authoritarian, reactionary, working-class Cockney, devoted to
the monarchy and the church, bigoted and xenophobic (Booth 2005;
Speight 1986). On 20 September 1972, the episode of Till Death Us Do
Part was called ‘The Bird Fancier’. In one scene Alf’s wife, Else, is saying
that the local pub is a hotbed of scandal:
Alf: Blimey… Hark who’s talking! When you and Old Gran get in there
with yer port an’ gins no one’s reputation is safe. The other night
in there—old Gran—she was spreading scandal about heaven… say-
ing—she was—that—Mary couldn’t be a virgin—‘cos she was in
child by (looks reverently upwards) Him.
Else: (is shocked)
Alf: I thought she’d get struck down any minute, I did—I walked away.
I wasn’t the only one either.
Else: Well… I suppose they’re different to us—up there. I suppose they
can have babies without having to do what we have to do.
Rita: (reacts sympathetically)
Alf: Yer… I know… well, what they do is immaculate, anit?
Mike: I wonder how many they’ve got now?
Else: Who?
Mike: HIM and HER.
Else: They only had the one.
Mike: Yeah—but that was two thousand years ago—they could have had
another fifteen hundred by now.
Else: (is not amused)
Mike: Unless they’re on the pill.
Alf: (explodes) You… I only hope He can hear you—you blasphemous
scouse git! (Tracey and Morrison 1979, 110–111).
Speight’s humour here was particularly offensive to Roman Catholics,

who believe not just in the Virgin Birth but in the Immaculate Conception
(a doctrine declared ex cathedra to be infallible), in Jesus not having siblings
even though they are mentioned in the New Testament and that ‘artifi-
cial’ methods of birth control are wicked and forbidden. Speight had been
brought up in an authoritarian Catholic family and sent to a Catholic school,
and Alf Garnett is supposed to have been based on his own father, a Catholic
docker, though Alf is depicted as an Anglican in the TV series. Speight is
making fun not just of Christian churches and the oddities of their members
and clergy, but of the central mysteries of their faith. This is not the mere
gentle poking fun at religious institutions found in other BBC television
comedies such as The Vicar of Dibley, All Gas and Gaiters or Father Ted; this
is comedy that puts the boot in. It is likely that not only did Speight not
believe in God but he hated Him. Not surprisingly this very popular episode
caused widespread outrage (Tracey and Morrison 1979, 111–115) among
those who had been protected from such comedies in earlier decades.
Both Till Death Us Do Part and another very popular programme, It
Ain’t Half Hot Mum, were regularly attacked for their use of innuendo
and of bad language (Tracey and Morrison 1979, 88; Whitehouse 1967,
162). Alf Garnett’s use of the word ‘bloody’ was incessant and repeti-
tive, used as many as 103 times in a single episode (Tracey and Morrison
1979, 88). One of Mrs. Whitehouse’s many supporters wrote two letters
to Lord Hill, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, pointing out the
monotony of his speech, a straight letter of complaint and a satirical ver-
sion using the word bloody as often as Garnett did.
Dear Lord Hill,

Will you please spare a few b----- minutes to read these two b----- letters.
Last Friday my b----- husband and I counted the b----- number of times the
b----- word ‘bloody’ was used in b----- ‘Till Death Us Do Part’. You may
be b----- well surprised to know the b----- number—44 times—16 in the
first few b----- minutes as a b----- result of this I found myself b----- well
obsessed by the b-----word and b----- well tossed and turned the whole b---
-- night long.
I feel I should be b----- well failing in my b----- duty as a Christian if I
didn’t raise my b----- voice small though it well b----- be and ask you as
a b----- man in authority to raise your b----- voice in protest against such
b----- programmes’
(Whitehouse 1971, 80–81, cited without naming its Christian author, the
wife of a school-master).
32 C. DAVIES
Lord Hill replied to the letters without using the ‘b’ word. He justified
Alf’s bloody mindedness on the grounds that he was inarticulate and so
was forced to use it constantly. This was no more true of the highly articu-
late Garnett than of the comedian Billy Connolly when, like the legendary
Australian (Davies 1990, 269), he said ‘I know at least… oh my God, at
least 127 words. And I still prefer “Fuck”.’
Mrs. Whitehouse had long been a member of and was strongly influ-
enced by an organization called Moral Rearmament (MRA) (Tracey and
Morrison 1979, 63–69), which was widely regarded with dislike and dis-
dain, and particularly by Sir Hugh Greene (Tracey 1983, 231). By origin,
MRA was evangelical Christian, but many church leaders condemned it
and it later transformed itself into a general vehicle for what it called ‘abso-
lute morality’, open to members of any religion. One of its absolutes was
‘absolute purity’, which sounded sinister to many. Its leader in the early
1960s, Peter Howard, was full of contempt for what the BBC had become
and obsessed with the ‘evils’ of homosexuality. Most of those who hold
strongly negative views of homosexuals and homosexuality are not homo-
phobic, merely misguided. But Howard was homophobic. He feared and
hated homosexuality, and saw homosexuals as part of a conspiracy and as
a potential source of total moral collapse. Howard’s book Britain and
the Beast has chapters with titles such as ‘Sods and Squares’ and ‘Queens
and Queers’. He begins another chapter with the phrase ‘God is the great
totalitarian’ (Howard 1963, 84). The slightest public joke on the subject
could reduce him to hysterical indignation:
The radio and television push acceptance of unacceptables on us in many

ways. Programmes often are sympathetic to dirt and make suggestive jokes
about homosexuals and filth. One morning in Spring, 1963, I heard two
men talking about cricket reports. One said he had had his camera trained
on an Australian cricketer with his legs wide apart fielding at left slip. He had
commented to the public that the man was ‘waiting for a tickle’. Giggles and
laughter. This goes out to millions (Howard 1963, 33–34).
The harmless remark in question, a vulgar pun and innuendo, depends on

the use of the word ‘tickle’ by cricket commentators to mean that the ball
has just touched the edge of the bat, which may mean that someone field-
ing behind the batsman can catch it and thus dismiss the batsman. The
comment was made by Brian Johnston, known as Johnners, who was to
become one of the BBC’s most popular commentators on cricket matches.

It is quite likely that the original remark had been a ‘Freudian leg slip’,
but one that was instantly recognized and produced sniggering hilarity.
Peter Howard made a fool of himself with his paranoid interpretation of
it as part of a BBC lurch towards permissiveness in regard to homosexu-
ality. However, once the gaffe had been made it became and remains a
very popular humorous item, and Brian Johnston repeated it in his book
of jokes, along with his later gaffe broadcast by the BBC, ‘The batsman’s
Holding, the bowler’s Willey’ (1995, 10; 2008; Tibballs 2007, 18).
Michael Holding was a noted West Indian cricket player and Peter Willey
an off-break bowler for England. They were playing together in a cricket
match at The Oval in 1976 with Johnners commenting, but by this time
there may well have been a deliberate carelessness about his gaffes. He
knew that the cricket fans would laugh at these petty indecencies and that
no-one would care. Had Peter Howard, a former rugby international, still
been alive and listening he would no doubt have seen it as the fall of the
Roman Empire and the decadence of Weimar Germany rolled into one.
The key question is why he could regard a mere joke as a matter of such
extreme importance. The answer is that he was in the grip of a rigid and
inflexible ideology, and any affront to his worldview or a reminder of its
fragility he found seriously, if irrationally, threatening. An innuendo that
made light of an imagined, indecent physical contact between men might
lead to an unleashing of the sins of Sodom on the country and to total
social collapse or to a supine acceptance of a foreign invasion. It is not dif-
ficult to guess what would have been the reaction of the by then deceased
Howard to the popular radio comedy Round the Horne, described here by
Jonathan Green (2005, 151):
But of all the Round the Horne humour none equalled the strain of
unashamed camping that ran through the show. Homosexuality was not
legalised until 1967 and the running references to the gay world and its
particular jargon, delighted both homosexuals who were already ‘in’, and
a growing ‘straight’ public, who began to understand just what it was the
team were going on about. At its simplest there were the throwaway lines:
Kenneth ‘Stinker’ Williams, the fag with the filtered tip […] and, in refer-
ence to a well-known West End ‘cottage’: ‘Kenneth Williams can be seen in
‘The Little Hut’ in Leicester Square—soap and towels, 3d extra’.
34 C. DAVIES
‘Hello, I’m Julian, and this is my friend Sandy’ was the catch-phrase of two
outrageous camp characters played by two outrageous gay actors, Kenneth
Williams and Hugh Paddick (The Bona World of Julian and Sandy, 1996),
in direct defiance of the old BBC rule book edict that there must under
no circumstances be humour about effeminacy in men. Mrs. Whitehouse
would have been even more outraged by Round the Horne had she been
able to grasp the references to unnatural sexual shenanigans being made
in Polari, a gay argot (Took and Feldman 1974, 12; Baker 2004; Ellison
and Fosberry 1996). One of the functions of Polari, particularly in the
days before homosexual behaviour was legalized in 1967, was to enable
gay men to talk freely about forbidden matters without incurring trouble
from the censorious and indeed from police informers. If it fooled the
informers, it would certainly have fooled Mrs. Whitehouse and she would
not easily have been able to challenge in court what was being said. Both
Paddick and Williams loved Polari and ad-libbed, which made the show
far filthier than Mrs. Whitehouse could even have imagined. And yet even
when the meaning was innocent, it sounded vaguely indecent. Kenneth
Williams, the star of the show, wrote in his diary on 28 April 1968:
BBC Studios for the talk with Peter Haugh on ‘Moviegoround’. He asked
me for a definition of ‘camp’. I said ‘To some it means that which is fun-
damentally frivolous, to others the baroque as opposed to the puritanical
(classical) and to others—a load of poofs’ (Williams 1994, 324).
Despite considerable pressure from the members of MRA to play a larger

role in the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, Mrs. Whitehouse
was careful to keep them at a safe distance and did not accept money from
them. She did not want them explicitly involved in her work nor did she
invite them to speak at her meetings (Tracey and Morrison 1979, 68),
though they did sometimes distribute their leaflets in the foyer (Tracey
1983, 231). She wanted to run a quite independent organization. Yet
at some level in her mind she probably knew that many Christian people
were very hostile to MRA because of its tactics (Harrison 1934) and its
bigotry. Nonetheless, her outlook was very much shaped by her earlier
experiences as a member of MRA (Tracey and Morrison 1979, 63–64,
69) and she went to MRA conferences in the 1960s when she was set-
ting up the NVALA. It was particularly manifest in the way she was later
to mount savage legal attacks on representations of homosexuality in
print or on stage, particularly if they impinged on and therefore, in her
eyes, besmirched religion or patriotism. In doing so, she foolishly drew

the public’s attention to obscure items that would otherwise have gone
unnoticed. For her, homosexuality was the peccatum illud horrible, inter
christianos non nominandum, that horrible crime not to be named among
Christians, a crime against the very order of society and indeed of God’s
creation (Davies 1982, 1983, 2004). But her crusade failed and Quentin
Crisp’s ‘stately homos of England’ prevailed. Openly gay comedians are
a standard part of twenty-first century broadcasting comedy. Welcome to
the queer new world.
WHY THE CULTURE WAR WAS LOST

The conflict between the BBC and the NVALA over comedies that the
latter found offensive has to be seen as part of a much more general ‘cul-
ture war’, which in turn arose from deeper patterns of social change. The
dirty and irreverent BBC comedies were a symbolic battleground. Those
who hated them did not understand the new and unwelcome patterns of
social change in the wider world and must have felt helpless to stop them.
Instead they attacked that which was visible and tangible and offensive
and which they thought they could eliminate: offensive broadcasts. The
would-be censors deluded themselves into thinking that these nasty com-
edies had a significant negative effect on society as a whole and that, were
they abolished, there could be a return to the old decencies. They were
utterly wrong on all counts. Comedy is both important and unimportant.
It is important because of the great pleasure it gives to those who decide
to join an audience. That is why so many millions of people chose to
watch the disapproved programmes, enjoyed them enormously and went
on watching. Comedy is unimportant because it has no effect and no
consequences at all in a world where social change is driven by other far
stronger social forces (Davies 2011).
It does not follow that the underlying concerns of the NVALA were
trivial or unreal. They were in the main fervent evangelical Christians and
rigorist Roman Catholics who were living in a society that was increasingly
secular. People were giving up going to church or belonging to a church
and, most important of all, had stopped sending their children to Sunday
school (Davies 2004, 43–50). Very roughly, adherence to a church had
peaked just before World War I and then gone into slow decline. From
the mid-1950s the decline accelerated (Brown 2001; Davies 2004). The
changes began well before the BBC descended into its comic mockery
36 C. DAVIES
of the Christian religion. The BBC did not cause secularization. Rather,
the decline in religion created a cultural climate in which it was possi-
ble for the BBC to put out its offending comedies with impunity. Mrs.
Whitehouse and her supporters were a remnant of what had once been the
dominant culture and they did not like their new position.
With the decline in popular Protestantism (Green 2010) came a decline
in the respectable virtues. The years of strong religion before World War
I had produced a marked decline in both violent and acquisitive crime,
in the abuse of drugs and alcohol, and in the number and proportion of
illegitimate births. By the inter-war period, Britain was a low crime society;
illicit drugs were almost unknown and public drunkenness rare. Prisons
were being closed down because there were not enough inmates to justify
their existence. From the mid-1950s all this changed. Crime rates of all
kinds and drug and alcohol abuse rose rapidly, indeed alarmingly, and
were to go on rising for forty years, completely transforming the society
in undesirable ways (Davies 2004, 1–42). But the change that alarmed the
opponents of offending comedy was the marked shift in patterns of sexual
behaviour. Younger people no longer saw any reason for waiting until
they were married before enjoying sexual relations. Sexual matters were
freely talked about. The use of the criminal law to punish homosexual
behaviour came to be seen as an anachronism, and attempts were made
to abolish these laws. People were ceasing to condemn the abominations
of Leviticus or to take seriously the view of religious traditionalists that
tolerating homosexuality would lead to disaster (Davies 2004, 139–180).
All this was abhorrent to the shrinking minority of true believers. Smutty
comedies were seen as offensive because they aroused the deepest fears of
those who were alarmed by the changes in sexual behaviour and attitudes.
But secularization and the marked shift in sexual behaviour meant that
in the long run the NVALA would be defeated because fewer and fewer
people saw the world the way they did and ever fewer found comedies
mocking the old conventional pieties to be unacceptable. Smut and irrev-
erence had won.
A NEW HEGEMONY
Mrs. Whitehouse lost, but in the twenty-first century political correctness
has taken the BBC back to the rigid patterns of the 1950s and comedy
has been correspondingly enfeebled (Deacon 2009; Lawson 2009). The
golden age of comedy of the latter part of the twentieth century is over.
Many of the television programmes of that brief era of freedom, such as
Till Death Us Do Part and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum are never shown, even
though they would still attract huge audiences for a BBC, which for finan-
cial reasons depends heavily on repeating successful old comedies such as
Dad’s Army or sketches from The Two Ronnies (Barker 1999; Davidson
and Vincent 1978). Needless to say, no new programmes employing or
implying mockery from the outside of ethnic and religious minorities will
ever again be made by or for the BBC. It Ain’t Half Hot Mum made fun
of British entertainer-soldiers in India in World War II with accompany-
ing Indian menials, one of whom was played by a browned-up, Hindi-
speaking, Indian-born Englishman. It can no longer be shown because it
offends today’s BBC elite, who, along with administrators and producers
alike, belong to a new version of a high-minded upper middle class with
a single seamless world-view. The hegemony is even more absolute than
it was in the early days of the BBC, for there are no rebellious producers
seeking to defy their masters and amuse the masses in politically incorrect
ways. When politically incorrect old programmes such as Fawlty Towers are
shown, they are cut and censored. It does not take a great stretch of the
imagination to guess how and why the Fawlty Towers script reproduced
here was mutilated before being shown as a repeat.
The Major: Strange creatures women.

Basil: Well, can’t stand around all day…
The Major: I knew one once… Striking looking girl… tall, you know…
Father was a banker.
Basil: Really.
The Major: Don’t remember the name of the bank.
Basil: Never mind.
The Major: I must have been rather keen on her, because I took her to
see… India!
Basil: India?
The Major: At the Oval… Fine match, marvellous finish… Now Surrey
had to get 33 in about half an hour… She went off to powder
her… powder her hands or something… women… er… never
came back.
Basil: What a shame.
The Major: And the strange thing was… throughout the morning she
kept referring to the Indians as niggers. ‘No no no,’ I said,
‘the niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘All cricketers are niggers.’
Basil: They do get awfully confused, don’t they? They are not think-
ers. I see it with Sybil every day (from ‘The Germans’ broad-
cast on BBC2, 24 October 1975).
38 C. DAVIES
The Major, who is clearly a doddering anachronism, rarely sober and

not very sharp, provides humour by speaking in character and is not to
be taken seriously or identified with, but he has been cut out like a fallen
member of the Central Committee in a Kremlin photograph (Stevens
2013). Mrs. Whitehouse lost the war, but her style of thinking has cap-
tured the BBC. Words once again have magical evil properties, regardless
of intention or context and have to be excised from comedy. The delusion
that comedy can have a powerful bad influence has returned, as has the
idea that certain selected minorities must never be offended. Like Mrs.
Whitehouse, the BBC elite are unable to understand that their views and
values are not necessarily widely shared and that others may in good faith
and for honourable reasons reject them. The conflicts are not about values
and never were. They are about power. It is about who decides whose
tastes in comedy shall prevail and whose shall never be catered to. It is
about who has the power to decide who may be spurned when offended
and who shall be pandered to.
NOTES
1. BBC files. R34/292/21, 5 and 6 February 1942. All references to BBC files
in the text refer to those in the BBC Written Archive in Caversham, England.
I would like to thank the staff for their invaluable and helpful assistance to
me during my research visits there.
2. BBC files. R/34/275/3 Policy Censorship in Programmes 1947–1954,
File 1c, July 1948.
3. BBC files. T16/157.
7. BBC files. T16/157, 1 September 1947.
8. Draft Television policy Censorship Code, 20 January 1947. Taste File
1946–1954.
9. BBC files. R34/1250, Policy Censorship Variety and Comedy Programmes,
1960–1967.
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Weber, Max. 1948. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Ed. H.H. Gerth and
C. Wright Mills. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Whitehouse, Mary. 1967. Cleaning-Up TV: From Protest to Participation. London:
Blandford.
———. 1971. Who Does She Think She is? London: New English Library.
Williams, Kenneth. 1994. In The Kenneth Williams Diaries, ed. Russell Davies.
London: Harper Collins.
The Last Laugh: Dark Comedy on US
Television
Kristen A. Murray
In the TV series Pushing Daisies (2007–2009), a small car full of clowns

runs off the road and crashes, killing all occupants. As the corpses are
removed from the car, each clad in a colourful costume, the scene becomes
increasingly preposterous. How many dead clowns fit into a car?1
The phenomenon of dark comedy—also known as gallows humour or
black comedy—engenders perceptions of distaste, insouciance, confusion,
revulsion and even transcendence. In the presence of these intrinsic con-
tradictions, dark comedy has emerged as a powerful and pervasive form of
expression in contemporary US television.2 Many recent series—such as
Six Feet Under, House, M.D., Breaking Bad, The Last Man on Earth, and
The Big C—have created dark comedy through an imbrication of levity
and death.
Despite the current popularity of dark comedy, there have been few
efforts to understand the cultural conditions that evoked this form of
expression. This chapter focuses on the social forces that sparked the cre-
ation of dark comedy and fuelled its prominence. I contend that dark
comedy emerged from significant shifts in people’s relationship to, and
understanding of, death in contemporary American society.3 Some of the
K.A. Murray ( )
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_3
42 K.A. MURRAY
key aspects of this alteration include: longer life expectancy, changing reli-
gious affiliations, differences in memorial arrangements, constant access
to media information and interactive experiences related to death. These
social changes, which occurred over the past half century, coincide with
the period in which TV became a ‘social and aesthetic force that serves as
a powerful instrument for disseminating and legitimating culture and for
regulating how persons and things are represented and valued’ (Shoshana
and Teman 2006, 560).
This chapter explores television texts as cultural artefacts, or entities that
both reflect and shape the ways in which people process their existence. In
applying this analytical metaphor to dark comedy, I consider how media
about death generates ‘a cultural forum of ideas, rather [than] a singular
unified message’ (Mittell 2010, 363). From this perspective, people who
engage with media about death may be considered ‘participants’: individu-
als who actively and continuously make and remake meaning from these
texts and who influence the creation of future media.4 Thus, different forms
of media ‘not only present culturally relevant content, [but also] models
and opportunities for particular representational processes’ (Greenfield
1993, 161). The TV scenes analysed aired in the United States and other
countries between 2000 and 2015—a period when many prominent TV
series explored new, confrontational terrain through dark comedy.5
The following section offers a concise theoretical discussion of the
structures and effects of dark comedy as well as illustrative examples of
its caustic voice. The focus of this chapter is not primarily how dark com-
edy operates, but how particular social conditions facilitate the creation
and appreciation of this form of expression. To that end, the central sec-
tions of this chapter look at how death has become increasingly medi-
calized, secularized and mediatized in contemporary society. Extending
Mellor’s (1993) notion of the simultaneous absence and presence of death
in contemporary society, this author argues that dark comedy is an urgent
articulation of the tension between visible and hidden aspects of loss. The
impetus for this research, then, is to ‘ascribe a place for humour in a par-
ticular process, by bringing it into relationship [with] the social structure’
(Palmer 1994, 67).
APPROACHING AND RETREATING FROM DEATH

In the early to mid-twentieth century in the United States, experi-
ences of loss were particularly extensive and devastating, due to a wide
range of untreatable diseases and the casualties of war (Kellehear 2007;
THE LAST LAUGH: DARK COMEDY ON US TELEVISION 43
Seale 2000). These fatal forces were entwined with considerable social
pressure to maintain an impervious personal facade. Despite the promi-
nence of death in daily existence, the expression of emotion regarding
death and grief remained relatively taboo through most of the twentieth
century (Ariès 1981; Jalland 2006; Mitford 2000).
From the 1970s onwards, discussions of loss became more prominent
in public discourse. Nonetheless, issues surrounding death, grief and pal-
liative care have received, and continue to attract, insufficient research and
public policy attention (Gibson 2007; Kellehear 2007). Becker (1997)
believes this avoidance of death is entrenched in US institutions, cultural
practices and personal interactions. Even in twenty-first century America,
there are societal protections in place—particularly the healthcare system
and funeral home industry—that keep death partially shrouded (Hockey
2007; Mitford 2000).
Yet the denial of mortality, however intricately conceived and prac-
ticed, ignores the inevitability of death. Bauman calls death the ‘ultimate
incongruity’ because it juxtaposes the free, rational human mind with the
crude limitations of the human body (1992, 1). This disconcerting public
silence surrounding the subject of loss may ‘explain the intense confu-
sion, anxiety, and even terror which are frequently experienced by indi-
viduals [facing] signs of their own mortality’ (Mellor and Shilling 1993,
414). Because real, tangible death is generally concealed from view, people
may be poorly equipped to face significant bereavement. Despite society’s
efforts to sanitize death, it ‘intrudes into human thought in a myriad of
ways’ (Crouch and Hüppauf 1985, xi).
Although American society seems to sequester death, there are other
ways in which contemporary culture brings death to the fore, incessantly
reminding people of the fragility and unpredictability of life. The media,
both in news and entertainment forms, make death seem more likely than
it actually is, by artificially inflating our fears and predictions of loss (Höijer
2004). In addition, the entertainment industry creates virtual reality prod-
ucts that enable people to vividly view and perform acts of fatal violence.
Thus, most Americans are exposed to countless deaths per day through both
fictional and nonfictional media. In this sense, people possess a high degree
of information about, and artificial engagement with, mortality (Gibson
2007; Seale 2000). Yet death in the media involves a kind of disembodi-
ment—a crafted, marketed, sanitized representation of loss rather than a
tangible, traumatic physical demise. As a result, media exposure to death
may do little to assuage the angst of genuine, individual loss (Gibson 2007).
44 K.A. MURRAY
This creates a contradiction—between approaching and retreating from

death—that seems to provoke dark comedy. The following section presents
a concise discussion of the three key theories of humour and how they illu-
minate recent examples of comedy about death.
Incongruity Theory and Corpses

The television series Six Feet Under (2001–2005) focuses on the Fisher
family, who operate a funeral home in Los Angeles. In one episode,6 an
apprentice mortician named Arthur places the corpse of an extremely
obese man on a trestle, awaiting the arrival of an extra-large coffin. In
the middle of the night, the trestle collapses, dumping the body onto the
floor. Arthur recruits three other people—two funeral home staff and a
friend named Russell—to move the dead man back onto the trestle. While
funeral home employees calmly debate different strategies for lifting the
corpse, Russell freezes; he has never seen a dead body. Eventually they
cooperate and lift the corpse, only to drop it again and dislocate the man’s
nose. Arthur spends the rest of the night reconstructing the deceased
man’s face in preparation for the funeral.
As discussed extensively in previous research, there are three key per-
spectives on the process of perceiving humour: the incongruity, catharsis
and superiority theories (Martin 2007; Raskin 2008).7 The incongruity
theory is particularly relevant to the perception of dark humour. This the-
ory focuses on the juxtaposition between two unlike elements that share
some unexpected similarity or surprising connection (Bergson 1980). In
this scene, the characters in the funeral home have a problem that feels
both familiar (that is, moving a heavy object) and entirely foreign (the
weighty object is a corpse). The body is both essentially human and irrevo-
cably inert. Bergson’s model for the incongruity theory of humour states
that the perception of humour arises from human rigidity, or ‘a certain
mechanical inelasticity just where one would expect to find the wide-
awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being’ (1980,
66–67). Thus, the dark comedy in this funeral home scene stems from
the contradiction between the corporeal elements of inflexibility and mal-
leability, as well as the difference between Russell’s shock and Arthur’s
complacency.
Another aspect of incongruity in dark comedy is the contrast between
the ideal concept of a funeral and the reality of these events. Although
most people envision a tranquil memorial service populated by scores of
devoted friends and family, this is often not an authentic picture of an indi-
vidual farewell. The series Scrubs (2001–2010), about a team of residents
at an urban hospital, depicts an irreverent moment at a funeral home.
A young doctor named John Dorian, known as J.D., treats a man in an
irreversible unconscious state in the hospital.8 He labels the patient ‘Coma
Guy’ and flirts with the man’s wife. When the patient dies, J.D. attends
the funeral, where the deceased man’s wife displays her romantic inter-
est in him. They are later caught, by the dead man’s parents, in a sexual
encounter in the closet of the funeral home. The dark comedy in this scene
stems from an obvious juxtaposition between an idealized, sacred memo-
rial service and an impulsive, disrespectful act of passion. The incongruity
theory suggests that this type of situation becomes funny when it is sur-
prising, yet not too confronting. This dark comic scene in Scrubs achieves
that balance through its slapstick style, yet it also reveals the ruthless scope
of this form of expression.
Catharsis Theory and Mortality

In the series The Big C (2010–2013), a school teacher named Cathy
Jameson confronts her mortality after being told she has melanoma and
may have only 12–18 months to live. The prognosis creates complex ten-
sions within her family, community, colleagues and medical care envi-
ronment. As these anxieties intensify and overlap, Cathy copes by taking
new risks. When she visits a restaurant,9 the waiter asks ‘Are you ready to
order?’ Cathy briefly considers her situation. ‘I’ll just have desserts and
liquor’, she replies. Cathy frequently manages anxiety—both her own and
that of others—by creating dark comedy. She asks her oncologist what
he thinks of her figure before she begins treatment for cancer.10 He hesi-
tates, then gives her a compliment. Although he instantly regrets crossing
the boundaries of appropriate patient/doctor relations, Cathy is amused.
‘Don’t worry’, she reassures him, ‘you only have eighteen months to feel
guilty about it. Lucky for you. Not so lucky for me.’ In this moment,
Cathy diffuses the tension that the doctor’s comment, and her impending
mortality, create.
These scenes from The Big C align with the catharsis theory of humour,
which suggests that a difficult situation generates an elevation in poten-
tially negative emotions; this agitation may be followed by a surprising
perception that minimizes the threat of the situation, thereby producing a
sense of relief and the possible perception of humour. This view originates
46 K.A. MURRAY
in Freud’s (1960) notion of psychological arousal and resolution, which

sees an increase in tension as a catalyst to humour. When viewing The Big
C, Cathy’s comments create both apprehension and assurance.
In the series Grey’s Anatomy (2005–present), about a team of surgeons
in Seattle, a young doctor named George O’Malley attempts to allay the
fears of a boy facing surgery.11 George takes the boy into an operating
theatre to show him how calm surgery can be. However, George chooses
the wrong door and reveals a patient having a face transplant; the per-
son’s skull, musculature and eyeballs are entirely exposed. George and
the child both scream. George then takes the boy into a different theatre,
showing him a sleeping patient who is fully draped. The boy looks at the
second patient and says: ‘I want to go back to the other one’. The child’s
response indicates curiosity rather than terror, which dissipates the emo-
tional tension regarding his wellbeing and allows the scene to be perceived
as humorous.
Superiority Theory and Accidents

The superiority theory of humour states that people find it satisfying when
a situation inflates their impression of themselves and diminishes their
view of others (Hobbes 1997; Martin 2007). When characters on Six Feet
Under die in embarrassing ways (such as a baker who dismembers himself
in a bread machine, an actress who electrocutes herself in the bathtub with
hair rollers), the participants who engage with this scene may minimize
their concerns about their own mortality; they may feel inured to death,
since they feel incapable of such obvious mistakes. Thus, dark comedy can
foster the view that death is occasional and self-inflicted, not common-
place and inevitable. This perception of superiority offers participants a
temporary, comfortable distance from their own demise.
The proximal/distant metaphor for dark comedy is supported by exten-
sive research on individuals working in emergency services and journalism
(Buchanan and Keats 2011; Moran and Massam 1997; Scott 2007). In
joking about the severity of the situations they encounter, first respond-
ers and journalists employ dark comedy to ‘disengage from emotionally
challenging emergency situations’, especially when the death is ‘associated
with compromised or unusual situations’ involving the physical position
or condition of the deceased (Scott 2007, 357). Dark comedy is especially
common in bizarre situations, such as accidental decapitation or dismem-
berment. In another scene from Six Feet Under, the Fisher brothers try to
reconstruct a corpse that is in numerous pieces.12 The two men search the
funeral home for a missing foot. The mortician, David, asks his brother
about the dismembered foot in an annoyed, parental tone: ‘Come on now,
Nate, is there anywhere else you could have left it?’ In this scene, the
physical segmentation of the dead body challenges the established notion
of a unique, complete ‘self’ at the point of death.
In a similar scene from Grey’s Anatomy,13 a junior doctor named Cristina
Yang notices an abnormality with a patient who is prepped for surgery. She
asks the senior surgeon to look at the patient’s feet. ‘What about them?’
barks the busy surgeon. Cristina pulls back the drape, revealing one leg
and one dismembered foot. ‘They’re both left’, she replies. This scene
enables Cristina, and those who engage with this text, to feel superior;
they know they would never attach a left foot to a right leg. This percep-
tion of superiority creates a degree of distance from death, allowing par-
ticipants to become inquisitive but detached observers of the macabre—as
though death is largely the result of incompetence. The perception of
dark humour seems to require an ideal level of involvement in the text:
participants need a feeling of recognition and empathy, but also a sense of
neutrality and immunity.
While the three main theories of humour—incongruity, catharsis and
superiority—provide frameworks for understanding the structure and
effects of dark comedy, these perspectives do not fully illuminate the
cultural conditions under which dark comedy thrives. In the following
sections, it is considered how death is both shielded and exploited in con-
temporary society and how that influences the perception of dark humour.
CONCEALING AND REVEALING DEATH

Death is bound by a web of complex cultural factors, three of which—
medicine, religion and the media—help define contemporary American
society and its diverse cultural products.
Medicalizing Death
Since the mid-twentieth century, death has become the almost exclusive
domain of professionals working in health and funeral services. In contem-
porary American society, people are more likely to die within sanctioned
institutions (that is hospitals, nursing homes and hospices) than at home
(Mitford 2000). In fact, people in the general population rarely witness
48 K.A. MURRAY
a death or see a dead body (Hockey 2007). The heightened medicaliza-

tion of the process of dying means that death is seen as a separate experi-
ence, rather than an integrated aspect of existence (Jalland 2006). Nuland
describes this as a move towards ‘the method of modern dying, where
[death] can be hidden, cleansed of its organic blight, and finally packaged
for modern burial’ (1997, xv).
Dark comedy can emerge from the contrast between those who wit-
ness death repeatedly and those who do not. In a scene from Nurse Jackie
(2009–2015),14 a young nurse named Zoe is ordered to put pressure on a
patient’s chest in an emergency room. ‘I could do something more impor-
tant’, the young nurse complains. The seasoned nurse Jackie says, ‘Take your
hand off.’ Zoe does so and blood spurts out like a fountain. ‘See?’ Jackie
states. ‘That’s important.’ In these examples, dark humour emerges from
the composure that health professionals show in life-threatening situations.
This familiarity with injury, illness and death is not present in the gen-
eral population because medical care usually occurs in a hospital or clinic,
where patients and their families are partially shielded from the complexi-
ties of death (Hockey 2007; Jalland 2006). In addition, people are inclined
to abdicate responsibility for their health to doctors (Nuland 1997). This
strategy externalizes the sense of control over health issues—a perspective
that can be both reassuring and frightening. In addition, the high reli-
ance on specialists to deliver palliative care and funeral services removes a
degree of autonomy from the bereaved. People are more dependent upon
professionals at times when they may be least prepared to advocate for
themselves. Kellehear says that the last several decades have ‘heralded a
major period of patient passivity’ (2000, 6).
The notion of the doctor as God figure is essential to the series House,
M.D. (2004–2012), in which a famous diagnostician named Gregory
House solves intransigent cases while flaunting protocol. When a young
boy’s disease worsens,15 Dr. House brusquely relates the news to the par-
ents: ‘His liver is shutting down.’ The boy’s father is confused. ‘What
does that mean?’ House responds with cheerful sarcasm: ‘It means he’s
all better. He’s ready to go home.’ The dark comedy in this series stems
from House’s behaviour, which is incongruous with hospital protocol. Yet
House is virtually immune to discipline because of his unparalleled insights
into disease. Bauman refers to this phenomenon as ‘the cult of specialists’
in which professionals are deemed capable of not only delaying death but
almost avoiding it completely (1992, 23). The excessive medicalization of
death involves two additional, interrelated issues that influence dark com-
edy: the idealization of youth and the seclusion of the corpse.
Idealizing Youth
Over the past century, life expectancy has increased by more than twenty
years. Yet for disadvantaged groups within the broader population, life
expectancy is lower than average and it may not improve in the near future
(Seale 2000). This greater longevity, combined with the increased medi-
calization of death, can create a deceptive future: it may seem as though
‘death, as such, is inevitable [but] each concrete instance of death is con-
tingent’ (Bauman 1992, 8). The potential for a longer life prompts a kind
of reverence for the vernal, vibrant body and unrealistic attempts to pre-
serve it. The process of ageing now seems ‘as disgusting as the natural
processes of copulation and birth were a century ago’ (Gorer 1995, 20).
Mellor and Shilling argue that an overwhelming emphasis on youth
may make death particularly distressing. ‘[The] more people prioritise [a
connection between] self-identity and the body, the more difficult it will
be for them to cope with the idea of the self ceasing to exist’ (1993, 13).
Yet this rejection of the ageing process inhibits people’s ability to con-
template mortality and prepare for bereavement. As a result of improved
medical treatment, ageing has become protracted. For those privileged
enough to have stable healthcare, the process of dying now takes longer
than ever before (Seale 2000). Even though the past three decades have
seen significant developments in hospices, home-based palliative care and
bereavement programs, society still lacks sufficient resources for those fac-
ing death and grief (Kellehear 2007).
Veiling the Corpse
Another area of notable social change over the past half century is the han-
dling of corpses. In previous generations, dressing a corpse was ‘a piece of
domestic technology familiar to most households’ (Feifel 1977, 5). By the
end of the twentieth century, however, it was extremely unusual to view a
corpse in the deceased person’s residence; almost all deaths were managed
by professional funeral services and/or hospital morgues. In fact, cas-
kets—open or closed—are now less common, due to a significant increase
in cremations (Najman 2000). Crouch argues that the practice of omit-
ting the casket from public view symbolically hides the corpse and thereby
denies the permanency of death. The ‘disposal [of the body] is hedged
about with ritual to fence in the dangers it signifies’ (2004, 1). The sight
of a dead body now seems more confrontational because it is less familiar.
50 K.A. MURRAY
Corpses feature prominently in a significant number of dark comic

scenes on television. In the series Monk (2002–2009), detective Adrian
Monk becomes suspicious of the circumstances surrounding the fatal
shooting of a bodyguard. Monk takes a seat in a church balcony to observe
the man’s funeral, but he accidentally drops his keys into the open coffin.16
Since the key ring was a special gift from his late wife, Monk attempts to
retrieve the keys without interrupting the funeral. He attaches a paper clip
to a long line of dental floss and lowers it from the balcony towards the
open coffin. Rather than grabbing the keys, however, Monk hooks the
dead bodyguard’s sleeve and jerks the man’s entire arm out of the cof-
fin. For a moment, it looks as though the dead man is waving. The entire
congregation erupts into fearful cries; a few people faint, others run out of
the church. Monk’s inadvertent raising of the corpse is a reminder of the
chaos death brings. The movement of the dead body in this scene is ter-
rifying because most people in contemporary society are unfamiliar with
the physical realities of death. The corpse is seen as an object that must
be removed, albeit respectfully, so that living memories of the deceased
individual can continue.
In a scene from Grey’s Anatomy,17 the surgeon Cristina Yang finds it
difficult to be sensitive about corpses because she sees them frequently.
When a shocked and bereaved family is faced with difficult decisions about
organ donations from their loved one’s body, Cristina hurries them along
to obtain as many donations as possible within the optimal timeframe. Just
after the family agrees to the donation of several organs, Cristina abruptly
asks one more question: ‘Ok, what about the skin?’ Cristina’s view on the
corpse requires a new perspective—one that the family cannot compre-
hend yet; the dead body is simultaneously a sacred entity and a collection
of potentially reusable parts.
As noted, most people in contemporary society are unlikely to witness
actual death or its aftermath. Thus, death seems more conceptual than prac-
tical; it is like a concealed possibility rather than a certainty. In the following
section, it is considered another way in which death is sequestered from
public view: through the diminishing, diversifying influence of religion.
Secularizing Death
In previous centuries, organized religion played a primary role in shap-
ing people’s beliefs about death by prescribing particular beliefs. More
recently, religion provides a theological context for death as well as range
of communities in which people can contemplate and receive support for

their experiences of loss. From approximately the 1950s to the present,
however, the percentage of people involved in organized religion in the
United States has declined. At the same time, the increasing power of the
healthcare system has obscured the role of the church (Rumbold 2000).
This shift—from a communal, religious perspective to a more individual,
secular and medical one—foregrounds the physical aspects of death over
its spiritual meaning. Mellor and Shilling point to an overall reduction in
the ‘scope of the sacred’; they see the move away from organized religion
as one of the major sociological changes of the twentieth century (1993,
413). Increased secularism means that people are less likely to have ‘an
over-arching, existentially meaningful, ritual structure’ through which to
understand death (1993, 427).
The shift towards secularism has also affected funeral practices. Most
funerals held in the first half of the twentieth century were formal religious
occasions with a pre-ordained structure (Jalland 2006). Over the past four
decades, however, funeral practices have become more flexible memorial
events, ranging from traditional religious rituals, to secular celebrations of
life, to any combination of these. In general, contemporary funerals are
more likely to present a diverse and animated record of an individual life
rather than a reflection on shared beliefs about death (Crouch 2004).
The series The Last Man on Earth (2014–present) follows the lives of
a small band of survivors after the death of almost all the planet’s inhabit-
ants. An exuberant survivor named Carol, upon greeting another member
of this strange group, screams ‘Boo!’18 The man, Gordon, has a sudden
heart attack and dies. Subsequently, the survivors hold a makeshift funeral
for Gordon on a beach, following a burial in a simple, sandy grave. During
the memorial service, Carol unexpectedly takes the floor—perhaps due to
her guilt over causing Gordon’s death—and babbles about the deceased.
Can I just say something real quick? I’ll be done in a jiffy. Um, well you
know, I didn’t know, uh—Gordon? Was it Gordon? [Ok] Gordon. Is it
Gordon with a G? Ok. I grew up across the street from a Dordon, with a D,
like Dracula. I did not know Gordon well. May he have a smooth journey
to heaven. Or hell. Again, I did not know him. By now we are all so used
to death, as we have seen everyone in the world around us die. Every single
person—dead. Just oodles and caboodles of death. Just heaps and piles. But
Gordon will be missed. Uh, ok…
52 K.A. MURRAY
Carol’s speech becomes comic because it breaks the boundaries of even

the most casual and contemporary memorial service. While the framework
of a eulogy is intact, the content is bizarre and explosive. At the same
time, Carol does not severely disparage Gordon, so the speech remains
relatively inconsequential. This balance—between meeting and contra-
dicting expectations about funerals—may enable participants to perceive
dark humour in this context.
Over the past two decades, some memorial services (particularly for
celebrities or groups of people) have mimicked the form of other cultural
products, such as sporting rallies, music concerts or theatre productions.
These public events place death within a contemporary social framework
that emphasizes an individual’s life, but suggests a collective reluctance to
accept the profundity and finality of loss. In Crouch’s view, these secular
‘celebration of life’ events may serve to ‘paper over the fragmentations of
our existence, our terror and ignorance of death…’ rather than bring a
deeper sense of meaning to grief (2004, 3).
In addition to becoming more secularized, memorial services are now
increasingly globalized; a few large companies now own the vast majority
of funeral homes in America and their reach extends overseas (Howarth
2000; Mitford 2000). This corporate dominance of the funeral industry
results in ‘a lessening of cultural difference […] and the loss of diversity’
within funerals (Mitford 2000, 90). Increased globalization leads to a sec-
ular blueprint for funerals into which personal variation may be inserted.
It seems that the commercialism of the funeral industry, in combination
with the increasing secularization of death, create a less communal, more
commoditized place for death in society. This point links to the following
discussion of death as depicted in the contemporary media.
Mediatizing Death
While the preceding analysis focussed predominantly on the ways in which
death is kept private and separate from everyday life, this section looks at
how death is made public and how stories and images of loss are infinitely
replicated.
At present, the US television landscape is a vast, dense, frenetic and
frequently violent environment. There is also now a wide range of pro-
gramming choices and viewing modes that influence participants in vari-
ous ways; these processes of interpreting and shaping television content
are complex, controversial and currently in flux, due to rapid shifts in the
way programs are transmitted and viewed (Mittell 2010). Denzin, writing
prior to the Internet revolution, suggests that ‘the new information tech-
nologies turn everyday life into a theatrical spectacle [of] uncertainty’—
one that both stimulates and desensitizes (1991, 8).
People living in contemporary American society encounter media about
death so frequently, and often fleetingly, that the experience may become
unremarkable (Gibson 2007; Kearl 1995). Stories, images and informa-
tion about death form the core of most news programs and a significant
number of entertainment programs, particularly shows focussed on crime,
medicine and science fiction. The overwhelming majority of mediatized
deaths are caused by crime and accidents, which generate vivid and vio-
lent images. Although sudden deaths represent only a small percentage of
actual deaths per annum, the scenarios presented on television focus on
unexpected, premature losses (Najman 2000).
A number of prominent television series from the past decade—includ-
ing The Sopranos (1999–2007) and Breaking Bad (2008–2013)—contain
extremely violent dark comedy. In a scene from The Sopranos,19 two mafia
men try several times to stab an obese man, but it takes many attempts to
fell the man because the knives are not long enough to penetrate his girth.
Just as the man collapses, his cell phone plays a jaunty ring tone. Breaking
Bad depicts a scene in which a drug dealer, Jesse, tries to eliminate a mur-
der victim’s body by placing the corpse in bathtub full of acid.20 However,
the acid leaks through the bathtub and the floor, dumping the body, debris
and acid into the hallway below. In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
(1990–2016) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015), charac-
ters joke about suspects, colleagues and corpses. An important aspect of
these scenes is that the deaths depicted are mostly premeditated murders,
as opposed to natural or accidental deaths. The intentionality behind these
losses makes the dark comedy more callous and confrontational, perhaps
also more fragile. As participants immerse themselves in these media
images and narratives about death, they may develop a simultaneous sense
of detachment: a feeling that they are momentarily enthralled and con-
cerned, but not distressed. This partial disengagement seems to foster the
experience of dark humour. At the same time, these scenes reveal the lim-
inal areas of dark comedy—the spaces where viciousness may prevent the
perception of humour.
Another important aspect of dark comedy in a violence-saturated media
environment is the tendency for stories about death—in both fictional
and factual contexts—to minimize or omit details about the deceased.
54 K.A. MURRAY
Television implores us to notice the deaths of strangers, then requires us

to relinquish any attachments to these losses. Because television rarely
provides follow-up information about the extended, interwoven conse-
quences of death, it contracts and contorts the experience of bereavement,
making it seem like a contained, tearful moment followed by a funeral
(Gibson 2007; Bauman 1992). In this respect, death in the media becomes
merely a continuous, impersonal parade of anguish. Höijer points out that
it is virtually impossible for people to engage with unrelenting misery and
not experience a reduction in their sense of ‘collective global compassion’
(2004, 515). Kearl notes that ‘public callousness towards televised death
[raises] the visual requirements’ (1995, 24). As a result of ongoing expo-
sure to death in the media, people become inured and require increasingly
shocking stories to garner their attention (Erth 2002).
The concept of desensitisation also relates to the research on dark
comedy as a coping mechanism for emergency workers and journalists.
Because first responders encounter death so frequently, and because they
rarely know the deceased, they may create dark comedy to express the
‘absurd or paradoxical elements in daily sudden deathwork’; these coping
strategies assist ‘by increasing camaraderie and forging solidarity’ (Scott
2007, 358). Research suggests that an analogous process occurs for jour-
nalists and other participants who are exposed to war, crimes scenes and
other media about death (Buchanan and Keats 2011).
Death in the media is also partially controlled by fortune and power;
the passing of famous individuals is examined in extensive detail and rep-
licated continuously on the news, while the deaths of anonymous, single
individuals, or groups of people killed in the same event, may be ignored
or generalized. In addition, death perceived through a screen is always
distant, untouchable. Death may seem close, through the magnification
the camera provides, but this ‘enhanced proximity’ to death cannot ‘over-
come the actual corporal and geographical distance’ to real death (Gibson
2007, 417). The contrast between simplified, immediate, public examples
of loss and the complex, prolonged, private experiences of death may seem
disconcerting, yet it may also be the essence of dark comedy.
RESPONDING TO THE ABSENCE/PRESENCE OF DEATH

This chapter presents the argument that current attitudes and practices sur-
rounding death, set against the pervasiveness of violence and loss in the
media, create an unsettling juxtaposition. In some aspects of contemporary
American culture, the physical realties of death are concealed and the expres-
sion of grief subdued. Writing in the 1960s, Gorer makes a prescient point
that ‘while natural death [has become] more and more smothered in prud-
ery, violent death has played an ever-growing part in the fantasies offered
to mass audiences’ (1995, 21). Yet in other respects, media images of death
and bereavement are omnipresent and intrusive. These social conditions—in
which death is both artificially absent and virtually present—enables people
to preview death within acceptable parameters; they can examine some of
its complexity and cruelty without its sense of permanence. This process
appears to be complex and tenuous, yet crucial to the appreciation of dark
humour.
The experience of dark humour does not eradicate the existential ques-
tions prompted by the absence/presence juxtaposition of death in con-
temporary American society. Dark humour entreats people to engage, at
least momentarily, with the experience of loss. It seem that dark humour
is not an instantaneous, superficial response, but an ongoing, provoca-
tive endeavour—an attempt to articulate the impact of grief and ascribe
meaning to loss. Rather than seeing death as a transition at the end of life,
Shoshana and Teman ‘offer the concept of transitory movements’, or a
continuous ‘oscillation’ between the ‘life-self’ and the ‘death-self’ (2006,
568). This metaphor of movement, shifting between different viewpoints
in relation to death, provides a better understanding of what dark humour
achieves. Lewis argues that ‘the apparent intensification of cruel humour’
in the late twentieth century suggests ‘a widely shared desire or need’ to
comprehend and cope with the loss of life (1997, 253).
Ultimately, dark humour seems to present a precarious optimism: a
sense that life has an inevitable but potentially tolerable end, seen in the
broader context of human existence. Crouch and Hüppauf caution that
‘the history of [humanity’s] attempts to come to terms with death is a
succession of obvious failures…’ (1985, 2). The phenomenon of dark
humour may be one of those enervating failures—or perhaps it is a sur-
prising, discomfiting success.
NOTES
1. Season 2, Episode 2, ‘Circus, Circus’, 8 October 2008.
2. The terms ‘humour’ and ‘comedy’ may be applied in different ways in
humour studies research. In this chapter, the term ‘comedy’ is consistently
employed to denote media texts (in this case, filmed performances of written
56 K.A. MURRAY
television scripts). The term ‘humour’ is used to refer to the phenomenon of

humour, or the experience of finding something funny. The term ‘dark com-
edy’ is used in preference to ‘black comedy’ out of respect for the wealth of
comic material created and performed by African Americans and other cul-
tural groups who use the term ‘black comedy’. The term ‘dark humour’
refers to the perception that texts about death may be funny. (For an over-
view of recent humour studies research, see Martin 2007; Raskin 2008).
3. The term ‘contemporary society’ is intended to highlight the shared aspects
of American culture, not to suggest the existence of a singular, unified cul-
tural experience. In this analysis, the term ‘society’ indicates that people
within a national group have in common a range of cultural artifacts, includ-
ing television, that influence people’s perceptions of their existence (Gibson
2007; Hockey 2007; Mittell 2010).
4. The term ‘participants’ represents the interactive nature of the relationship
between the people who engage with experiences and the researchers who
study people’s creations and perceptions surrounding these experiences.
The term ‘participants’ is used to refer to individuals who ‘read’ the relevant
media texts.
5. This chapter focuses on dark comedy on US television since the year 2000,
but the series M*A*S*H (1972–1983) was a forerunner of contemporary
dark comedy. The series was audacious and poignant in its depiction of sur-
geons in a military hospital who chide and laugh while performing opera-
tions and create comic skits to divert depression. The series also obliquely
criticized the United States’ involvement in the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
In the latter two decades of the twentieth century, following the completion
of M*A*S*H, few if any television series regularly and extensively engaged
with dark comedy in this manner.
6. Season 3, Episode 32, ‘Making Love Work’, 6 April 2003.
7. It is not possible to extricate all strands of analysis on the texts discussed.
This chapter applies the three key theories of humour in a concise analysis
of dark comedy, but subsequently focuses on the overarching social condi-
tions that enable this form of expression to flourish. Other researchers have
worked to develop the three theories and consider their relevance to a range
of texts (Boskin 1997; Davis 2003; Davies 2011; Palmer 1994).
8. Season 2, Episode 18, ‘My T.C.W. (Tasty Coma Wife)’, 20 March 2003.
9. Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Pilot’, 16 August 2010.
10. Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Summer Time’, 23 August 2010.
11. Season 5, Episode 4, ‘Brave New World’, 16 October 2008.
12. Season 1, Episode 2, ‘The Foot’, 17 June 2001.
13. Season 2, Episode 6, ‘Into You Like a Train’, 30 October 2005.
14. Season 1, Episode 7, ‘Steak Knife’, 20 July 2009.
15. Season 1, Episode 11, ‘Detox’, 1 March 2005.
16. Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Mr. Monk and the Candidate’, 12 July 2002.
17. Season 1, Episode 3, ‘Winning a Battle, Losing the War’, 10 April 2005.
18. Season 2, Episode 3, ‘Dead Man Walking’, 11 October 2015.
19. Season 6, Episode 11, ‘Cold Stones’, 21 May 2006.
20. Season 1, Episode 2, ‘Cat’s in the Bag’, 27 January 2008.
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‘This Is Great, We’re Like Slave Buddies!’:
Cross-Racial Appropriation in ‘Post-Racial’
TV Comedies
Carter Soles
In the season two Arrested Development episode ‘¡Amigos!’, Buster Bluth

(Tony Hale), the effeminate, geeky youngest son of an affluent Southern
California family, stows away in the trunk of his older brother Michael’s
(Jason Bateman) Mercedes in an attempt to escape his obligation to the
US Army by fleeing to Mexico. There are, of course, practical reasons for
his journey (to evade the Army), but Buster’s flight also exemplifies the
trope of privileged, white male geeks seeking coded-ethnic melodramatic
victimhood via proximity to non-whites in contemporary one-camera
television comedies like Arrested Development (2003–2006), Party Down
(2009–2010), and Trailer Park Boys (2001–2008). Buster’s masculinity
has been threatened by his fear of joining the Army, so he flees into an
ethnicized fantasy of low-wage life among his housekeeper Lupe’s (B. W.
Gonzalez) Mexican family in order to restore his manhood and generate
sympathy for his abject plight.
The viewer is aware that Buster is not, in fact, in Mexico, but in Santa
Ana, California, ‘just six minutes inland from his home’ according to the
show’s narrator (Ron Howard). This only highlights that this ‘Mexican’
sojourn is purely Buster’s projected fantasy, an enactment of his desire to
C. Soles ()
The College at Brockport, Brockport, NY, USA

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_4
62 C. SOLES
escape his whiteness: ‘I love being Mexican’ he tells Lupe at one point.
Buster completes his imaginary flight from the world of white largesse by
accompanying the several working men of his newly adopted family to
work as dishwashers the next day: ‘This is great, we’re like slave buddies!’
he joyfully exclaims as he piles into the back of their truck.
Buster’s term, ‘slave buddies’, reveals what is at stake for him in this
exchange: validation of his suffering (that is, his status as a ‘slave’) via
proximity to non-white associates, which he uses to negate his substan-
tial white privilege and achieve a sympathetic ‘simulated ethnicity’ that
marks him as authentic in a postmodern, supposedly ‘post-racial’ milieu
(Kunyosying and Soles 2012). Of course, his ability to simulate racialized,
lower-class status at will merely reaffirms his place of privilege and social
mobility as a white man.
Arrested Development and other millennial comedies participate in a
longstanding tradition of cross-racial appropriation in American popu-
lar culture, from Huckleberry Finn to the present day (Fiedler 1948). As
Stuart Hall (1983), a key critic of race and ethnicity in American popu-
lar culture, asks: What happens to such cultural appropriation as the US
moves into the new millennium, deeper into the ‘postmodern’ era? How
does the white male’s desire for identification with imagined blackness
take shape in a cultural milieu increasingly (if wrongly) assumed to be
‘post-racial’?
This chapter explores how (representations of) acts of cross-racial
appropriation unfold when perpetrated by white geeks who perceive
themselves to be post-racial. Throughout millennial one-camera televi-
sion comedies, there is a persistent trope of geeky white kids wishing to
strongly align themselves with an imagined blackness, from Gob Bluth’s
friendship with a black ventriloquist’s dummy in Arrested Development to
Michael Scott’s failed attempts to seem simultaneously racially sensitive
and ‘hip’ in the presence of people of colour in the US version of The
Office. This chapter investigates the deployment of the racial appropria-
tion trope across three recent, white male-centred comedy programmes
Party Down, Arrested Development, and Trailer Park Boys, all single-cam-
era ‘mockumentary’ style shows with strong cult followings. Since none
of these was a mainstream hit—Arrested Development is the most widely
seen of the three, as evinced by its revival, with a fourth season of new
episodes released on Netflix in May 2013—the chapter will look at how
shows that specifically address marginal, ‘cult’ audiences deal with cross-
racial appropriation. Such shows are typically willing to expose the white
‘THIS IS GREAT, WE’RE LIKE SLAVE BUDDIES!’: CROSS-RACIAL APPROPRIATION... 63
geek’s complicity in creating the post-racial fantasy he himself engages in

when in the presence of real people of colour. This helps these comedies
achieve the aptly named black-comic, squirmy style of tonally dark and
uncomfortable humour so pervasive amongst postmodern, one-camera
shows produced since the new millennium. Ultimately, the chapter argues
that while some of these shows make strides toward deconstructing the
act of white cross-racial appropriation and offering a multi-ethnic point of
view, they nevertheless tend to simultaneously perpetuate a narrow, ste-
reotypical view of non-white characters, failing to shake loose the limited
perception of people of color in the white cultural imaginary.
While the cultural critiques at the heart of comedy are sometimes over-
looked due to the false notion that ‘it’s only a joke’, Freud’s work dem-
onstrates that all jokes reveal deeper unconscious impulses, and along that
line these shows expose a society that wishes to be post-racial yet clearly
has not moved beyond unconscious use of damaging racial stereotypes
and unthinking cross-racial appropriation.
In the postmodern milieu, in which white maleness becomes increas-
ingly difficult to defend by virtue of its position of centrality and privilege,
proximity to real ethnicity or racially marked persons connotes authen-
ticity and generates audience sympathy. In a related development, even
discussing racial or ethnic markedness—what Linda Williams calls ‘play-
ing the race card’—is frequently interpreted by the dominant culture as
a cheap ploy for undue sympathy and undeserved privileges: ‘the very
accusation of playing the race card has now become a way of disqualifying
the attempt to discuss past and present racial injury […]. To win at the
“game” of race is to lose the larger game of life in which raced competi-
tors already play with a full deck’ (2001, 4). Despite our culture’s toler-
ance of structural economic and social inequities levied against persons of
colour, in the cultural milieu, non-whiteness is somehow perceived as an
advantage, a badge of victimhood that can be played to elicit sympathy
and claim a moral high ground over whites.
Therefore, white male protagonists in pop-cultural texts often seize
onto non-white ethnic identities as a mode of generating sympathy and
recovering their accustomed place of centrality in narrative and in culture.
This tendency is especially present wherever such protagonists’ masculin-
ity or sexuality is challenged or called into question. Sexuality is racialized,
and the geeky, feminized white male protagonists of the contemporary
television comedies under discussion exist on a racial and gendered con-
tinuum that positions them as sexually inferior to male jocks and black
64 C. SOLES
males, who are stereotypically considered more embodied, sexual and ani-
malistic than white men (Dyer 1997, 20, 27–28). Of course, these raced
positionings along the masculinity/femininity continuum result from the
projection of white male fantasies, not necessarily anything in ‘real life’—
they are white, middle-class cultural stereotypes. The shows analyzed here
depict interracial buddy pairings that exemplify the function of imagined
black masculinity for the feminized geek in direct, highly sexually charged
terms. In each case—Arrested Development’s Gob and Franklin, Trailer
Park Boys’ J-Roc and T, and Party Down’s Kyle and William—the femi-
nized white male protagonist’s anxiety over his own sexual impotency and
fragile masculinity is channeled into projected blackness. These white men
participate in imagined ethnicity to reinforce their masculinity and hetero-
sexuality in the face of their own geeky arrested development.
PROJECTION AND PUPPETRY: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Arrested Development chronicles the farcical exploits of the Bluth family,
self-absorbed, overly entitled Orange County residents whose insensitivity
to matters of race and class are attributed to their selfish, insular, upper-
class cluelessness. As in many millennial comedies, audiences are encour-
aged to laugh at the anti-heroic Bluths’ failures and foibles, even as, each
episode, we are encouraged to love them as well, their humanity empha-
sized through the naiveté and earnestness of Michael’s barely pubescent
almost-teenager George Michael (Michael Cera).
The show assumes an intelligent viewer who can follow the rapid-
fire, inter-textual references and complex gags; as in the example that
opened this chapter, the show’s humour often centres upon the discon-
nect between the sympathetic way in which the characters see themselves
and the obvious self-centredness of their onscreen actions, usually bluntly
commented upon by the series’ narrator. Yet the series also signs off on
the white characters’ fantasies to some extent, especially where Buster is
concerned: his Mexican ‘slave buddies’ welcome him into their home with
no protest or fanfare. We are never given any insight into Lupe’s family’s
emotions nor do we know if they are in on the joke of his presence among
them or if they are genuinely pleased to adopt Buster. They are ciphers
who act in perfect accordance with Buster’s fantasy of interracial frater-
nity, for reasons left opaque to the viewer. In fact, this potentially repre-
sents a case of superficially positive stereotyping in which Lupe’s family’s
extraordinary hospitality and willingness to harbor Buster, the son of their
white employer, is naturalized as an innate quality of stereotypically hard-
working and servile Latinos.
However, the series does feature several whistle-blower type characters

of colour who call out the Bluths on their racist assumptions. For one,
there is the Mexican man mistaken for a migrant labourer in the season
one episode ‘Staff Infection’ who reveals that he is, in fact, a Professor of
American Studies at the University of Mexico City, revealing Lindsay’s
(Portia de Rossi) racist gaffe. Or, in the same season two episode in which
Buster finds his Mexican ‘slave buddies’, Gob (Will Arnett), the eldest
Bluth brother, unsuccessfully attempts to become buddies with an African
American bounty hunter named Ice (Malik Yoba), who repeatedly reminds
Gob that he is only a client, not a friend, repudiating Gob’s attempt to
enlist him in an interracial buddy fantasy.
Gob finally finds a non-white friend in Franklin, a black ventriloquist’s
dummy he unveils during a social gathering late in season two. Franklin
serves as a recurring sidekick to Gob, allowing the latter to indulge his
projected fantasy of tough-talking, black masculinity through the pup-
pet’s interactions with other members of the Bluth family and the out-
side world. During the penultimate season two episode ‘The Righteous
Brothers’, Gob enters a recording studio with his dummy in order to
produce Franklin Comes Alive, a CD of the two of them singing duets
together. As Gob and Franklin launch into one particularly racist set of
lyrics about Franklin’s having fathered multiple illegitimate children, we
see the black sound engineer disappear from the sound booth, obviously
refusing to have any part in such a racially ignorant and offensive project.
The joke is on Gob, his racism exposed by the ethically grounded depar-
ture of the nameless engineer.
Yet in its third season Arrested Development concludes the ongoing
Gob and Franklin saga in an uncritically stereotypical way by revealing (in
‘Family Ties’) that the dummy Franklin is a real-life pimp. In an attempt
to glean information about Nellie (Justine Bateman), a woman he believes
to be his long-lost sister, Michael goes to a hotel room to meet with a
man named Frank he has only previously spoken with over the phone.
Once Michael arrives in the darkened room and speaks briefly with the
tough-sounding Frank, he turns on a light to find Gob and Franklin sit-
ting in an easy chair, dressed as stereotypical pimps in loud suits and rakish
porkpie hats; Gob and ‘Frank’ have been posing as Nellie’s pimp for some
time. Michael briefly expresses his disappointment with Gob but quickly
refocuses upon the mystery of the sister, and neither Michael nor the ubiq-
uitous narrator make any comment about the racist nature of Gob’s equat-
ing Franklin’s blackness with pimphood.
66 C. SOLES
In line with the usual pattern of this trope, the viewer learns in flash-
back that Gob took on the role of pimp after meeting Nellie some months
earlier and spending an evening ‘crying like a girl’ in her presence.
Having the fragility of his masculinity exposed provokes Gob to shore
up that masculinity by engaging an exaggerated performance of coded-
black, hyper-masculine pimpness as a compensatory gesture. Of course,
Gob’s assuming the role of pimp can be understood as an extension of
his prolonged appropriation of a racialized identity via his partnership
with Franklin, and the viewer knows the whole thing to be a charade
perpetrated by Gob and endorsed by Nellie. Yet the show itself passively
endorses the coding of pimphood as black, for ‘Frank’ has been acting as
Nellie’s pimp for some time, and all of her clients have dealt with ‘Frank’
on the phone, believing him to be real. The simulation passes for the real
thing: Gob’s performance of exaggerated, African-Americanized pimp-
hood works as an effective front for Nellie’s prostitution business in the
show’s fictional world. In other words, its conflation of pimphood and
criminality with blackness is not just in Gob’s mind; it goes unquestioned
by anyone in the show’s larger milieu.
All of which reinforces the show’s focus on white characters and white
experience. There are no significant characters of colour in Arrested
Development, and the non-whites who interact with the Bluths are as often
ciphers as they are accusatory figures who comically expose the Bluths’
cluelessness. Thus the show, while poking witty fun at the stupidity and
ignorance of its over-privileged whites, nevertheless engages in a strategy
of exclusion or omission wherein ‘repetition of black absence from loca-
tions of autonomy and importance creates the presence of the idea that
blacks belong in positions of obscurity and dependence’ (Snead 1994,
6). The show’s fourth season continues this trend. The whole season arc,
conveyed exclusively from the white characters’ multiple points of view,
is framed around the Bluth family’s attempt to preempt Cinco de Mayo
by staging a Cinco de Cuatro event, crassly appropriating the Mexican-
American community’s holiday for financial gain.
EMBODIED APPROPRIATION: TRAILER PARK BOYS

As its title suggests, the Canadian single-camera mockumentary comedy
Trailer Park Boys examines white masculinity among the poor denizens
of a low-rent Nova Scotia trailer park, at the opposite end of the class
spectrum from the protagonists of Arrested Development. Due to their
lower class status and lived experience growing up around economically

disenfranchised persons of white and non-white ethnicities, the white
male protagonists of Trailer Park Boys have perhaps a greater justifica-
tion for appropriating aspects of black culture into their identities. For
example, most of the show’s main characters, regardless of race, are fans
of rap music, as becomes clear early in the series when Julian (John Paul
Tremblay) receives an NWA CD for his birthday and later on when virtu-
ally everyone in the park attends white rapper J-Roc’s (Jonathan Torrens)
live freestyle rap show in the season three episode ‘Who’s the Microphone
Assassin?’
The connection between coded-blackness and poverty-ridden life in the
trailer park is made explicit by T (Tyrone Parsons), J-Roc’s black sidekick,
at the outset of ‘Microphone Assassin’. T says of himself and J-Roc that
‘we live in the park, it’s real gangsta out here, you gotta keep it gangsta,
you gotta keep it real, rappin’ about the real life things we go through’.
Thus for T, trailer park life equals ‘gangsta’ life, and while that statement
may be part of his own attempt to compulsively bolster his masculinity by
making suburban trailer park residency seem rougher and tougher than it
really is, the economic disenfranchisement and resulting petty criminality
that pervades the park does to some extent validate T’s claim. The park,
while not quite the same as an urban black ghetto, is surely not much akin
to a middle-class white neighborhood either.
In addition to depicting the Sunnyvale Trailer Park as a quasi-ghetto,
Trailer Park Boys also makes clear early on that J-Roc truly considers him-
self to be culturally and ethnically black. He is the leader and only white
member of a posse made up entirely of black rappers and dope dealers, and
other park residents verify that J-Roc has always considered himself black
since childhood. No park resident ever seriously questions the appropri-
ateness of J-Roc’s assuming a coded-black identity, and his lifelong friend-
ship with T further naturalizes this cross-racial identification.
J-Roc himself addresses the issue of his own racial identity at the outset
of ‘Who’s the Microphone Assassin?’ in a speech to the camera in which he
claims to be ‘reversing who’s black and who’s white’ through his rap career,
and ultimately stating that for he and T, as well as society writ large, racial
categories do not matter: ‘we’re saying, society, you know what’s up, this shit
don’t even matter, you know what I’m sayin’, at the end of the day, right?’
Under the guise of post-racial rhetoric (‘it don’t matter’), J-Roc appropri-
ates a coded-black masculinity in order to conform to the demands of what
Majors and Mancini Billson call ‘compulsory masculinity’, an alternative to
68 C. SOLES
traditional masculinity often taken up by black males, a ‘rigid prescription

for toughness, sexual promiscuity, manipulation, thrill-seeking, and a will-
ingness to use violence’ that ultimately serves to compensate for ‘feelings
of shame, powerlessness, and frustration’ (1992, 34). As a comedy, Trailer
Park Boys often reveals the cracks in J-Roc’s compulsively masculine facade,
as when, despite his love of waving guns around in his rap videos, he flees
every time a real gun fight occurs in the park. However, there is little doubt
that J-Roc inhabits his compulsively masculine identity in large part due
to his impoverished upbringing in the park and his early exposure to black
culture through his friends. Yet as is the case with so many of the millen-
nial ‘squirmy’ comedies, whose humour emerges more so from provoking
uncomfortable situations than setting up and delivering tightly constructed
gags and punch lines, the show leaves some central questions unanswered,
especially where ‘white negro’ J-Roc is concerned (Mailer 1957).
Trailer Park Boys negotiates issues of cross-racial appropriation in com-
plex ways, contextualizing J-Roc’s imagined black or ‘white negro’ iden-
tity within a cultural and class structure that, to some extent, explains
(if not justifies) it. Unlike the privileged whites of Arrested Development
and Party Down, Trailer Park’s J-Roc is lower class, living among the
lower-class blacks and whites of Sunnyvale. As Eric Lott has documented,
working-class white men, due to closer socioeconomic proximity to black
men, often evince a complex relationship to black masculinity, an extremely
ambivalent negotiation fraught with both admiration and emulation as
well as fear and resentment (1997, 195). This ambivalent proximity does
not so much give working-class white men the right to appropriate black
culture, but it does complicate the act of appropriation in a way to elevate
it above mere mercenary thievery.
Although J-Roc inhabits a more or less permanent coded-black identity
as a white rapper, the biggest challenge to his cross-racial appropriation
comes, as with Buster and Gob in Arrested Development, in the wake of
a direct affront to his masculinity. In ‘Who’s the Microphone Assassin?’
Julian, Ricky (Robb Wells) and Bubbles (Mike Smith) go to visit J-Roc in
his mother’s trailer, where he lives. J-Roc’s mom (Linda Busby) shows the
boys back to J-Roc’s room, only to walk in on the white rapper furiously
pleasuring himself. J-Roc is incredibly embarrassed over this and spends
the remainder of the episode denying that his mother caught him mastur-
bating. He specifically expresses concerns that the incident, if made public,
may harm his rap career, making explicit the contrast between the imma-
ture, pre-Oedipal sexuality connoted by masturbation and the more com-
pulsively masculine values embodied in J-Roc’s usual coded-black identity.
Further complicating the implications of the masturbation scene are

Cory (Cory Bowles) and Trevor (Michael Jackson), a buddy duo around
whom an aura of heavily suggested yet never quite confirmed homoeroti-
cism hovers throughout the series: in season two they have sexual liaisons
with two transvestites, and in season five Trevor reveals that he knows on
which nights male strippers take the stage at a local club. Significantly,
Cory and Trevor are peeping in J-Roc’s window during the masturbation
incident, and while they claim to be following J-Roc’s movements due
to their interest in participating in the rap show, their presence queers
an already emasculating event, intensifying J-Roc’s need to reestablish
his masculinity and heterosexuality via his coded-black (and compulsively
masculine) performance at the rap show.
Once the rap show gets underway, things go fine for J-Roc until
Detroit Velvet Smooth (Garry James), a black rapper from the nearby
city of Moncton, shows up in Sunnyvale to interrupt the show and accuse
J-Roc of pirating his music on a recent recording. Smooth’s accusation is
valid, and when J-Roc feebly explains that he meant the act of piracy as an
homage and gesture of respect to Smooth, whom he calls ‘my brother’,
Smooth challenges him: ‘You calling me your brother? Seems like to me
one of us ain’t black. Are you black?’ To which J-Roc replies, ‘Yeah, I’m
black.’ Interestingly, at the moment of that pronouncement, T, standing
just behind J-Roc, puts his hand to his forehead in a gesture of disbelief.
This gesture is only visible for a brief second, but affords T the opportu-
nity for critique of his white buddy denied to so many characters of colour
in Arrested Development. However, the show never indicates whether T is
skeptical of J-Roc’s right to consider himself black in general, or if he is
simply embarrassed to hear J-Roc state his appropriative racial identity so
boldly in front of Detroit Velvet Smooth.
Immediately following Smooth’s accusation and J-Roc’s claim to black-
ness, the show cuts to a brief interview segment wherein two acquaintances
explain that ‘It’s not an act—[J-Roc] really believes [he’s black].’ This
endorsement of J-Roc’s authenticity is followed by a second short inter-
view clip, this time of J-Roc explaining his theory that there are ‘degrees
of black’ and delineating where a few famous entertainment figures fall on
the continuum of whiteness and blackness: Lionel Richie is ‘barely black’
and Michael Jackson is a ‘white black’ according to J-Roc. While in no
way negating the appropriative aspects of J-Roc’s identity and behaviour,
his explanation nevertheless articulates an understanding of race as socially
and culturally constructed, coding ‘blackness’ as a set of behaviours and
70 C. SOLES
attitudes rather than a category essentially tied to biological race. As a bio-

logically white man claiming a black identity, this is potentially problem-
atic: J-Roc exercises his white privilege in choosing a coded-black identity.
Yet the show and the episode leave open the possibility that this may be a
legitimate choice in J-Roc’s circumstances.
When we next see J-Roc after his confrontation with Smooth, he is
hiding out in his room, site of the embarrassing masturbation incident
that catalyzed his need to participate in the re-masculinizing freestyle rap
show in the first place. His mother again walks in on him, this time to offer
him consolation, and finds him changed out of his usual clothes, instead
wearing a rainbow-coloured polo shirt and khaki trousers, his outfit sig-
nifying a stereotypically white man. When his mother inquires, he replies,
in standardized English rather than his usual gangsta dialect: ‘Why would
I be dressed any differently, mom? It’s who I am. It’s hard to admit it,
but—mom, I’m white!’ J-Roc undergoes a race-based identity crisis that
plainly reveals the constructed nature of his usual coded-black persona.
Detroit Velvet Smooth’s challenge to J-Roc’s black identity has acted as
a reality principle utterly shattering the white rapper’s cross-racial fantasy.
Yet J-Roc’s mother does not accept her son’s acquiescence to his own
whiteness, and gives him a pep talk in which she asks him ‘Who’s the
microphone assassin?’ and tells him that he needs to believe in himself.
When this doesn’t quite convince him, she reveals that she has always pre-
ferred black men to white ones, and has had sexual relations with several
black men in the past. This cheers him up significantly.
Meanwhile, outside at the stalled rap show, Julian pays Smooth royalty
money for the use of his music on J-Roc’s behalf, settling his gripe. Then,
J-Roc’s mom, having reemerged from the trailer, asks the black rapper to
go inside and speak to her son. He agrees. And while this at first appears
to be a scenario akin to that of Buster’s encounter with his Mexican ‘slave
buddies’, in which a character of colour offers approval and validation for
a white character’s act of cross-racial appropriation, Smooth warns J-Roc
that ‘There’s a lot more to being black than just being down with NWA,
seriously.’ This suggests that Smooth—and the show—is well aware that
J-Roc does not in fact understand fully what it means to be black. Of
course, to be fair, Arrested Development is well aware of the ridiculous
inappropriateness of its white characters’ appropriative cross-racial fanta-
sies as well, yet it only rarely gives its characters of colour a chance to
directly admonish its comically clueless protagonists. Here, conversely,
J-Roc is reprimanded by one of the very people upon which he has mod-
eled his ‘black’ identity.
Yet Smooth ultimately validates J-Roc’s right to be whatever he wishes,

saying: ‘There’s black and there’s white and then there’s you, J-Roc, and
I still don’t know what in the fuck that is yet.’ Interestingly, Smooth’s
categorization of J-Roc places the latter in a liminal identity category,
neither black nor white. While this pronouncement neatly sidesteps the
problematic dimensions of a white person appropriating a coded-black
identity, it nevertheless makes clear that whatever J-Roc is, it is unique and
as-yet incomprehensible to people (and a society) who fit more clearly into
established ethnic categories. Buoyed by Smooth’s intervention, J-Roc
changes back into his gangsta outfit and resumes the rap show, joined
onstage by his idol. In line with classical comedy conventions, the episode
ends with celebratory unification of the whole community around its male
protagonist. The entire social body of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park rallies
around J-Roc, validating his claim to a third racial category between that
of black and white, offering a positive, utopian interpretation of the white
rapper’s act of ethnic self-determination.
However, this ostensibly happy ending masks a troubling subtext. As
Eric Lott has written of Elvis Presley, ‘nobody who thinks with their ears
can dismiss Elvis as merely a case of racial rip-off’ yet the fact remains that
Presley made his fame and fortune by repackaging black music and dance
moves for white audiences—what Lott ultimately calls a ‘whiteface’ per-
formance of black blues and gospel sounds (1997, 203). Similarly, while
it would be reductive to say that J-Roc only or merely steals his identity,
music and performance style from black gangsta rap culture, it is neverthe-
less the case that he is a white man profiting from his appropriation of rap
music and gangsta style. So, liberating though Smooth’s liminal yet inde-
terminate classification of J-Roc may be for the white rapper personally,
the episode ends by representing a problematic real-world act of cultural
theft. Structurally speaking, J-Roc gets away with repackaging rap music
for a mostly white audience in his own form of ‘whiteface’ performance.
The episode responds to its own titular question—‘Who’s the microphone
assassin?’—with a sobering answer reflective of the real history of popular
culture: a white man.
DECONSTRUCTING THE POST-RACIAL TURN: PARTY DOWN

Party Down centres upon the exploits of a group of Los Angeles-based
caterers, most of whom view their work as a stop-gap on their way to suc-
cess in the entertainment industry. Though their ages and genders vary,
72 C. SOLES
all are white. They all struggle to make ends meet but unlike the edge-of-
poverty inhabitants of Sunnyvale Trailer Park, the Party Down crew is all
firmly situated in the middle class.
Being a darker comedy than the other two shows under discussion,
Party Down is the most savage in its critique of the white racial imaginary.
This comes to the fore in the season two episode ‘James Ellison Funeral’,
in which the Party Down catering crew works the funeral reception of an
upper-middle-class black businessman. Much humour is generated from
the fact that most of the black party guests are richer, better educated and
much more well-mannered than most of the white caterers.
Early in the episode, geeky crew member Roman (Martin Starr) engages
in a debate with Mary (Tamala Jones), the daughter of the deceased, over
the exact meaning of the phrase ‘jungle fever’. Claiming that the term only
applies when a white person lusts after a black one, and not vice-versa,
Roman asserts that his position is based only upon ‘facts of semantics’
and does not mark him as racist: ‘I’m post-racial’, he confidently claims,
‘People are people. If you’re cool, you’re cool.’ To which Mary rejoins: ‘If
you’re an ass, you’re an ass’, clearly referring to Roman himself, which he
misses. This joke shows Roman not only to be self-involved and dense, but
also exposes his claim to be ‘post-racial’ as a lie. Roman is an ‘ass’ precisely
because he (wrongly) considers himself to be post-racial. His imagined
post-racialness allows him to indulge his penchant for disregarding other
peoples’ feelings, and Mary Ellison calls him on it. The joke is on Roman;
we laugh with Mary at him.
Roman’s racism is reemphasized at one later point, when he asks a bira-
cial guest if he knows the exact definition of ‘jungle fever’. The guest
stares at Roman in disbelief, and the vignette ends in an uncomfortable,
squirmy silence. Roman’s assumption that it takes someone of colour or
(even better) a biracial individual to understand the concept of interracial
desire reveals his essentialist assumptions and marks him as racist.
An even more involved joke of similar stripe involves Kyle (Ryan
Hansen), a privileged, white ‘pretty boy’ metrosexual who, when not
catering, stars in ‘B’ films and fronts a squeaky clean emo-pop band. As
an aspiring musician, Kyle is utterly captivated by an older black funeral
guest’s performance of ‘Amazing Grace’ at the reception, and approaches
that guest to ask him for pointers in learning how to play the blues. The
guest, William (Lee Weaver), agrees, and begins ordering Kyle to per-
form all manner of absurd tasks: removing and surrendering his designer
belt, picking shrimp out of shrimp puffs, and finally, shining William’s
shoes. All these tasks, William claims, will teach Kyle about the blues so
long as the white caterer doesn’t try too hard to ‘understand’ their pur-
pose; instead, the blues singer urges, Kyle must simply ‘experience’ what
is happening to him. For Kyle, these assignments are freighted with mean-
ing; he engages in each new humiliation with great eagerness, convinced
he is learning something very special. However, at episode’s end one of
William’s friends reveals that the blues man is not really a blues man at
all, but rather a retired dentist who recently started learning to play guitar
as a hobby. William and his chums (and Roman) have a laugh at Kyle’s
expense, and the latter walks off, looking a bit embarrassed and crestfallen.
Yet at the end of the reception, Kyle approaches William and, despite the
ex-dentist’s assertion that ‘there was nothing to learn’ from the degrad-
ing prank, insists again and again that he has indeed learned something,
claiming to ‘get it’. Kyle’s earnestness here suggests that this is more than
a simple defense mechanism against having been the butt of an elabo-
rate gag. Rather, Kyle engages the dentist’s joke in a postmodern way, on
two levels, as both ironic and authentic simultaneously, as if there were
‘real’ lessons to be gleaned from it even though it was a joke. Kyle believes
his temporary simulation of ethnicity, which he repeatedly equates to the
‘slave experience’, to be, in some sense, real. Just as, according to Judith
Butler (1990), gender identity is performative, so too is ethnicity, when
played to elicit melodramatic sympathy and simulate victimhood. Kyle
reinterprets a process that only exists as a joke, investing it with depth,
projecting a white racial fantasy, imagining (we suppose) that by partici-
pating as the victim of the joke, he has experienced genuine oppression
akin to that of black slaves. He plays at being (what he imagines to be)
black, but this is not real slavery, nor even a convincing simulation of it.
But it is all the premise Kyle needs to imagine that he understands the
‘black slave experience’ which allows him to grasp ‘the blues’. Yet the
audience knows that the dentist’s status as a Magical Negro, defined by
Audrey Colombe (2002) as a ‘self-sacrificing’ black figure whose ‘sole pur-
pose in the story is to selflessly use [his] powers to help a White man’, is
only in Kyle’s imagination.
The ‘James Ellison Funeral’ episode does evince racial stereotyping in
its depiction of the late Mr. Ellison as sexually promiscuous, though per-
haps the deployment of that stereotype is somewhat tempered by Mrs.
Ellison’s (Loretta Devine) acceptance of her husband’s extramarital affairs
and her claim that their marriage was an open one by mutual consent.
However, the episode’s major punch line comes when it is revealed that
74 C. SOLES
the deceased Mr. Ellison fathered not one but (at least) two illegitimate
children, a depiction that plays upon the same offensive stereotype that
causes the studio engineer in Arrested Development to refuse to work with
Gob and Franklin on their CD. The damage here is mitigated by Mr.
Ellison’s upper-class status, which works against the usual stereotype of
lower-class black men as sexually voracious. Yet this joke illustrates how
even the most intelligent and incisively critical of comedy shows finds it
difficult to resist indulging in stereotypical depictions of persons of colour,
even in the service of deconstructing the presumed post-racialism of its
white characters.
CONCLUSION
Privileged members of the dominant white, Euro-American culture often
find the fact of lingering structural racism hard to digest, wanting very
badly to believe that we now live in a post-racial society. Contemporary
single-camera comedies belie this persistent fantasy. These post-millennial,
single-camera comedy shows, at their best, call out white characters (and
by extension, viewers) for their discomfort in confronting issues of struc-
tural racism and white privilege. Insofar as they poke fun at whites who
think themselves post-racial yet indulge in unconscious stereotyping and
other passively racist activities, these shows give the lie to the notion of
a post-racial North-America, even as they—to varying degrees—recycle
those same stereotypes for the purposes of comedy.
Each of the three shows under discussion approaches these issues
differently. As the best-known and most ‘mainstream’ of the three,
Arrested Development focuses exclusively on its white characters. Despite
a few moments of critique from characters of colour like Ice, Arrested
Development tends to deploy cross-racial appropriation as a means to gen-
tly satirize the privileged Bluths and their associates, laughing at them
yet centralizing them and their racist worldview. It mines humour from
the cluelessness of rich white people yet lets its stereotypical depictions of
blacks and Mexicans go unproblematized. Trailer Park Boys is more subtle
in how it addresses the cultural constructedness of race, explicitly critiqu-
ing the essentialist position. Yet as a more traditional (less dark) comedy, it
favours a utopian view that allows characters like J-Roc to appropriate an
imagined black identity without serious or lasting consequences. Granted,
Trailer Park Boys self-consciously foregrounds its mockumentary form,
thereby decentering J-Roc’s perspective by offering conflicting points of

view (the acquaintances’ interview, Detroit Velvet Smooth’s accusation)
on his act of racial appropriation in ‘Who’s the Microphone Assassin?’. Yet
Smooth’s episode-concluding endorsement, while ambiguous, is never-
theless an endorsement. The show ultimately signs off on J-Roc’s right to
inhabit an ethnically black identity, never again questioning his ethnic sta-
tus and even granting him a black son in its Netflix-produced ninth season
(2014). Finally, as the least well-known and tonally darkest of the three
shows, Party Down makes the strongest effort to critique the white geek’s
post-racial position. Roman and Kyle are made the butts of jokes articu-
lated by black characters, revealing the white caterers’ complete oblivi-
ousness to their own structural privilege. Though the show, like Arrested
Development, foregrounds economically advantaged white characters, it is
more pointed in its critique of those characters’ obliviousness to racism.
For example, as early as its first episode, Party Down positions team leader
Ron Donald (Ken Marino) as a well-meaning but passively racist idiot who
is excited to have recently attended racial sensitivity training yet thinks
nothing of yelling the word ‘jiggers’ (in reference to alcohol glasses) in
front of two black clients. That said, Party Down’s focus is predominantly
on white characters and the show employs racist stereotyping, as in the late
Mr. Ellison’s rapacious sexual desire for lighter-skinned women.
Ultimately, the trends analyzed here are bound up in the broader rise of
geeky white masculinity to a place of cultural centrality and power in the
postmodern milieu. These shows’ threatened white characters participate
in imagined ethnicity to reinforce their place of privilege in a culture in
which whiteness is paradoxically (and inaccurately) seen as a liability. Yet
while these shows’ depictions of white appropriation of imagined ethnicity
belie or at least question these characters’ ‘post-racial’ fantasy, their focus
on white characters and tendency to perpetuate racial stereotypes contrib-
ute to the ongoing marginalization and mistreatment of people of colour.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
London: Routledge.
Colombe, Audrey. 2002. White Hollywood’s New Black Bogeyman. Jump Cut, 45.
Dyer, Richard. 1997. White. London: Routledge.
Fiedler, Leslie. 1948. ‘Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey! Partisan
Review 15(6): 664–671.
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Hall, Stuart. 1983. What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture? In Black Popular
Culture, ed. Gina Dent, 20–33. New York: The New Press.
Kunyosying, Kom, and Carter Soles. 2012. Postmodern Geekdom as Simulated
Ethnicity. Jump Cut, 54.
Lott, Eric. 1997. All the King’s Men: Elvis Impersonators and White Working-
Class Masculinity. In Race and the Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry
Stecopoulos, and Michael Uebel, 192–227. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mailer, Norman. 1957. The White Negro. Dissent, Summer.
Majors, Richard, and Janet Mancini Billson. 1992. Cool Pose: The Dilemma of
Black Manhood in America. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Snead, James. 1994. White Screens Black Images: Hollywood From the Dark Side.
London: Routledge.
Williams, Linda. 2001. Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White
from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Phrasing!: Archer, Taboo Humour,
and Psychoanalytic Media Theory
Matt Sienkiewicz
Media theory, emerging at the intersection of literary criticism and critical

theory, inevitably draws upon a variety of analytic tools. Some of these,
such as the structuralist approaches to genre, remain intuitively appeal-
ing to contemporary students. For example, an evening watching net-
work sitcoms makes apparent that the culture industries themselves have
embraced the existence of deep structures and formulas in the production
of entertainment. Other approaches, such as critical race theory, remain at
greater distance from industrial self-awareness, but resonate strongly with
the contemporary socio-political moment.
Freudian psychoanalysis, however, presents a different set of obstacles
to both teacher and student. Students have a tendency to question the
approach’s relevance to the contemporary media industry and to contem-
porary life more generally. This makes the task of choosing a text through
which to teach psychoanalysis particularly daunting. If the Freudian ele-
ments of a text are too obscure, the instructor is easily accused of ‘reading
too much’ and infusing it with lewd connotations it has done nothing to
deserve. If the Freudian elements are too obvious, the text is just as easily
understood as mocking psychoanalysis and, perhaps, the instructor trying
M. Sienkiewicz ()
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_5
78 M. SIENKIEWICZ
to teach it. After all, if Freud is right, the stuff worth studying ought
to be hidden, right? An ideal text for introducing psychoanalytic media
theory, therefore, is one that engages with the core concepts of Freudian
analysis while nonetheless employing more subtle, subterranean elements
that can, with effort, be brought to the surface. In order to ease naturally
resistant students into the realm of psychoanalytic criticism, a text must be
willing to display a certain level of interest in ideas such as Oedipal fixa-
tion, repression and the death drive. These elements must be visibly and
audibly present enough to convince a careful viewer of their existence, but
obscured enough, at least in places, to plausibly be understood as less than
fully conscious references to psychoanalysis. The text must admit Freud,
but not be about Freud.
In this chapter I argue that the animated FX series Archer, through its
consistent, yet often narratively oblique engagement with Freudian taboos,
offers just such an opportunity. I contend that, alongside putting forth
humour steeped in Freudian concepts of sexual and violent drives, the spy
comedy also engages in a variety of textual practices that can be interpreted
as unconscious acts on the parts of producers that serve to make palatable
(and enjoyable) taboo desires. There are obvious Freudian overtones in
Archer’s humour that must be understood in terms of consciously playful
decisions on the part of the creators. However, through its exploitation
of the medium of animation, Archer’s producers (perhaps unconsciously)
craft a safe space in which to give expression to some of the most deeply
repressed elements of the human psyche. Countless jokes about mother-
son incest and sadomasochism have no doubt been weaved into the show
by producers at least somewhat conscious of their Freudian implications.
Yet they are packaged in highly unusual ways that mitigate the threat these
taboo jokes present to the social consciousness of producers and viewers.
These techniques can be read as evidence of the impact of unconscious
needs on the part of producers to blunt the edginess of their comedy.
Thus, Archer becomes a text that both provides an introduction to
obvious psychoanalytic material through which to teach key Freudian con-
cepts while nonetheless serving plausibly as a repository for the uncon-
scious needs of its producers and consumers. It should be noted that my
interest lies less with the absolute truth of a multi-layered psychoanalytic
interpretation of Archer as with the utility the show provides as a peda-
gogical tool. The primary ambition of this argument is to present the
program as an ideal text through which to communicate pre-established
theories of the connection between comedy, taboo and the return of the
repressed in media.
PHRASING!: ARCHER, TABOO HUMOUR AND PSYCHOANALYTIC MEDIA... 79
ARCHER AND THE DUALITY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC

CULTURAL READING
Archer’s first episode opens with a slow zoom out from the glass-blue eyes
of the animated program’s titular hero. He is chained to the wall of a dun-
geon, wearing nothing but tight black briefs over an Adonis body marred
only by a few pink scars. A man with an odd, perhaps Russian, accent lights
a large cigar and prepares for an interrogation. He speaks, making clear he
knows exactly who his captive is: ‘Sterling Archer. Code name Duchess.
Known from Berlin to Bangcock [the stress being audibly clear] as the
world’s most dangerous spy.’ He walks over to a pair of jumper cables and
touches the ends together. Sparks fly and he shivers with excitement. After
a moment of dramatic pause, Sterling speaks up. He mocks the interroga-
tor, accuses him of faking his accent and laughs at the pleasure he seems
to be getting out of the sado-erotic overtones of the scene. A voice then
booms in from an intercom: ‘Son of a bitch!’ A screen lights up, reveal-
ing a middle-aged woman watching the scene while sipping on a mixed
drink. She reprimands Sterling for not taking the interrogation simulation
seriously. He complains about his code name, Duchess, which is revealed
to be the name of the woman’s deceased dog. She picks up a picture and
looks down at it longingly—it’s a black-and-white photo of her nude body
huddled against the canine Duchess’. As the scene ends, the interrogator
reveals that this woman, who had been watching the sexually charged
interrogation and codenamed Sterling after a dog she once loved (perhaps
physically), is Mallory Archer, Sterling’s mother.
Archer thus begins with a scene drenched in Oedipal tension that shat-
ters the few taboos that are left to break on cable television. Given the free
expression of anormative sex found on FX programs such as It’s Always
Sunny in Philadelphia and Nip/Tuck, Archer must turn to jokes about
incest and bestiality in order to call attention to its edge and, from a psy-
choanalytic perspective, address drives that are still understood as being
widely repressed. The scene sets up the semi-sexual tension that marks the
relationship between Sterling and Mallory Archer throughout the series
and has become a trademark of the program’s relentlessly taboo comedy.
The plot of the episode, however, quickly moves away from this point of
focus, developing a highly self-aware but nonetheless conventional story
about a double agent infiltrating Archer’s organization. While this Oedipal
fixation, along with many other Freudian concepts to be discussed later,
figures into the background of every episode, it never serves as the primary
80 M. SIENKIEWICZ
driver of the program’s narrative. Archer thus clearly places questions of

humour and repression squarely on the surface but does not fixate on
them. The result is a show that engages with repressed ideas and desires
but nonetheless makes a certain effort to marginalize them, creating, I
argue, an ideal opportunity to consider the ways in which taboo comedy
can serve as fertile ground for considering the psychoanalytic implications
of the show for both the producer and its viewers.
In his widely used textbook Cultural Theory and Popular Culture,
Storey (2012) offers a simple but instructive division by which to articulate
the possibilities for basic psychoanalytic interpretations of popular media
texts. On the one hand, he puts forth the ‘author-centered’ approach. In
this approach cultural texts are positioned as analogous to the ‘dreams and
pathological ideas’ that, in Freudian clinical psychoanalysis, are revealed by
the patient and interpreted by the analyst (Freud 1965, 135). This reading
strategy thus treats the textual elements of a movie, television program or
other cultural product as a manifest level of signification that, via analysis,
can be made to reveal the latent meanings that the producer has unwitting
imparted (Freud 1965, 99). In identifying this approach, Storey draws on
Freud’s own observations in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis on
the parallels that exist between the production of dreams and works of
art. There Freud argues that art is ‘a path that leads back from phantasy to
reality’ and that the artist is capable of ‘work[ing] over his day-dreams’ in
order to use them as material to be presented to the public (Freud 1989,
468). These dreams are made tangible in the process of artistic production
and can be extracted by the attuned critic.
Freud’s artist, however, must ‘tone […] down’ the repressed material,
thus stripping it of any apparent connection to desires that must, perforce
of societal demands, be left hidden. As Flitterman-Lewis puts it, ‘conceal-
ment of those “marks of enunciation” that stamp [artistic] authorship’
are crucial for the viewer to experience film as an analogue to their own
dreams (1987, 182). This, of course, presents a challenge to the teacher
of the ‘author-centered’ approach. By definition, the true meanings of the
text have thus been buried so as to avoid detection on the part of most
viewers. And, at least in theory, the process of recovering this meaning
ought to require a similar level of attention and expertise to that which
an analyst must devote to a patient. This is a difficult, daunting and per-
haps even ridiculous-sounding prospect for students with no training in
the field of psychology. Although it is certainly possible to evoke these
meanings through careful explication of Freudian principles, the general
skepticism through which contemporary students tend to view the con-

cept of psychoanalysis can make this an extremely uphill battle. It can
appear, perhaps with some reason, that the interpreter can do little more
than hazard guesses at what repressed ideas have been submerged in the
text. Archer, however, offers something in the way of a happy medium.
It is easy to identify material in the program’s humour that, according to
Freudian theorists, is commonly repressed. This fact allows the student
to consider why these elements are present and how the producers have
done the work of ‘toning down’ the latent material in the program while
nonetheless leaving such manifest traces.
The question of viewer pleasure points to the second of Storey’s two
approaches, the ‘reader-centered’. In this case, the interpreter considers
the media text a ‘substitute dream’ through which the viewer gains ‘uncon-
scious pleasure and satisfaction’ in the process of consumption (Storey
2012, 100). In an introductory text on the subject, Allen argues that the
process of media viewing is ideal ‘for escaping the tyranny of reason and
staging the associative processes of condensation and displacement that,
for Freud, characterized unconscious thought’ (2003, 128). The broad
popularity of a given text, therefore, can be explained by its ability to
engage with feelings and desires that are repressed by large groups of
potential consumers and to do so in fashion that produces a pleasurable
sense of release in many of them. From this perspective, the overtness of a
given text’s engagement with taboo thoughts and ideas ceases to be a hin-
drance and becomes an opportunity. However, those texts that emphati-
cally engage with the desires most easily communicated to students as
being subject to near universal repression, rarely become popular hits.
Although popular shows can often be mined for interesting psychoana-
lytic material, such work can require great nuance and appear to be rather
forced. Archer, once again provides a unique opportunity. Yes, it is a pro-
gram that is found in the higher numbers of most cable systems, but it is
nonetheless a show that has gained a mainstream following unavailable to
most texts that, to cite a few examples, feature repeated, explicit descrip-
tions of eroticized death fantasies or make repeated reference to a son’s
ability to perform sexually in the presence of his mother. Furthermore, it
is a program aimed precisely at the demographic most likely to be learning
critical media theory for the first time—young, educated, middle-class
viewers. The program thus not only offers the instructor the opportunity
to ask why one might take pleasure at seeing a character described being
choked to death during sex, but also to ask precisely why they seem to
enjoy it.
82 M. SIENKIEWICZ
In the following sections I analyze Archer from both of Storey’s

approaches to psychoanalytic interpretation. My aim is to show that
Archer can be productively and honestly presented in psychoanalytic terms
that strike a careful balance between the obvious and the hidden. To do
so, I consider the impact of the media of television and animation, as well
as the specific content of Archer, returning occasionally to original texts
of Freud in order to bridge the comedic use of today’s taboos with tradi-
tional notions of repression and release.
ARCHER AND DREAMWORK, CONTEMPORARY TELEVISION

AS DREAMSCAPE
The author-centered approach to media texts is one that asks not only what
repressed materials from the creator’s unconscious are being expressed in
the text, but also how those elements are incorporated in a fashion that
makes them palatable to viewers. To answer this latter question is also
perhaps to consider the ways in which artists are able to so consciously
deal in the realm of their own unconscious. The ‘toning down’ that Freud
describes not only serves the purpose of making taboo material palatable
for others, but also enabling artists to plausibly distance themselves from
the reality of the repressed desires they are expressing. My focus in this
section is thus on the ways in which Archer exploits the medium of tele-
vision animation in order to craft a fertile, safe environment in which to
place the most shocking of repressed emotions and drives. All media can
be thought in some ways to operate in a manner similar to that of dreams.
Archer, however, employs exceptional, innovative approaches to crafting a
diegetic world that mirrors the logic of dreams as Freud explains them and
thus tempers the fierce reality of the repressed desires the show uses as the
basis of so much of its comedy.
The foundations of psychoanalytic media theory lay primarily in schol-
arly reflections on the experience of traditional cinema going. The cin-
ematic experience is said to run in parallel to the process of falling asleep
and drifting into a dream state. The result is an aesthetic experience in
which, as Mulvey notes, ‘the extreme contrast between the darkness in
the auditorium (which also isolates the spectators from one another) and
the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light’ allow the viewer to project
‘repressed desire on to the performer’ (Mulvey 1975). Although psycho-
analytic cinema theorists have devoted much time to parsing out the spe-
cific ramifications of this media experience, Mulvey’s focus on darkness
and isolation is generally considered central to cinema’s ability to grant

access to repressed desires.
These factors have, however, created significant barriers to the importa-
tion of psychoanalytic theory into the realm of television studies. As John
Fiske argues ‘the huge bright cinema and the anonymous darkness of the
auditorium’ stand in stark contrast to ‘the far less imperative television
screen situated in the family living room in the middle of ordinary family
life’, thus disrupting many of the dream parallels that Mulvey and others
draw to the cinema (1987, 226). Furthermore, as Flitterman-Lewis notes,
television often resists the shot-reverse shot editing pattern that classical
Hollywood engages in order to ‘suture’ the viewer into a scene (1987,
200). Even if a given show chooses to engage in such a visual style, the
medium, via a preponderance of talk shows, game shows, variety program-
ming and other fare establish a mode of viewing that is starkly different
from that attending a pitch-black megaplex screening.
Both Flitterman-Lewis and Fiske find other means through which
to employ psychoanalytic theory in order to explain televisual pleasure.
Flitterman-Lewis attempts to turn the ‘fractured subjectivity’ of the tele-
vision medium into an asset by asserting that it must create ‘ever more
powerful psychic mechanisms’ in order to maintain viewer interest (1987,
204). Fiske, in contrast, points to television’s traditionally degraded cul-
tural position via associations with sexual promiscuity, glorification of
violence and crass ‘appeal to the lowest common denominator’. This dis-
cursive positioning allows viewers to engage in the pleasure of ‘plaisir’
through which one releases repressed desires by ‘confirming their social
identity as one that opposes […] dominant social values’ (1987, 228).
Archer certainly plays into these television stereotypes and taboos, offer-
ing levels of sex and violence that push the boundaries of what Michael
Curtin describes as ‘edge’—the process by which broadcasters intention-
ally limit their appeal to specific cultural groups in order to craft ‘market-
able boundaries of difference’ (Curtin 1996, 190).
However, the contemporary context, particularly when viewed from
the perspective of the student, complicates the picture that Fiske portrays.
Yes, today’s television landscape features more taboo material than ever
before, but a new critical approach has come to eclipse the traditional
stances toward televisual sex and violence. Whereas writers such as Jerry
Mander once bemoaned television’s insistence on promoting violence over
values of ‘cooperation, loving and caring’, contemporary popular critics
have reappraised such televisual tendencies, often reframing them in terms
84 M. SIENKIEWICZ
of art (1978, 36). For example, the best-selling critic Alan Sepinwall, while
never praising sex and violence for its own sake, points to the HBO series
Oz, full of scenes of prison rape and murder, as a key text in the creation of
‘another golden age’ for television (Sepinwall 2012, 2). The violence of The
Sopranos, the sexual candor of Sex and the City and the casual portrayal of
extramarital sex on Mad Men have in each case contributed to television’s
cultural cache, not diminished it. This is not to say definitively that view-
ers no longer have access to the pleasure of plaisir that Fiske points out. It
does, however, emphasize the importance of updating discussions of con-
temporary television in order to account for changes within the medium.
Some of these changes, in fact, significantly recast the original obser-
vations that forced Fiske and Flitterman-Lewis to reject the cinematic
approach to television’s psychoanalytic significance. Most plainly, televi-
sion’s domesticity, while certainly still prevalent for some viewers, is by
no means universal. Both technology and industrial shifts have changed
the television-watching experience, a fact that is plainly clear to contem-
porary students of the medium. For many, the experience of watching
Archer might, in fact, provide an even more persuasive case as a parallel
to a dream state than did cinema viewing for scholars such as Mulvey.
Fiske approaches television as a small screen watched at a distance in the
presence of the entire family. Younger viewers, however, are just as likely
to watch Archer in bed, alone (or not alone), in the dark, on a computer
screen laying mere inches away. Occasionally, one supposes, they fall asleep
and enter actual dream states as a result of the experience. The rise of
online video as a mainstream form of television consumption thus radically
repositions the possibilities for considering television psychoanalytically,
particularly with regards to shows aimed primarily at younger, richer and
therefore more technologically advanced audiences.
Even when watched in real time on FX, the domesticity of Archer is
significantly reduced in comparison to the context in which the founda-
tional work on television and psychoanalysis was written. Network Era
television was pitched at large swaths of viewers lending credence to Fiske
and Flitterman-Lewis’ sense that televisual publicity stood in opposition
to cinematic intimacy. Over time, however, the fracturing of the television
audience has complicated this picture, particularly with regards to cable
television. As Lotz notes, networks such as FX have ‘sought to develop pro-
gramming that establishes their narrowly focused brands and allows them to
deliver […] particular demographic and psychographic groups of consum-
ers’ (2007, 183). In the case of individual households this suggests greater
levels of solo viewing. Furthermore, in order to reach this goal, networks

have made concerted efforts to cordon off certain timeslots in order to craft
a sense of intimacy and personal attention for viewers. Cartoon Network’s
Adult Swim block, for example, inserts ‘bumps’ into its commercial breaks
aimed at crafting a sense of intimacy. These simple, text-based shorts are
often addressed in the second person, creating a simulation of a one-on-one
dialogue between viewer and television.
Archer’s network, FX, uses a similar tactic, and one that can be read as
particularly useful in setting up the viewer for the reception of repressed
desires that is to be found in the programming that follows. Billing its late
block as FX Fully Baked, the network introduces each episode of Archer
with a soft focused, oddly lit scene featuring a young, beautiful woman
baking in a messy, haze-filled kitchen. She is, in her own right, a rather
striking Freudian concoction, equal parts suicide girl and fifties housewife.
She wears her hair in a style reminiscent of June Cleaver, along with a very
low cut apron revealing abundant cleavage. Her arms are covered in tat-
toos of domestic items—an eggbeater, cookie cutters and so on. And the
end of each scene she smiles provocatively and offers the viewer a baked
treat that, implicitly, has been made with some ingredients unavailable at
the grocery store. These scenes not only offer a sense of intimacy to the
viewer, but also suggest that the following material comes from a place
devoid of standard social inhibitions. Just as Freud notes that the oncom-
ing of sleep causes ‘involuntary ideas’ that must otherwise be repressed to
emerge in the process of clinical psychoanalysis, the branding of FX Fully
Baked as late-night, drug-like comedy suggests a safe space in which to
grapple with taboos.
ARCHER, ANIMATION AND THE LOGIC OF DREAMS

It is this ‘safe space’ that is crucial in understanding the sense in which
Archer is particularly suited to be read through the ‘author-centered’
approach to media psychoanalysis. As will be detailed later, the series
provides ample material for the psychoanalytic critic to consider. Too
much, even. In order to understand Archer as a text susceptible to psy-
choanalysis, as opposed to one that is simply about psychoanalysis, there
must be some explanation as to the means by which the text tempers its
release of repressed psychic materials, both for the sake of the audience and
the producer. In this section, I argue that Archer’s innovative use of the
medium of animation plays this role. The narrative and aesthetic strategies
86 M. SIENKIEWICZ
of Archer work to reframe its content, employing tactics that bare remark-
able similarity to Freud’s descriptions of dreams. By mimicking dreams in
such a fashion, Archer becomes a text in which producers can insert con-
cepts such as Oedipal desire without fully facing their reality and viewers
can enjoy them without understanding their true, unconscious origins.
The choice of animation as the medium for Archer plays a central role
in establishing such an environment. Although FX and other cable net-
works often push boundaries in live action programming, Archer’s ani-
mated format allows the program to depict images of intense sexuality and
sexual violence, and to do so in the context of comedy no less. To a certain
extent this likely relates to issues of television standards and practices. It is
hard to believe a network signing off on depicting an actor naked, being
choked to the brink of death as another looks on in apparent amusement
or arousal. Such scenes appear with frequency in Archer. The question is
why this double standard persists. The answer, perhaps, lies in the psycho-
logical framework in which audiences engage animated programming. As
Napier notes, animation, by virtue of its ability to construct entirely arti-
ficial realities, ‘challenges our expectations of what is “normal” or “real,”
bringing up material that may seem more appropriately housed in dreams
or the unconscious, and this can be a deeply disconcerting process’ (2005,
74). Along similar lines, Wells argues that animation, by re-writing both
the rules of physics and society, can stage a space in which ‘the free-play
of the id, unchecked by other mechanisms in the personality’ can be made
manifest (1998, 154).
Archer, however, goes further in establishing such a space, engaging
practices that, if not unique to the show, are nonetheless highly unusual
in the context of mainstream narrative television. This can be seen in its
unique use of what may be described as ‘kettle’ or dream logic. In The
Interpretation of Dreams, Freud posits that dreams possess a unique trait
that stands in stark contradiction to the rules of waking, social reality. In
dreams, something can be true and not true at once. As an illustration,
he points to a patient of his who had a dream in which he had damaged
his neighbor’s kettle. As a defense, the dream-self of the patient offered
three explanations to the neighbor: that he had returned the kettle with-
out damage, that it was damaged when he borrowed it and that he had
never borrowed it at all (1965, 153). These obviously contradictory expla-
nations are, Freud argues, one of the fundamental markers of the dream
space in which repressed ideas can be safely expressed. In dreams, Freud
argues that ‘thoughts which are mutually exclusive make no attempt to do
away with each other, but persist side by side […revealing that which] our
conscious thoughts would never tolerate but such as are often admitted in
our actions’ (1965, 635).
Archer engages with this sort of ‘kettle’ logic in two fashions. For one,
the show constructs scenes in which characters admit to the reality of two
entirely contradictory experiences. For example, in the episode ‘Training
Day’, Sterling Archer explains to Cyril Figgis, via flashback, an encounter
he once had in Jamaica:
Cyril: When would you use an underwear gun?

[The scene cuts to a smoke-filled room. Archer gazes down at a naked women
in bed.]
Archer [v.o.]: Hopefully never. But say you’re in a Caribbean bungalow,
and you’re kind of high, an exotic woman on the bed. Now
is she just the high-priced whore you asked for?
[She kisses him.]
Archer [v.o.]: Or is she an assassin?
[Out of nowhere, she pulls out a small gun.]
Cyril [v.o.]: I don’t know.
Archer [v.o.]: Oh, here’s room service. Who ordered champagne?
[Three large Jamaican men enter, all with friendly looks. One pushes a room
service cart.]
Cyril [v.o.]: Ah. How should I know?
Archer [v.o.]: Exactly. You’re baked. You can’t remember. But since when
does it take three huge surly Jamaican guys to deliver one
bottle of champagne?
[Each of the men pulls out a gun and scowls.]
Cyril: Ohh. Because they’re assassins too?
Archer [v.o.]: Or. Maybe one guy’s a new waiter. The second one’s train-
ing him, and the third’s from maintenance, finally off his
lazy ass to fix the A.C.
[The guns have disappeared. The Jamaicans pull out a bottle of champagne, a
room service bill and a wrench, respectively, and present them.]
Cyril: Oh, yeah. I guess that could happen.
Archer: Point is, you come out of the john waving this [the under-
wear gun] around… no one’s gonna bug you for a tip.
Equally kettle-like is the entire environment in which Archer takes

place. Historically, the version of New York City featured in the program
is one built on bizarre contradictions that emphasize the unreality of the
88 M. SIENKIEWICZ
elements being presented in the story. For example, Archer’s world is one
in which The KGB and Soviet Union remain America’s greatest enemy,
but also one in which sleek, slim contemporary cell phones are standard.
The super high-tech office in which much of the show’s action takes place
is equipped quite noticeably with circa 1980 Apple 2C computers, yet
characters travel by blimp, dress in 1950s-style suits, talk about their expe-
riences in World War I and create holograms of Japanese anime vixens.
The effect is not one of science fiction, as none of the elements are particu-
larly remarkable or remarked upon. It is instead a world of contradictions,
cobbled together from bits and pieces of cultural memory. Like the kettle
logic Freud describes in dreams, Archer’s New York both is and is not set
in the past.
Archer also follows the dream logic outlined by Freud in its creative use
of scene transitions, whereby individual words or images are used to pro-
vide a fulcrum on which to move from one scene to the next. As the series
has developed, the scripts have moved away from traditional transitions
between scenes occurring in different plotlines, employing techniques in
which a character from one scene will apparently answer a question posed
in another or, more commonly, a homonym is used in order to serve as
a point of connection between two storylines. For example, in the sea-
son one episode ‘The Rock’ the following exchange serves as a point of
transition:
Mallory: [Speaking of the wealth of a prospective client] The thing impor-

tant is that they’re loaded.
[Scene transitions to another room.]
Pam: [Describing her previous evening] Just shit-faced! About fifteen
freaking beers, although that shootsy and holy shit, did honk
down a bunch of absinthe!
The connection between the scenes hinges upon the double meaning
of the word ‘loaded’ and follows quite strikingly the sort of transitional
logic that Freud ascribes to dream states in The Interpretation of Dreams.
In dreams, he puts forth:
The ideas which transfer their intensities to each other stand in the loosest
of mutual relations. They are linked by associations of a kind that is scorned
by our normal thinking and relegate to the use of jokes. In particular, we
find associations based on homonyms and verbal similarities treated as equal
in value (1965, 629).
Archer’s use of this technique can by understood as a means by which

the creators, perhaps unconsciously, create a fictional space in which, like
in dreams, it is possible to address drives and desires too socially taboo
to consider in straightforward terms. Moments after the transition just
described, the character of Cheryl proceeds to punch Pam in order to
induce her to vomit. She then turns to Cyril, telling him, with a hint of
seduction in her voice, that she has ‘lost her appetite-for food, that is’. This
intertwining of scatology, violence and eroticism represents just the sort
of repressed desire that, according to psychoanalytic theory, requires the
mitigation of dream logic and structure to remain palatable and enjoyable.
ARCHER AND THE ID, ARCHER AND OEDIPAL DESIRE

Having established the sense in which the authors of Archer craft a text in
which repressed desires are made manifest in fashion that mitigates con-
scious rejection, I now turn to the ‘reader-centered’ approach that Storey
describes. This interpretative strategy asks the critic to consider the ele-
ments of the text that give expression to the consumer’s unacknowledged
but deeply held subconscious drives. The intentionality of the author thus
plays a far less central role, as the psychoanalytic success of a text depends
only on the viewer not being too harshly reminded of the fact that
repressed material is being made manifest. Given the relatively low level of
understanding (or interest) that most viewers have in Freudian concepts,
this allows for a text that might be seen as rather obvious to the critic.
Though Archer engages playfully with a variety of desires attributed to the
unconscious in psychoanalytic thought, it most commonly invokes drives
towards non-normative sexual behaviour, often mixed with a sense of
sadomasochism. In this section I consider this tendency of Archer in terms
of the Oedipal drive and the theorized dual forces of eros and thanatos.
As the interrogation scene that opens Archer’s first episode makes plain,
much of the humour in the program derives from its interrogation of the
relationship between Sterling and his mother Mallory. The series spells
out an Oedipal drama in which Sterling, having no knowledge of his own
father, condenses both parental roles into the character of his mother.
Mallory, simultaneously sensuously feminine and stern in the manner of
a prototypical father figure, becomes a simultaneous object of Sterling’s
drives towards both sex and violence. According to Freud, a young boy
plays out an Oedipal drama by lusting after his mother and fantasizing
90 M. SIENKIEWICZ
about the death of his father. For Sterling Archer, a man who maintains a
boyish level of maturity and self-awareness, his mother takes on both roles.
Though never becoming the focus of the narrative, this story of Oedipal
desire is present throughout the series premiere. Later in the first episode,
by way of explaining Sterling’s failed relationship with the character of
Lana, Archer cuts to a flashback of the two lovers in bed. They speak
lovingly to one another. Lana suggests they reengage intercourse while
watching pornography. She flips on the television and moves towards
Sterling as the phone rings. He picks up and begins talking to Mallory.
Frustrated, Lana turns off the porn. Sterling, with the phone still open,
turns to Lana, whispering ‘No, turn it on. I can do both.’ A few scenes
later the theme of mother-son sexuality is further developed, as Sterling
enters Mallory’s office to find her masturbating. Sterling verbalizes a mild
disgust at the sight but goes on to enter the room and discuss his own
philandering.
This Oedipal comedy takes on yet another Freudian form in a running
gag that develops over the course of the series. As a running joke through-
out the series, Mallory stumbles into a series of statements that, to the ears
of her son Sterling, are understood entirely on the level of sexuality. At
the conclusion of each, Sterling exclaims ‘phrasing!’ in order to alert his
mother to the sexual implications of her words. For example, in a scene
during which Mallory complains about the professional ethics of a rival,
male competitor:
Mallory: You want to play me hard?

Sterling: Phrasing!
Mallory: Then you better nut up!
Sterling: Phrasing!
Mallory: Cause I’ve swallowed just about as much as I can take from you!
Sterling: Hey! Phrasing!
Each element of the exchange falls precisely into the category of

humour that Freud describes as double entendre, meaning a joke that
‘depends quite specially on the sexual meaning’ despite the presence of an
equally available non-sexual meaning (1989, 44). In Freud’s conception
of comedy these double entendres function to aid in the release of nervous
energy that comes with the expression of repressed sexual and aggres-
sive desires (Buijzen and Valkenburg 2004, 148). Set in the context of
Archer’s mother-son dynamics, however, they take on a second meaning.
In this case Sterling’s insistence on pointing to his own mother’s sexual-

ity via the vehicle of double entrendre can be understood as allowing the
viewer to safely play out her Oedipal inclinations. Although the material
is perhaps too overt to be considered revelatory of the repressions of the
producers, the Oedipal content, filtered through the identification char-
acter of Sterling, can nonetheless be understood as providing pleasure in
part through its expression of the audiences deeply held repressed desires.
The final scene of Archer’s first episode cleverly combines the two main
components of Oedipal desire. In a comically confusing ‘Mexican stand-
off’ Sterling finds himself holding a gun to Lana’s head while an infiltra-
tor—the man who was performing the mock interrogation earlier—puts
a gun to Mallory’s head and threatens to shoot her. The assailant asks
Sterling to envision his mother ‘down in the gutter’ and describes her
violent demise. The scene resolves as Lana screams in disgust, noting that
Sterling has become physically aroused at the thought of Mallory’s death,
creating the distraction that ultimately saves the day. The scene, reaching
for the ultimate taboo in the pursuit of edgy comedy, engages directly
with the Oedipal implications of Mallory taking on both the feminine
and masculine elements of Sterling’s parenting. As both loving mother
and relentless disciplinarian, Mallory has aroused in her son a simultane-
ous sexual and violent desire that finds expression when he is forced to
consciously consider her gruesome death. From a Freudian perspective,
his erection declares that he wants to love his mother and kill his father.
In this case, they are condensed into a single figure. Although it is unclear
how conscious the creators are of this dynamic, it would seem to nonethe-
less offer viewers the pleasure of relief in seeing their own, deeply hidden
Oedipal desires expressed.
ARCHER, EROS AND THANATOS

Archer’s consistent engagement with Freudian psychoanalytic concepts
perhaps finds its most satisfying and ingenious expression in the program’s
dedication to the linking of sexual and violent desires. The program links
the two in both obvious and subtle ways without resulting to overt con-
templation of their connection. The highly unusual, nonjudgmental way
in which sex and death are intermingled throughout the show offers a rare
opportunity to clearly illustrate media’s potential for giving voice to the
component parts of Freud’s conception of the id.
92 M. SIENKIEWICZ
Animation has long been considered an ideal place for the representa-
tion of Freud’s general breakdown of the personality into the superego,
ego and id. David Berland, in a study of Disney and psychoanalysis, argues
that the world of Mickey and Donald is beset with Freudian allusions.
The debates that go on between Donald’s mini angel and devil selves,
for example, can be understood as a battle between the superego and id
(1981, 96). Similarly, Mickey’s perfectly behaved, sexless persona makes
him the embodiment of the superego, whereas Goofy’s slovenly joyfulness
stands in for the id (1981, 97). Archer employs a similar tactic, but at a
more sophisticated Freudian level.
Sterling is a truly powerful personification of the id. At the most basic
level, he represents the absolute refusal to maintain the rules of one’s
social position. A running joke throughout the program derives from his
insistence on broadcasting his position as the world’s greatest secret agent
because if one does not, then ‘what’s the point?’ Sterling’s appetites and
fears account for the near entirety of his character with few scenes going
by in which he is not drinking, copulating, destroying or doing some com-
bination of the three. However, what makes Archer more useful in the
explicating of Freud’s concept of the id is the means by which the program
goes deeper, expressing the Freudian division of eros (libido) and thanatos
(the death drive) that comprise the id component of the personality.
In Civilization and its Discontents Freud codified a more complex con-
ception of the id, acknowledging the need to supplement his theory that
repressed sexual drives constitute the most basic motivations for human
behaviour. He argues that the erotic drive and a destructive drive (named
the thanatos by later writers) ‘seldom—perhaps never—appear in isolation
from each other, but are alloyed with each other in varying and very dif-
ferent proportions’. He points to the sadomasochist as merely an extreme
case in which these dual desires, unconsciously present in all of us, take a
‘conspicuous and tangible form’ (1962, 66). It might be argued that in
contemporary Western society many elements of sexuality that were once
repressed by the socially driven superego no longer must be. However, as
the move towards a more open attitude regarding sexual desire has taken
hold, the same could hardly be said for the case of sexual violence. In a
contemporary classroom, students are probably more open to consider-
ing the possibility that sexual desire drives their actions at a subconscious
level. Given the progress that has been made in fostering awareness of
sexual assault, however, the connection between sex and violence, eros and
thanatos, perhaps more than ever, is likely to be a point of repression.
In Archer, however, they are presented as intimate, inseparable instincts,

just as Freud would have it. In the character of Sterling, this manifests
primarily in exuberant scenes in which he revels in his ability to simulta-
neously engage in destruction and eroticism. In ‘Tragical History’, for
example, Sterling fights twin sister ninjas who, in previous scenes, have
been remarked upon both for their skills with katanas and hand jobs. The
fight becomes complicated by Sterling’s obviously torn sense of purpose in
the battle. On the one hand, he needs to defeat them in order to survive.
On the other, he feels a desperate desire to seduce the twins. The added
taboo of incest is always mixed into the scene. Sterling assures the twins
he is ‘totally into, obviously’ the idea of sleeping with sisters simultane-
ously. Such scenes are commonplace in Archer, appearing at least once per
episode and arguably giving the audience a form of safe expression of the
drives towards both sex and destruction.
More potentially shocking, however, to the contemporary viewer, is the
aggressive way in which the character of Cheryl articulates the intimate
connections between the allures of sexual pleasure and self-destructions.
Cheryl’s comedic position is related almost entirely to her ability to overtly
express the ways in which she finds death and self-affliction erotic. The joke,
more often than not, derives simply from her ability to express this fact. A
monologue she delivers in the episode ‘Honeypot’ nicely enforces this point:
Cheryl: Imagine […] a big sweaty fireman carries you out of a burning
building, lays you out on the sidewalk and you think ok, yeah, he’s gonna
give you mouth to mouth. But instead he just starts choking the shit out
of you and the last sensation you feel before you die is he is squeezing your
throat so hard that big, wet blob of drool drips off his teeth and, blurp, onto
your popped out eyeballs… I’m wet just thinking about it.
The monologue is, in its own right decidedly unfunny. It expresses what
it is, to most observers, not only a shocking sexual preference but also
one in which it is morally abhorrent to find humour. But yet, for some
at least, when placed into the context of Archer’s fictional universe, in
which dream logics trump narrative coherence, an atmosphere of ‘fully
baked’ haze lingers and repressions of all sorts are made manifest, there
is something amusing and even pleasurable in hearing this most taboo of
sentiments given voice. This does not prove, of course, that the pleasure
of Archer derives from the relief of seeing one’s repressed desired made
manifest in a safe space. It is, however, a persuasive way to explain how
this might be the case.
94 M. SIENKIEWICZ
CONCLUSION
I have illustrated the ways in which Archer represents a model text
through which to teach both the ‘author-centered’ and ‘reader-centered’
approaches that Storey develops in his discussion of psychoanalysis. I have,
admittedly, for the most part avoided considering competing possibili-
ties for the popularity of Archer’s deep engagement with taboo humour.
There are many other means of explaining Archer’s aesthetics and their
success. However, no competing approach ought to detract from the ped-
agogical possibilities that Archer offers in terms of teaching psychoanalytic
media theory. By combining representations of oft-repressed desires with
an innovative, dream-like mode of animated story-telling, Archer offers an
opportunity both to draw students into the main concepts of psychoanaly-
sis, as well as to consider the more subtle implications of media’s relation-
ship with the theory. Its bold use of taboo material immediately demands
both attention and critical consideration. And although few students will
freely admit their joy in the show derives from their own repressed drives
towards sex and death, Archer nonetheless provides a perfect opportunity
in which to provoke such a discussion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Richard. 2003. Psychoanalytic Film Theory. In Blackwell Companion to
Film Theory, ed. Toby Miller, 123–145. London: Blackwell.
Berland, David. 1981. Disney and Freud: Walt Meets the Id. The Journal of
Popular Culture 15(4): 93–104.
Buijzen, Moniek, and Patti M. Valkenburg. 2004. Developing a Typology of
Humour in Audiovisual Media. Media Psychology 6: 147–167.
Curtin, Michael. 1996. On Edge: Culture Industries in the Neo-Network Era. In
Making and Selling Culture, ed. Richard Ohmann, 181–202. Hanover:
Wesleyan University Press.
Fiske, John. 1987. Television Culture. New York: Methuen.
Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. 1987. Psychoanalysis, Film, and Television. In Channels
of Discourse, ed. Robert C. Allen, 172–210. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press.
Freud, Sigmund. 1962. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: Norton.
———. 1965. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Avon.
———. 1989. Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. London: Liveright.
Lotz, Amanda D. 2007. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York: NYU
Press.
Mander, Jerry. 1978. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York:
William Morrow Paperbacks.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16(3): 6–18.
Napier, Susan J. 2005. The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation.
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149(1): 72–79.
Sepinwall, Alan. 2012. The Revolution Was Televised. New York: What’s Alan
Watching?.
Storey, John. 2012. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Dorchester: Longman.
Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.
Taboo Humanity: Paradoxes of Humanizing
Muslims in North American Sitcoms
Kyle Conway
In December 2010, CBS news anchor Katie Couric said she thought ‘the
bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the
most disturbing stories to surface this year. Of course, a lot of noise was
made about the Islamic Center, or mosque, down near the World Trade
Center, but I think there wasn’t enough […] careful analysis and evalua-
tion’. As a solution, she proposed, ‘Maybe we need a Muslim version of
The Cosby Show. I know that sounds crazy, but The Cosby Show did so much
to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think
sometimes people are afraid of things they don’t understand. [M]aybe if
it became more a part of the popular culture’, attitudes toward Muslims
would change (Katie Couric Speaks, 2011).1
In fact, Couric was late to the game. In January 2007, a gentle
Muslim-themed comedy called Little Mosque on the Prairie (2007–2012)
premiered on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) flagship
English-language television network.2 It was the creation of Zarqa Nawaz,
a feminist Muslim filmmaker whose previous films included a comedy
Thanks to Lucian Stone for the conversation about ‘humanness’ that led to this
chapter.
K. Conway ()
University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_6
98 K. CONWAY
about two brothers accused of terrorism when their backyard grill blows
up, and a documentary about conservatism in North American mosques.
It was produced by Westwind Pictures, whose biggest prior hit was the
reality show Designer Guys. By the end of 2010, when Couric made her
comment, it had finished its fourth season, and it would run for two more
before ending in 2012.
Little Mosque was remarkable in many ways, not least of which was its
success—it attracted more than 2.1 million viewers when it premiered, rival-
ing the ratings of popular US programs such as CSI and Grey’s Anatomy.
It differed from previous shows about Muslims in many ways, including its
setting and characters. It took place in the fictional small town of Mercy
in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, and it was about a mosque com-
munity that found a place to worship in the basement of an aging Anglican
church. It had an ensemble cast with six major Muslim characters, ranging
across the political and theological spectrums, in addition to non-Muslim
characters who represented a similar range of perspectives. The mosque-
within-a-church conceit allowed writers to put Muslims and Christians
into conversation with each other, and the diversity of characters allowed
them to address a wide range of points of view. According to Nawaz, that
was the show’s purpose: to ‘[show] Muslims being normal. It humanizes
Muslims. I want the broader society to look at us as normal, with the same
issues and concerns as anyone else’ (Bilici 2010, 204–205).
But despite its creator’s efforts, Little Mosque did not do what Couric
thought a Muslim version of The Cosby Show should do. Although it
expanded the range of representations of Muslims on North American
television, it did so in a paradoxical way. ‘Humanizing Muslims’ was a
paradoxical task. It presupposed that ‘regular’ viewers were non-Muslim,
and as a result, ‘humanizing Muslims’ meant erasing visible markers of dif-
ference. To talk about belief, writers had to privilege simplicity over com-
plexity. Some traits were entirely out of bounds: ‘humanizing Muslims’
meant avoiding negative emotions such as anger and indignation. Hence
the paradox: ‘humanizing’ Muslim characters meant cutting them off
from much of what it means to be human.
In this chapter, I describe the factors that led to this paradox. Instead
of describing how people use humour to deal with taboo topics, I con-
sider topics that remain taboo—at least in sitcoms—even with the use of
humour. I begin by considering the conceptual limits of representation,
which result from the logic (or illogic) of synecdoche that subtends the
idea that a member of a group can stand in for the group itself. Then I
TABOO HUMANITY: PARADOXES OF HUMANIZING MUSLIMS IN NORTH... 99
describe two forms of pressure exerted on program-makers that limit the

choices they can make. Some pressures are a function of genre: although
sitcoms frequently serve as an entrance point for minorities into the
realm of television programming, the door they provide has often been
narrow, allowing certain people through but not others. Other pressures
are related to policy and industry. Canadian broadcasters have a mandate
to represent the country’s diversity, but producers and networks want
their shows to be commercially successful; as a result, commercial suc-
cess plays a larger role in their decision-making process than policy. CBC
executives have long had to borrow strategies from their commercial
rivals, even though the CBC receives funding from Parliament.
To make my argument, I adopt a critical production studies approach
(Caldwell 2008; Havens et al. 2009). I draw on interviews conducted in
2011 and 2012 with people involved in the production of Little Mosque,
including the show’s creator, executive producers, directors, writers, and
financial underwriters, as well as CBC network executives involved in the
green-lighting process.3 I supplement these interviews with CBC reports
and accounts from popular magazines and newspapers. These addi-
tional materials corroborate, and sometimes challenge, program-makers’
accounts, and in the process, they provide a multi-dimensional picture of
the production process. The conclusion will examine a specific episode of
Little Mosque where characters’ reactions to mistreatment (detention at
the airport) demonstrate writers’ avoidance of depictions of negative emo-
tions. In the end, I describe a situation characterized by good intentions
but contradictory results: although the characters had a wide range of per-
spectives, there were still Muslim viewers who felt left out; although the
characters experienced a wide range of emotions, there were still some—
which were no less human for being negative—that were left out.
THE LOGIC OF SYNECDOCHE AND REPRESENTATION

In his story ‘The Congress’, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges describes a
plan devised by a group of utopian dreamers that illustrates the shortcom-
ing of synecdochic representation, where one person stands in for a group
with similar traits. Led by don Alejandro Glencoe, the dreamers want to
‘[call] together a Congress of the World that would represent all men of
all nations’, but they soon discover it is a complicated task: ‘Planning an
assembly to represent all men was like fixing the exact number of platonic
types—a puzzle that had taxed the imagination of thinkers for centuries’
100 K. CONWAY
(Borges 1974, 33–34). The problem is their list of traits to represent is

ever-expanding, and as a result, so is their need for representatives. In the
end, they abandon their plans and destroy their work because they realize
the Congress is coterminous with all of humanity, making representation
unnecessary: ‘The Congress of the World’, don Alejandro explains, ‘began
with the first moment of the world and it will go on when we are dust.
There’s no place on earth where it does not exist’ (Borges 1974, 47).
A key idea that underlies Borges’s story is that of the asymmetric rela-
tionship synecdochic representation creates. No person’s identity matches
up exactly with the identities of the members of the group he or she rep-
resents, but as a stand-in for a group, a person still comes to define its
public face. The act of standing in creates a power differential between the
representative and the other group members, whose diversity is obscured
in the process (Galewski 2006). It is for this reason that don Alejandro’s
Congress, as it is initially conceived, fails: the people who were represented
felt that those who spoke for them could do so inadequately. Hence the
expansion of the list of traits to account for, and, ultimately, the characters’
realization that representation, as they understood it, was bound to fail.
This logic has important implications for Little Mosque on the Prairie,
whose creators wanted characters who better represented Muslims in
Canada (and North America more broadly). To that end, they created
six main Muslim characters. First is Yasir Hamoudi, an opportunistic con-
tractor who rents the basement of the church on the pretense of hous-
ing his business there, and his wife Sarah, a local woman who converted
from Christianity to marry him. They have a daughter named Rayyan,
the town’s doctor and a strong feminist. There is also Fatima Dinssa, a
woman from Nigeria who owns a local café and is more traditional in her
approach to Islam. Finally, there is Baber Siddiqui, an irascible conserva-
tive who serves as the mosque’s imam until the arrival of Amaar Rashid, a
young (and liberal) lawyer-turned-imam who comes from Toronto in the
pilot episode.
This distribution of characters—an example of what Christopher
Cwynar (2013, 43) calls ‘strategic essentialism’—clearly demonstrates the
logic of synecdoche. Zarqa Nawaz explains, ‘I was fortunate enough to
have […] six main Muslim characters […] so each character could repre-
sent a different aspect of the Muslim community, so they didn’t all have to
be these “good” practicing Muslims, so you could have every spectrum, so
you could deal with all the different nuances of the Muslim community’.4
Some viewers felt the show accomplished this task. As one wrote in a letter
to the editor in an Ottawa newspaper,
The sitcom was actually a fairly realistic look at some of the challenges that
Muslims face in Canada and around the western world. It also showed that
Muslims are not always the typical stereotypes that one sees in the media.
There were Muslims from various countries and cultures, each arguing typi-
cally about what food would be best to serve for iftar (the opening of the
fast), and how the moon should be best sighted for the start of Ramadan.
There were Muslims who had adopted the faith of Islam through conversion
as well as Muslims who were fairly secular in their approach, and Muslims
whom one might describe as ‘straight off the boat’ (Sherazi 2007, A15).
Others identified the shortcomings of the show’s characters. Faiza Hirji

(2011, 44) wrote of the doctrinal differences the show obscured: ‘all of
Mercy’s Muslims seem to practise the same way—if there are Sunnis and
Shias, who would differ in their understanding of how an imam is appointed,
or in the specifics of their prayers, this is not made apparent’. Tarek Fatah
and Farazana Hassan (2007) of the Muslim Canadian Congress, in contrast,
considered the liberal/conservative spectrum: ‘Although the characters are
meant to reflect the diversity of Muslim society, a closer examination reveals
the show is not about liberal or progressive Muslims competing with con-
servatives. Rather, the writer has created a false dichotomy of ‘conservative’
Muslims vs. ‘ultra-conservative’ Muslims[,] the former being disingenu-
ously passed on as feminist and progressive’.
The point here is not to offer an exhaustive analysis of the reception
of Little Mosque on the Prairie, but to highlight how the logic of synec-
doche created an asymmetric relationship between the show’s characters
and the real people they were meant to represent. The show fell short of
Nawaz’s goal of ‘deal[ing] with all the different nuances of the Muslim
community’. How could it do otherwise? There are more North American
Muslim identities than six characters could embody. Although the show’s
makers were not deliberate in excluding certain identities, the gaps they
left were the result of decisions they made: the list of traits they could
address was finite, and addressing one category meant not addressing
another. Thus the relevant question becomes, why did they choose the
traits they did? And what effect did those choices have on what it meant to
‘humanize’ Muslims for their viewers?
102 K. CONWAY
TELEVISION’S STAGES OF REPRESENTATION

To answer these questions, it is useful to consider a second meaning of
the word ‘representation’: in addition to ‘standing in for’, it also means
‘depiction’. In television studies, this second meaning is more common
as scholars have asked, what images do viewers see of minorities? In an
early influential paper, Cedric Clark (1969, 18) suggested: ‘The com-
mercial nature of the medium emphasizes advertising of products bought
by those at the top of the social structure, and thus reinforces the sta-
tus quo. And it does this often at the expense of those at the bottom
through non-recognition, ridicule, or regulation.’ Each of these stages—
non-recognition, ridicule, and regulation—allow the hegemonic class to
control the images of ‘those at the bottom’. During the stage of non-
recognition, minorities are excluded. When they exert pressure for visibil-
ity, they appear on TV ‘at the price of being ridiculed’ (1969, 19). When
they continue to exert pressure through protests, such as during the US
civil rights movement of the 1960s, they begin to appear as people in posi-
tions of responsibility for maintaining law and order, where they call on
viewers (directly or indirectly) to ‘identify with the “right” side of society’.
Clark identified a fourth stage but was doubtful about minorities’ ability
to reach it: ‘In their bid to be recognized in a natural fashion by the mass
media, ethnic groups must also pass through a fourth stage, which can be
characterized as one of respect’ (1969, 21).
Clark’s model has been applied, critiqued, and extended by schol-
ars writing about African Americans (Means Coleman and McIlwain
2005), gays and lesbians (Baley and Lucas 2006), and Native Americans
(Fitzgerald 2010), to give only a few examples. The pattern also seems to
fit depictions of Muslims (and Arabs, two categories that are often con-
flated), especially in North American film and television. Images of men
as ‘stooges-in-sheets’ and women as ‘bosomy bellydancers’—clear exam-
ples of ridicule (Shaheen 2001, pp. 19–20)—have given way to images
of Muslims as terrorists or, more interestingly, innocent victims of rac-
ism who must accept the indignity of suspicion in order to prove their
loyalty to the United States (Alsultany 2008). In this second case, stories
that present Muslims as unfair targets of hate and discrimination have a
regulatory effect because they illustrate the idea that suspicion of Muslims
is natural and warranted.
With respect to Little Mosque, the value of Clark’s model is two-fold:
it highlights the evolution of depictions of minorities, and it emphasizes
the influence of the socio-political context on the TV industry, and of the
industry in turn on that evolution. At first glance, the earnestness with

which Little Mosque’s creators approached their show, made evident in
the range of characters, suggests that Muslims have begun to enter the
‘respect’ stage, even if depictions in other programs remain in prior stages.
But if that is the case, it is so only partially: the logic of synecdoche dic-
tates that the range of traits represented will be smaller than the ones that
characterize the broader Muslim community.
To understand what is left out, let us consider the socio-political and
industrial contexts affecting Canadian television. Two factors are espe-
cially important: Canada’s policy of multiculturalism and its predomi-
nantly commercial system of broadcasting. Of those, multiculturalism is a
weak force, while commercialism is a strong force.
CANADIAN BROADCASTING AND MULTICULTURALISM

In the Canadian context, ‘multiculturalism’ can refer to diversity as a
demographic reality, a philosophy about how such diversity should be
managed, and the policies meant to put such philosophies into action
(Kallen 1982). Canada was the first country in the world to enact an offi-
cial policy of multiculturalism in 1971, and in the following decades, it
enacted two policies (one in 1985 and one in 1991) directly related to
multiculturalism in broadcasting, but any direct effects on programs have
been mitigated by the ambiguities of Canada’s experience with managing
its cultural diversity.
The 1971 policy came as an indirect result of the rise of the Quebec sep-
aratist movement in the 1960s. Although the colonial powers that ‘settled’
Canada were France and Great Britain, immigrants, especially those who
moved to the western provinces, came from a wide range of other places.
These non-French, non-English immigrants objected to the French-
English dichotomy that framed debates about Quebec and shaped the
policies, such as official bilingualism, that the federal government enacted
in response. Their objections led Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to enact
the multiculturalism policy, which had the added benefit of undercutting
one argument in support of Quebec nationalism, namely the idea that
Canada was not only bilingual but also bicultural.5
The policy has had a mixed impact on its broadcasting policy. In the
decade that followed its enactment, the term ‘visible minority’ entered
the Canadian lexicon as a way to describe people of non-European ori-
gins (Karim 1993). It drew attention to the visible markers of culture,
104 K. CONWAY
race, and ethnicity such as skin colour and dress that set these new immi-
grants apart and made them targets for discrimination. By the early 1980s,
visible minorities had grown increasingly vocal about the discrimination
they faced, prompting the government to create a Special Committee on
Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society in the House of
Commons. The committee examined social integration, employment,
public policy, education, justice, and the media. About the latter, it said,
‘The media are very far from the goal “of making Canadians visible to each
other”. Our very advance to the forefront of communications technology
brings with it a threat to our identity as a nation, not to mention to ethnic
groups within the nation’ (Canada 1984, 94).
In 1985, in response to visible minorities’ complaints, Canada’s regu-
latory agency, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission (CRTC), crafted ‘A Broadcasting Policy Reflecting Canada’s
Linguistic and Cultural Diversity’, which established five categories of
‘ethnic programs’. Type A programs were in languages other than English
or French. Types B, C, and D were in English or French and were directed
at ‘culturally or racially distinct’ groups. The only programs intended
for broader audiences were those of type E: ‘A program in French or
in English that is directed to any ethnic group or to a mainstream audi-
ence and that depicts Canada’ s cultural diversity through services that are
multicultural, educational, informational, cross-cultural or intercultural in
nature’ (CRTC 1985). To be licensed as an ‘ethnic station’, stations were
required to devote at least 60 percent of their programming between 6:00
am and midnight to programs in categories A, B, C, and D.
The existence of these ethnic stations had an influence on the presence of
minorities on ‘mainstream’ commercial stations. In 1991, Parliament revised
the Broadcasting Act; the new act defined the system as made up of ‘public,
private and community elements’ that collectively ‘serve[d] the needs and
interests, and reflect the circumstances and aspirations, of Canadian men,
women and children, including equal rights, the linguistic duality and mul-
ticultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society’ (3.1.b and 3.1.d.iii).
Because the system, by definition, was a single one, ‘it was initially possible
to use the text to argue that as long as there is cultural and racial diversity
somewhere in the system, it is balanced’ (Roth et al. 2011, 390). After 2001,
in response to the continued absence of minorities on the major commercial
networks, the CRTC began to require broadcasters ‘to develop strategies
specific to their own operations that detail the measures they are taking and
procedures they will follow to ensure that they properly meet their ongoing
responsibilities to reflect and portray cultural diversity’ (CRTC 2005). But
a 2004 report by a Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) task force
found that the inertia of past practices made change slow. In its report, the
CAB wrote:
There are very few experts (or expert news analysts/guests) from culturally
diverse backgrounds used in English-language news. Very few on-screen
roles such as anchor or reporter are filled by individuals from culturally
diverse backgrounds on French-language news. Very few primary speak-
ing roles are filled by individuals from culturally diverse backgrounds on
English-language drama (Task Force 2004, 4).
Thus, multicultural broadcasting was characterized by a contradiction:

the CRTC saw it as important enough to warrant its own policy, but the
‘ethnic stations’ it created targeted minority viewers, not majority viewers.
This let the commercial networks off the hook, able to pursue their goals
unfettered by the need to present a more representative image of Canada.
In this way, concerns about multiculturalism were subordinated to the
exigencies of Canada’s predominantly commercial system.
COMMERCIALISM AND THE CBC
The commercial logic also affected Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC,
which had an even more specific mandate. The 1991 Broadcasting Act
required the CBC to offer programming that ‘reflect[ed] the multicul-
tural and multiracial nature of Canada’ (3.1.m.viii). Parliament required
the CBC to file annual reports about its efforts to uphold this mandate;
during the years leading up to Little Mosque on the Prairie, these reports
tended to focus on news programming (where content was concerned)
and efforts to diversify production staff (where hiring practices were
concerned).
In fact, the mandate’s role was indirect at best in the conception and
green-lighting of Little Mosque. Its principal value was to provide the CBC
with a reason to take a risk on the show (Conway 2014). But the mandate
did not figure into Zarqa Nawaz’s decision to create the program.6 Nor
did it figure into Westwind Pictures’ decision to produce it, as executive
producer Mary Darling explains:
106 K. CONWAY
I think there is that feeling that it’s CBC’s mandate to reflect what we see
of ourselves as Canadians to ourselves as Canadians […]. But I see Little
Mosque on the Prairie as a show which should have been able to air on any
of the channels. I don’t think it has to be mandated—I think […] we went
in with a very strong interest in the content for our own reasons, but those
reasons couldn’t become preachy or didactic, or it wouldn’t have gotten 2.1
million on its first airing. It had to be about relevance, relatable character
comedy with some real laughs in it.7
According to Darling, Anton Leo, the CBC executive who was instru-
mental in green-lighting the show, thought about Little Mosque in similar
terms:
When we pitched [Little Mosque] […] Anton didn’t say to us, ‘Hey, that
really fits our mandate beautifully, let’s do that.’ He said, ‘You know what?
I am—my parents came straight from Sicily’ [… H]is parents came from
Italy […] and Anton was a first-generation Canadian, but he really got the
cultural context in the universal characters that we tried to create. He never
went off about, ‘Doesn’t this hit the mandate beautifully?’ and ‘This is what
Canadians need’.8
Instead, Leo saw the show in terms of its potential audience appeal: in a
country of immigrants, viewers could relate to a story about marginaliza-
tion, regardless of which group was marginalized.9
The question of audience appeal was, at its core, a question about com-
mercial success. This is clear in the answers I received when I asked Little
Mosque’s writers about what is necessary to make good multicultural pro-
gramming. They worked to strike a balance between depicting diversity
and attracting ‘mainstream’ non-minority viewers:
[W]hat the best multicultural programming […] should do is it should have

[…] an opening up of things that the rest of mainstream culture doesn’t
know and opening it up to them so that they learn about it in a way that
doesn’t feel like a lesson. And you only do that by making something that
has kind of a mainstream appeal to it. And yet it at the same time is a window
into cultures that you normally don’t get a window into. And that’s what I
think Little Mosque did really well. A lot of the programming does not suc-
ceed that well. It doesn’t succeed in [being] interesting to the mainstream
audience, and so its only appeal is to the people of the [ethnicity depicted
in the show].10
This is not to say that writers whitewashed cultural difference, however,

only that they had to temper it by finding points of commonality with
non-minority viewers. As another writer explained:
I don’t like anything where it’s about something that I know nothing about
but I could have written all the jokes, you know what I mean? [… I]f I
see an Aboriginal comic, I want to learn something about the Aboriginal
people or an Aboriginal point of view or something that I don’t know going
in because I could write a whole bunch of […] simplistic and stereotypi-
cal jokes about any culture based on my rudimentary understanding—but
the deeper you get into something, the better the comedy is always going
to be because then you get subtlety, and […] the more subtlety you have,
the more likely you are to hit pay-dirt in terms of finding common ground
[…]. Whatever it might be, there’s just something where you’re grounded
enough that there’s a little thing they do, some ritual, some little thing
between mother and child, that’s very similar to something you do. They do
it like that, but it’s just like the way we do something else. They both mean
the same thing, you know, and that’s where you find the comedy.11
Writers’ concerns about reaching an audience matched those of the Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation itself, which had seen its budget cut dramatically
over the course of prior decades. Parliament was asking the CBC to do more
with less, and the CBC in response had adopted progressively more com-
mercial strategies. Commercial networks in Canada, especially those car-
ried on cable, sought to create audiences by counter-programming against
their competitors. The CBC began to adopt a similar niche approach in the
1990s: its focus was Canadian programming. It wrote in a submission to the
House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage,
As the environment in which we operate shifts and the business models

upon which we depend become more and more unreliable, there is an esca-
lating need to consider how best to bring the system back into balance.
And the strength of the Canadian system hinges on a robust national public
broadcaster, since there are some things that private broadcasters either can-
not or will not do, but that a public broadcaster can and will do (CBC/
Radio-Canada 2007, 6).
What were those things? The CBC argued it could provide program-
ming that was ‘Canadian’, ‘distinctive’, and ‘intelligent/challenging’,
among other things (CBC/Radio-Canada 2007, 7–8), as opposed to the
108 K. CONWAY
commercial networks, which relied heavily on programming imported

from the United States. In other words, the CBC sought to justify con-
tinued Parliamentary appropriations by re-articulating its public service
mandate in commercial terms: Canada’s broadcasting system worked bet-
ter if the CBC, through its niche strategy of Canadian programming, gave
commercial broadcasters the freedom to be, in a word, commercial.
In this way, the writers’ concerns about audiences echoed those of the
CBC. The CBC was willing to take a risk on Little Mosque because it
helped the network make the case that it was upholding its mandate while
also being commercially strategic. The writers’ (and producers’) attention
to non-minority audiences paid off in the ratings Little Mosque received.
But what effect did they have on representations of Muslims? If the logic
of synecdoche means writers could not reflect all aspects of Muslim life,
what did they leave out?
DISCRIMINATION AS COMIC MISUNDERSTANDING

The people who created Little Mosque wanted to address issues related to
discrimination. The CBC’s Anton Leo explained,
[Creator Zarqa Nawaz] told me stories about people calling the police when
a white van showed up in front of her mom’s house [and…] about people
who didn’t want to really associate with them [that is, Muslims]. And it was
that sense of suspicion that animated this conversation I had with Zarqa […]
because no one was more in the news than Muslims at the time.12
Writers, as their explanations show, wanted to create a program that depicted

Muslims more accurately, or at least less like generic ‘ethnic’ characters.
They even wrote scenes where characters faced discrimination and allowed
characters to express indignation, as long as it was funny. But in each case,
they resolved the plot by redirecting attention away from the structural
factors (such as racism and the institutionalized war on terror) that made
such discrimination possible and focused instead on characters’ personal
shortcomings. In other words, there was a limit to the negative emotions
characters could express about racism, and to resolve the plots, characters
had to express personal responsibility for the problems they faced.13
The pilot episode illustrated this phenomenon well and set a pattern
for the rest of the season. It begins with Amaar, the new imam, in the
airport, as he prepares to check in for his flight to Mercy. He is talking on
the phone to his mother, and he says, ‘It’s not like I dropped a bomb on
him. If Dad thinks it’s suicide, so be it. This is Allah’s plan for me. I’m not
throwing my life away—I’m moving to the Prairies!’ The woman behind
him ducks away, and a few seconds later, security guards drag him away,
saying, ‘Step away from the bag. You’re not going to paradise today.’
The humour, of course, derives from the juxtaposition between Amaar’s
sinister-sounding words and his innocent intents. This juxtaposition con-
tinues a few scenes later, when Amaar finds himself in a small room where
the security guard, who seems to have learned his interrogation technique
from police procedurals on TV, asks him questions. Here and throughout
the episode, the scene builds on viewers’ familiarity with other genres.
Much of the humour comes from parody, or the way writers rework other
shows’ conventions. Thus, in Amaar’s ‘interrogation’, the security guard,
like other TV cops, presumes the suspect is guilty. He asks why Amaar
left his father’s law firm, and Amaar answers, ‘While I was in Egypt doing
my Islamic studies, I found my true calling.’ ‘Explosives?’ asks the officer.
Amaar rolls his eyes: ‘Yeah, explosives.’ But the scene does not end as it
would in an episode of Law and Order or CSI. The agent does not extract
a confession, but instead insists on his obviously mistaken understanding
of the situation. Amaar finally explains he is moving to Saskatchewan to
become an imam, and he says he can prove it: ‘I have the ad I answered
for the job. You can call the mosque if you like. If the story doesn’t check
out, you can deport me to Syria.’ The officer answers, ‘Hey, you do not
get to choose which country we deport you to.’
In addition to parody, another form of intertextuality—satire—is at
work here. Satire, as Cwynar (2013, 52–53) writes, is concerned with
‘moral, social, and political’ critique, whereas parody is concerned with
other texts’ formal or aesthetic qualities: ‘Satire […] reduces the stature
of dominant entities, while parody often refers to shared cultural mate-
rials and frames of reference.’14 For viewers, the reference to Syria was
likely to bring to mind Maher Arar, a Canadian-Syrian dual citizen whom
the United States deported to Syria in 2002 on suspicion of belonging
to Al-Qaeda. A Canadian commission of inquiry later cleared him of all
charges, but the controversy surrounding his extraordinary rendition
would have been familiar to viewers of the CBC, whose news programs
covered it extensively. But the satirical edge is dulled when the scene ends
with a clever one-liner. It is delivered by the contractor Yasir Hamoudi,
whose answering machine the agent reaches when he calls the number
Amaar gives him: ‘Hello. You’ve reached Yasir’s construction and con-
tracting at our new location. We’ll blow away the competition!’
110 K. CONWAY
Satire’s critique is mitigated later in the episode, too. When Amaar

arrives in Mercy, a reporter from the local paper asks whether he is a ter-
rorist, a question that the town’s radio shock jock, Fred Tupper, wants
to ask, too. When Amaar accepts Fred’s invitation to appear on air, their
exchange sounds much like what viewers might hear on conservative talk
radio. In that respect, it uses parody’s intertextuality in the service of sat-
ire’s critique, at least at first:
Fred: Are you a terrorist?

Amaar: No, I’m –
Fred: Do you object to the term?
Amaar: Of course I do!
Fred: Or do you prefer mujaheddin?
Amaar: Yes! No! I mean, look, Fred, I came here to clear the air. You’re
not letting me get a word in.
Fred: Oh, please feel free to give as good as you get. That’s the privilege
of living in a country with freedom.
Amaar: Freedom? To do what? Fan the flames of hatred?
Fred: Oh, isn’t it Muslim preachers like yourself who do that, huh? I got
news for you, Johnny Jihad –
Amaar: That’s –
Fred: Folks around here will not sit back and let that happen. You can
bet your falafel on that!
Fred’s aggressive style and his unwillingness to let Amaar speak both
follow the scripts of shock jocks on networks like Fox News, which is
based in the United States and has been available in Canada since 2004.
Fred forces Amaar to choose between two bad options—Amaar is either
a terrorist or a mujaheddin, and he either supports the freedom to insult
or opposes the very idea of freedom. Fred also makes ‘common sense’
appeals to ‘folks around here’ who ‘will not sit back’ and let Amaar spread
his supposed hatred. In response, Amaar begins to express his frustration
with a system that forces him to say something he does not want to say.
Satire’s critique comes through in that frustration, but it is quickly tem-
pered as the parodied scripts shift from talk radio to the western:
Fred: I call on Rev. Magee to turn you and your gang out of the church
hall by sundown. (cut to shot of Rev. Magee)
Magee: Yasir, this is Rev. Magee again. We need to talk about this lease.15
(cut to shot in Fred’s studio)
Amaar: Sundown? What is this, the wild west?
Fred: You got that right, my little bedouin buckaroo.
The shift from talk radio to the western also marks a shift in the logic
of the episode’s plot. Amaar reaches a line he cannot cross: despite having
made his frustration with Fred (and the airport security agent) clear, he
must now accept responsibility for his unhappiness. Fred finds his weak
spot—his ego and sense of big-city superiority—and exploits it:
Fred: You’re not in the big city any more. (cut to shot of
radio in café)
Amaar (exasperated): Oh, I’ve noticed. Doesn’t anyone in this town
know how to make a cappuccino?
Fred: Oh, you’re saying we are ignorant? (cut to reaction
shots of café patrons)
Amaar (over the radio): Some of you, yes. In fact, I’ve never seen so much
small town ignorance in my life.
Unnamed patron: Well if he hates it here so much, why doesn’t he go
back to Toronto?
The camera cuts to Amaar in his office. He holds a telephone and says,
‘Yes, a one-way ticket back to Toronto.’ Thus, through his actions, he
admits he is not up to the task he has undertaken, an idea confirmed in a
later scene, when Rayyan comes to persuade him to stay:
Amaar (on the phone): A one-way ticket to Toronto. (pause) Amaar Rashid.
(pause) Yes, I’ll hold. (Rayyan enters the office.)
Can’t a Muslim book a one-way flight these days
without someone having to call their supervisor?
Rayyan: Oh, you poor thing! Racial profiling, making it very
difficult for you to run away.
Amaar: What am I supposed to do?
Rayyan: I don’t know. Let me ask the imam. Oh, wait! He’s
running away!
Amaar: Look, I screwed up, okay?
Rayyan: No, it is not okay.
This exchange confirms what the earlier scene suggested: Amaar is frus-
trated not because of the discrimination he has faced but because of his
own personal failings. As Rayyan repeatedly insists, he is ‘running away’
because he ‘screwed up’. Amaar repeats the point at the end of the episode
during a sermon on humility: his failings become the punch-line to his
self-deprecating jokes, which themselves lead to his announcement that
he will stay. The episode follows the sitcom’s narrative logic and ends on a
point of stasis (Feuer 2001).
112 K. CONWAY
Thus the episode responds to the pressures of the commercial system by

hewing to convention and privileging parody (of police procedurals, talk
shows, and westerns) over satire and critique. This pattern recurs through-
out Little Mosque’s run. For instance, in ‘No Fly List’ (season 2, episode
9), Baber Siddiqui is scheduled to give a talk at a conference in Chicago,
but his name appears on a no-fly list. The episode revolves around Baber’s
interactions with the US border guard indifferent to his plight, but in the
end, Baber reveals that his name is not on any list—the ‘list’ was a story he
told to cover up his fear of flying.16 Similarly, in ‘Smooth Hate Criminal’
(season 5, episode 6), it appears that someone has committed a hate crime
against the mosque, but the ‘perpetrator’ is really the town’s mayor, and
the ‘crime’ is the result of a misunderstanding attributable to the mayor’s
ineptitude.
CONCLUSION: TELEVISION’S LOGIC OF PERSONAL

RESPONSIBILITY
In the final analysis, Little Mosque on the Prairie was a complex and
contradictory program. It expanded the range of Muslim characters on
North American television, but, through the structure and logic of its
plot, it restricted the range of emotions they could express. Restriction of
some sort was unavoidable, and the specific form it took in Little Mosque
resulted from program-makers’ decisions in response to policy and indus-
try pressures.
Was Little Mosque the Muslim Cosby Show Katie Couric imagined? No,
but to be fair, The Cosby Show did not do what Couric thought, either.
Similarly to Little Mosque, it expanded the range of black characters: the
main characters Cliff and Clair Huxtable belonged to the professional
class (he was a doctor, she was a lawyer). But, as Sut Jhally and Justin
Lewis show, it gave the impression that US blacks’ material conditions
had improved, when in fact they had declined in the previous decade. By
not addressing the structural factors influencing black poverty, the show
suggested that racism was not based ‘on the functioning of social institu-
tions but upon the behaviour of individuals’ (Jhally and Lewis 1992, 72).
In this light, Little Mosque points to a larger overriding logic shaping
North American television, one that privileges personal, character-driven
explanations over structural accounts of inequality or discrimination.
Perhaps this is because structural accounts would implicate viewers, whom
program-makers are loath to alienate. As long as that logic holds, expres-

sion of certain emotions—danger, indignation, and so on—will remain
taboo, even or especially in sitcoms: if characters take personal responsibil-
ity for problems that are structural in origin, program-makers can leave
viewers undisturbed and willing to tune in again next week.
NOTES
1. Couric made this comment, it should be noted, before Cosby faced multi-
ple accusations of sexual assault.
2. The show’s title was, of course, a play on Little House on the Prairie
(1974–1983), the series based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books of the same
name. Executive producer Mary Darling says it was a reference to her home
state of Minnesota (personal interview, 20 July 2011), but the similarities
between the shows end with their prairie settings. Little Mosque was a half-
hour contemporary sitcom, while Little House was an hour-long historical
drama.
3. I conducted most interviews in person or by telephone, and they lasted
between 30 and 90 minutes. I conducted one interview by email when the
interviewee had limited availability. I structured interviews around the fol-
lowing questions: What relationships (for example, between Muslims and
non-Muslims) did the interviewee want to influence? What issues did the
interviewee see as salient in the context of those relationships? How did they
shape the interviewee’s actions in producing Little Mosque? I cite by name
only those interviewees who gave me explicit permission to do so.
4. Personal interview, 8 April 2011.
5. This is a truncated history of a series of events that were much more com-
plicated. See Cameron (2004) for a collection of primary historical docu-
ments concerning Canada’s multiculturalism policy. The point here is not
an exhaustive account of multiculturalism, but of the policy’s effect on TV
programs, especially Little Mosque.
6. Personal interview, 8 April 2011.
7. Personal interview, 20 July 2011.
10. Writer f.rom seasons 1, 2, and 6, personal interview, 12 August 2011.
11. Writer from seasons 1, 2, and 6, personal interview, 19 July 2011.
13. This logic echoes the one Alsultany (2008) identifies in recent dramas with
Muslim characters. One recurring device writers use to avoid stereotypes is
to create characters wrongly accused of terrorism. To prove their patriotism,
114 K. CONWAY
these characters must accept the injustice of the racism they face. To criticize
it would be to call into question the justness of US foreign and domestic
policy since the rise of Al-Qaeda, but especially since the attacks of 9/11.
14. Cwynar (2013) draws on the work of Katarzyna Rukszto, Zoë Druick, and
especially Linda Hutcheon.
15. This refers to a plot point made earlier: Yasir signed a lease to rent the
church basement for his business, but the lease does not mention the
mosque.
16. This episode caught the attention of the US diplomatic service, which was
more concerned with the depiction of the border guard than the resolution
of the plot, as a leaked cable published by WikiLeaks reveals: ‘The Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has long gone to great pains to highlight
the distinction between Americans and Canadians in its programming, gen-
erally at our expense […]. A December 2007 episode portrayed a Muslim
economics professor trying to remove his name from the No-Fly-List at a
US consulate. The show depicts a rude and eccentric US consular officer
stereotypically attempting to find any excuse to avoid being helpful’ (United
States 2008).
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ch/cable/2008/01/08OTTAWA136.html
PART II
Controversial Humour
in Variety Shows, Commercials
and Factual Programming
Dummies and Demographics: Islamophobia
as Market Differentiation in Post-9/11
Television Comedy
Philip Scepanski
Despite promises and attempts by officials to respect racial difference and

religious freedom, Middle Easterners and Muslims came under height-
ened scrutiny after September 11, 2001. In addition to the relatively subtle
racial profiling of which federal and other agencies were accused, more
obvious Islamophobia surfaced in forms like mosque vandalism (Lewin
and Niebuhr 2001; Ridha 2003). ‘Do you know what it’s like being of
Arab heritage with a Muslim last name living in America?’ asked Dean
Obeidallah in the TV special The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (2007), ‘I could
use a hug.’ As one of many television comics engaged with post-9/11 cul-
ture, he joked from a position (both ideologically and marketably) of mul-
ticultural tolerance. But this was only one position within the ever-growing
expanse of choices in the narrowcasted television landscape of the 2000s.
Scholars of TV comedy have often focused on the apparent growth of a
strain of moderate-left, politically aware satirical comedy over the course
of the 2000s and not without reason (Day 2011; Gray et al. 2009; Jones
2010). But that is of course not the only form of comedy TV from this era.
Although more politically progressive fare grew in prominence, other pro-
grammes demonstrated countervailing attitudes, both by avoiding easily
P. Scepanski ()
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_7
120 P. SCEPANSKI
pigeonholed political expression, or by playing more explicitly to conserva-

tive audiences. This chapter focuses on more ostensibly conservative pro-
grammes by examining how comedy programs featuring Carlos Mencia,
Jeff Dunham, and others used post-9/11 Islamophobia for market differ-
entiation. By feeding into the anti-Islamic and anti-terrorist sentiments of
post-9/11 American culture, comics positioned themselves as brave truth-
tellers against the tide of political correctness with relative safety. At the
same time, these were not overly simplistic attacks, but required a certain
amount of negotiation between discourses of racism and anti-racism as
well as dehumanizing and humanizing in order to create their humour
while navigating the rules that govern expression in twenty-first century
American culture.
Though appropriately ridiculed as a cliché and exaggeration, there is
some truth to the saying that ‘9/11 changed everything’. Alongside obvi-
ous changes like the Bush administration’s shift in focus from domestic
to foreign affairs, Marita Sturken (2007) notes more subtle developments
like changes to architecture and consumer automobile preferences. Of
course, changes in common topics of conversation occurred as well—with
issues like civil and religious liberties gaining prominence in media outlets
and elsewhere. But for all these seemingly sudden changes, 9/11 occurred
amidst various older and more slowly developing shifts.
Following trends as old as the medium itself, the US television industry
continued to expand its outlets and subdivide its audiences during the
1990s and 2000s. In addition to the continuing spread of factors begun
decades earlier, including cable subscriptions and home video sales, the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the discontinuation of the Financial
Interest and Syndication (Fin-Syn) rules in 1993 proved particularly nota-
ble aspects of the move towards ever-narrower niche marketing (Holt
2011, 140–177). The 9/11 attack seemed anomalous amongst these
broader trends in that it temporarily drew US television viewers to a seem-
ingly unified national culture. But as Lynn Spigel rightly predicted:
The post-9/11 performance of nationalism will fail because it really does

not fit with the economic and cultural practices of twenty-first century U.S.
media society. The fact that there is no longer a three-network broadcast sys-
tem means that citizens are not collected as aggregate audiences for national
culture. As we all know, what we watch on TV no longer really is what other
people watch—unless they happen to be in our demographic taste culture.
The post-network system is precisely about fragmentation and narrowcasting.
DUMMIES AND DEMOGRAPHICS: ISLAMOPHOBIA AS MARKET... 121
While the new five-hundred-channel cable systems may not provide true
diversity in the sense of political or cultural pluralism, the postnetwork sys-
tem does assume a culture that is deeply divided by taste, not one that is
unified by national narratives (Spigel 2004, 257).
Though Spigel is sceptical towards claims of true ‘political or cultural plu-

ralism’, TV attempts to court viewers based on their position within dis-
courses of left/right American political culture.
Although often discussed as a unique event, 9/11 seemed repeatable
inasmuch as it instilled a sense that the United States was under threat of
future attacks. This model fit readily into familiar Cold War discursive pat-
terns, positing an ever-lurking, foreign threat. The period separating the War
on Communism from the War on Terror was not free from catastrophes, as
events like the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, the Oklahoma City Bombing,
and the Columbine shootings proved. But compared to those instances,
where the apparent perpetrators were American, post-9/11 fears focused on
external, foreign threats. Terrorists, Muslims, and those of Middle Eastern
descent were the prime targets for an anxious government and citizenry.
Unlike in the catastrophes of the 1990s, television did not purport to rep-
resent a marginalized group’s or disturbed individual’s position in relation
to the nation except in rare cases. Instead, it largely addressed issues from
more nativist perspectives. ‘How should Americans respond to this new
Other?’ they seemed to ask. In answering this question, certain programs
conflated the categories of terrorist, Muslim, and Middle Easterner, while
others made sure to distinguish them. Depending on ideological positions
then—ones determined to a great extent by the target demographics—tele-
vision comedy reinforced us/them binarisms, complicated these categories,
and/or argued positions more reflective of pluralism.
Hamid Naficy (1997) notes the importance of derisive humour in
American reactions to the 1979–81 Iranian hostage crisis—an event that
represented a threatening mix of despotism, Islam, and anticolonial atti-
tudes similar to those that seemed to energize Al-Qaeda. While bin Laden
may have replaced the Ayatollah Khomeini on toilet paper sheets and in
satirical songs, the enormous discursive imprint of 9/11, among other
factors, meant a larger and more varied television engagement with the
Middle East, its people, and its diasporas than had occurred two decades
earlier. Additionally, while the taking of American hostages in Iran neces-
sarily focused attention on another part of the world, the domestic nature
of the 2001 attacks caused American Muslims and those of Middle Eastern
122 P. SCEPANSKI
descent to come under heightened scrutiny, albeit a scrutiny that often

threatened and/or denied their status as fully or authentically American.
General cultural suspicion along with more official federal responses from
agencies like the FBI and FAA echoed the kind of xenophobia directed at
Japanese-Americans in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.
Debates over ‘political correctness’ also proved a longer-term trend
into which 9/11 factored. Geoffrey Hughes explores the history of the
term as well as many of its implications.
Political correctness became part of the modern lexicon and, many would
say, part of the modern mind-set, as a consequence of the wide-ranging
public debate which started on campuses in the United States from the late
1980s. Since nearly 50 percent of Americans go to college, the impact of
the controversy was widespread. It was out of this ferment that most of the
new vocabulary was generated or became current. However, political cor-
rectness is not one thing and does not have a simple history. As a concept it
predates the debate and is a complex, discontinuous, and protean phenom-
enon, which has changed radically, even over the past two decades. During
just that time it has ramified into numerous agendas, reforms, and issues
concerning race, culture, gender, disability, the environment, and animals
rights (Hughes 2010).
Hughes’ book offers a complex history of the way an explicit academic

attempt to ‘sanitize the language by suppressing some of its uglier prej-
udicial features’ transformed into a more implicit set of codes pre- and
proscribing certain actions and forms of communication. To detractors
like Doris Lessing (2004), the threat of being labelled politically incorrect
acts as a form of ‘mental tyranny […] manifesting as a general intoler-
ance’. Political correctness in the television industry is likely the result of
two primary factors. First, it reflects a genuine ethical concern of a largely
left-leaning, metropolitan, college-educated, creative labour force. At the
same time, to the extent that rules of conduct might help to avoid scaring
away viewers and advertisers, the strictures also reflect a business strategy.
But if ‘political correctness’—however understood—reigns, then acting
against this set of social mores offers the promise of unique content.
As the 1990s’ popular understanding of political correctness rose to
cultural prominence, both cultural conservatives like Lessing and com-
ics of more varied political leanings grew nervous regarding their ability
to speak with impunity (Saper 1995). So while these attitudes may have
helped usher comics like Andrew Dice Clay out of the limelight, hipper
comedies like Seinfeld (‘The Outing’, 1993) and The Simpsons (‘Homer’s
Phobia’, 1997) narrativized the apparent struggles of straight white males
to navigate the new cultural sensitivity. By the late 1990s, more self-
conscious rejections of political correctness like South Park and Family
Guy appeared on broadcast and cable. At the same time, stand-up comics
like Carlos Mencia worked comedy clubs and television’s fringier cable
and late-night sites as the apparent successors to Don Rickles, playing on
their ability to say in comedy routines what appeared to be increasingly
silenced elsewhere.
This thumbnail sketch of comedy in the 1990s suggests that those who
negotiated, ignored, or flaunted the developing rules of political correct-
ness served a wide swath of demographic markets from young adults to
fans of older more Borscht Belt-inspired comedy. While crises of racial
identity like the O.J. Simpson case informed these comedic debates
throughout the 1990s, 9/11 inflected the conflict differently for the rea-
sons discussed earlier. But since these nebulous standards acted as a subtle
cultural dominant governing many areas of public life, certain television
texts could differentiate their product by testing or flouting the rules. So
while there was a perceived air of multicultural tolerance by the turn of
the millennium, 9/11 created an Other defined in large part as a minority
culture, religion, and ethnicity.
Numerous scholars have weighed in regarding humour’s ability to
create a sense of community as well as its ability to alienate individuals
and subcultures from larger group formations. Henri Bergson’s essay on
laughter contains an often overlooked insight into the phenomenon’s
social dynamics. In his understanding, laughter is always that of a group
directed at an individual (1980, 64). When one person is not performing
in the best interest of society, the laughter of the group disciplines the
individual.1 More contemporary humour theorists offer further insight
into humour’s group-building aspects. Ted Cohen describes the ways
that joking reinforces established bonds among comics and audiences by
ritual engagements with linguistic codes (1999, 12–32). Group laughter
signals common knowledge and values and thus reinforces group bonds
and identity. And while admitting its potential for divisiveness, Lawrence
E. Mintz believes that American humour developed the way it did as a way
to smooth over divisions within the nation’s ‘dynamic and heterogeneous’
culture (1999, 237). John Limon has a similar take, though instead of see-
ing comedy as an ever-present force unifying all Americans, he proposes
that comedy of a type has spread to unite Americans. ‘America, between
124 P. SCEPANSKI
1960 and the millennium’, he writes, ‘in a process that began around the
ascension of Johnny Carson or the Kennedy Assassination, comedified.
Stand-up was once a field given over to certain subsections of a certain
ethnicity. By now, roughly speaking, all America is the pool for national
stand-up comedy’ (Limon 2000, 3). In its ability to pilot issues of same-
ness and difference, comedy proved a privileged discourse after 9/11 in
navigating the seemingly oppositional desires of xenophobia and ecumen-
ism within culture.
Though comics like Rickles and others had been pushing similar buttons
for decades, self-consciously anti-PC comedies from those of seemingly
right-wing Jeff Dunham to the obviously leftist Bill Maher’s Politically
Incorrect flouted the rules as a way to build comic credibility. Thus after
9/11, Muslims and Middle Easterners became prime targets for comics
who wanted to demonstrate their edgy rejection of political correctness,
while ingratiating themselves to those who considered themselves to be
more truly American. In comedy especially then, the clashes of cultural
and religious tolerance, nationalist anger, anti-PC backlash, and humour’s
ability to negotiate such issues created a particularly telling milieu where
these debates could be argued and examined like they could in no other
television genre or cultural discourse.
LAUGHTER AS A WEAPON: TARGETING BIN LADEN

AND TERRORISM
While 9/11 did not produce the Arab terrorist as a common enemy in
American discourse, it undoubtedly increased the prominence of and
scorn towards such figures. Coverage of and fallout from the events crys-
tallized negative attitudes felt by many towards bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, ter-
rorists, and perhaps Middle Easterners and Muslims more generally. Some
comedy shows served the desire by symbolically mocking and abusing
these figures. But while anti-terrorist sentiment hit a high point during
this period, attempts to satisfy these desires were tempered by certain fac-
tors. Parties ranging from politicians to comedians almost immediately
made sure to distinguish between Islamic extremists and peaceful Muslims
and Americans of Arab descent, perhaps reflecting aspects of the gains
made by proponents of ‘political correctness’ in the previous decades.2
At the same time, the 9/11 attacks produced a cultural demand for humour
that attacked a foreign enemy while solidifying a sense of Americanness.
Throughout this period, attacks on bin Laden served as a safe constant while
comedies variously took liberties humorously attacking terrorists, Islam,

Middle Easterners, or non-Americans more generally. Flagrantly mocking
ethnic and religious minorities would have signalled a strain of cultural con-
servatism, but in the wake of 9/11 it grew more difficult to easily peg some
shows’ political allegiances. Despite these upheavals and shifting signifiers of
political allegiance, a number of comedies cornered portions of the market
by blatantly appealing to the political and cultural interests of more conserva-
tive demographics through humour.
In reporting on his 2011 death, much was made of Osama bin Laden’s
appetite for pornography. While a curious element to the story of his
demise, highlighting this aspect of his lifestyle clearly held value as a way
to demean him. News outlets likely were not using this element rhetori-
cally, since very few in their viewing audience would have remained on the
fence about the terrorist mastermind. Instead, this acted as a unifying rit-
ual meant to elicit disdainful laughter at this less-than-holy warrior. One of
the most extreme examples of this symbolic shaming technique came from
the stop-motion animated Robot Chicken (‘Poisoned by Relatives’, 2012).
Airing after his death, it exaggerates reports of bin Laden’s porn habit so
that when Navy SEALs break into his compound, they not only discover
pornography, but evidence of severe sexual deviance as bin Laden hangs
in a closet wearing only woman’s underwear in addition to his standard
turban, suggesting that he died from autoerotic asphyxiation. Reporting
to his commanding officer, a SEAL radios, ‘I understand how it would
look if the history books told future generations that a porn-loving jerk off
enthusiast had gotten the upper hand on America.’ Following an implied
order, the soldier then shoots the corpse twice, recreating reports of his
death as a result of shots to the chest and head.
Though Robot Chicken’s extreme example came after the leader’s death,
attacks on bin Laden and other newly perceived enemies were among the
earliest forms of humour on television after 9/11. Bin Laden was of course
a prime target during this period. One of the most notable examples of
that period’s attacks occurred in South Park’s 7 November 2001 episode,
‘Osama bin Laden has Farty Pants.’ While complex on many issues, it
treated bin Laden fairly simply as a target for abuse, often mobilizing reli-
gion and ethnicity in its attacks. This episode offers numerous examples of
violent slapstick, all with fairly comparable ends. For example, when bin
Laden threatens Eric Cartman with a knife, Cartman announces, ‘Uh oh.
Five-thirty; time to pray.’ At once mocking the leader’s presumed piety and
an invented gullibility, the leader kneels on a rug before the child flattens
his head with an oversized mallet. These gags of physical humiliation give
126 P. SCEPANSKI
way to those of sexual humiliation. Cartman dresses in drag in order to

entice the leader, but instead a camel catches bin Laden’s eye. This bit stops
just short of literally showing bin Laden as a ‘camel fucker’.
While the use of cartoon texts may suggest that these responses are
somewhat juvenile, allusions to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd also conjure
a sense of nostalgia. In visiting humiliations on bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and
Islam in this episode, South Park paid homage to Warner Bros. Cartoons.
These segments especially invoke those of the World War II era like Herr
Meets Hare (1945) and Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944) wherein Bugs
Bunny took on Axis foes. And it is not the only nostalgic tribute. In this
episode’s final scene, one of the characters symbolizes America’s imperfect
superiority by propping up a miniature US flag in a nod to the 1965 A
Charlie Brown Christmas’s similar treatment of a Christmas tree.
Textual and formal nostalgia in one sense spoke to a larger discourse from
this era on wanting to return to a pre-9/11 sense of security, even while pol-
iticians decried those who held a pre-9/11 mentality.3 In other senses, play-
ing around with the imagery of World War II implied comparisons between
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as unprovoked, devastating attacks. The connection
to World War II also suggested popular notions of the 1940s and the imme-
diate post-9/11 period as those of greater public unity regarding the belief
in a military response that would be more justifiable than those of conflicts
in the second half of the twentieth century. Most notably, it also served as a
reminder of a time when comics felt more comfortable mocking enemies of
the United States using ethnic and racial stereotypes.
That terrorists other than bin Laden served as targets for comedic scorn
is unsurprising. The Seth MacFarlane-branded television shows—Family
Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show—tend to align with the
United States’ moderate, and sometimes less moderate, left even while
relying on humour that deliberately flouts politically correct conventions.
Similar to instances imagining violence on bin Laden, Family Guy provides
examples where violent slapstick encourages laughter at the expense of
less notable terrorists. One gag offers a parodic alternate history where
‘America was attacked by mentally challenged suicide bombers’ (‘Hannah
Banana’, 2009). A cutaway demonstrates by showing an Arab man shout-
ing ‘Allahu akbar’ as he rides a bicycle into a World Trade Center tower.
The characters’ use of the politically correct term ‘mentally challenged’,
even while making a politically incorrect joke proved interesting consider-
ing the show’s common use of the word ‘retarded’ (‘Petarded’, 2005).
While often presenting as a politically progressive text, Family Guy’s
moments of apparent cultural conservatism deny easy reading as either left

or right. But other comedy texts engaging in negative humour of this type
spoke more directly to cultural and political conservatism.
ARAB IS THE NEW BLACK: RELATIVIZING THE OTHER

John Caldwell notes the way media texts familiarize crises and catastro-
phes by comparing them to recognizable historical precedents (1995,
317–318). While his examples focus on journalism during the 1992 Los
Angeles uprising, post-9/11 media culture showed a similar impulse. As
with any broad discourse, forms and levels of engagement varied. In one
of the more notable forms of historical engagement, comics spoke of 9/11
as a historical turning point where certain older ethnic prejudices gave way
to newer ones. If Muslims and those of Middle Eastern descent were the
new Other, perhaps it meant that other oppressed minorities could escape
that history.
The cheekily titled Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (2007) showcased Persian-
and Arab-American comics, highlighting their position in relation to
9/11 and political labelling. Coming from this special, Dean Obeidallah’s
‘I could use a hug’ joke underscores his position as a prime Other in
post-9/11 United States. He characterizes this as a recent development.
‘Before 9/11 I’m just a white guy living like a typical white guy life […].
I go to bed September 10 white. I wake up September 11—I’m Arab.’
Obeidallah’s historicising instructs viewers regarding the political instabil-
ity of racial categories. Not only does his race change in the eyes of many,
but so too do the implications of being Muslim or of Middle Eastern
descent. Discussions of these issues were common among comics who
engaged with the idea that ‘Arab is the new black’, as he explicitly states.
However, Obeidallah is fairly unique in that comics of Middle Eastern
descent, while not entirely absent from television, are rare.
Lanita Jacobs-Huey’s (2006) ethnography of African American com-
edy clubs demonstrates that even in the earliest days after the 9/11
attacks, black comics and their audiences celebrated the perception that
‘the Arab is the new nigger’. While the historical specificity of each group
and the conditions under which they became the target of conscious and/
or structural racism prevent such simplistic comparisons from an earnest
perspective, this discourse serves as a method by which comics negotiate
the position of Middle Easterners vis-a-vis other minorities, explore the
history of racial minorities in the United States, and historicise arguments
128 P. SCEPANSKI
over whether everything had indeed changed. For one comic in particular,
this logic acted as a useful tool by which to activate and justify xenophobia.
Carlos Mencia is a stand-up comic whose performances reflect an immi-
grant persona. Despite this aspect of his identity, his comedy rarely aligns
neatly with a pluralist tolerance viewpoint. Instead, it often relies on self-
consciously politically incorrect material playing with ideas about racial
difference. As might be expected of this sort of comic in a post-9/11
environment, Mencia joked at the expense of Middle Eastern people,
Americans of Middle Eastern descent, and Muslims to cement his persona
as an anti-PC bad boy. This tendency is apparent in his Comedy Central
program, which ran from 2005 to 2008. Mencia’s monologue from the
first episode of Mind of Mencia marks his stance with regards to both the
dominant and perhaps growing racial power bloc and the Middle Eastern
Other. The show’s set decoration included a barbed-wire fence indicative
of a border-crossing checkpoint. In his first monologue, Mencia enters the
stage, exclaiming:
The beaner got a show! I want you guys to know that the fence around here
is not just for decoration. This is the actual fence that my mom and dad
jumped when they came to this country. Is he already making fun of people?
I’m gonna make fun of everybody. I get Muslims pissed off. [adopting an
Arabic accent] Why are the American people messing with me? [return-
ing to his voice] Because Achmed, it’s your turn! America’s a giant game
of tag, somebody’s always ‘it’ and guess what Achmed? You’re it. Here’s
what happened, a lot of people don’t understand. September 11: bad day
in American history; great day for blacks and Hispanics; greatest day in our
generation, because on that day, white people accepted us as Americans.
Before that, we weren’t Americans. Then on the eleventh, the buildings col-
lapsed; they showed the pictures of the hijackers. When they showed those
pictures, Maria, Loquisha, Carlos, and Tyrone walked up to Achmed and
went, ‘tag. Your turn!’
Perhaps as a justification for the more controversial content to follow,

Mencia both establishes and teases himself as an immigrant, despite admit-
ting that his parents actually crossed the border. His promise to ‘make
fun of everybody’ also functions as a justification since it guarantees some
level of equity in his attacks on different races and ethnicities. And to some
extent, Mencia lives up to this promise by mocking whites, blacks, Indians,
and others. But the opening monologue signals two important tactics.
First, though perhaps not the prime reason for self-deprecating humour,
Mencia’s willingness to poke fun at his own ethnicity justifies much of his
other material. And second, like many comics during this period, he uses
9/11 as ground upon which to show off his willingness to engage in edgy
and racially insensitive humour in the relatively safe manner of attacking
the newly perceived threat. While the seemingly indefensible argument
that 9/11 was good may shock some viewers in its evocation of radical
leftist politics, Mencia redirects these implications to buoy certain minori-
ties at the expense of others.
Continuing the routine’s use of comic metaphor, he moves from the
‘giant game of tag’ to comparing the United States to a fraternity. ‘In
order to join our country’, he argues:
You must get hazed. And guess what? It’s Greek week. Everybody went
through it. That’s what I don’t understand. I’m not afraid of people calling
me a racist. Go ahead and call me a racist. Go ahead and do it. [adopting
an Arabic accent] Hey that’s not fair you’re only checking me. Why don’t
you check the women? [returning to his voice] Well, because women in this
country, Achmed, were treated like crap for about 150 years when they
couldn’t vote. So unless you don’t want to vote for that long and possibly
give me head, I suggest you [agree to increased scrutiny].
Mencia attempts to short-circuit possible dismissals of his routine as racist

by accepting all such criticism before again arguing for solidarity among
all non-Middle Eastern, non-Muslim historically oppressed groups. The
rhetoric in this routine relies on mixed appeals to racial and gender equal-
ity as well as racist exceptionalism. While to some extent admitting the
injustice of racial profiling, Mencia places the contemporary wave of xeno-
phobia in relation to historical injustices to argue that such hardships are
necessary evils for gaining acceptance into the dominant racial power bloc.
Of course, European Americans are largely absent from this argument, but
Mencia ingratiates himself to various historically oppressed categories of
Americans by adopting a logic where past suffering is a patriotic virtue.
African and Latin Americans as well as women of all backgrounds earn the
right to current liberties thanks to past violations. So while Mencia selec-
tively subscribes to the classically liberal notion of individual equality, it is
a zero-sum game by which one group’s civil rights can only be purchased
at the expense of another’s.
At one point in the routine, Mencia’s straw Arab American man asks,
‘Why don’t you check the Hispanics? Is it because you are Hispanic?’
‘No’, he responds as himself, ‘It’s because Hispanics don’t blow shit up.
130 P. SCEPANSKI
They clean it up, then build it up after you blow it up.’ While he does
not dwell on this point, it performs an important role in the routine,
excusing the comic from accusations of self-interest. Mencia’s use of Latin
American stereotypes continue to exhibit his penchant for political incor-
rectness, but the contrast he makes between Arab Americans as destructive
and Latin Americans as constructive justifies Mencia’s as a more valuable
category of immigrant.
These comedic tactics were not new to the 2000s. Scholars David
R. Roediger (2007, 115–163) and Noel Ignatiev (1995) argue that Irish
American immigrants performed black face minstrelsy in large numbers
because denigrating African Americans was a way to win status as white
Americans during a period when many considered Irish to be neither white
nor American. Robert Nowatzki (2006) adds that the new immigrants
were well-suited to this role not only because of a history of cultural shar-
ing between Irish Americans and free African Americans, but also because
the Irish had been the subject of minstrel shows performed by native-born
Americans during earlier waves of immigration. To have been the subject
of racist humour in the past offered entrée to the field, suggesting that the
most successful racist humour comes from those who are or had recently
been the subject of it.
Mencia’s monologue betrays a similar logic to that described by cul-
tural historians regarding Irish American integration. Though a common
tactic in history, his monologue’s notability arises from its explicitness
and, compared to examples like Jacobs-Huey’s, for being performed on a
mass medium where such boundary pushing comes under closer scrutiny.
Seemingly having purchased with his own oppression the right to make
these statements and jokes, Mencia explicitly argues for the curtailment
of another group’s civil rights and invites all other formerly or currently
oppressed parties to join his cause. Implicitly, this also functions as an
argument for the freedom to attack the Othered group through humour,
a right that Mind of Mencia exercised throughout its run.
A PITIABLE ENEMY: JEFF DUNHAM AND ACHMED

THE DEAD TERRORIST
Though performing in relative obscurity since the early 1990s, Jeff

Dunham’s self-conscious attempts to appeal to a conservative, rural,
Christian audience enabled him to become one of the most financially
successful stand-up comics of the decade following 9/11. In a telling

interview, Dunham confessed to mocking everything equally with the
exception of ‘basic Christian-values stuff’ (Mooallem 2009). More gener-
ally, he revealed that while often working blue and trying to attract a large
audience, he intends his humour for a particular type—‘the conservative
“country crowd”’. And even though this New York Times Magazine piece
intends kindness to both Dunham and his fans, even the writer could not
help but poke fun as she describes Dunham’s ‘not thin’ audience. While
offering different views of his audience, both the comic and the inter-
viewer depict a particular taste culture. In his Comedy Central specials and
short-lived weekly show, Dunham codes his routines to speak to a cultur-
ally conservative audience—often classified in news articles as ‘red state’
crowds (Genzlinger 2009; Lowry 2009; Mooallem 2009).
The comic’s Comedy Central specials tend to follow a pattern. After a
short introductory sketch and the opening credits, Dunham performs a
relatively short traditional stand-up routine that in part establishes themes
and set-ups for later callbacks when he turns to his comedy’s more notable
aspect: ventriloquism. In the opening stand-up routine for his 2007 special
Spark of Insanity, Dunham proudly proclaims ‘I know it’s not politically
correct to drive [my Hummer SUV] anymore’, to which the audience
offers an applause break. While not exactly fitting with a common under-
standing of ‘politically correct’ as avoiding offence to identity categories,
the attack on this concept as limiting a wider range of behaviour serves
a number of purposes. Among others, it ingratiates the comic to right-
identified members of the so-called culture wars. Additionally, the more
general attack on the concept of political correctness—a theme that recurs
throughout his performances—functions similarly to Mencia’s invitation
to label him a racist. By adopting the politically incorrect label, Dunham
seeks to short-circuit criticism. And in associating the strictures of political
correctness with more broadly perceived attacks on personal liberties, like
the types of automobile one chooses to drive, the comic further disparages
the concept in the minds of his fans, implicitly justifying the more overtly
edgy humour that follows. Finally, in celebrating a behaviour frowned on
by one taste culture, he identifies with its perceived foes, defined in part
through their resentment towards such social proscriptions.
Similar to Carlos Mencia, Dunham literally promises to offend—in that
he verbally guarantees it when introducing content (The Jeff Dunham
Show, ‘Episode 6’, 2009). But unlike Mencia, Dunham’s stage persona
does not present him as a raging truth-teller. Instead, he more often
132 P. SCEPANSKI
presents as an affable everyman or, at worst, a mischievous but harmless

idiot. This despite his humour’s overt reliance on racial and other ste-
reotypes. Again like Mencia, Dunham justifies his offence as distributed
evenly. Efforts to balance the mockery with white trash, black hustler,
and Arab terrorist dummies function as another way in which Dunham
justifies his speech in a media environment sensitive to issues of racial
representation. A cell phone ring tone of his Achmed character’s ‘I kill
you!’ catchphrase was banned in South Africa due to its being perceived as
offensive to Muslims. Dunham defended himself by arguing, ‘I’ve skew-
ered whites, blacks, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks,
the elderly, and my wife. As a stand-up comic, it is my job to make the
majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of
free speech’ (Miller 2008).
Dunham’s fans do not appear to be as even-handed in their preferences
as the ventriloquist is in providing options for comedic scorn. By many
indicators—from on-screen audience reactions, to Internet video views,
to journalist estimations—Achmed the Dead Terrorist, a skeletal puppet
primarily used to poke fun at Muslim terrorists, proves time and again to
be the comic’s signature and most popular character. As Time points out,
‘The explosion [of popularity] came, appropriately enough, with Achmed
the Dead Terrorist, a character Dunham debuted in late 2007 on his
[Comedy Central special and] DVD Spark of Insanity’ (Luscombe 2009).
As a means of introduction, Dunham allows his cranky elderly puppet
Walter to mock terrorists and Islam more generally just before introducing
Achmed in that 2007 special.
Walter: There’s one group of folks I don’t understand at all.

Dunham: Who’s that?
Walter: Damn suicide bombers.
Dunham: Oh.
Walter: Good God! What the hell is this? [performs an impression of
Arabic speech followed by a battle cry and explosion]. Well way to
go, Habib! Betcha can’t frickin’ do it again. [repeats battle cry/
explosion] Dumbass.
Dunham: You know Walter, those guys actually believe that if they martyr
themselves like that there will be 72 virgins waiting for them in
paradise.
Walter: Well, April fool, dumbass! If there are virgins waiting for you,
it’ll be 72 guys, just like you! [affects an accent] Oh no, this is
not what Osama said it would be. [repeats battle cry/explosion] 72
virgins? Why not 72 slutty broads who know what they’re doing?
In this special, disparaging attacks on Islamic terrorism and Islam more

generally meet with vocal audience approval. Dunham plays the slightly
knowledgeable, somewhat respectful straight man, setting Walter up with
his comment on 72 virgins as a reward for martyrdom. Dunham’s angry,
psychopathic, and mischievous puppets clearly demonstrate the psycho-
analytic understanding of jokes as expressing pent-up aggression (Freud
1963). In fact, later in Spark of Insanity, his character Peanut suggests that
each of his puppets represent different repressed emotions, with Walter
standing in for Dunham’s anger and resentment.
When ‘Achmed the Dead Terrorist’ first appears, the routine shifts
registers from Walter’s non-ironic anger to an Arab character’s illegiti-
mate rage. Blatantly satirical, Achmed functions as a symbolic straw man.
Having only managed to kill himself (and, in one routine, his son) with
his suicide bombing, he operates as a pathetic figure at which the audi-
ence laughs (Very Special Christmas Special, 2008). Whereas Walter is a
surrogate, giving voice to Dunham’s and his audience’s frustrations and
anger, Achmed serves primarily as a target of derision. In this way, he is
also an object at which symbolic violence can be directed. Not only did
Achmed’s self-victimization allow for slapstick humour, it also shows his
incompetence.
As he first introduces the puppet, Dunham plays it straight: ‘As we all
know there’s a big mess going on in the Middle East right now and when
it comes to the terrorists, most of us don’t understand their extremist
views and beliefs and I got to thinking the other day, “How would it be
just to sit down and talk to one of those guys?”’ (Spark of Insanity, 2007).
Adopting the language of cross-cultural curiosity and ecumenism presents
the ventriloquist as the reasonable counterpoint against which his puppet
will contrast. But at another level, it critiques the ideology that underpins
such attempts to understand the Other. As quickly becomes clear, there is
little thinking necessary to ‘get’ Achmed—he is single-mindedly violent.
There is no point in trying to ‘understand [his] extremist views’ and no
point in adopting any stance towards the Middle East’s ‘big mess’ other
than one of laughing derision. While all of Dunham’s dummies are about
the same size, the obvious intercultural conflict and Achmed’s role as an
object of scorn make the contrast in appearance between puppet and mas-
ter notable. Dunham, representing a typical American, stands far taller
than Achmed whose exaggeratedly large head and eyes, small body, and
sitting posture suggest that of a toddler. This infantilization colours his
emotions such that his and all other terrorist anger are more associated
134 P. SCEPANSKI
with childish temper tantrums than legitimate political or religious frus-

tration. Introducing himself as ‘a terrifying terrorist’, Achmed repeatedly
tries to frighten Dunham. Each time he refuses to be scared, defeating the
terror of terrorism. Frustrated, Achmed mutters, ‘God dammit. Ooh! I
mean, uh, Allah dammit!’ simultaneously admitting defeat and profaning
the religion that he supposedly serves.
While Dunham peppers the rest of the routine with further disparages
towards terrorism—as when Achmed says that his organization’s recruit-
ment slogan is ‘We’re looking for idiots with no future’ (in reference to
the US Marines’ slogan, ‘We’re looking for a few good men’)—Achmed
is at times more sympathetic. The audience applauds approvingly when
he claims that he could pass through airport security by claiming to be
Lindsay Lohan (in reference to a discourse from that period painting the
star as too skinny). ‘I told a joke’, the dummy proclaims with the excite-
ment of a child. Achmed takes this approving laughter as a cue to tell
more jokes, eventually telling both anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic ones.
‘I would not kill the Jews. I would toss a penny between them and watch
them fight to the death. Ha ha ha ha. Yes, yes! I did the same thing with
two Catholic priests, but I tossed in a small boy. Ha ha ha ha. Yes, yes! And
the winner had to fight Michael Jackson!’ None of Dunham’s other pup-
pets nor would Dunham himself have been as successful telling such jokes
to his audience. But by displacing jokes about Jews killing each other for
money and Catholic priests killing one another for the privilege of molest-
ing a child to an Arab figure, Dunham and his audience can have their cake
and eat it too. The otherwise-verboten jokes get told, but are justified by
coming from the mouth of an anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic character. The
audience can laugh at the jokes in their own right as well as the teller, ulti-
mately defaming all three groups, plus Michael Jackson.
Considering ventriloquism’s roots in the type of verbal play associated
with ‘Who’s On First’-type vaudeville, Achmed the Dead Terrorist repre-
sents an exceptionally physical form of slapstick among ventriloquism acts
generally and Dunham’s routines in particular. Achmed’s existential joke
is that he was a terrorist too incompetent to kill anyone but himself and
perhaps his son (Very Special Christmas Special, 2008). While more often
described than shown, Achmed’s stories of botched attacks paint a picture
of self-inflicted physical trauma that distinguishes him from Dunham’s
other puppets, whose humour relies more on wordplay. ‘If you must
know, I am a horrible suicide bomber’, he explains, ‘I had a premature
detonation […] I was getting gas and I answered my cell phone’ (Spark of
Insanity, 2007). ‘What was the last thing that went through your mind?’
asks Dunham. ‘My ass’, replies Achmed. Considering Achmed’s role as

an object of scorn, this physicality makes sense. The symbolic shaming of
verbal insults and humiliation as well as celebrations of physical damage
wrought on Achmed and other terrorists speak directly to his role as a
response to post-9/11 fears about the threat of terrorist violence.
In Dunham’s Very Special Christmas Special (2008) Achmed’s more
physical humour plays out in a number of ways. Notably, one bit begins
with a pun—among the most verbal forms of humour. After Dunham
asks if he had actually ever blown anything up, Achmed responds that
he has ‘blown up’ a woman. ‘She was inflatable. You know, an inflatable
virgin. I had to stop seeing her […] she popped.’ Achmed then makes the
sound of a balloon popping and farting out its air. While described rather
than shown, this routine quickly turned from a pun into a description of
physical comedy in which the diminutive Achmed humps and ultimately
destroys the less animate object. Presumably, the inflatable virgin popped
because of Achmed’s skeletal body, referencing his self-victimization. The
humour exists primarily in the situation described, but also reminded the
audience of the slapstick violence that caused Achmed to be a ‘dead ter-
rorist’ in the first place.
In this and other stand-up specials, Achmed’s physical humour goes
beyond mere description. While Dunham’s puppets all rely on physicality
to some extent, all but Achmed stop for the most part at exaggerated facial
expressions and head movement. In his first appearance, Achmed’s skeletal
feet fall upside down, leading him to exclaim, ‘I need some ligaments!’
(Spark of Insanity, 2007). This same gag repeats in the 2009 Christmas
special except that in addition to his foot problems, Achmed loses an arm.
A victim of his own violence, Achmed shrinks from a threatening figure to
a pathetically fragile, albeit comic, one.
Because its filmed format allowed for more complex staging, Dunham’s
sketch comedy show, in which his puppets left Dunham’s side to interact
with off-stage people, provided an ideal place for Achmed to perform his
self-destructive slapstick. On more than one occasion, the show features
Achmed trying to learn how to be a more effective perpetrator of violence
only to be comically stymied. Most notably, he attempts in one sketch to
join the US Marine Corps. Justified as an attempt to become a citizen so
that he could attack the United States ‘from the inside’, this bit is more
about creating humorous contrast between the highly competent sol-
diers and Achmed, whose incompetence both highlights his harmlessness
and offers an excuse for slapstick at his expense (The Jeff Dunham Show,
‘Episode 6’, 2009).
136 P. SCEPANSKI
Various physical gags make these points. As punishment for his incom-
petence, a drill sergeant repeatedly orders Achmed to do push-ups that he
cannot perform, underscoring his physical weakness. Although he eventu-
ally performs a lone push-up, Achmed’s arms fall off in an exaggerated dis-
play of fragility. The dummy reinforces this point in bits where he attempts
to fire weapons. When using a rifle, the recoil violently drives him back.
And when Achmed throws a grenade, his entire arm goes with it, again
showing how easily he could be torn apart. But because he is also stupid,
Achmed runs after his arm, stepping on the grenade just as it explodes to
re-enact his initial ‘death’.
In the finale of the Achmed routine from the Very Special Christmas
Special, he sings a song called ‘Jingle Bombs’, to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’
with lyrics like ‘Dashing through the sand/with a bomb strapped to my
back./I have a nasty plan/for Christmas in Iraq./I got through check-
point A,/but not through checkpoint B./That’s when I got shot in the ass
by the U.S. Military’. Here, US military forces in Iraq caused Achmed’s
wounds, seemingly in opposition to his previous explanations. Politically,
this song seems to support the Iraq war as an anti-terror measure, one
of the more controversial justifications for the United States’ operations
there.
CONCLUSION
The pleasure of revenge fantasies against Middle Eastern terrorists from
bin Laden to Achmed is fairly self-explanatory. But shows demonstrat-
ing these tendencies varied in the ways they presented and attacked these
representative figures. While South Park, in ‘Osama bin Laden has Farty
Pants’ at least, uses both visual and narrative tools to ridicule bin Laden,
Family Guy barely bothers to characterize its mentally handicapped ter-
rorist. Mencia justified Islamophobia partly as a method for preventing
further attacks, but also as a means for promoting other minorities’ civil
rights. Dunham took a somewhat different approach with Achmed in that
the character has some depth and at times even arouses sympathy. Despite
all the ways Dunham demeans Achmed, the character is at least partly
humanized. Neat us/them binarisms thus cannot fully explain Mencia’s
rhetorical logic or the enjoyment of watching the puppet injure himself
or fall apart. Dunham humanized the Other even while visiting violence
upon him.
Though appearing rather simplistic at first blush, these examples and

their defiance of easy readings represent a confluence of factors. The use
of demeaning comedy to attack figures associated with terrorism demon-
strate the differentiated appeal of anti-PC humour in a fragmented media
market. At the same time, they at least acknowledge and sometimes subtly
support aspects of the politically correct discourses they ostensibly reject.
Ultimately, 9/11 produced a target uniquely suited for this type of com-
edy and media environment. It appeared edgy and delivered on aspects of
the pleasure associated with contentious humour, albeit while attacking
thoroughly safe targets. But even these most flagrant attempts to defy con-
vention—using targets that seem especially safe for xenophobic and racist
mockery—had to deal with the realities of discourse on race in the 2000s.
NOTES
1. Even if one person laughs, Bergson believes that person serves the larger
societal interest and imagines themselves part of a group.
2. President Bush’s Address on Terrorism Before a Joint Meeting of Congress,
21 September 2001.
3. See the Transcript of the Candidates’ First Debate in the Presidential
Campaign, 1 October 2004.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Johns Hopkins University Press.
Caldwell, John Thornton. 1995. Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in
American Television. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Cohen, Ted. 1999. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Day, Amber. 2011. Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political
Debate. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Freud, Sigmund. 1963. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York:
Norton.
Genzlinger, Neil. 2009. No Puppet to Political Correctness. The New York Times,
December 9.
Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson (ed). 2009. Satire TV: Politics
and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York: New York University Press.
Holt, Jennifer. 2011. Empires of Entertainment: Media Industries and the Politics
of Deregulation, 1980–1996. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
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Hughes, Geoffrey. 2010. Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture.

Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge.
Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. The Arab is the New Nigger: African American
Comics Confront the Irony and Tragedy of September 11. Transforming
Anthropology 14: 60–64.
Jones, Jeffrey P. 2010. Entertaining Politics: Satiric Television and Political
Engagement. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Lessing, Doris. 2004. Censorship. In Time Bites: Views and Reviews, 7–12.
London: Fourth Estate.
Lewin, Tamar, and Gustav Niebuhr. 2001. Attacks and Harassment Continue on
Middle Eastern People and Mosques. The New York Times, September 18.
Limon, John. 2000. Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Lowry, Brian. 2009 The Jeff Dunham Show. Variety, October 22.
Luscombe, Belinda. 2009. The Puppet Master. Time, June 8.
Miller, Joshua R. 2008. Comedian Defends Achmed the Dead Terrorist Puppet
Routine Against South African Ban. Fox News, October 2.
Mintz, Lawrence E. 1999. American Humor as Unifying and Divisive. Humor 12:
237–252.
Mooallem, Jon. 2009. Comedy for Dummies. The New York Times Magazine,
November 1, 38–43.
Naficy, Hamid. 1997. Mediating the Other: American Pop Culture Representations
of Postrevolutionary Iran. In The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and
Perception, ed. Yahya Kamalipour, 73–90. Westport: Praeger.
Nowatzki, Robert. 2006. Paddy Jumps Jim Crow: Irish Americans and Blackface
Minstrelsy. Éire-Ireland 41: 162–184.
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WK10.
Roediger, David R. 2007. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the
American Working Class. London: Verso.
Saper, Bernard. 1995. Joking in the Context of Political Correctness. Humor 8:
65–76.
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Quarterly 56: 235–270.
Sturken, Marita. 2007. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from
Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Durham: Duke University Press.
Excessive Stand-Up, the Culture Wars,
and ’90s TV
Evan Elkins
Recent years have seen renewed debates over comedy and political
correctness in American culture. Incidents such as Daniel Tosh’s 2012 on-
stage suggestion that a heckler should be raped or the discovery of offen-
sive tweets from new Daily Show host Trevor Noah have produced outcries
and discourse regarding the appropriateness of joking about certain topics
as well as public laments from comedians that ‘P.C. culture’ constrains
their freedom of expression. Because questions of appropriateness, propri-
ety, and political correctness are so central to contemporary comedy, this is
a good time to revisit three instances of controversial stand-up comedy on
US network television during the 1990s, all of which point to the changes
and continuities in more contemporary debates.
In particular, I will revisit Andrew Dice Clay and Martin Lawrence’s
controversial Saturday Night Live hosting gigs (1990 and 1993, respec-
tively) and Bill Hicks’s censored Late Show with David Letterman appear-
ance from 1993. These performances are all notable for having been
policed, regulated, or censored in some fashion; some of the comics were
banned from these respective programs, and some led others to boycott
the programs. The flaps over Lawrence, Clay, and Hicks’s routines came
E. Elkins ()
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_8
140 E. ELKINS
out of two contexts—one cultural and the other industrial. The first is the
various political, social, and regulatory public battles over art, free speech,
and political correctness usually characterized as the ‘culture wars’. These
extended from the Reagan 1980s into various debates over art and politics
in the 1990s. The second is US network television during what Amanda
Lotz (2007, 12) refers to as the ‘multichannel transition’, the period of
widespread expansion and change in the television industry occurring
between 1985 and 2005. These contexts each characterize certain dis-
courses, regulatory acts, and political and aesthetic strategies existing at
multiple levels of bureaucratic power, artistic practice, and audience activity.
Specifically, these performances characterize the uneasy existence of
stand-up comedy on US television at an important moment of transition
in US TV that shaped public discourses about comedy and offense. On
one hand, the highly performative and improvisational characteristics of
stand-up afford it a visual banality and unpredictability seemingly at odds
with both the medium’s ‘televisual’ style during this period as well as its
imperative to police and contain overtly offensive material. On the other
hand, Lawrence, Clay, and Hicks all represent different versions of a highly
popular and promotable anti-P.C. ‘bad boy’ comic persona that was a sta-
ple of comedy clubs, late night programs, and cable stand-up specials at
the time. Such tensions also highlight network TV’s ambivalent adoption
and rejection of offensive material within the competing contexts of con-
servative culture wars and deregulation of the television industries. While
this was an era in which the ‘big three’ networks increasingly found them-
selves competing with the looser affordances of niche cable programming
and the Fox network, they still had to maintain their position as exhibitors
of more mainstream entertainment during a period when certain sectors
of American art and culture were under fire from various watchdog groups
and the US government.
CULTURE WARS, THE MULTICHANNEL TRANSITION,

AND STAND-UP COMEDY
The ‘culture wars’ refer to a wide-ranging series of debates and contro-

versies surrounding art and culture considered offensive or transgressive
in some way.1 Although rooted in long-held binaries of left/right, pro-
gressive/conservative, and Christian/secular, the culture wars of the late
1980s and early 1990s are often associated with two art exhibits in par-
ticular: Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987), a photograph of a crucifix
submerged in the artist’s urine, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s
EXCESSIVE STAND-UP, THE CULTURE WARS, AND ’90S TV 141
retrospective The Perfect Moment, which contained explicitly homoerotic

photographs. In 1989, Piss Christ attracted the attention of Reverend
Donald Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association (AFA),
a fundamentalist Christian organization promoting conservative val-
ues and politics. Wildmon sent a letter to Congress decrying the work
and initiated a letter-writing campaign. The same year, Mapplethorpe’s
retrospective resulted in a public and political outcry when it arrived at
Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art. The fervor over Piss Christ
and Mapplethorpe in particular led to former US Senator Jesse Helms’
ultimately failed attempt to cut funding for the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA) the same year. During this period, the culture war
debates spilled over into countless venues, including congressional hear-
ings, newspaper editorials, court cases,2 and perhaps most infamously,
former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s speech at the
1992 Republican National Convention. Often dubbed the ‘culture war’
speech, Buchanan’s address outlined his vision of a polarized America and
supported a right-wing, fundamentalist Christian set of values while pos-
iting supporters of these values as directly opposed to the purportedly
left-wing, secular pole represented by Democratic presidential candidate
Bill Clinton.
While the culture war debates were prominent among the spheres of
high art, news media, and partisan politics, they also focused on popular
culture and television. In one example, bowing to pressure and boycott
threats from religious groups (including the AFA), Pepsi dropped singer
Madonna from its advertising campaigns in 1989. However, the most
notable war over pop-culture censorship surrounded the rap group 2 Live
Crew and their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be. In 1990, a Florida
record store clerk was arrested for selling a copy of the album, which a
US court had recently ruled obscene after complaints from, once again,
the AFA. Shortly after, 2 Live Crew was arrested after performing songs
from the album at a concert. Eventually, the band and record clerk would
be acquitted and an appeals court would overturn the initial obscenity
ruling.3 Throughout the ordeal, 2 Live Crew became a convenient target
for conservative pundits and politicians attempting to build capital with
their conservative base by condemning what they considered obscene and
offensive material.
Writing in 1992 at the heart of the culture wars, Lawrence Grossberg
outlines the importance of these practices and discourses for conserva-
tive politicians, who ‘have won and held political power only by waging a
142 E. ELKINS
cultural war’. As he suggests, ‘If the new conservatism can accomplish its
victory directly within the space of culture and everyday life, it will have
already won the terrain on which any democratic state, no matter who
controls it and with what ideology, must operate’ (1992, 257–258). Thus,
lest examples from popular culture and television seem frivolous or banal
compared to the court cases and congressional hearings just described, they
in fact exist within a terrain of hegemony, power, and discourse that cir-
culates beyond the more explicitly ‘political’ realms of the state. As Jeffrey
P. Jones points out, the ideological battles waged in the culture wars ‘have
been conducted as much through social institutions or cultural patterns
and behaviours (such as media, language, lifestyle, academia, religion)
as through formal politics’. Furthermore, ‘the battlegrounds are quite
fluid, though, to the point where cultural battles can be waged in political
forums […] and political battles may be waged in cultural forums such
as talk television’ (2010, 50). Indeed, S. Craig Watkins notes that during
the culture wars, a key battleground for conservative groups’ attempts to
achieve ideological dominance was the popular media, which they viewed
‘as a bastion of permissiveness and nihilism that erodes public civility and
antagonizes traditional American values by promoting violence, sexual
promiscuity, and familial disintegration’ (1998, 29). In addition to this
more nuanced understanding of the relationship between popular culture
and politics, the three examples of regulation and censorship discussed
herein represent complex articulations of race and gender that erode the
simplistic binaries that tend to circulate within culture-war discourse.
In many ways, television during its ‘multichannel transition’ was mov-
ing against a tide of new conservatism that seemed to dominate much of
the national discourse around the culture wars. Due to the development of
new media technologies, deregulation of ownership and content, and espe-
cially the rise of basic and subscription cable networks, broadcast television
shifted its programming strategies during this era (Lotz 2007, 12–15). As
Lotz points out, ‘Instead of needing to design programming likely to be
least objectionable to the entire family, broadcast networks—and particu-
larly cable channels—increasingly developed programming that might be
most satisfying to specific audience members’ (2007, 14). An inevitable
consequence of straying from the ‘least objectionable’ strategy that char-
acterized broadcast television in the network era was a move toward edgier
content that would hopefully pry eyes away from cable’s laxer decency
standards. The late-night variety and talk show became one of the formats
where networks could offer more audacious material.
While late-night broadcast television has been a space more permissive

of excessive and offensive performance, in the 1990s it was, and is still,
bound to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decency
rules. However, the US Supreme Court case Federal Communications
Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) resulted in a post-prime-time
‘safe harbor’ enabling looser restrictions for broadcast content between
midnight and 6:00 am (Hendershot 1998, 79–81). This safe harbor, and
the resulting ‘transgressive’ or ‘indecent’ material that might air during
that time, has helped sustain a vision of late-night viewers as constitut-
ing part of what Lynn Spigel calls the ‘fringe time public’ (Spigel 2008,
270). For Spigel, such viewers maintain a ‘queer relation to the entire
apparatus of TV time’ insofar as they exist outside of the normative, nine-
to-five work paradigm and watch programming other than the first-run,
prime-time material that holds a more central place in US television cul-
ture (2008, 270–271). It follows, then, that the ‘fringe time public’,’ or at
least the sector of it that views late-night programming, will likely prefer a
different, and perhaps even bawdier, form of humour. Still, while it makes
sense that late night was a space where networks would exhibit such come-
dians, network television still had to tread a fine line between promoting
these figures around their extreme personae and restricting that excess
within the strictures of network television content. As David Marc notes
regarding stand-up on television, ‘the fetishization of “dirty words” on
television puts severe limits on stand-up text. It is perhaps principally for
these reasons that the stand-up comedian has been largely squeezed out
of prime time into what the industry terms “marginal hours”’ (1996, 23).
Similarly, stand-up comedy has been at once a mainstay of US television
and a marginalized factor in histories of the medium. On one hand, this is
surprising, considering the importance of stand-up as not only a form of
television but a feeder system of talent into the television industries as well.
On the other hand, comprised largely of monologues told to a generally
unseen audience, stand-up is at odds with the excessive visual style of ‘tele-
visuality’, which John Thornton Caldwell posits as the reigning aesthetic
of US television during the 1980s and 1990s. However, while visually
banal on the surface, stand-up comedy communicates its excess through
the performativity of the comedians and the often ribald content of their
acts. As Caldwell points out, televisuality is 'conceived of as a presenta-
tional attitude, a display of knowing exhibitionism' (1995, 5). Indeed,
such a description is in many ways similar to Marc’s characterization of the
comedy-variety show, and its ‘presentational teleforms: stand-up comedy,
144 E. ELKINS
impersonation, and the blackout sketch’, which strive for ‘the spectacle
of excess’ (Marc 1996, 21). He notes that by ‘eschewing the protection
of narrative superstructure and continuity’, stand-up ‘is one of the most
intense and compelling of modern performance arts’ (1996, 22). Caldwell
draws on Marc’s analysis of the comedy-variety show, suggesting, ‘pre-
sentational comedy […] involves the traits one associates with liveness:
improvisation, snafus, and spontaneity’ (1995, 30). Thus, even if stand-up
is less ‘visual’ than other, flashier forms of television at the time, it exhibits
televisuality’s ‘stylizing performance’ (1995, 5) through excessive person-
alities and star images. However, individual performances based in rhetori-
cal and actual violence against people, groups, institutions, ideologies, and
social mores could still only push so far against the regulatory mechanism
of network television standards and practices. In a few instances, comedic
performances crossed, or at least threatened to cross, these lines.
‘BAD BOYS’ ON LATE NIGHT

The examples I look at in this section are far from the only instances
of stand-up comics going too far during this time period. Though not
nationally televised (at least until its circulation on the news after the fact),
Roseanne Barr’s loud and playfully obscene rendition of The Star Spangled
Banner before a 1990 Major League Baseball game between the San
Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds drew the ire of conservatives like
columnist George Will and President George Bush (Rowe 1995, 50–52).
In another untelevised incident, at the 1993 Friars’ Club Roast of Whoopi
Goldberg, actor Ted Danson (then Goldberg’s boyfriend) performed, in
blackface, a racially charged act written by Danson and Goldberg (Haggins
2007, 166–169). In 1994, ‘alternative’ comedian Bobcat Goldthwait was
banned from The Tonight Show after dousing one of the set’s couches in
lighter fluid and setting it ablaze. On the same token, it should not be
assumed that these were by any means the first instances of US broadcast
television regulating excessive stand-up. On Saturday Night Live, Richard
Pryor in 1975 and Sam Kinison in 1986 were both placed on seven-second
delay. And while there have been fewer controversies surrounding stand-
up comedians on broadcast television specifically since the culture wars of
the 1980s and 1990s, the FCC complaints over U2 singer Bono’s use of
profanity on the 2003 Golden Globe Awards and FCC fines brought after
Janet Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl halftime performance indicated that
battles over appropriate content on broadcast television would continue
into the new millennium.
But let’s return back to the early nineties. Andrew Dice Clay’s 12 May
1990 performance as host of Saturday Night Live came at the peak of
his career. At the time, he represented the archetypical ‘bad boy’ comic
that existed in the stand-up world but also characterized the ‘shock jock’
sensibility of Howard Stern, Don Imus, and later Clay cohorts Opie and
Anthony. In his stand-up act Clay offered affronts against multicultural-
ism, feminism, and other movements promoting social justice and equi-
table treatment but that were often derisively dubbed ‘political correctness’
by conservatives and comedians alike. This drew him a large audience in
the early 1990s, and he became the first stand-up comedian to sell out
Madison Square Garden twice. Accordingly, his act was often sexist, rac-
ist, and homophobic, and this combination of celebrity and offense made
him a controversial character. Given the level of his fame, Clay was in many
ways a natural choice to host Saturday Night Live in 1990. At the same
time, the profane nature of his act would seem to be a poor fit for a live
program so notoriously skittish about dirty words. By this point, he had
already been banned from MTV for reciting an explicit monologue on the
1989 MTV Video Awards, and considering the more permissive nature of
MTV’s censorship rules, it is unsurprising that Clay’s appearance on the
presumably more restrictive venue of network television would be greeted
with public controversy and unease from NBC’s Standards and Practices
department. Adding to an already substantial level of publicity surrounding
Clay’s appearance, Saturday Night Live cast member Nora Dunn and musi-
cal guest Sinead O’Connor boycotted the episode as a protest against Clay’s
misogynistic act (Donlon 1990). Furthermore, as a result of the comedian’s
raunchy routine, the network announced that it would place the program
on a seven-second delay in case Clay swore on the air (just as they had done
for Pryor and Kinison in past years) (Shales and Miller 2003, 354).
Although the episode brought reasonably high ratings, the news that
Clay would appear on the program and the subsequent outcry would
prove to be more eventful than the actual episode. The episode’s cold
open is a parody on It’s a Wonderful Life, which comments directly on the
uproar over Clay’s hosting gig. In the skit, the devil (Jon Lovitz) shows a
suicidal Clay what life would be like had Clay not been born and, thus, if
he would not have hosted the episode of Saturday Night Live. In a wink-
ing nod to the controversy leading up to the episode, as a result of Clay’s
absence, Nora Dunn is killed when she is crushed by Sinead O’Connor’s
amplifier. The crowd’s uproarious laughter at the revelation that the legs
under the amplifier belong to Dunn indicate that the joke’s true punchline
146 E. ELKINS
was her mock-killing rather than the sketch’s self-referential commentary

on the controversy. Following the cold open, Clay’s jittery and largely
inscrutable monologue is comprised of material about telling clean jokes
and one dirty, misogynistic joke about brides wearing white. The rest of
the episode is generally garden-variety Saturday Night Live, except for an
after-school special parody wherein Clay explains sex to his son (played by
Mike Myers) in particularly lewd terms.
The hosting gig would appear to be the beginning of the end for Clay.
After the critical and commercial failure of his feature film, The Adventures of
Ford Fairlane, released in the summer of 1990, his career began to fall into
a decline. Only two months after his Saturday Night Live appearance, the
New York Times would write, ‘Popular entertainment does, after all, have
a revulsion threshold. Andrew Dice Clay should know. He stepped over
it and is now desperately trying to salvage his career as a stand-up comic’
(O’Connor 1990a). By the end of the year, the same writer blamed Clay
for two of the television year’s most ‘dreadful moments, the kind that trig-
ger an involuntary shudder. Andrew Dice Clay gets credit for scoring twice
in this regard: being the host of “Saturday Night Live,” and weepily whin-
ing about his critics on The Arsenio Hall Show’ (O’Connor 1990b). Several
years after the fact, Saturday Night Live and NBC executives reflected on
Clay’s hosting gig as an unfortunate period in the program’s history. For
example, NBC Vice President of Late Night Rick Ludwin calls booking
Clay onto the program a ‘professional mistake’ made without knowledge
of the misogynistic nature of his act (Shales and Miller 2003, 354).
Looking at Clay’s career and performance on Saturday Night Live, it
should be evident that humour considered ‘politically incorrect’ or ‘offen-
sive’ in some way, or comedy that has been subject to censorship, does not
necessarily imply a politically progressive stance. Thus, while the ‘culture
wars’ described in the preceding section are often framed in the binaries
I outlined earlier, the conflict between decrying the hateful material in
Clay’s act and denouncing censorship on broadcast television indicates
that these debates take place on a more complicated and multivalent matrix
of power. The same can be said of another example of excessive stand-up
on Saturday Night Live: Martin Lawrence’s 1993 hosting gig. While most
of the controversy surrounding Clay’s performance on Saturday Night
Live involved the hype leading up to his appearance on the program, the
outcry over Lawrence’s performance stemmed directly from the material
in his monologue.
On the 19 February 1993 episode of Saturday Night Live, Lawrence

presented one of the lewder moments in the program’s history. Beginning
his monologue with a comment suggesting he needs to watch himself
because of the network censors, Lawrence proceeds to joke about John
Bobbitt and the supposed anger and malice of women in the 1990s. This
leads into an infamous, extended bit about poor feminine hygiene:
I’m meeting a lot of women out there, and you got some beautiful women,
but … some of you are not washing your ass properly … I tell a woman in a
minute, douche! … Some women don’t like when you tell them that, when
you straightforward with them … I say, well, I don’t give a damn what you do,
put a Tic-Tac in your ass. Put a Cert in your ass … But if you’re not clean in
your proper areas I can’t, you know, kiss all over the places I wanna kiss. You
know, some women’ll let you go down, you know what I’m sayin’, knowin’
they got a yeast infection … Come up with dough all on your damn lip.4
Even by today’s standards, the bit crosses lines rarely crossed on network
television. Indeed, Lawrence’s monologue was pulled from the program
in all subsequent reruns. The whitewashing of Lawrence’s monologue is
made literal during rebroadcasts of Lawrence’s episode. When the epi-
sode has been rerun in syndication, an onscreen disclaimer read in a pro-
fessional, sober monotone by long-time Saturday Night Live writer Jim
Downey replaces the offending portion of Lawrence’s monologue:
At this point in his monologue, Martin begins a commentary on what

he considers the decline in standards of feminine hygiene in this country.
Although we at Saturday Night Live take no stand on this issue one way or
the other, network policy prevents us from re-broadcasting this portion of
his remarks… It was a frank and lively presentation, and nearly cost us all our
jobs. We now return to the conclusion of Martin’s monologue.
The cheeky nature of the voice-over, as well as Downey’s faux-sincere

delivery, provide a safe, ironic distance from the black male excess of
Lawrence’s monologue. Indeed, there is a conscious and even jokingly
reflexive sanitation of Lawrence’s material, as Downey continues, ‘Martin
feels… that the failure of many young women to bathe thoroughly is a
serious problem that demands our attention. He explores this problem,
citing numerous examples from his personal experience, and ends by pro-
posing several imaginative solutions.’ By couching the monologue in aca-
demic terms, the program implies a heightened address that, along with
148 E. ELKINS
Downey’s elocution, is coded as ‘white’ to counteract the now-censored

black masculinity from the initial broadcast.
As in the case of Andrew Dice Clay, however, outlining network cen-
sorship should not imply a full-throated endorsement of the censored
material. Indeed, Kristal Brent Zook notes that Lawrence’s monologue
was entirely in keeping with his misogynist sense of humour, manifest in
his feature film A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, his concert film You
So Crazy, and his appearances on HBO’s stand-up showcases Def Comedy
Jam (which he hosted) and One Night Stand (Zook 1999). Zook notes
that this misogyny is at odds with much of the contemporaneous public
discourse about Lawrence’s starring Fox vehicle Martin, which framed
the program as a tale of a generally functional, happy relationship between
Martin Payne (Lawrence) and his girlfriend Gina Waters (Tisha Campbell),
thus ignoring the explicitly patriarchal dimensions of the program (1999,
64). In her criticism of Martin, Robin Means Coleman also suggests that
the program relied largely on black stereotypes and misogynist humour,
writing, ‘In full view of young white viewers (the series’ primary audi-
ence) Martin belittled not only Black women, but cultural signifiers at
times attributed to Black females’ (Means Coleman 1998). That Means
Coleman laments in particular the presentation of intra-racial animosity
to a white audience recalls Christine Acham’s discussion of black comedi-
ans like Chris Rock exposing the ‘internal critique’ existent within black
American cultures. As Acham points out, once black comedians begin air-
ing grievances in white, mainstream contexts of national television, ‘the
venue can change the meaning. No longer are you speaking to an audi-
ence that has a shared historical understanding underlying the humour’
(2004, 182).
Still, while Clay was undoubtedly controversial, his white, Brooklyn-
based masculine persona protected him from the often literal polic-
ing to which people embodying other identity groups were subjected.
As Kimberlé Crenshaw points out, ‘While 2 Live Crew was performing
in an adults-only club in Hollywood, Florida, Andrew Dice Clay was
performing nationwide on HBO’ (1991). This double standard suggests
that while Clay’s exaggerated version of familiar white-masculine aggres-
sion could be domesticated safely enough for late-night network televi-
sion (MTV ban notwithstanding), the offensive humour and excessive
black masculinity represented by Martin Lawrence’s stand-up made for
a more volatile mix on network TV. While the misogyny of Lawrence’s
monologue is deserving of harsh criticism, it enters a cultural conversa-

tion that is more complex than a binary of offensive/inoffensive based
merely around the jokes’ content. In addition to stand-up comedy,
Lawrence maintains an association with early 1990s hip-hop culture due
to his hosting gig on Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam and his existence
within a Fox milieu that promoted its brand around hip-hop aesthetics
and signification. As Bambi Haggins and Amanda Lotz point out, while
the program ‘offered a comedy product apropos of television’s zeitgeist
in the early 1990s’ (2008, 159), it belongs in a broader context. They
write, ‘Russell Simmons brought black and “blue” comedy to HBO at the
moment hip-hop was blowing up into mainstream American popular cul-
ture.’ As implied by Crenshaw’s comparison between Andrew Dice Clay
and 2 Live Crew, Lawrence’s monologue can be understood in concert
with public battles over rap music and hip-hop culture from the same time
period. The censure of Lawrence’s monologue is at once an ambivalent
reaction against hatefully misogynist humour as well as a policing of ethni-
cally coded performance in a predominately white space.
Due to their hugely popular stand-up acts and television programs,
Clay and Lawrence were firmly entrenched in the early 1990s zeitgeist.
However, more obscure ‘alternative’ comedians also found themselves
facing network regulation during this time. Already well known in various
stand-up comedy scenes around the country and especially in the United
Kingdom, Bill Hicks began to achieve a measure of mainstream success in
the late 1980s and early 1990s along with other ‘alt-comics’ like Janeane
Garofalo, Denis Leary, and Steven Wright. Hicks, a Texas-based stand-up
with a significant British fan base, but only a cult following in the United
States, was a regular guest on David Letterman’s talk shows in the late
1980s and early 1990s. On 1 October 1993, Hicks taped a stand-up seg-
ment for The Late Show with David Letterman, where he told jokes target-
ing anti-abortion activists. Hicks says:
You know who’s really bugging me these days. These pro-lifers. You ever
look at their faces? ‘I’m pro-life!’ … Boy, they look it don’t they? They just
exude joie de vivre. You just want to hang with them and play Trivial Pursuit
all night long. You know what bugs me about them? If you’re so pro-life,
do me a favor. Don’t lock arms and block medical clinics. If you’re so pro-
life, lock arms and block cemeteries. Let’s see how committed you are to
this idea.
150 E. ELKINS
In addition, Hicks mocked the Christian practice of wearing crucifixes as

jewelry and the absurdity of Easter celebrations involving ‘giant bunny rab-
bits’ and chocolate eggs. After the bit, Letterman invited Hicks to sit beside
the desk, making the good-natured crack that Hicks should have fun read-
ing his mail for the next few weeks. That evening, however, Hicks received
a call from Late Show executive producer Robert Morton notifying him
that the set had been cut and would not air that evening (Lahr 1993).
While Clay’s performance was controversial due largely to the audi-
ence’s preceding knowledge of his persona and act and Lawrence’s
because of the misogynistic nature of his monologue, Hicks’s performance
was cut due to the fear of backlash from right-wing groups and sponsors.
Furthermore, his was the only one of these three that, until recently, never
made it to air. Of the three acts discussed in this study, his is the most
blatantly political, inasmuch as it touches on the hot-button partisan issue
of abortion, one of the mainstays of the culture wars. Indeed, the battle
over representations of abortion on television predates Roe v. Wade, the
US Supreme Court ruling that eased federal and state restrictions on abor-
tion (D’Acci 1997). After the ruling, fundamentalist groups like the AFA,
Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition of America, and Jerry Falwell’s Moral
Majority publically opposed abortion and a woman’s right to choose, and
as I have discussed, such groups saw television and popular culture as
one of the battlegrounds on which these cultural wars should be waged.
That The Late Show cut the act pre-emptively speaks to the power of such
groups’ ability to pressure networks and advertisers.
After the Letterman taping, Hicks discussed the incident on Howard
Stern’s radio program and Austin Public Access program CapZeyeZ. In the
CapZeyeZ interview, Hicks tells host Dave Prewitt that he appreciates public
access and decries network television for its reliance on advertising dollars
and its unwillingness to promote experimental or controversial material.
Significantly, then, the fight against censorship is framed not only as a battle
against generally oppressive social norms, but against the capitalist exigen-
cies of broadcast television. As Hicks says in the interview, ‘I thought I
lived in the U.S.A., United States of America, and actually we live in the
U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guar-
anteed—if you’ve got the money.’5 Ultimately, insofar as Hicks’s set was
banned due to generally progressive viewpoints denouncing the radical,
right-wing tactics of many anti-abortionists (although it’s worth mention-
ing that the act also contained homophobic humour), it is in many ways
a more admirable example of fighting against network television strictures
than those of Clay and Lawrence, which prop up traditionally dominant

power structures. On the same token, as a battle between network televi-
sion executives and advertisers trying to avoid angering right-wing groups
and an explicitly left-wing comedian mocking uptight pro-life groups,
Hicks’s Late Show appearance offers a neat summation of the polarized—
and polarizing—discourses, functions, and practices of television regulation
during the period sustaining these culture wars.
CONCLUSION
Network television maintains its complex relationship to offensive mate-
rial, at once celebrating and castigating it. Indicating television’s pro-
pensity to both promote and reflect on its most sordid histories once
enough time has passed to heal the wounds, two of the incidents dis-
cussed recently made reappearances, of sorts. On the 30 January 2009
episode of The Late Show, sixteen years after Hicks’s performance and fif-
teen years after his death from cancer, Letterman invited Hicks’s mother
onto the program for an interview and finally aired the suppressed set. In
an unusual moment of sincerity for the broadcast (though also reflecting
the program’s tendency to look back unsentimentally on its own past as
Letterman approached his retirement in 2015), Letterman apologized to
Hicks’s mother and took responsibility for cutting the set in the first place.
Lawrence’s censored monologue from seventeen years earlier made a less
serious comeback during actor Jon Hamm’s monologue on the 30 January
2010 episode of Saturday Night Live. During the monologue, Hamm
alludes to fictional pre-Mad Men gigs, one of which was an appearance on
Def Comedy Jam. The program cuts to Hamm, dressed as his Mad Men
character Don Draper in a suit and holding a tumbler of whiskey, standing
behind a stand-up microphone and dryly reciting the following adaptation
of Lawrence’s monologue: ‘Have you seen them? You know what I’m
talking about—those round the way girls… They need to wash they ass.’
The program then cuts to archival footage of a predominately black Def
Comedy Jam audience laughing uproariously. That the joke is based on the
incongruity of the paradigmatically white Hamm in a distinctly black con-
text, and the according incongruity of the suave Draper/Hamm reciting
such ‘debased’ material, indicates that such humour’s racial dimensions
maintain an uneasy presence on broadcast television. Even as it represents
its own way of making amends for an earlier act of censorship, it does so
152 E. ELKINS
by packaging Lawrence’s monologue within Hamm’s broad appeal—a far

cry from Letterman’s much more honest and difficult contrition.
Still, while US television’s allowances for dirty or willfully offen-
sive humour have increased a great deal since these incidents, the blu-
est material remains on premium cable, streaming platforms like Netflix,
and basic cable channels like Comedy Central (particularly during the
Comedy Central Roasts), Adult Swim, and FXX. Nevertheless, contempo-
rary domestic (and domesticated) network sitcoms are more amenable to
relatively offensive humour, as a viewing of, say, Two Broke Girls will indi-
cate. Although it would be tempting to attribute this to an inexorable and
ethereal loosening of ‘standards’ or ‘mores’ due to the evolution or de-
evolution of American society, a more accurate reading is that broadcast
television comedy, in what Lotz has called the ‘post-network era’ (Lotz
2007), must continue to compete with cable and web comedy for viewers.
Still, such industrial dimensions must always take into account the social
contexts in which they are embedded. Looking back at recent history,
then, the examples of Clay, Lawrence, and Hicks indicate much about the
conflicts that would continue to exist within the US TV industry and US
political culture as well.
Indeed, these incidents speak to both the longevity of debates regard-
ing comedy and political correctness, but they also indicate how the indus-
trial and technological mechanisms that sustain them have shifted over
time—from decisions made by powerful television executives to debates
produced primarily by online activists and comedians speaking directly to
Internet-based publications like Salon and The Daily Beast. While complex
debates over the cultural politics of Clay, Lawrence, and Hicks’s acts came
largely out of top-down actions from executive boardrooms, more con-
temporary rhetoric over the appropriateness of rape jokes and racist and
misogynist comedy is often produced from Internet-based writers. Some
of these writers are professionals or freelance pop-culture commentators,
but some are simply fans who are tired of comedians ‘punching down’,
to use an increasingly common parlance. That many of the more contem-
porary debates over comedy and political correctness revolve less around
the appropriateness of ‘blue’ material and more about the cultural and
identity politics of certain kinds of comics and jokes also indicates that at
the center of debates over comedy, offense, and freedom of expression is a
much-needed critique of humour steeped in patriarchal aggression. While
the politics of comedy, offense, and freedom of expression are thorny and
complex, this criticism is, at least, welcome and necessary.
NOTES
1. For more thorough history and analysis, see Bauerlein and Grantham
(2009); Bolton (1992); Heins (1993); Hunter (1991); Wallis et al. (1999).
2. For reprints of many documents pertaining to these debates, see Bolton
(1992).
3. For a comparison of the 2 Live Crew and Mapplethorpe controversies, see
Brigman (1992).
4. Transcript from
SNLTranscripts.org. http://snltranscripts.jt.org/93/93nmono.phtml
5. The CapZeyeZ interview is available at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8409129199157823217
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Tosh.0, Convergence Comedy,
and the ‘Post-PC’ TV Trickster
Ethan Thompson
In the summer of 2010, comedian and television host Daniel Tosh pulled
off a Comedy Central coup: his show, Tosh.0, was drawing more viewers
than the US cable network’s nightly cornerstone, The Daily Show with
Jon Stewart. True, Tosh only put one new episode on the air each week
to Stewart’s ‘daily’, but in the land of basic cable comedy, this seemed
a significant milestone. The show had more than doubled its viewer-
ship from the previous, premiere summer, and Daniel Tosh was, in the
words of The New York Times, ‘indisputably the television comedian of
the moment’ (Stelter 2010). Most surprisingly, Tosh had done it all on a
cheaply produced clip show featuring online videos that many people had
already seen or could easily see elsewhere. Originally conceived as an inex-
pensive format that would drive content to the Comedy Central website,
the program successfully leveraged online videos as a free (or nearly free)
source of content with the clip show format popularized by E!’s Talk Soup
(1991–2002) and The Soup (2004–present). However, the popularity of
Tosh.0 has proved to be anything but ‘of the moment’. Going into its fifth
season in 2013, Tosh.0 remained not only the most highly rated program
on Comedy Central, but had become the highest rated program among
E. Thompson ()
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_9
156 E. THOMPSON
men ages 18–34 across all channels on Tuesday nights (Levine 2012). By
2015, it had not only maintained its ratings success on Comedy Central,
but had been sold into broadcast syndication on Fox stations across the
country (Block 2015).
This chapter will argue that the success of Tosh.0 is not simply due to
the combination of funny videos and a wise-cracking host, but how the
program integrates participatory practices of online media into TV con-
tent, and how Tosh’s comedy is preoccupied with what appear to be the
declining privileges of white masculinity. Tosh’s success is symptomatic of
a particular moment in media culture where what we laugh at and what
we feel about that laughing is in flux, due to technological and cultural
change. Henry Jenkins (2006) has described how the sweeping changes of
convergence culture refigure relationships between media producers and
consumers in provocative ways. And yet, in this new era of media culture,
many of the traditional power relationships maintain prominence. For
example, the ‘we laugh’ above is a problematic assumption, similar to how
television comedy (such as Tosh.0) presumes to speak for and to every-
one, yet is often calculated to specifically appeal to males aged 18–34.
Since it now constitutes a long-running hit, Tosh.0 is a prime example of
media culture that begs to be analyzed in order to situate and understand
the assumptions and privileges elided when males aged 18–34 stand in
for the norm. Daniel Tosh deftly crosses boundaries between what is or
isn’t socially acceptable to do or say, just as his show blurs boundaries
between consumers and producers of comedy, and between viewer and
host. This goes beyond the typical self-deprecation of many comedians,
and seems key to his construction of a masculine identity privileged to
engage in ‘politically incorrect’ comic commentary. The combination of
these strategies helps explain why Tosh.0 has managed to be the ‘comedy
of the moment’ for so long. Tosh’s comedy incorporates participatory
components and also turns upon shifting cultural politics and values in
relation to identity. Tosh’s recurring jokes about race and ethnicity seem
symptomatic of white male anxiety about ‘who gets to say what’ in an era
of increased diversity, complaints of censoring due to ‘political correct-
ness’, and continued discomfort talking about race in particular. Tosh.0
is an important example to consider as representation and articulation of
white masculinity in what has been referred to as a ‘post-politically cor-
rect’ moment in television—particularly in how the comedy seems preoc-
cupied with the politics of language and power.
TOSH.0, CONVERGENCE COMEDY, AND THE ‘POST-PC’ TV TRICKSTER 157
Freud theorized that laughter relieved the anxieties produced by social

repression. The joke is social subterfuge; it allows the getting around of
social decorum and the explaining of reaction as involuntary. ‘A joke will
allow us to exploit something ridiculous in our enemy which we could not,
on account of obstacles in the way, bring forward openly or consciously;
once again, then, the joke will evade restrictions and open sources of plea-
sure that have become inaccessible’ (1960). From this theoretical perspec-
tive on comedy, the social changes brought about by identity politics and
‘political correctness’ creates social pressures, and laughing at ‘politically
incorrect’ jokes is a return of the repressed. Another essential piece to
understanding this social repression/release mechanism and its relation
to culture and the broader community is Mary Douglas’s work on ‘jok-
ing relations’, which describe how jokes map tensions within a culture
and emerging perspectives (1975). The job of the comic or clown then
becomes mapping the borders of what can or can’t be said. Tosh.0 enacts
this mapping through television, bringing into existence through his audi-
ence a community whose laughter or squirms provide the other half of
making that map, signaling what can or can’t be said. Simply put, Tosh.0
resonates with the 18–34-year-old male audience’s online habits, as well
as its repressed anxieties.
COMMENT COMEDY, ON TV AND ONLINE

The simplest description of what happens during almost any episode of
Tosh.0 is that a stand-up comedian does something people usually do them-
selves. That is, they watch videos from the relative safety of a computer,
perhaps sharing them with friends, or commenting on other people’s post-
ing of them on Facebook or other social media. Though the content of
the featured videos varies from episode to episode, Tosh.0 has followed a
strict structure in how those videos are presented and commented upon.
Like many sitcoms, each episode starts with a cold open: a short video
that usually involves self-inflicted physical injury. Tosh introduces him-
self, makes a short joke about the clip, then shows it again, making more
comments. Soon after is ‘20 Seconds on the Clock’ in which Tosh fits in
as many comments about a video as he can in 20 seconds. The result is
similar to reading a series of brief comments on a video from different
users, one after another, sometimes related to each other, sometimes not.
Another regular segment is ‘Video Breakdown’, in which a clip is slowed
down and paused while Tosh comments upon what happens at various
158 E. THOMPSON
moments. Thus, Tosh.0 is modeled upon the ways in which viewers all
over the world have been interacting with online videos since before the
dawn of YouTube: watching and ridiculing videos of individuals humiliat-
ing themselves in an infinite number of ways.
True, as a professional comedian with a team of writers, Tosh’s com-
ments trump the entertainment value of your average comment thread.
But making snarky comments about television on television isn’t exactly
ground-breaking, either. Examples of television antecedents to the comic
commentary of Tosh.0 include clip shows like Talk Soup, amateur video
showcases such as America’s Funniest Home Videos, and other programs
that have featured hosts or characters talking about TV or media culture,
such as Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Beavis & Butt-Head. These
examples of media culture all create comedy from comic commentary
on media culture, and model such practices as methods of making media
pleasurable by ridiculing it. Tosh.0 weds that format with the expansion of
individual viewers commenting on and about media beyond isolated con-
versations on fan message boards to the common, mainstream media prac-
tice it has become. The participatory culture of comically commenting
may target anything from a lousy episode of an expensively produced TV
show, showcased on an official website, to a low-res, mobile phone-shot
clip of backyard wrestling, to a badly produced, early 1990s hip-hop video
digitized off an old videotape and posted on YouTube. Whether actually
commenting on the footage, or laughing at other people’s comments,
there are abundant opportunities to engage and participate in the culture
of humiliation comedy without actually being the person shooting the
video or its subject. Aside from the videos themselves, comments posted
by individuals now provide a legitimate draw in their own right, especially
for those who enjoy taking pleasure in the pain and failures of others. For
every Daniel Tosh, there are thousands of others who provide similar ser-
vices, and they do so without their own television show but a peculiar kind
of self-produced celebrity: ‘trolls’ who don’t just try to be funny but seek
to create a negative response because of the harshness of their comments.
Tosh’s commenting is a professionally enhanced version of what indi-
viduals might do online, but the show does actually offer opportunities
for viewer participation in the show itself. From its premiere, Tosh.0 has
embraced online participatory practices, with Tosh commissioning fans to
make particular kinds of videos that could be uploaded to the show’s web-
site and even showcased on the program alongside viral video stars. The
program’s rise also coincided with that of Twitter, and Tosh encouraged
viewers to ‘live tweet’ the show, to interact with him and each other, long
before the networks began superimposing hashtags in the corners of every
primetime program. Some of those comments routinely were put at the
end of the episode for Tosh to respond to—a convergence culture update
of the practice of reading viewer mail that has been around since the medi-
um’s early days.
Talk show hosts have long addressed their audiences in such ways, but
Tosh uses social media to engage them in conversation and even feature
them on the program to an unprecedented extent. He regularly gives
video assignments based on other videos he shows, encouraging viewers
to submit their own videos, which may be later featured on the show or
its website. An example is ‘I’m Better Than You, Na-Na-Na-Boo-Boo’, in
which Tosh challenges viewers to outdo something he has done on video,
usually some physical feat such as jumping chairs or something more elab-
orate such as a gag that had Tosh and staff members repeatedly jumping
through a flaming hoop as it rolled down a hill. Tosh.0 occasionally takes
viewers behind the scenes of the show’s production, usually to show Tosh
torturing/humiliating staff members or himself. These scenes are usually
in dialogue with one of the videos, and the behind-the-scenes nature of
them is obviously done to set up jokes, rather than provide any actual doc-
umentation of what producing the show is like. Comedy shows for many
years have offered behind-the-scenes moments as one way to invite audi-
ences in on the production of comedy. This includes David Letterman’s
banter with his director in the control room, for example, all the way back
to Ernie Kovacs, who liked to appear wearing a headset before a pile of
monitors, chomping on a cigar. Tosh.0 has gone beyond the tease of such
glimpses, not only prompting viewers to consider what it might be like
to put a show together, but making their contributions and participation
fundamental to the content and structure of the show.
Will Brooker has described web content for television programs as
‘overflow’ that seeks to capture viewer attention when not actually watch-
ing the program ‘on TV’. Such content constitutes an extension of the
television text for fans to engage and ‘live’ beyond just viewing (2004).
Because Tosh.0 is so based upon online videos and practices, it makes sense
that the program’s website offers many opportunities for fans to talk back
to Tosh, comment upon other videos and photos featured on the site, and
talk to one another. The blog is continually updated with videos that don’t
make it to TV, and contests are held for fans to write captions for photos
or argue the merits of a video. Aside from these official sites, there are also
160 E. THOMPSON
many videos on YouTube and groups on Facebook campaigning to get

the stars of various clips on the show. Tosh.0 has not just nurtured its fan
base by giving them something to do ‘off TV’, but reversed the process
of overflow, bringing the habits of commenting and communication of
interactive media to television.
PARTICIPATORY HUMILIATION OR REDEMPTION?

Tosh.0 is not a narrative, but its ‘Web Redemption’ segment creates nar-
rative for online videos by tracking down their stars, then flying them out
to appear on the show to ‘redeem’ themselves by correcting their failed
performances or bad behaviour. By facing Tosh (and through him those
who would comment upon their failures and humiliations) these segments
don’t simply provide moments of prolonged humiliation, but offer an
opportunity for the subject to regain some control of their identity. The
‘Web Redemption’ segment involves both the star/victim and the viewer
taking pleasure in their failure, allowing an opportunity for the star/vic-
tim to talk back and regain a modicum of control while humiliation is
displaced upon Tosh—usually. Whether the star/victims come off look-
ing good or bad, or better or worse than Tosh, is somewhat inconsistent.
For example, Denny Blazin, the self-proclaimed ‘Average Homeboy’ who
made his own rap video circa 1990, comes across as a jerk who complains
that you couldn’t make a movie called ‘Black People Can’t Swim’ without
being called a racist (Tosh.0, 10 February 2010). One way Tosh attempts
to be non-threatening in these segments is by appearing as an exagger-
ated version of the individual in the original video. This usually means
similar-but-worse fashion choices and showing off his skinny body the
way Will Ferrell is fond of showing off his not-so-skinny one. In doing so,
Tosh offers to preemptively humiliate himself, both as a visual joke and an
apparent attempt to put the individual at ease. But this comic feminizing
also seems designed to put Tosh’s sexuality into question, freeing him up
to inquire about or taunt viral star/victims about their sexuality. Examples
include asking a male intern to take his shirt off when he delivers water
to him during a web redemption in which Tosh is attempting to ‘out’
the male star of the video (Tosh.0, 18 January 2011). Two other exam-
ples suggest the extreme to which Tosh is willing to tease male anxieties
about sexuality: in season two, he filmed a slow-motion segment in which
he meticulously rubbed tanning oil all over physically ripped comedian
Carrot Top (Tosh.0, 21 August 2010), and another in which he and male
staff members took Viagra and then watched gay porn in a contest to see
who would involuntarily out himself as being attracted to men (Tosh.0,
25 January 2011). In retrospect, the first example seems a similar taunt
of his male fans, forcing fans to watch a man rub oil on another man. The
Viagra segment itself surely prompted a large proportion of the demo to
ask themselves, ‘What if?’
Usually the redemption itself is fairly simple: a better music video, a
better job answering pageant questions, a better job singing the National
Anthem. Others are more elaborate. The first episode of the third sea-
son featured Antoine Dodson, the star of Auto-Tune-the-News’ ‘Bed
Intruder’ video, which was based on footage from his TV news interview
following the sexual assault of his sister (Tosh.0, 11 January 2011). The
segment offers Dodson a chance to recapture control of how audiences
read him, and while Tosh dresses up as Dodson in the video, with an afro
wig and red do-rag, and sleeveless shirt, Dodson comes across as dignified
and, mostly, annoyed with Tosh.
A description of the redemption illustrates the standard format, as well
as the recurring kinds of jokes about sex and sexuality Tosh likes to make.
Tosh meets Dodson in a park where he says there are more unsolved rapes
per square acre than any place in the United States—queue a scream-
ing woman running behind the two of them. Tosh asks Dodson what
he wants the world to know about him, and when Dodson says that he
is openly gay, Tosh counters that he thinks people knew that one sec-
ond into his video, alluding to his effeminate mannerisms. Tosh also asks
him about his reactions to being remixed. Dodson says he was initially
offended and thought that his family was being made fun of, then he
decided the video had a positive message and was an ‘alert’. Tosh seizes
upon this to turn the redemption as an opportunity to treat sexual vio-
lence as a topic for light humour. The two conduct a ‘rape prevention
class’, then set a trap with Tosh in a pink tutu as bait for a rapist. It all
culminates with a timely joke about Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh
Steelers quarterback accused of sexual assault. This redemption, while
typical in terms of its structure, is disconcerting for how it typifies the sex-
ist tone and content of much of Tosh’s material. Rape is made a topic for
light humour throughout the piece, a screaming victim of sexual violence
little more than a quick gag. This kind of attitude, while successful with
the demo, would later create controversy, also typified by an ill-conceived
viewer challenge: ‘Lightly Touching Women’s Stomachs While They’re
Sitting Down’ (Tosh.0, 3 April 2012).
162 E. THOMPSON
Given how the featured performers usually end up getting the better of
Tosh, the Web Redemptions don’t seem to add up to prolonged humilia-
tion of the online video star/victim. They might be seen as symptomatic
of audience fascination with celebrity (and the industry’s proven methods
to nurture that fascination), however minor or dependent upon humili-
ation that celebrity might be, as well as conflicted feelings about taking
pleasure in other people’s humiliation. That self-consciousness is symp-
tomatic to this moment not just because of online video, but because of
reality television, which often features ordinary people humiliating them-
selves with bad behaviour, or showcases fashion failures necessitating a
makeover. Aside from criticism based on quality, the complaint that plea-
sures produced by watching these shows is unethical is part of the popular
discourse on reality TV. The Web Redemption segments do adopt the
‘makeover’ trope of many recent reality television shows. However, Tosh.0
skips the empathy crucial for melodrama or the sense of justice neces-
sary for Schadenfreude that Amber Watts has described as so important
to makeover shows (2008). The continued centrality of these segments
to the show as its success has continued might signal audience anxiet-
ies about what social media could ‘do to them’ if old video from high
school found its way online, for example, or if someone happened to have
a video camera that time a public speaking engagement went tragically
off course. Again, Tosh.0 offers another opportunity for the audience to
wonder, ‘what if?’
IS IT (OR THE HOST OR THE AUDIENCE) RACIST?

That several of the examples noted in this chapter include comedy that
overtly engages issues of race, gender, and sexuality is not the result of
cherry-picking content from the series for social relevance. Tosh.0 is over-
whelmingly preoccupied with what it means to be ‘politically correct’.
This in itself is not a negative criticism: violating taboos and mapping the
boundaries of what can or can’t be joked about (and therefore, what can or
can’t be said) is an important social function of comedy. However, Tosh.0
doesn’t so much engage identity politics as it attempts to ridicule and dis-
miss them. The program serves as a prototypical example of what Amanda
Lotz terms ‘post-PC comedy’—comedy that seems to have internalized
the discourses of identity politics, not to the extent of having ‘learned
the lessons’ or embraced identity politics, but that takes audience aware-
ness of them for a given, and treats this as a license to incorporate jokes
with racist, sexist, or homophobic content while suggesting that the jokes
themselves are not racist, sexist, or homophobic because both comedian
and audience know better (Lotz 2011).
The negotiation of the politics of language, what can or can’t be said or
laughed at, is right on the surface of Tosh.0. ‘Is it racist?’ is another segment
that has appeared multiple times over the seasons, and usually includes
both an online video and another segment starring Tosh. Sometimes it is
simply the visual content of the video itself that seems to embody racist
stereotypes. For example, video of a watermelon eating contest held by a
Baptist Church, which shows a black woman destroying two white male
competitors while she is cheered on by several white women (Tosh.0, 28
February 2012). Other times, the videos are about the politics of lan-
guage, basically showing white people saying things that contemporary
social standards dictate they shouldn’t. For example, in one episode, Tosh
shows a clip from a local news show in which one of the news anchors
introduces an African American weather man with the phrase ‘speaking
of the colors’ (Tosh.0, 26 February 2013). Tosh then says, ‘In this hyper-
sensitive day and age, it’s hard to know who will be offended by what’,
and so he developed a list of terms he says have no racial connotations
whatsoever and presented them to an ‘extremely diverse’ focus group:
a white woman, a gay man, a Latino, an African American man, and an
Asian woman. Tosh presents terms that he wants to know if any of them
find offensive. While most seem totally nonsensical, they bear enough of
a derogatory nature that the individuals argue back and forth with Tosh.
‘Cream jockey’, ‘water flaps’, ‘sugar taster’, ‘saddle shins’, ‘clink clunk’—
by the end it is a back and forth between him and the African American
man. ‘What can I call you?’ ‘Apple picker? Why are you offended by Apple
Picker?’ What is lost on Tosh, but not the individuals, is that it is not the
particular words that are offensive, but the exercise of privilege and power
that labeling a group assumes. The terms may be nonsensical, but the fact
that the entire scene is essentially seeking to update white privilege with
new derogatory terms for referring to entire groups of people is not lost
on the members of the focus group, who repeatedly object. What this is
really about is trying to maintain existing white, male power by updating
language. The joke is supposed to be that minorities will be offended by
even total nonsense, but the end joke is that it is Tosh that can’t figure out
that it’s the ‘name calling’ and not the names themselves that are offen-
sive. ‘Be careful using those new terms, guys’, Tosh tells the audience. ‘It’s
a slippery slope. I’m pretty sure you also shouldn’t say “slippery slope”.’
164 E. THOMPSON
The presence of the studio audience in each episode is also noteworthy.

Not only does Tosh stand in front and comment while we hear audiences
laugh approval or groan disapproval, but we see reaction shots of them as
well. Tosh will even sometimes poll the studio audience as to whether a
segment or joke is racist. For example, one ‘Is it racist?’ segment featured
a news report about a middle-aged, white high school teacher who argued
that he shouldn’t have gotten in trouble for saying ‘niggas’ rather than
‘niggers’, which he regards as two completely different words (Tosh.0, 19
July 2011). Tosh uses this video to create a segment where he attempts
similar transformations, adding an ‘A’ to other racial slurs. We see Daniel
at work, throwing around such creations as ‘chinka’, ‘wetbacka’, and ‘dis-
gusting diabetes having fat piece of crapa’. The extent to which Tosh.0
recognizes that this segment caters to the demographic that has to moni-
tor its language for offensiveness is made a part of the joke. After the tape
ends, Tosh says, ‘Let’s let the black people in our audience decide, is it
racist?’ The camera cuts to a single African American man standing in the
midst of the studio audience. He gives a thumbs-up, to which the audi-
ence cheers. But Tosh feigns confusion: ‘Guys, I don’t know what you’re
cheering about. A thumbs-up means it is racist.’ Tosh suggests his audi-
ence is clueless about what it means for something to be racist, perhaps
acknowledging that the segment is just another in the flow of comedy,
something else to laugh at without reflecting upon what’s at stake with
racist language.
Herman Gray describes whiteness as ‘the privileged yet unnamed place
from which to see and make sense of the world’ (1995, 86). Richard Dyer
has likewise stressed the need to interrogate whiteness:
White power […] reproduces itself regardless of intention, power differ-

ences and goodwill, and overwhelmingly because it is not seen as whiteness,
but as normal. White people need to learn to see themselves as white, to
see their particularity. In other words, whiteness needs to be made strange
(1997, 10).
A generous evaluation of Tosh.0 might suggest that in its brazen attempts

to be funny for males aged 18–34 it has succeeded, inadvertently, at ‘nam-
ing’ that position and working through its particularities. This happens
continually through jokes about sexuality, race, and gender, and some-
times very directly in segments like ‘Is it racist?’, which are staged over
and over and over. Tosh’s inability to recognize that it is fundamentally
not language but privilege that is offensive undermines the potential for
interrogating privilege, overdetermining the repetitive, reductive ways the
segments address and dismiss the anxieties of the audience.
Tosh, of course, is not alone in making comedy that directly or tan-
gentially deals with identity politics in the ‘post-PC’ context. The pro-
gram’s approach bears comparison to two distinctive other programs that
have been considered by scholars. The first is Chappelle’s Show, a Comedy
Central hit years before Tosh.0, and Psych, a light drama on the USA
Network. Examining Tosh.0 in the context of these other shows illumi-
nates how differently race is treated and made meaningful in comedy at
the same, or nearly the same, cultural moment. Davi Johnson Thornton
writes that ‘Psych’s jocular treatment of race and racism communicates to
audiences that racial humour enhances, rather than threatens, interracial
intimacy because humour demonstrates that genuine amity need not be
regulated by race-conscious social etiquette such as the rules of “polit-
ical correctness,” or PC’ (2011, 426). Lisa Perks investigates how the
humorous discourse in Chappelle’s Show is structured in order to encour-
age activation of ‘polysemic potential’ in the text. Chappelle’s Show, she
says, created,
a rhetorical space to question cultural definitions of race and racial discrimi-

nation. The inclusion of conflicting discourses that circulate around issues of
racial stereotypes, racial epithets, discrimination, and White privilege magni-
fies the semiotic system of racial stereotypes, plays with semiotic bonds of
racial signifiers, and gently pushes the comedic generic constraints so as to
make serious issues more palatable to a diverse audience (2010, 286).
More recently, Inside Amy Schumer (2013–present), which also airs on

Comedy Central and is formatted very similarly to Chappelle’s Show, rou-
tinely interrogates definitions of gender and sexist discrimination. Inside
Amy Schumer also has repeatedly referenced its unique status as a female-
centered program on a male-skewing network. Its second season opener,
for example, featured a sketch in which a focus group of male viewers
argued about how sexually desirable Amy Schumer was or wasn’t (Inside
Amy Schumer, 1 April 2014). Such reflexivity or polysemic layering is miss-
ing in Tosh.0, which appears to lack the desire to mean different things to
different people. Chappelle’s Show had to make comic commentary on race
more palatable for its audience—a fact that ultimately lead Chappelle to
quit the show when he realized he had little control over what audiences
166 E. THOMPSON
were laughing at (Haggins 2009). Inside Amy Schumer has already gar-
nered Emmy and Peabody Awards, but it still can’t transcend the gen-
dered demographics of the Comedy Central audience. Deadline.com, for
example, caged the ratings success of her debut episodes each year rela-
tive to how much of her lead-in audience she lost. Her lead-in? The pro-
gram that was routinely the highest rated show among male viewers on
Tuesdays, Tosh.0 (De Moraes 2015).
Tosh, on the other hand, starts from a privileged position that needn’t
worry over audience reception, as he can assume he and the audience are
the same; that is clear in the content of the ‘Is it racist?’ segments. Mary
Douglas’s description of the position of the joker in a culture suggests
a homogeneity that fits Tosh better than Chappelle. She writes that the
joker ‘has a firm hold on his own position in the structure and the disrup-
tive comments which he makes upon it are in a sense the comments of the
social group upon itself. He merely expresses consensus’ (Douglas 1975,
107). Chappelle’s position as an African American comedian with a largely
white audience was much more tenuous, as is Schumer’s among the male
audience.
Perhaps, then, we shouldn’t be surprised by the prolonged success of
Tosh.0 vs. Chappelle’s retreat from television. Chappelle’s Show featured
sketches about race until Chappelle famously called it quits, crediting his
own misgivings about who was laughing at what in his comedy (Haggins
2009). But Daniel Tosh continues to churn out episode after episode, not
just feigning a lack of self-awareness, but outright dismissing the notion
that his comedy might mean something, aside from occasionally warrant-
ing an apology. Since he speaks to and for dominant masculine tastes,
there is little need to worry anyone might be laughing against the grain.
CONCLUSION: TRICKSTER 2.0

Andrew Stott, in his elaboration on recurring comic types, differentiates
the ‘trickster’ from other figures by the frequent boundary crossing that
the figure engages in. While other comic types might be laughed at for
being inferior or engaging in activities outside social norms, the trickster
makes a game of violating prohibitions and ‘is not confined by boundaries,
conceptual, social, or physical, and can cross lines that are impermeable to
normal individuals’ (2005, 51). But rather than destroying such bound-
aries by their violations and ultimately subverting social order, tricksters
narratives, he notes, ‘usually conclude with the meddlesome actions of the
protagonist coming to serve some useful or illustrative purpose’ (2005,

53). Trickster figures from the Coyote of Native American cultures of the
southwest United States, to Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, to that ‘cartoon anarchist’ Daffy Duck, ridicule belief systems
from the inside and out, ultimately not to subvert but to prevent them
from becoming too secure in themselves.
Tosh is a convergence media trickster, whose television program crosses
boundaries between watching videos and starring in them, between laugh-
ing at people from a safe distance, to confronting them and allowing them
to ‘talk back’ in person. That is, Tosh.0 confuses boundaries between who
is laughing and who is laughed at. Bridging boundaries of time and space
are what frame him as the trickster, who then can cross the socially conten-
tious boundaries of decorum and language that is the substance of much
of the show. The trickster gets away with things others can’t; his comic
power comes from his ability to cross boundaries, to switch identities,
to break categories that ‘normal’ people (who don’t have the power of
their own television program, and who abide by social decorum) cannot.
He blurs boundaries between what the white male says, wants to say, and
shouldn’t say. This is the source of what makes him funny; it’s not what
he says, or how he helps us see the world differently. Rather, it is how he
relentlessly breaks the rules that govern our world, that repress all the
psychic energy waiting for comic release.
Tosh.0 is a not just a prime example of a trickster figure on television,
but a trickster figure as product of (and suited for) the technological char-
acteristics of television in the convergence era, the industrial parameters
of its production, and the cultural tastes and experiences of its audiences.
That is, while the Coyote might have spoken to the particular social
mores and belief systems of southwestern Native American cultures, Tosh
is a trickster for the twenty-first century male audience aged 18–34. He
therefore crosses and violates boundaries of socially acceptable and unac-
ceptable behaviour and language that are symptomatic of that audience’s
experiences, and, crucially, does so in ways that ultimately reaffirm the
belief systems of that audience. In other words, it isn’t just what Tosh
says, but the particular format of his show that makes him such a suc-
cessful ‘post-PC’ trickster. Considering Tosh as trickster figure helps us
recognize that it isn’t so much the particular videos Tosh comments on,
or the specific ‘redemptions’ he stages, that can be credited with his quick
ascension and long-running ratings success. Rather, it is how he routinely
stages scenarios for white, heterosexual, masculine identity that perform
168 E. THOMPSON
insecurity in the face or sexual, racial, or gender difference, but end by

confirming masculine power. While ostensibly providing another oppor-
tunity to see online videos featuring humiliating or disgusting content
to laugh at, Tosh’s humour overwhelmingly derives from anxiety about
cultural change and the loss of privilege. While that might be found in the
punchlines of the highest rated sitcoms of the day (The Big Bang Theory,
for example), the format of Tosh.0 enables a more flexible boundary cross-
ing that, divorced as it is from narrative, explicitly engages with questions
of language: who can say what about whom—or who can laugh at whom.
Tosh possesses the ability to cross boundaries of time and space that
are impermeable to the audience. That is, Tosh doesn’t just laugh at an
Internet fail, he can summon that person to Los Angeles, restage a sce-
nario, and through a ‘Web Redemption’ attempt to rewrite the fail or
whatever it was to begin with. This is of course not just the product of
technology, but of the power granted Tosh by Comedy Central. In other
words, any individual might Skype with the star of a YouTube video,
but they wouldn’t be able to compel them to do so for cash or greater
celebrity/notoriety the way Tosh can. Tosh’s engagement with audiences
through social media and through his speaking to them and about them
on the show itself invites them along for the tricksterdom. The opportuni-
ties Tosh provides online for fans to comment on videos provides another
staging for audiences where they can assume the role of trickster by cross-
ing boundaries of what is acceptable to say about people.
The demographic profile of the basic cable audience that Tosh.0 success-
fully targets mirrors that of Daniel Tosh himself: young, white, and male.
The awareness of that mirroring that we’ve been examining helps us better
understand the success of Tosh.0 aside from its adept use of participatory
media practices. It also helps us understand Tosh’s resilience in the face
of the most controversial event in the history of the show. While attend-
ing one of Tosh’s stand-up performances at the Laugh Factory in July
2012, a woman, offended at Tosh’s discussion of the humorous merits of
rape jokes, intervened by heckling him, saying, according to her account,
‘Actually, rape jokes are never funny!’ Tosh responded by immediately
countering that it would indeed be funny if she was raped by five guys.
Her description of the event testifies to the immediacy of the experience:
‘I should probably add that having to basically flee while Tosh was enthus-
ing about how hilarious it would be if I was gang-raped in that small,
claustrophobic room was pretty viscerally terrifying and threatening all the
same, even if the actual scenario was unlikely to take place.’ The comment
was particularly threatening because of its invocation of sexual violence

‘in person’. That is, Tosh made the comment to a particular woman in
the same space he was performing. The sexism of the comment, while
consistent with the sophomoric tenor of his material, crossed over into the
territory of invoking violence.
The story was first publicly recounted on an anonymous Tumblr page
(2012), which garnered more attention after Tosh tweeted a two-part
apology, not surprisingly inspiring an explosion of responses back and
forth about the appropriateness of rape as a subject for comedy. Enter
another comedian adept at navigating and manipulating the convergent
media landscape, Louis C.K., who tweeted ‘@danieltosh your show makes
me laugh every time I watch it. And you have pretty eyes’ in the midst of
the controversy. When he did so, he became the subject of headlines across
the Blogosphere as well as in the trade papers (Zakarin 2012). As Amanda
Ann Klein (2012) has written, what proved especially interesting about
the incident were its repercussions—not so much for Tosh, but for Louis
C.K. While Tosh’s comments were offensive, they were consistent with
his comedy and not particularly offensive to his core audience. By 2012,
Louis C.K., not Tosh, had arguably become the comedian of the moment,
particularly following the success of his critically acclaimed program Louie,
which he writes, directs, edits, and stars in. Like Tosh, Louis C.K. combines
social media acumen with narrowcasted TV success. Aside from Twitter,
he has self-released comedy specials online and sends lengthy email mes-
sages filling his followers in on his current comedy projects, on top of
the success of his series on the cable station FX. However, C.K.’s defense
of Tosh, while typical of comedians reflexively defending one another,
was not consistent with his brand of politically conscious, liberal-friendly
comedy. Louis C.K. had become known as a comedian whose stand-up
routines and sitcom routinely critiqued white male privilege. Repairing his
image, C.K. appeared on the Daily Show, trying to explain that he wasn’t
really defending Tosh’s comments, but that he thought jokes about any-
thing bad were a good thing that increased dialogue. As an example, he
described how after reading some responses to the controversy, his eyes
had been opened to how rape polices women’s lives, limiting where they
can go and when. Thus, after a reckless tweeting error, he went on TV
to make his bumbling more consistent with his brand. In his next HBO
special Oh My God, which was shot in early 2013, C.K. even included a bit
on how ill-advised it was for women to date men at all, since men were the
number-one danger to women.
170 E. THOMPSON
Unlike Louis C.K., Daniel Tosh is no critical darling, but the rape con-
troversy did little to hurt his popularity. Tosh.0 has continued to mine
Internet failures and humiliations for comedy gold. While Tosh’s profile is
prominent enough that he receives attention outside his core audience, he
is beholden to their tastes (and anxieties) for his comedy and his paycheck.
Tosh.0 has mined online culture not just to find videos to repurpose, but
for jokes (and insults) from viewers, treating ‘the Internet’ as a production
partner. That back-and-forth sometimes leads to Tosh defending himself
on his own show, as in a 2013 episode in which he felt compelled to spell
out his show’s 'mission statement.' I’m well aware you think I’m getting
too big for my britches. That’s why I thought tonight it would be appro-
priate to remind you of the mission statement that hangs in our office and
has been the guiding principle behind every episode of Tosh.0 since day
one: to create a silly, web-based clip show that makes males between the
ages of 18 and 34 laugh and occasionally cringe, all at the lowest possible
price point so that one day I can purchase a private island. That’s it, noth-
ing more, nothing less (Tosh.0, 5 March 2013). Contrary to Tosh’s denial
of any cultural agenda, this examination of the content and format of the
show reveals it is profoundly preoccupied with the politics of language
and identity. In fact, this preoccupation need not be an agenda, as it is
inseparable from Tosh’s directive to make males aged 18–34 ‘laugh and
occasionally cringe’. What makes that audience do so are those videos,
sketches, and jokes that violate boundaries of decorum, which evade social
controls, and thereby elicit the involuntary response of laughter. The very
content of the program itself shows that identity politics isn’t just a mine-
field for a comedian to navigate, but central to the cultural work of map-
ping the boundaries of what is funny, and what is just offensive.
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Crude and Taboo Humour in Television
Advertising: An Analysis of Commercials
for Consumer Goods
Elsa Simões Lucas Freitas
The analysis proposed in this chapter implies, from the start, two different
sets of problems: advertising is, due to its nature, a restless and elusive type
of discourse, which resists categorization; at the same time, consensual
definitions of humour are difficult or even impossible to reach.
The issue of humour in advertising has generated considerable aca-
demic interest since its use as an advertising strategy is widespread (Gulas
and Weinberger 2006, 18). Although the positive effects of humour for
the purposes of memorization and increased likeability towards a brand
are not definitely proven, it is generally accepted that the ‘right’ audience
will react favourably to the ‘right’ humorous approach and that, regardless
of the underlying mechanisms involved in the process, the outcome is pos-
itive and beneficial to the participants and to the message itself (Flaherty
et al. 2004, 26).
In order to achieve this purpose, a number of variables must be taken
into account, namely the type of product that is being advertised, the
characteristics of the audiences intended, the media where the ad is being
broadcast, and, finally, the type of humorous approach that is going to be
used—hence the difficulty of correctly gauging what is meant by ‘right’,
E.S.L. Freitas ( )
Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_10
174 E.S.L. FREITAS
since contemporary advertising often resorts to cruder versions of humour

that would be potentially alienating for certain audiences.
It is the aim of this chapter to reflect on the uses of crude and taboo
humour in a number of contemporary ads, with a view to understand-
ing the way in which they manage to effectively reach their target audi-
ence, despite their potential offensive charge. The corpus of the present
chapter consists mainly of television ads. Effectively, advertisers are almost
unanimous in singling out television as one of the best media for the use
of humour, since its dynamic qualities are well adapted to the depiction of
situations that require a temporal development that ends with a punch line
(Freitas 2008, 108). There is also some consensus as to the most suitable
products to be advertised by means of humour: as we will see, these would
seem to be the ones in the category of consumer non-durables, or ‘yellow
products’ (Gulas and Weinberger 2006, 73), a category that encompasses
most of the ads on which this analysis will be based.
THE USES OF HUMOUR IN ADVERTISING

The complex mechanisms that underlie humour are hard to describe
(Berger 1993, 2; Yeshin 2006, 301), even though response to humour
would seem to be something of a universal human trait (Raskin 1985,
2). There are even doubts as to the way laughter (one of the most visible
consequences of humour) can be categorized among the gamut of human
emotions and behaviours (Morreall 1983, 2). In fact, laughter is normally
seen as a commonplace and normal reaction to funny events. However, as
Morreall points out, it is difficult to pinpoint the utility of this behaviour
as a physical response to a humorous situation, which can assume myriad
forms—unlike other reactions such as an impulse to flee caused by a ter-
rifying event (1983, 3).
However, other authors foreground some major benefits that this
apparently irrelevant behaviour might encompass, which would be telling
of its cognitive advantages for the adaptation of humankind to its environ-
ment. In fact, mere crude jokes require the use of a number of social and
linguistic skills, and it is therefore possible to say that humorous reactions
enable further social activity, which is reinforced, in turn, by the positive
emotions that were generated (Polimeni and Reiss 2006, 348).
Rather in the same way humour, as we will see, can be a difficult strategy
to handle in ads, writing about humour in general can be a hard task to
undertake—the difficulty arising with the very definition of the concept. In
CRUDE AND TABOO HUMOUR IN TELEVISION ADVERTISING: AN ANALYSIS... 175
fact, ‘humour’ covers such a broad spectrum of possibilities (ranging from

wit or whimsicality to laugh-out-loud reactions) that it becomes problem-
atic to provide a definition that comprehends all the varieties of humour
available. It is also a matter of controversy which mechanisms underlie the
gratification we obtain from different kinds of humour (Berger 1993, 2;
Gulas and Weinberger 2006, 22; Yeshin 2006, 301). However, generally
speaking, it seems to be related with a pleasurable sensation of satisfaction
either to the party at the production end, the receiving end or even both.
Raskin (1985) proposes a number of obligatory ‘external’ conditions
for humour, which are closely related to those required by advertising as
a communication process. Firstly, (1) a speaker and a hearer are necessary
(as a minimum of participants), followed by (2) a stimulus, whose exact
nature or trigger is debatable. It is also important to take into account (3)
the participants’ ability to deal with humour as a form of communication,
which will necessarily vary according to (4) the psychology of the indi-
viduals involved. Another fundamental element in the process is (5) the
situation where the humour act is taking place, which defines whether a
funny situation is indeed humorous or not. As Attardo points out (2003,
1289), humour is a highly collaborative situation, where two (at least)
have to agree on the adequateness of the moment and context for humour
to be effective. In close connection to these situational elements come (6)
the social backgrounds of the participants, which must be shared, at least
to some extent, for a joke to succeed (Raskin 1985, 16).
Although all the conditions mentioned here imply difficulties in terms
of taxonomy, condition number two (the stimulus) is, admittedly, one of
the most complex to define (Polimeni and Reiss 2006, 349). Effectively,
there are several theories that purport to explain why we laugh, some of
them mutually exclusive and others presenting a number of overlapping
features. These theories are often grouped according to the main approach
they adopt, as in Raskin (1985), who puts forward three main classes:
one possibility are (a) incongruity-based theories, which correspond to
a cognitive-perceptual approach, where humour would stem from an
unexpected element that frustrates previously created expectations—the
humorous effect would then result from the collusion of the two ‘stories’
or scripts being told when reaching the final surprise element, or the
punch line; another theory corresponds to (b) superiority/disparagement
approaches to humour, (classified by Raskin as ‘social-behavioral’), which
can be traced back to Plato and Thomas Hobbes, which claim that the
176 E.S.L. FREITAS
enjoyment we derive from humour always has at its roots some feeling
of superiority experienced by a group of individuals when compared to
others, felt to be more ridiculous and weaker than them (Zillmann and
Cantor 1996, 94). Finally, (c) arousal-release/relief theories, (a psycho-
analytical approach), which stress a biological purpose of laughter, in that
it can serve as a means to vent pent-up tensions and energies (as postu-
lated by Freud), as well as presenting some advantages in terms of pleasur-
able feelings, which might contribute to an overall healthier state of mind
(Polimeni and Reiss 2006, 351).
There is extensive research on the specific ways humour can work in
advertising. There seems to be a natural affinity between this discursive
format and humour, as a strategy. In fact, there is some similarity between
the proper functioning of a joke and the felicity conditions for a TV ad to
work in the best way, which involve the ideal length, content, timing of a
punch line and details in the right measure (Raskin 1985, 18).
These coincidences are probably due to the fact that both joke telling
and advertising have a very definite purpose (in broad terms, on the one
hand, to make the hearer laugh and, on the other hand, to persuade an
audience into buying something). The clarity of the aim intended by these
discursive pieces demands strict economy of means and a perfect adjust-
ment to the hearers’ needs and expectations. Additionally, a television ad,
with the vast array of channels it can resort to, can pack immense significa-
tion in a matter of few seconds—which mimics real life experiences of joke
telling, where the speaker hints, anticipates, insinuates a lot just with facial
expressions, gestures and voice modulations. In the same way we expect
to be amused when a number of clues on the speaker’s end signals that a
joke is about to be told, we have also learned to expect an ad to deliver its
message in very a competent (albeit artistic and creative) way.
Following on the path of the traditional grouping of the different theo-
ries of humour that were previously mentioned, several authors have tried
to point out which one (or ones) correspond to the most prevalent or
effectively used in advertising. Pioneer studies in the area, such as Alden
and Hoyer (1993), Cho (1995) and Alden et al. (2000), have undertaken
the task of analyzing different executional humorous styles in television
ads, in an attempt to gauge their effectiveness. Alden and Hoyer (1993)
concluded that the most successful humorous formats seem to be the ones
that resort to everyday life situations followed by a surprising punch line,
in contrast with direct presentations of real life confronted with impossible
events. This controlled kind of incongruity (vs. an obvious plunge in total
absurdity) apparently elicits the best results in terms of humorous read-

ings. Cho’s research (1995) confirms this position, adding that, according
to cognitive approaches, the audience’s problem solving abilities are acti-
vated by the proposed incongruent elements of the ad, in order to make
them fit pre-existing schemata—but this will only happen in case there is a
proper balance of all elements.
The fact that there are clues signalling intended playfulness is also
decisive in order to make the ad be read as humorous—otherwise, other
unwanted feelings (such as fear) could be aroused, which would be det-
rimental to the overall message of the ad. There are a number of possible
executional styles related with humour that are commonly found in ads,
such as ‘slice of life’, ‘ludicrousness’, ‘miniaturization’, ‘subtle complex-
ity’, and ‘perceptual interest’ (Cho 1995, 193). From all these styles, the
first, ‘slice of life’, is clearly the one that relates the most with people’s daily
struggles and is, therefore, the easiest for audiences to identify with. This
is possibly the reason why this style came second in perceived humour,
according to Cho’s research, immediately after ‘subtle complexity’, a style
that includes ad messages conveyed by means of metaphors, indirectness
and allusions, which stresses subtlety. In the wake of these findings, Cho
posits that cognition and affection seem to rank higher in the audience’s
ability to perceive an ad as humorous. On the other hand, styles based
in disparagement and negativity, as ‘ludicrousness’ and ‘miniaturization’,
although widely used in ads (especially in the United States and the UK),
often result in an ad that is not perceived as funny.
Starting with the assumption that failure to detect intended humour in
an ad will necessarily affect the way the message is perceived, Alden et al.’s
research (2000) builds on previous studies focussed specifically on televi-
sion ads, which have concluded that a combination of controlled incon-
gruity and an element of surprise (that was previously signalled as playful)
can result in enhanced humour perception. This, in its turn, might eventu-
ally result in a more positive attitude and warmth towards the ad (and, in
extension, towards the brand at stake). However, the authors stress that
not all attempts at humour in ads will result in an ad that is perceived as
funny, and this failure can eventually backfire when it comes to the public
reading of a given brand (2000, 12).
Regardless of the different approaches that try to cover the effects and
inner workings of humour in general, in the specific case of advertising, it
can be agreed that humour is used as a strategy at the service of the adver-
tiser’s ‘hidden agenda’, that is the promotion of a given product or service
178 E.S.L. FREITAS
with a view to raising the audience’s positive awareness of the brand, which
may eventually lead to a purchase decision (Belch and Belch 2004, 206).
In fact, humour seems to be an increasingly pervasive phenomenon in the
world of advertising (Alden et al. 2000, 1) and one that, apparently, guar-
antees memorization (Cho 1995, 191)—if not of the product or service
that is being advertised, at least of the ad itself.
Humour as an Advertising Strategy

The difficulty inherent to the characterization of the phenomenon makes
it all the more valuable when used as an attention-grabbing strategy in ads.
As Cook points out, ads make the most of indeterminacy and appeals to
emotion (1992, 45), such as the ones conveyed by humour or even music,
which might help disguise the lack of a relevant or noteworthy message.
When it is hard to pinpoint what exactly makes us remember a specific ad
is when the combined appeal of its different elements has effectively man-
aged to convey a powerful global message (Freitas 2008, 128–129).
Humour can indeed be a useful tool when indeterminacy is an intrinsic
part of the message (Polimeni and Reiss 2006, 348). That is usually the
case with advertising when, very often, there is no real discernible differ-
ence between products in the same category (Myers 1986, 49). Therefore,
differentiation has to be established on the basis of intangible and often
emotional associations that are used to extol the virtues of a material artefact
(Williamson 1978, 24; Dyer 1982, 53). Ambiguity allows the product to be
read beyond the mere physical characteristics, which are no longer enough
to seduce the audience into buying a specific brand (Myers 1994, 19).
Humour, as a strategy, can in some cases play a major role in an ad,
but it must necessarily be supported by other auxiliary strategies, such as
music, metaphors or intertextual references. This caveat is important in
that it draws attention to the fact that every single element in an ad conveys
meaning and all of them work together, concurring to the conveyance of
a unique message at the service of the product at stake (Cook 1992, 37).
However, the fact that humour never works alone in ad messages adds
extra complexity to an already demanding task, since the different effect
of humour in ads can be heightened, foregrounded or even downplayed
by the action of the other strategies that are also present.
Especially in the case of television ads, it is the simultaneous effect of all
the elements as they unfold during a chronological timeline that conveys the
overall effect intended (Freitas 2008, 127). An analysis that is exclusively
centred in either the text, the image or even the audio part of the ad will
necessarily be limited and fragmented in its scope (Cook 1992, 38), since it
does not take into account the way ads are seen and interpreted by real-life
consumers. In the case of humorous ads, a global approach in their analysis
is all the more necessary since, very often, the build-up of a final humor-
ous effect is achieved by means of an abridged narrative process, where text
(which can be written, spoken or sung), moving and static images, as well as
music and special sound effects all contribute to the delivery of a successful
punch line—and the joke will not be the same without one of them.
Humour represents a special case in advertising strategies, since it can
both describe a functional device—one of the many ingredients, which
can assume different forms, used to convey the ad’s message—as well as
an outcome or global effect of the ad (which allows us to describe a spe-
cific ad as ‘funny’). This fact clearly positions humour as an extraordinary
instance among the possibilities advertisers can resort to in order to trans-
mit their messages in a convincing manner.
Alienating the Audience? Risky Uses of Humour in Ads

As we have seen, the use of humour in ads does not guarantee persuasion.
Many complex factors have to be taken into account and to interact prop-
erly for it to succeed since, as Gulas and Weinberger point out, humour is
somewhat frail as a strategy (2006, 19). However, humorous ads seem to
be a favourite form of entertainment for many people and humour is defi-
nitely one of the features that audiences single out as revealing of creativity
and talent in the area of advertising.
As we have seen, ads are a marginal kind of discourse, which keep inter-
rupting other discourses—the ones that people really want or need to pay
attention to (Cook 1992, 13). Therefore, to make us overlook this intru-
sion, ads have to give audiences something in return for their trouble.
The bargaining chip is, very often, their entertainment value. An ad makes
an implicit promise that it is worth watching, because it will be creative,
funny and entertaining. The use of humour is, normally, a safe bet in this
case, since people will only tolerate an interruption that is not boring. In
certain cases, the entertainment value of ads has even created a tradition
of its own, as in Super Bowl advertising, an event where the social power
of advertising becomes obvious (McAllister 1999, 403), and where series
of ads are sometimes run months in advance, building up to the culmi-
nation of one final glorious ad during the event (Kim et al. 2005, 46),
and where ‘ad meters’ measure the entertainment value of the ads, that
180 E.S.L. FREITAS
is, their likeability, which is often associated with humour. As Gulas and
Weinberger postulate, it is possible that this measurement does not yield
crucial marketing information in terms of brand recall or even purchase
intent—however, it is most revealing of the fact that people have come to
expect ads to fulfil other functions apart from the mere delivery of a sales
pitch (2006, 165–166). In fact, research shows that a part of the audi-
ence will only watch the Super Bowl games in order to watch the famed
Super Bowl commercials (Kelley and Turley 2004, 399, based on previous
studies), which demonstrates that some audiences have come to enjoy ads
merely for the entertainment they may offer, appreciating them as pure
fun or even objects of aesthetic contemplation—or even both, simultane-
ously (González Requena and Ortiz de Zárate 1995, 12).
In view of the diverse findings discussed, which indicate that cognition
and affective-based approaches might achieve better results in the iden-
tification of an ad as humorous, thus enhancing its positive effects, there
could be something of a paradox in the fact that some brands deliberately
decide to advertise their products with more aggressive humorous tactics.
In the case of the Super Bowl ads mentioned previously, research indicates,
interestingly, that ads that combine violence with humorous contents were
among the public’s favourites, this type of ads having doubled in number
when comparing figures from 2005 and 2009. Apart from the informa-
tion this research may yield, it also raises serious ethical concerns, mainly
related with issues such as trivialization and acceptability of violence, when
embedded in humorous messages, which, apart from the humour, also
contain attractive and seductive features, rendering the whole experience
enjoyable (Blackford et al. 2011, 131).
Due to the complexity of the matter, the concept of ‘aggressive/vio-
lent humour’ has to be modulated by reassessing a number of factors that
always have to be taken into account when the issue is humour: among
others, it is crucial to define (1) the type of product that is being advertised,
(2) the audience at stake, and (3) the interplay of the mechanisms that are
activated in the individual during the processing of the ad’s message.
Concerning point (1), Gulas and Weinberger (2006), based on previ-
ous studies, conclude that advertisers prefer to use humour in products
that imply low involvement, low risk and less financial investment (des-
ignated as ‘yellow products’ or ‘small treats’). These products seem to
be the ones that lend themselves to light readings, which will (hopefully)
keep the product in the prospective buyers’ minds, whereas in the case of
more serious, high-involvement products, the humorous approach might

trigger readings of frivolity or shallowness, which could easily rub off onto
the product itself, therefore affecting its more sober image.
Point (2) is crucial when it comes to assessing the pertinence of adopt-
ing more aggressive approaches when existing research as well as empirical
evidence, up to a point, suggest that subtlety and affection might be more
effective in the long run. However, it is essential to bear in mind whom the
message of the ad is, in fact, addressing (Freitas 2008, 108). The matter of
offensive approaches should be viewed taking into account the intended
addressee of the ad message. In fact, criticism often comes from people
who are not the intended audience of such ads and who are imposing their
own concept of ‘good taste’ on messages that were not meant for them
in the first place (Boddewyn 1991, 33). Admittedly, some audiences are
harder to reach than others, and the characteristics of a given audience will
decisively affect our taking offence with the content of a specific ad (Beard
2008a, 14). On the other hand, our ever increasing media and advertising
literacy makes us more difficult to seduce and persuade (Myers 1999, ix).
One of the most difficult targets to reach is that of males between the ages
of 18 and 34. This is partly due to the fact that they are very familiar with
every type of media and the possibilities they offer when it comes to escap-
ing unwanted interruptions by commercial breaks, and also to their evasive
habits when using technology, seldom allowing their undivided attention
to dwell on any broadcast content for a long time (Gulas and Weinberger
2006, 167–168). Men in this age span are more tolerant of ads that fea-
ture sensitive issues, whereas women (particularly the ones over the age of
fifty) are more easily offended with references to antisocial themes (Waller
1999). This higher level of tolerance seems to be an opportunity for adver-
tisers to try to reach such an elusive target (even if it raises ethical concerns,
as pointed out by Gulas and Weinberger), attracting their attention with
the outrageousness of the humorous approaches adopted—certainly, run-
ning the risk of alienating other audiences by doing so (2006, 168–169).
Point (3) is an especially complex one in that, on one hand, it is closely
connected to the nature of the different humour theories previously
discussed, and their possible simultaneous existence, albeit in different
degrees, in many humorous ad executions (Cho and Kim 2000, 196). On
the other hand, we have to keep in mind that the market is overflowing
both with remarkably similar products in each category and with myriad of
ads in every medium imaginable. It is becoming increasingly more difficult
to cut through the clutter and achieve some visibility. As Beard postulates,
182 E.S.L. FREITAS
resorting to more aggressive forms of humour might be a way to achieve

this, enhancing attention to and awareness of the ad and, consequently, of
the brand (2008b, 3).
However, attention and awareness have to be of the positive kind if
effective results are to be obtained. There are several classic cases where,
by means of a misguided humorous campaign with shocking advertising
appeals, increased notoriety was indeed achieved, but for the wrong rea-
sons, which tarnished, in some cases permanently, the image of the brand
at stake. As examples of different types of attempts at humour gone astray,
Gulas and Weinberger mention the case of the shoe retailer Just for Feet,
with a campaign that was felt as racist and insensitive; Nike, with a magazine
ad that was felt as offensive to the disabled community, as well as several
ads for beers that stress the infamous ‘beer and bimbo’ sexist association
(2006, 174–177). Potential for offence when using humorous execution
styles is certainly high—hence the ‘fragility’ of the strategy that was men-
tioned before (Gulas and Weinberger 2006). However, research indicates
that it can be minimized with specific approaches. Even though their use
does not guarantee that the ad will be perceived as funny, it is less likely
that viewers will take offence, which, in the long run, will have positive
results for the brand’s image. Beard (2008a, 14) concludes that the risks
of humour in advertising are mostly concentrated on negatively aggressive
arousal-safety instances, since humour with positive resonations is relatively
safe. Additionally, when taking the risk of using the most risky approach,
the best target would be the most tolerant target audience (young males).
These findings seem to confirm the previously existing research, when it
comes to the riskier humorous types of execution. Approaches based on dis-
paragement and aggression seem to correspond to higher potential in terms
of offence, which may even obliterate the possibility of the ad being seen as
funny at all. As to the more compliant target audience, this study reinforces
the notion that young men are the most tolerant ones—which provides a
safe haven for advertisers who want to attempt more daring approaches for
the sake of novelty and innovation. Surprisingly enough, this same target is
increasingly becoming a favourite butt for jokes (Gulas et al. 2010).
ANALYZING AD CAMPAIGNS
Examples of purportedly funny ads that end up causing offence, for different
reasons, are not hard to find. A traditional repository for such material can be
found in the famous Super Bowl ads. In fact, the annual championship sports
event of the National Football League (NFL) in the United States, which
culminates the sports season, has become much more than a sports event.
Due to the huge worldwide viewership it enjoys, it represents, for some
brands, a major broadcasting opportunity for their most expensive advertise-
ments—and, very often, for their most risqué ones. Broadcasting these ads
during the Super Bowl event is, for some brands, a test of their acceptability
when it comes to using them for traditional media such as national TV. The
brief analysis that follows of specific ads will refer to Super Bowl ads, as well
to as some randomly chosen television ads recently broadcast on Portuguese
television channels. The criteria underlying these selections is ads that illus-
trate some of the theoretical points from the first part of this chapter as to
different types of humour and possible readings on their effects.
Blondes, Beer and Hamburgers: The Male Paradise

The classic association (already referred to) between a cold refreshing beer
and a ‘dumb blonde’ is explicit in a Sagres beer ad. Sagres is one of the two
most popular beer brands in Portugal and this particular ad was broadcast
on television in 2010 during the summer months. The ad relies on a very
basic narrative thread line, where a gorgeous blonde young woman in a
small bikini emerges from the sea, after taking a bath, and sashays slowly
along the sand towards a group of google-eyed, gaping-mouthed young
men. After looking at them for a few seconds in a seductive way, the woman
picks up a bottle of beer from an icebox next to her beach towel and gulps
it down with relish as the men still gaze at her. The intended humour in
the ad is to be found in the facial expressions of the group of drooling
men and on the lyrics of the song that is heard during the narrative. Sung
loudly by a male choir, it speaks about ‘Sagres, our very own blonde’, with
a very straightforward pun involving the colour of the young woman’s
hair and the colour of the beer—a metaphor that any Portuguese viewer
would immediately grasp, since it is still quite usual to hear beer referred
to as ‘a blonde’. What this ad does is to illustrate a rather sexist view of
women, using a visual and verbal metaphor to convey the notion BEER =
WOMEN. However, it is also possible to discern objectification of men in
the ad who are portrayed as simple-minded individuals, who are rendered
speechless by the sight of a beautiful woman, and are contented if they have
cool refreshing beers to keep them happy during a hot day at the beach.
This approach is similar to the one found in several of the crudest ads
aired in the Super Bowl series, in the United States, with comparable edgy
184 E.S.L. FREITAS
approaches by brands such as GoDaddy.com an Internet domain purchase

company - which heavily stress the 'buxom bimbo' theme (with the use
of celebrities such as Danica Patrick and Bar Refaeli), although in recent
years there has been a noticeable effort to downplay the excessive sex-
ism typically associated with their Super Bowl advertising. A part of this
trend, which seems generalised of late, might be associated with a shift in
viewership demographics: in fact, as of 2014, 46% of Super Bowl viewers
are women, which might help explain this recent turn towards a more
mature kind of humour (B2BNews 2015). However, brands like Carl’s
Jr. burgers are still betting on sexual suggestiveness as a source for rather
crude humour, as in their 2015 ‘All Natural’ ad featuring supermodel
Charlotte McKinney, who successively pays short visits to the different
stands at a farmer’s market. As she sashays along the aisles, we see curvy
fruit being superimposed on her body parts, which both exaggerate and
hide the curves of her—almost naked—body. This (c)overt sexuality is fur-
ther emphasized by the model’s delighted reaction to the male, wide-eyed
admiration she is obviously eliciting.
Both the Sagres ad described previously and in the ‘All Natural’ ad by
Carl’s Jr., the attempt at humour might easily backfire, on the one hand,
due to its perceived crudeness, but on the other hand, also due to the lack
of a strong narrative thread that might help support the use of the meta-
phors WOMEN = BEER, in the former, or FRUITS = FEMALE BODY
PARTS, in the latter. The use of metaphors usually indicates indirectness
and subtlety in the humorous approach, which normally increases positive
feelings and likeability (Cho 1995). However, as the metaphors used in
both ads are rather worn-out and simplistic, the final effect may result in
a rather crude reading—which, in the case of the Carl’s Jr. ad, could even
disqualify it from airing on national television (Daily News 2015).
The disparagement of young males and their simplistic needs is extremely
visible, in a more laugh-out-loud way, in a Super Bock ad (another brand
of Portuguese beer) also broadcast in 2010. This ad is for a stout beer,
which is traditionally associated with more mature men. The humour in
this ad is centred on incongruity, paired with the unlikelihood of the situ-
ation it proposes. The ad begins with a number of men in their thirties, in
white bathrobes, standing at the door of the ‘Stout Beer Spa’. When they
enter the spa, they see that it is designed as a men’s paradise: a number
of gorgeous and sophisticated female attendants wait on them hand and
foot, serving them all the (stout) beer they want, as they lounge in com-
fortable sofas and have their backs massaged with a special oil concocted
with stout beer. Although funny (and most men would probably find it
so), this ad clearly imposes a sexist reading of men in general. However,
the Sagres ad elicited more criticism and caused more offence, on the
one hand, probably because its approach is blunter. On the other hand,
it is possible that the more sophisticated approach of the Super Bock ad
(BEER + WOMEN = EARTHLY PARADISE FOR MEN), where a nar-
rative thread can be detected and where the actors seem to be aware that
they are indulging in a stereotypical masculine fantasy, creates a frame that
erodes the disparagement and enhances the creativity and ingenuity of the
concept. Men are the butt of the joke, in this case, but they are doing it in
a mock-ironical way, as if that kind of behaviour were expected of them,
after all. In this instance, it might be possible to read this ad’s humorous
approach as a depiction of male fantasies that has been duly sanitized (by
the use of irony and self-deprecation) for general consumption, so as to
render it eventually non-threatening for female viewers (Gulas et al. 2010,
117). These pre-emptive strategies are quite common when advertisers
use crude humour: after all, although an ad is meant for the enjoyment
of a specific audience, it is seldom good policy to outrage and antagonize
other potential viewers.
Drenched in Sweat: Making Grossness Funny

The ad chosen to illustrate this point can also be seen as disparaging for
men. In the ad for Axe deodorant (Lynx in the UK), humour clearly stems
from absurdity and exaggeration. Its technique is that of slapstick, when it
shows a young man so seriously afflicted with a perspiration problem that
he completely drenches everybody around him. Although it was seen as
truly disgusting by the majority of adults and even young women, this ad
proved extremely popular with young men (as most Axe ads are), which
seems to confirm that this is, indeed, the ideal approach for this target
audience, who are highly tolerant of explicit grossness.
In the present case, the Axe ad is resorting to an exaggeration of taboo
in order to create interest and humorous effects. It is common practice in
ads for products that enclose taboo readings (such as sanitary protection
products for women, toilet paper, laxatives, deodorants) to downplay what-
ever is unpleasant about them and divert the viewers’ attention towards
more pleasant things, with the help of music, metaphor, intertextuality,
and, eventually, unrelated (and positive) humour (Freitas 2008). Taking
the opposite approach, for the sake of originality, the Axe ad highlights
186 E.S.L. FREITAS
the perspiration problem, magnifying it into a major sweating affliction,

which affects the man doing the sweating and everyone who happens to
be nearby—for maximum grossness effects. Highlighting taboo instead of
hiding it can be a risky strategy, but for a brand like Axe, with a tradition in
outraging ads, it may pay off, especially with its target audience: once again,
constituted by young men.
The Blue Pill: Unlucky Man vs. Lucky Car

The Fiat 500X ad for the 2015 Super Bowl features, right from the start,
some classic elements of a humorous narrative, further enhanced by the
technical possibilities offered by the medium, such as the fast-paced alter-
nate angles that effectively tell the story, the close-ups on the actors’ faces,
and the scenic landscapes that help create the sense of scenic grandeur
that plays on the ‘enlargement’ metaphor that pervades this very Italian
universe. The famous blue pill and its effects are, just by themselves, com-
monly used humorous elements in jokes, and this prop guarantees, right
from the beginning, the appropriate mood on the part of the viewers.
What begins as a positive humour script suddenly takes an unexpected
twist, as the blue pills misses the elderly man’s open mouth, bounces all
over the town and finally lands in the open fuel tank of a Fiat 500, turning
it into a 500X crossover, bursting with life and energy, as the pill starts to
work inside it.
The sexual impotence vs. increased virility metaphor is, in the case of
this ad, safely kept within boundaries, making it a lot less racy than it could
be. The sexual readings are mainly expressed by means of the transfor-
mation (i.e. the sudden enlargement) of the small car’s frame, and con-
firmed by the lewd gazes of several women who glance at the transformed
version. This succession of metaphors effectively protects the ad from the
disadvantages negative humour could bring to the brand, and manages to
retain its attractiveness both for the main target audiences as well as for
other secondary ones.
CONCLUSION
This chapter ends with a truism of sorts: it is impossible to separate humour
in advertising from individual and contextual factors. Although we can say
that this applies to every single instance of humour in any situation, it is
even truer of its use in advertising: although an ad can be planned from

scratch to be funny (and with such a loaded form of communication as
advertising, that kind of planning was certainly earnest and intensive, were
such a strategy intended), it is only the individual on the receiving end that
will determine whether a specific ad will be received with laughter (Gulas
and Weinberger 2006, 56).
Audiences use the humour they find in ads for their own purposes,
which means that it cannot be imposed from outside. As with every other
strategy meant to seduce the viewers, attempts at humour in ads are pro-
posals, which can be successful or not, depending on many circumstances.
As Myers points out, ‘advertising does not impose its messages on passive
audiences, but provides a text that audience may take up and transform—
or may ignore entirely’ (1999, 14). One of the advantages of humour is
that it enhances an experience that can be already enjoyable: if successful,
the laughter it elicits is an extra reward given to us for taking the time to
pay attention (1999, 125).
A number of ethical issues can be associated to this discussion, and
the need to discuss them becomes even more pressing in the cases where
humour in ads is insensitive, sick, cruel, racist or sexist, due to the violence
that it can contain and depict, in more or less explicit manners. Although
in some cases ads with such characteristics do sell, they also have adverse
effects, since they may undermine the credibility and acceptance of the
advertising industry (Boddewyn 1991, 33).
It is true that risky humour strategies in ads can serve their purpose
and please the public they want to seduce. As we have seen with the Fiat
500X example, it is certainly possible to dilute or minimize aggressive
humour, combining it with other approaches so that it makes sense in
the overall context of the ad. Humour, in general, can be a very helpful
strategy for ads to say things in a more appealing and enjoyable way, even
when their subject is drab or downright unpleasant. However, as we have
seen, humour can also be a very dangerous weapon, when inappropriately
used—and the risk of it happening is considerably higher when extreme
forms of humour are used.
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Filthy Viewing, Dirty Laughter
Delia Chiaro
There is nothing intrinsically amusing about filth and dirt, especially when
it is displayed in vast quantities, in full colour and in minute detail across
our television screens. However, for some inexplicable reason, watch-
ing Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie, the presenters of TV series
How Clean Is Your House? dipping their beautifully manicured fingers
into thick gunges of sticky, mouldy leftover food and brandishing toilet
brushes streaked with faecal matter is not simply repulsive and nauseating,
it is also very funny. What exactly is so funny about these repugnant visu-
als? Are such revolting scenes amusing because they are incongruous and
out of step with the pristine perfection for which we so often aim? Are we
purely taking pleasure in the misfortunate lifestyles of others? Or are the
producers dabbling in some tendentious fun and laughing at these serial
‘grime offenders’?
In his extensive work on jokes, Davies has established that the trait
of stupidity is at the core of a vast number of joke targets, while another
widespread characteristic of those who are stupid is dirtiness. In serious
discourse ‘dirty’ has a stronger negative connotation than ‘stupid’—con-
sider ‘dirty bugger’ versus ‘stupid bugger’. Davies explains that in some
D. Chiaro ()
University of Bologna, Forlì, Italy

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_11
192 D. CHIARO
societies the absence of ethnic jokes about the filthy habits of others
reflects conflicting values and attitudes towards rational hygiene in dif-
ferent nations (1992, 173–174; 190). Having poor personal hygiene or
living in filth is not something of which people are generally proud. How
Clean Is Your House? places the dirt and grime of a person’s home on pub-
lic display, thus breaking a social taboo. After all, cleanliness, according to
the proverb, is close to godliness. Furthermore, this public display of dirt
reinforces the mores of society. By framing these images of dirt within
a context where they can be safely viewed, and above all contemplated
and ridiculed, they can subsequently be rejected as modes of behaviour
appropriate in the everyday world (Makarius 1970, 68). However, this
display of filth reminds us of our animal nature and with its many images
and references to faeces and urine the subject matter of the show is truly
scatological. The indigestible content of How Clean Is Your House? is far
from being metaphorical alone. The thought that people actually go about
their daily activities including eating and assimilating nutriments in envi-
ronments surrounded by rotting food and faecal materials, is, in itself,
stomach churning. Yet we laugh and enjoy it.
This chapter sets out to examine the humour factor and to identify
some diverse types and functions of laughter occurring in a representa-
tive sample of six episodes from the series. Rather than simply occurring
in response to the shocking yet comical situations presented in each epi-
sode, much laughter in the series conveys nervousness and embarrassment
as well as being a manifestation of alignment or dis-alignment with the
show’s presenters by the ill-fated residents of the unkempt homes.
INTRODUCTION
How Clean Is Your House? is a lifestyle entertainment program produced
by Stephanie Harris and Lisa Edwards that ran for five seasons on UK
Channel 4 between May 2003 and September 2009. In each thirty-minute
episode, experienced cleaners Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie tackle
a house or an apartment that is in an exceptionally dirty condition and,
with the help of a team of professional cleaners, meticulously clean it from
top to bottom and thereby restore it to immaculate perfection. Unlike
other home makeover programs such as Endemol’s Extreme Makeover
Home Edition (2003–12), in which dilapidated houses are totally refur-
bished with new fittings and furniture, How Clean Is Your House? limits
itself to cleaning and restoring the contents that are already present in
FILTHY VIEWING, DIRTY LAUGHTER 193
the household. Furthermore, although the show deals with people who
have serious problems regarding lack of hygiene, it is also different from
programs such as Hoarders (A&E, 2009–present) and Hoarding, Buried
Alive (TLC/Discovery, 2000–13). How Clean Is Your House? is not con-
cerned with the physical and psychological ordeal that people suffer when
they are unable to control their surroundings, but focuses instead on the
dirt and chaos in which they live. Above all, the program mostly tackles
the problem from a light-hearted and whimsical stance.
A US spin-off of How Clean Is Your House? ran for two seasons in 2004
on Lifetime network. The series differed from the UK series in that the
presenters, who typically give out household tips and use everyday house-
hold products like lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda for cleaning, in the
US version also use and advertise commercially available cleaning products
throughout. Translated versions of the show, via subtitling and dubbing,
have ensured its success in twenty countries worldwide, while the format
also exists in its Dutch and French adaptations, respectively Hoe schoon is
jouw Huis? and C’est du propre!
As in all makeover shows, How Clean Is Your House? follows a before-
and-after format that is repeated throughout the series with each epi-
sode following exactly the same set-up and structure. Practiced cleaners
Woodburn and MacKenzie arrive at an exceptionally filthy and unkempt
property in need of cleaning and begin by inspecting the premises for
dirt and grime. They reprimand the owners for their slovenly habits, offer
practical advice on how to carry out household tasks and with the help of
a team of professional cleaners, clean the premises to utmost perfection.
However, as well as providing instructions in terms of tips regarding how
to set about a variety of household tasks, the show also provides a good
deal of comic relief. Each episode is a sort of humorous cautionary tale
that provides a shock factor deriving from the extreme living conditions
of the occupants of the households, tempered by the contrast of the pre-
senters’ appearance (especially Kim’s) plus their irony, sarcasm and witty
banter. The mismatch between sharp, witty discourse and its surround-
ing images of extreme filthiness contributes to a general atmosphere of
non-seriousness. In other words, the program walks the fine line between
the serious predicaments of the occupants’ dire living conditions and the
objective absurdity of these very conditions. Images of noxious matter
and serious discourse regarding the dangers of living in filth constantly
switches to friendly banter and then back again to seriousness in a matter
of seconds.
194 D. CHIARO
So, how exactly does How Clean Is Your House? succeed in transform-
ing the serious problem of people who have at the very least an aversion to
cleanliness and at the worst who suffer from a pathological condition into
light entertainment? According to the contents of this show, the answer is
quite simple: through humour and laughter. In fact, from the capricious
opening credits and upbeat background music to actor Paul Copley’s
quirky and alliterative voice-over narration together with Woodburn’s
amusing banter, each episode is in sharp contrast with its more serious
documentary style counterparts. The show’s true protagonist, together
with dirt, is the repartee that succeeds in subverting situations concerning
the unpleasant subject matter of messy homes into something that audi-
ences actually want to watch.
The episodes examined in this chapter are all contained in a DVD com-
pilation entitled How Clean Is Your House. Six of the Filthiest Shows ever
seen on TV!1 Presumably the producers of this DVD must have considered
the single episodes representative enough to make up a sort of ‘greatest
hits’ compilation making it ideal material for the purpose of this study as
they should exemplify six typically dirty premises and six equally typical
residents, or, as they are wittily labelled on the show ‘grime offenders’.
Media scholars have examined makeover shows such as, and including,
How Clean Is Your House? Of particular interest are the studies by Hunt
(2009), Moseley (2000) and Nathanson (2013), which examine these
series from the point of view of femininity in the postfeminist context.
While providing significant (indigestible?) food for thought, these studies
remain beyond the scope of this chapter, which is restricted solely to the
humorous aspect of the show.
MUCKY SURROUNDINGS
The stark, white DVD cover features Kim and Aggie relaxing on a sofa. The
duo are wearing the white cleaning overalls and bejewelled rubber gloves
they don in the cleaning stage of each episode and are clutching feather
dusters. Both are looking straight into the camera, poised with their legs
crossed, Aggie simply smiling while Kim has a mock-stern expression and
waves a gloved hand in a queen-like manner. The accompanying blurb is
couched in a light-hearted mode as it informs viewers that Kim and Aggie,
‘the ladies who like to ditch the dirt’ will ‘…expose their [the homes’]
deepest, darkest, dirtiest secrets’. The cover also includes a short review
from the Daily Star that claims that the series guarantees ‘Good, filthy
fun. Humiliating, embarrassing and extremely funny.’ So, thanks to the

not especially subtle sexual innuendo of terms like ‘dirty’ collocated with
‘secrets’ and ‘filthy’ with ‘fun’, viewers can expect a program that may not
be totally in earnest. As well as this, the terms ‘humiliating’ and ‘embar-
rassing’ hint at unkindness, suggesting that the series will involve some
kind of underdog, a target to be laughed at. In fact, the blurb appeals to
what George Orwell famously refers to, in The Art of Donald McGill, as
the typically British inclination for ‘low’ humour, the ‘naughty’ double
entendre of the seaside postcard and the Carry On tradition. This informa-
tion, together with the comic-style haphazard font of the graphics, builds
up expectations that are more reminiscent of a tabloid newspaper than a
documentary about home maintenance.
The title sequence at the beginning of each episode opens with roughly
twenty seconds of black-and-white close-ups of different parts of the
house where dirt and upheaval reign accompanied by a tune that is char-
acteristic of a horror film. There are quick flashes of sinks piled up high
with dirty dishes, piles of laundry scattered all over, floors covered in rub-
bish, close-ups of dusty and grimy surfaces and the floating corpses of a
variety of insects. Each shot of a filthy space is interspersed with a short
clip of the residents explaining how and why the premises got into such
a state. The horror music reaches a crescendo as the photographs moves
into a 17-second long title sequence, in which the presenters appear as
their cartoon parodies. The cartoon versions of Kim and Aggie consist of
exaggerated caricatures of their real life persona: Kim is excessively buxom,
Aggie overly nerdy. As in reality, the duo are meticulously well dressed
in colourful outfits, trendy shoes, costume jewellery and signature mani-
cured nails so, the opening sequence, like the entire show itself, strongly
focuses on the contrast between the well-groomed duo and their slovenly
surroundings. Against a background of dramatic music that includes the
sound of squeaking doors, gasps, screams and horrific laughter, the first
thing the audience sees is a spider crawling across a wedding photo cov-
ered in cobwebs and a manicured index finger rubbing a thick layer of
dust off the surface beneath it. A close up of Kim’s stylized face honing in
on an anthropomorphised spider dashing across the screen follows, while
bespectacled Aggie’s inspection beneath a table is met with the silhou-
ettes of two Disney-style mice and several pairs of headless, beady eyes.
Audiences next see insects emerging from the toilet pan, a kitchen sink
overflowing with dirty dishes, pots and pans and spiders dangling from
the ceiling. However, the blood-curdling shrieks and horror film music
196 D. CHIARO
gradually morph into the upbeat rhythm of a jazzy tune and dust and
cobwebs transmute into soap bubbles. A series of close-ups follow, first of
Kim threateningly shaking a tin of Scour Away at the offensive dirt, then
of the tightly swathed derrières of the cartoon versions of Kim and Aggie
on their knees as they scrub a floor wiggling their hips to the rhythm of the
music. The sequence ends with a close up of Kim’s curvaceous calves, her
feet in teetering high heels as she sweeps away numerous creepy-crawlies
from the floor. Finally, we see the pad of Kim’s finger with its long mani-
cured nail lacquered with scarlet varnish, writing the title of the series
in a layer of dust. Therefore, from the musical score to the caricature
of the presenters and a dirty home literally crawling with insects, audi-
ences receive a clear signal of the non-seriousness of what is to come. And
this represents the program’s first incongruity, the first hint of (ill)logical
mechanisms and oppositions contained in the text that render it humor-
ous in intent (Attardo 2001, 25–27).
A further important element that signals non-seriousness of the series
is actor Paul Copley’s whimsical, often alliterative voice-over narration for
each episode. As discussed at length elsewhere (Chiaro 2016), Copley uses
words and expressions from the semantic field related to the specificity of
each episode and elaborates as many connected puns as possible. Although
makeover shows are generally considered to be unscripted, it is unlikely
that Copley’s voice-over has not been carefully planned, written down and
rehearsed in detail in order to get the timing that is so crucial to achieve a
comic effect, just right. When Kim and Aggie set about cleaning a house-
boat, Copley says that the residents are ‘a family who have sailed into deep
water’ and are now ‘struggling to keep their heads above water’ as, among
other things ‘the family has made a titanic mess of the toilet’ but that
Kim and Aggie are ‘ready to stick their oar in’. Copley’s delivery is usually
deadpan but at times he delivers his lines in a ‘smile voice’—a ‘raspy way
of speaking that correlates with smiling, nearly laughing, or preparing to
laugh’ (Glenn and Holt 2013, 6). In other words, some situations are so
extreme that at times Copley is unable to maintain a straight voice and his
smile voice will emerge.
SHOCK, HORROR AND LAUGHTER

According to Glenn and Holt, time after time laughter turns up either in
moments of celebration or moments of trouble (2013, 2). The quality and
quantity of filth in the homes in question is undoubtedly a troublesome
situation and over and above matters of safety and hygiene, these spaces
are exaggeratedly unkempt, so much so as to trigger a reaction of shock,
horror and, why not, laughter. After all, more incongruous situations than
homes in which garbage takes over most of the living spaces and refrigera-
tors teem with rotten food are hard to find. Therefore, it stands to reason
that upon entering each household Kim and Aggie will normally react to
the dirt and chaos they see with shock and revulsion. In fact, the duo typi-
cally have difficulty moving around, as the residents of the home will have
usually hoarded large quantities of clutter that haphazardly occupies large
areas of space. As the couple explore, often physically having to climb over
debris, they come across filth and grime of all sorts, including food left to
rot, mould surfacing on unfinished drinks, dead insects and the excrements
of rodents. Kim and Aggies outfits further impede their movements. They
wear brand new shiny shoes, Kim’s with high heels to complement a very
tight skirt, and Aggie’s trendy with pointed toes. Neither of them wears
shoes that are suitable for mountaineering over rubbish heaps, so viewers
engage in their physical exertion. Of course, this contrast shiny, new/dirty,
messy teamed with the sheer struggle of physically negotiating the spaces
adds to the humour factor. Moreover, Kim and Aggie will quite rightly
shriek and gasp in histrionic disgust, but most of all they use laughter to
express their revulsion. Upon entering a household where eleven birds are
flying around the room and defecating on every possible surface, Kim and
Aggie retreat to a corner of the room where they crouch down and cover
their heads to prevent being hit by droppings. Surrounded by flying birds
both women shriek and laugh presumably out of a mixture of astonish-
ment and fear. Having eleven birds run (fly) wild in someone’s living quar-
ters is undoubtedly bizarre, but how exactly does all this become comic?
Arguably, it is the duo’s use of laughter as well as their physical reac-
tion as they huddle together giggling loudly, combined, of course, with
a series of extra-textual elements that create the humour. Viewers are
already privy to the cartoon opening sequence, the offbeat music and,
of course, the tenor of the Paul Copley’s camp voice-over. In this epi-
sode, Copley’s wordplay includes painful puns such as ‘Kim and Aggie
don’t normally get into a flap’, ‘These birds may be living in Paradise
but Corinne’s kitchen is no Garden of Eden’ and that luckily upstairs is a
‘No fly zone’. This episode is especially comical because of the combina-
tion of animals and excrements in which spectators return in laughter,
that, according to Critchley, is in itself, similarly to defecation, ‘an erup-
tive, physical animality’ (2002, 47). Critchley argues that animal jokes and
198 D. CHIARO
therefore by extension humour involving animals ‘are a sort of code for

the body and its wayward desires’—‘look this isn’t really about birds, is
it?’ Combined with the horror film music in the background, the scene is
quite reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds, especially as Kim’s hairstyle,
worn up in a blonde bun, recalls Tippi Hedren’s. Only, Hitchcock’s mas-
terpiece is not funny while this scene with Kim and Aggie, on the other
hand, is. The thought of being defecated upon by a bird is unthinkably
ghastly, and the duo quite rightly retreat to a corner of the room, and
do their best to ‘protect’ themselves first by adopting a brace position of
‘safety’ and second, by clinging onto each other. Their laughter seems
to be genuinely fearful rather than laughter connected to the absurdity
of the situation itself. In a way, it recalls the behaviour of children trying
to avoid being touched by the child who is playing ‘it’. Children’s fear
of being caught is mingled with laughter, as they know they are playing
a game. Kim and Aggie’s squealing shrieks of fear continually transmute
into laughter giving the impression of genuine fear and at the same time
betraying their feeling of foolishness for feeling that fear. However, it is
Aggie, in particular, who laughs and giggles the most, while Kim prefers
to put on a brave face, that of a sort of stern matron figure.
In fact, Kim tends to partake in what Drew (1987) calls ‘po-faced’
behaviour; in other words, she is especially good at retaining an overtly seri-
ous stance while her interlocutor attempts to stifle laughter. Throughout
the series Aggie will often fall into fits of giggles, also mixed with fear
(or pseudo-fear) when confronted with especially strange situations while
Kim adds to the comedy by remaining po-faced. When the pair present
themselves to Corinne, they do so wearing clear plastic rain bonnets, again
a ridiculous incongruity as they are indoors. Aggie is clearly stifling laugh-
ter when Corinne asks them whether it is raining outside. Po-faced Kim
remarks, ‘She’s a comic cut isn’t she? This is to stop the doody.’
Before the residents arrive, the couple will walk around the property
picking up smelly underwear and retrieving half-eaten meals from beneath
piles of debris. They especially seem to enjoy putting their beautifully
manicured nails into oven trays deep in old fat and grease and picking
thick clusters of stagnated urine and faecal matter from around toilet rims.
Another favourite activity is to pull clumps of hair out of various plugs
and bathroom appliances. For a few seconds viewers see grease, hairs and
gunge being rubbed with relish between French manicured fingers—dis-
gusting, yes, but it is likely that viewers’ appalled expressions at such sights
may well include a smile. It is in such scenes that Copley goes to town
on the punning while Kim never misses an opportunity for banter either.
When Aggie retrieves a dusty book entitled Home Comforts, The Art and
Science of Keeping House from beneath a pile of detritus, Kim emits a series
of genuinely loud guffaws, but even without the help of Kim’s laughter
the irony is self-evident.
Examples of what Critchley labels 'peditological wit' (2002, 47–50)
do not escape Kim and Aggie. Upon stepping into a particularly putrid
houseboat, Kim opens the bathroom door and Aggie says ‘What a terrible
smell you just released’, opening the way for Kim to retort ‘Well it wasn’t
me… are you suggesting?’, in an affronted tone. What is funny here is not
the hypothetical fart, which would not be that funny in itself, but Kim’s
negation and articulation of disrespect.
HOW EMBARRASSING!
After a first inspection of the premises, the presenters meet the residents,
who are probably already embarrassed about their life-style, yet Kim in
particular will scold them quite vigorously for having allowed their homes
to get into such a terrible state. Kim’s dressing downs are not always taken
seriously. Recipients do hang their heads in shame, but they will do so at
the very least with a wide grin on their faces, at the worst with laughter.
It would appear that this laughter is an attempt at jokingly laughing the
situation off, a dis-alignment with the presenter. This reaction to Kim’s
admonishments causes Kim to reply with comments such as ‘I’m glad you
have the grace to laugh’ delivered in her deadpan, po-faced manner.
During Kim’s admonishments, another kind of laughter can be detected
within residents’ explanations and excuses for the state of their houses.
Unlike the predictable schoolchild laughter of a reaction to a scolding,
this is clearly embarrassed laughter. A mother of seven says she does ‘have
a clean out now and then especially £when we have visitors coming£’;2
another mother of three says, ‘I’d say Ryan was the worst offender but
Daniel comes a close second heh huh’ and a woman living on a house-
boat ‘we’re actually £too tired to do anything about it£’. As Billig points
out (2005, 218), in his discussions on embarrassment, Goffman ignores
the role of laughter, yet it is evident that nervous laughter plays a part
in conveying discomfiture. Laughter accommodates an apology, albeit
non-verbally.
Kim and Aggie are extremely severe with bird lady Corinne, but her
response to ‘How can you live like this? How can you not notice this?’,
200 D. CHIARO
with regard to a house covered in bird droppings, she replies giggling

‘They’re my babies aren’t they?’ Corinne also giggles when shown putrid
food from the fridge. Research reports that there is a relationship between
laughter and ‘delicate’ environments. Corinne is being scolded and may
be using laughter in an attempt to ameliorate a confrontation (Arrminen
and Halonen 2007) or else, she may be trying to ‘win round’ the present-
ers in an endeavour at affiliation. Laughter here can be interpreted as a
way to relieve the tension of the moment by undermining the seriousness
of the situation. However, Corinne’s laughter is equivocal and it is most
likely that it displays a stance of dis-alignment in response to the present-
ers’ complaint (Holt 2012).
Residents do not always react passively to Kim and Aggies’ reproaches,
and Corinne is one of those residents who stand up to the presenters
through their own witticisms. In answer to how bird droppings got onto
the walls of her lounge, Corinne proudly shows the presenters how she
herself flicks the droppings from her clothes onto the walls ‘you know
what that is don’t you? You know if they do it on you, you go ping!’ She
then laughs loudly and proudly at her audacity in clear dis-alignment to
Kim and Aggie. Flicking pieces of bird excreta across a room from one’s
clothes to a wall is not for the squeamish, but the incongruity and surprise
element of Corinne’s bravado is disgustingly funny. Presumably, audiences
perceive a mixture of horror and amusement too. From the safety of our
armchairs, as viewers we are distanced from the mess and stench of these
properties and are therefore relieved not to be a part of it.
When Kim and Aggie open the fridge of a young chemistry teacher
(James) and find some very old eggs, Aggie asks ‘Shall we open them?’
While begging them not to crack the egg, James’ speech is full of laugh
particles as he is aware that the eggs are rotten and if opened will let out
a stench:
O(h)h n(h)o! oh my G(h)od d(h)on’t d(h)o that! O(h)h no n(h)o no no

Oh God!3
Indeed, Aggie, Kim and James break out into peals of laughter when the
year-old rotten egg is cracked. Cries of disgust (ugh!) are indistinguishable
from laughter although Kim does emit a reproachful ‘Ho ho!’, followed
by an appalled ‘Oh you dirty devil! You dirty beggar!’ This last epithet,
which she uses repeatedly throughout the series, again, like her response
to the accusation of having broken wind, is not funny per se, but as in real
life conversation, we generally try not to insult other people so directly,
the shock factor is conversationally incongruous and unexpected. What is

funny about Kim’s manner is that she breaks conventional conversational
behaviour, and according to Chiaro (forthcoming), Kim’s overt disrespect
of the grime offenders makes good entertainment. Again, Kim reprimands
a young woman who lives with her father but does no housework, ‘Life
is not just pleasuring yourself’, to which the young woman replies ‘but
I’m only 24!’ True to style Kim retorts ‘You’re a dirty 24!’ It is not at all
usual to affront a complete stranger in such terms, but Kim does and the
effect is comical. In line with Kim’s signature insult, the DVD examined
contains a ‘Grime and Punishment Quiz’ in the special features. This quiz
consists of a multiple-choice test about cleaning and if the respondent gets
the wrong answer, they receive a screen shot with the words: ‘You dirty
beggar!’ Rules of politeness dictate that we do not overtly signal others’
shortcomings with such a rude epithet. We are surprised, possibly shocked
and therefore laugh.
Aggie is generally kinder in her scolding. When she tells the residents of
a houseboat that a toothbrush taken from their toilet contains 32 million
bacteria, they quietly laugh in what can only be described as mortification,
also conveyed by their hanging heads.
KIM AND AGGIE: THE FEMME FATALE AND THE DETECTIVE

As Nathanson points out, the show’s hosts Kim and Aggie are ‘extremely
feminized and maternal…decked out in pearls, heels and manicures’
(2013, 44)—a highly polished dress code that is in stark contrast with the
filth contained in the homes they visit. While on one level Kim and Aggie
are a pair of middle-aged fairy godmothers, on another, contradictory
level, Kim plays on her sexuality by taking on the persona of the coquette.
No spring chicken, Kim is tall and Junoesque and her shapely figure is
accentuated by tight fitting pencil skirts and glossy nylon stockings and
heels. In each episode, cameras never miss an opportunity to close into
her hips and legs. Her skirt is too tight to step over a mountain of laundry
so she hitches it up to reveal her shapely legs. Audiences get full views of
her thighs as she climbs onto a houseboat and above all, when, daringly
for a woman her age, she tries to stop a passing dustcart by standing on
the kerb and pulling up her skirt as far as her thighs. However, she does
not stay in her civvies for long as in each episode, when Kim changes into
her white working overalls; she emerges from the changing room to a tune
the first bars of which are reminiscent of ‘The Stripper’, an instrumental
202 D. CHIARO
composed by David Rose that evokes the kind of music that traditionally
accompanies striptease artists. Once kitted out in her whites and rubber
gloves embellished with marabou feathers and jewels, she stands in front
of the camera in a sexy burlesque pose. Kim is the embodiment of camp.
A leitmotiv and huge source of humour is Kim’s ‘sexy’ persona. Typically,
Kim glares appraisingly at a group of male cleaners, prods the arms of one
of them, looks into the camera with a sultry look and says ‘they’re all
muscle’ and flirts with male residents: ‘Vince you’re a lovely man, but a
dirty beggar’. Queen of the innuendo, when she provocatively leans on an
especially short male resident as he does the washing up he flirtingly says,
‘I’m just the right height for you, aren’t I?’ Kim is not game and replies
‘Could you possibly take your mind out of the gutter and get on with what
you are doing?’ Later she rubs his arm with a nylon scouring pad and asks,
‘Is it rough on you darling? Is it nice?’ Kim is a tease with an attitude. As
she struggles to make her way through a cramped houseboat choc a block
with rubbish, she holds onto her breasts and says ‘Got to be flat chested I
tell you!’ If, as argued by Critchley, humour functions by ‘exploiting the
gap between being a body and having a body’ (2002: 42), then the false
tragic sublimity of Kim’s body collapses into comic ridiculousness. Kim
inhabits her body powerfully and comically. Interestingly, we do not laugh
at Kim, and although she is acting with her tongue firmly in her cheek, she
is not ridiculous. We are not laughing at mutton acting like lamb—in fact,
whether Kim is actually sexy is questionable. Kim’s attitude is reminiscent
of Mae West, of a girl behaving badly yet who is very much in control of
her sexuality and in no way a sex object (Chiaro 2005). Neither is Kim
object of laughter. Like West, she is very much subject. When she makes
fun of herself it is not in a self-deprecating way.; On the houseboat Kim’s
distinctive hairdo—her hair is worn up in a ponytail looped over with plaits
on top—gets tangled up in the rubbish dangling from the ceiling; ‘Me
coiffeur me coiffeur, me coiffeur’s going to seed here’, she shrieks.
Playing on her femme fatale image, before cleaning the houseboat, she
tells Aggie that ‘I can take the husband and you can take the wife’. Aggie
complains that ‘you always take[s]the men’ and the banter continues with
Kim’s ‘Jealousy does not become you Aggie, come on, don’t start’.
PROFESSIONAL LAUGHTER
While Kim acts the part of a middle-aged sex kitten, Aggie, the less volup-
tuous of the two, plays the role of the serious, bespectacled scientist. When
first entering each property, Aggie in particular adopts the persona of the
frightened woman who startles at every creak and noise. When the noise
has a simple explanation, such as an object falling off a pile of debris,
she will typically laugh in relief. She inhabits the ‘serious’ body. When
she changes into a lab coat there is no accompanying music or burlesque
pirouettes that accompany Kim’s ‘striptease’. Aggie inspects the premises
for bacteria and takes swabs of dirt from different areas of the house that
are then professionally analyzed for microorganisms. Characteristically, lab
tests show that the premises are infected by a variety of bacteria such as
salmonella, E. coli, etc. Aggie presents the residents with magnified (and
disgusting) close-ups of these germs that are seen moving around beneath
a microscope. Microbiologist Dr. John Barker takes part in the episode
featuring bird lady Corinne and discusses the health hazards present in
her house:
Barker: when you consider that 1 gram of bird faeces can contain up to
10 billion bacteria and £there may be 500 or a 1000 grams£ of
faeces £distributed r(h)ound the room that means there could
be trillions and trillions of bacteria£ within the room on those
surfaces.
Aggie: So Corinne could be eating bird poo?
Barker: W(h)ell £she may well be£ and of course £fresh£ b(h)ird d(h)rop-
pings are a g(h)reater hazard than those that h(h) ave. dried onto
a surface…’.
Aggie is perfectly serious and concerned about the health hazards cre-
ated by the bird droppings, yet Barker is clearly amused by the absurdity
of the situation. He begins by explaining that the quantity of bacteria the
birds are creating is unsafe but does so with the inclusion of laugh particles
as he speaks. The complete ludicrousness of someone who may actually
be eating bird droppings is overstated by the technicalities of fresh versus
dried excreta and as before Barker is unable to suppress particles of laugh-
ter from his speech.
Chemistry teacher James keeps a cat litter in his kitchen that he is reluc-
tant to move elsewhere. Aggie informs James that he has carpet beetles
and, worse still, flies breeding in his home. When she tells him that they
found a pupa in his home his response is ‘One?’ to which Aggie laughs in
dis-alignment while James defensively and laughingly asks ‘S(h)eriously,
just the one?’ Cameras zoom into numerous flies and maggots while
Aggie explains that:
204 D. CHIARO
They’re laying eggs, the eggs are turning into maggots, the maggots are
pupating, more flies and you know how flies eat? They need everything to
be liquefied, so there’s lots of vomiting, lots of pooing all over the kitchen
surfaces.
ON (NOT) CALLING A FILTHY SPADE A FILTHY SPADE?

Aggie juxtaposes scientific terms such as ‘pupating’ with childish words like
‘pooing’. This use of euphemisms used to talk about excrements and urine
adds to the humour, especially when it occurs encircled by more technical
terminology. The presenters refer to bird droppings as ‘bird poo’, faeces as
‘doody’, a bad smell is described as ‘everything is stinky poo’ and chemis-
try teacher, James, who habitually urinates outside the toilet bowl is made
to smell his own ‘pee pee’. When Kim has to leave a bathroom gagging
because of the stench, Aggie cries out ‘Oh uric acid everywhere’ and ‘This
person is just not aiming, there’ s wee wee everywhere.’ Kim scolds the
owner ‘Dear the devil’s living in your bladder!’ Presumably, female viewers
will laugh in alignment with the presenters regarding the male habit (com-
monplace?) of missing the bowl:
Aggie: Look at that loo seat, it’s thick with urine.

Kim: Men, never aim down a toilet.
Aggie They don’t…
Kim: You can pick it up in little balls.
The presenters use a wide gamut of nouns to describe urine, from uric
acid right the way down the register scale to pee pee. The same occurs
with terms concerning defecation:
Having that cat litter on the floor, you’re attracting lots of flies, they’re crap-
ping and weeing everywhere so it’s all over your surface and your food and
the cat jumps out of the litter tray, up onto the surfaces as well, licking out
of your bowls and round the taps…
After a close up of droplets of caked urine that Kim rubs with delight
between her hands, Aggie summons James:
Aggie: James I want you to take a look at all this nastiness around here.
Kim: It’s called urine.
James: I don’t want to get any closer.
Kim: Excuse me it’s your pee pee dear.

James: It might not all be my pee pee.
Kim: Don’t start that business, if you can’t bear to look at what you’ve
done, it’s a disgrace. You are cleaning up your own pee pee.
Kim is totally dour throughout the exchange while Aggie looks on with
a huge wide mouthed smile on her face, which turns into a quiet giggle
of alignment with Kim and dis-alignment with James. Tackling the filthy
state of what Copley describes as ‘the toilet time forgot’, Kim flaunts the
toilet brush towards James telling him to look at it. He begs her not to
make him look but the camera zooms into the soiled brush as she contin-
ues to brandish it telling James that it contains ‘dried in urine and little bits
of faeces’—that are clearly visible to viewers.
So this switching between technical jargon and childish euphemism
adds to the humour. In fact, examining the toilet on the houseboat Kim
says ‘That toilet is so full of stale poopy-doops’ and ‘Pee pees I’m being
very polite’. She then throws in a pun for good measure: ‘Aggie have you
ever heard the expression on the poop deck? This is a poop-poop house-
boat. A poopy decky houseboat.’
LAST LAUGHS
At the end of each episode, the residents are led around the clean prem-
ises. Dissolves of before and after in different locales of the property are
accompanied by a sweet musical refrain. At this point, instances of laughter
occur as a sign of the contented reaction to the makeover. Residents laugh
in amazement and happiness and the laughter is convivial as Kim and Aggie
smile proudly at their—hopefully reformed—grime offenders. Residents’
laughter is of an affiliative nature and in alignment with the presenters. In
the episodes examined, two residents actually become over-emotional and
shed a few tears, but the usual reaction is laughter. When Kim tells James
he is a changed man, he laughs in accordance and alignment, as do other
reformed residents. At this final stage of the makeover, only the laughter of
one resident, bird lady Corinne, has a different function. After presenting
her with a pristine house, Aggie tells Corinne ‘We will be back’ to which
Corinne emits a lengthy cackle. When Kim and Aggie leave the premises
Corinne rubs her hands and chortles and she says to herself in glee ‘I’ll just
go and get the birds now’. When the presenters actually return after two
weeks and find the house in reasonably good condition they tell Corinne
206 D. CHIARO
to ‘Keep up the good work’ and wish her ‘Good luck with the cleaning’.
Nevertheless Corinne sarcastically replies, ‘I will try’ followed by an artificial
‘Ha ha ha…I’ll do my best…I’ll try huh (shrug) try not to come back, eh?
Bye heh huh’. However, the duo do get the last laugh as Aggie, ever the
optimist thinks that the house could remain clean ‘Once she’s got the poo
under control’, to which Kim replies ‘Yes and pigs might fly!’
LAUGHTER AND MATTER OUT OF PLACE

Feminist scholars such as Nathanson (2013) have read much into make-
over shows, claiming, among other things, that these shows place the fault
of home mismanagement, women’s careless appearance and badly behaved
children onto women’s newly acquired social position in the workplace.
Women now share time that was once dedicated solely to the home with
the workplace. In fact, the transformation in How Clean Is Your House?
takes place in 24 hours and the underlying message is that anyone can
achieve an immaculate home with minimum effort—never mind the
expense of the squad of numerous cleaners who actually do the work on
the show. This program like others in the genre does indeed focus on the
time factor. But unlike other shows it does not involve only female cul-
prits, although it does suggest that a clean home will lead to eternal hap-
piness and joy—as does being able to cook a meal in twenty minutes, or
having a slimmer body and looking ten years younger of other makeover
shows. This significant aspect of the show is beyond the focus of this study.
How Clean Is Your House? presents audiences with dust and grime,
mould and gunge, flies and larvae, urine and faeces and a variety of
stenches, a flotsam and jetsam of stomach-churning conditions in which
some people choose to live. If the pain and suffering of the human condi-
tion is the essence of humour, then this, in itself is funny. According to
philosopher Critchley, this kind of subject matter is what triggers the risus
purus, the highest laugh that laughs at the laugh, the laugh that laughs
at the unhappy (2002, 111). Take away Kim in her camp attire and her
po-faced attitude, take away Copley’s voice-over and take away the embar-
rassed smiles of the ‘grime offenders’ and the program turns into one of
many tear-jerking reality shows that promise happiness if we simply tidy up
and lose weight. Instead, the show invites us to laugh and to laugh at what
we, as humans, are capable of achieving left free to act as the animals that
we really are deep down inside. A cold thought, but a funny one. After all,
in the famous words of Margaret Mead, dirt is only matter out of place, so
let us rejoice and laugh at what is out of place in the places of others. After
all, we are only human.
NOTES
1. How Clean is your House? Six of the Filthiest Shows ever seen on TV! (Talkback
Thames Productions/FremantleMedia Group, 2004). The disc has a run-
ning time of approximately 144 minutes and contains six episodes plus spe-
cial features. The episodes included are: ‘Kim and Aggie take a fright at bird
lady’; ‘Kim and Aggie climb a mountain of laundry’; ‘Kim and Aggie sniff
out the science teacher’s ancient egg’; ‘Kim and Aggie clean up with Geordie
jokers’; ‘Kim and Aggie perk up the Perkins’; and ‘Kim and Aggie ask How
Clean in your Houseboat?’.
2. From the system for notating laughter in conversation developed by Gail
Jefferson (1984): £yes£, pound signs, indicate a ‘smile voice’ of delivery of
materials in between, and ‘heh huh’ indicates beats of laughter.
3. From the system developed by Jefferson (1984): y(h)es, h in brackets, indi-
cates laugh particle within speech.
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Mother. New York: Routledge.
A Special Freedom: Regulating Comedy
Offence
Brett Mills
In January 2010 a man called Paul Chambers, who was stranded at Robin
Hood airport in Doncaster, England, after his flight was cancelled due
to bad weather, tweeted, ‘Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve
got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the
airport sky high!!’1 A week later Chambers was arrested by anti-terrorism
police, his house was searched and his laptop, PC and mobile phone were
confiscated. He was charged with ‘sending a public electronic message
that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing charac-
ter contrary to the Communications Act 2003’. In May 2010, Doncaster
Magistrates Court found him guilty, and he was fined £385, plus £615
costs. As a result, he lost his job.
This series of events has come to be known as the ‘Twitter Joke Trial’
in the UK, and Chambers’ ordeal continued for another two years.2 After
two failed appeals in 2010 and 2012, his conviction was finally quashed
in July 2012 at the High Court. Explaining their decision to overturn
the conviction, the judges stated that ‘a message which does not cre-
ate fear or apprehension in those to whom it is communicated, or who
may reasonably be expected to see it, falls outside [the Communications
B. Mills ( )
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_12
210 B. MILLS
Act 2003]’. At the court, Chambers was accompanied by the comedians

Stephen Fry and Al Murray, who saw the case as one vital to debates over
free speech and comedy; Fry had offered to pay any legal costs and fines
Chambers incurred.
The Twitter Joke Trial was heavily reported in the British press, with
many commentators seeing it as emblematic of the failure of state institu-
tions to understand how humour works, and the ways in which fears of ter-
rorism affect how forms of communication are understood (for example,
Bracchi 2010; Mensch 2012); indeed, the judge that rejected Chambers’s
first appeal explicitly referred to the current socio-political context in the
UK, justifying the decision by saying, ‘Anyone in this country in the pres-
ent climate of terrorist threats, especially at airports, could not be unaware
of the possible consequences.’ In doing so, this judge asserted that such
judgements are predicated on the content of a piece of communication,
irrespective of whether those who saw the tweet thought it was a genu-
ine terrorism threat or not: in contrast, the successful appeal ruling fore-
grounds readers and audiences, noting that if no ‘fear or apprehension’ is
caused then nothing wrong has been done.
Nowhere in the story is there evidence that anyone involved thought
Chambers’s tweet was a real terrorism threat; this is unsurprising consider-
ing it’s unlikely that terrorists commonly end their warnings with exclama-
tion marks, nor do they conventionally give a ‘week and a bit’s’ notice of
their intentions. The trial was not really interested in whether or not the
tweet was a joke, nor does it analyse the success or failure of the humour;
instead, in finding Chambers guilty, the English courts demonstrated their
inability to make sense of humorous communication, which, by defini-
tion, prioritises ‘ambiguity, inconsistency, contradiction and interpretative
diversity’ (Mulkay 1988, 26), in opposition to the seriousness of legal
systems, which are predicated on ‘the existence of a single, organized,
independent world’ (1988, 23). Furthermore, the trial raises questions
concerning the relationships between comedy and regulations, and high-
lights the consistent difficulty regulators have in putting together rules
and guidelines that successfully encompass comedy.
This chapter aims to explore these relationships and difficulties, and to
contribute to debates about the roles of humour in society and, in par-
ticular, the boundaries that regulations place upon comedy. This is an
extremely broad area, and debates about the ‘appropriate’ use and content
of humour repeatedly arise in many societies and cultures (Davies 1990;
Lockyer and Pickering 2005), resulting in this being one topic of Humour
A SPECIAL FREEDOM: REGULATING COMEDY OFFENCE 211
Studies, which, perhaps, non-scholars see as worthy of interest. Certainly, it

is a field that many sections of the mainstream media report and comment
upon, as the examples in this chapter demonstrate. Such debates are, of
course, historically and culturally specific, and a single chapter is incapable
of exploring these contexts in their entirety. The focus here, therefore, is
on a much smaller area, and explores how regulations pertinent to British
television attempt to encompass and make sense of comedy. It is hoped that
focussing upon this area is a fruitful entry point into broader debates about
‘appropriate’ and ‘taboo’ humour in society, including those pertinent to
the Twitter Joke Trial, which is predicated on similar, though not identical,
assumptions about humour in mass media and the consequences comedy
might have.
To do so, this chapter first outlines the ways in which regulations have,
and had, defined comedy’s role on British television. While such regula-
tions respond to broader social understandings of comedy, there are con-
texts related to broadcasting that inform the development and function of
such regulations. For a start, TV is a mass medium wherein there is a geo-
graphical and temporal distance between the joke being told and the audi-
ence that hears it, and so it is much more difficult for joke tellers to respond
to audiences in the same way that someone might in a stand-up comedy
club, or when friends tell jokes to one another. Perhaps more important,
though, are the roles that television is ascribed in many cultures, and that
are made concrete within the British context through the concept of public
service broadcasting. Britain has always seen television as something that
is not merely a product, and has instead always required it to have a social
role as a ‘public utility’ (Scannell 2000, 46): in negative terms this has been
because of a fear of the effects of mass media and a mistrust of audiences;
in positive terms this has been intended to inform a democratic citizenry
and therefore aid the country functioning in the best way it can. While this
chapter does not intend to examine these contexts, they are worth not-
ing because the regulations demonstrate these two conflicting contexts in
action. The idea that comedy might fulfil a social purpose—and therefore
be a part of public service broadcasting—is enshrined in British television
regulations to an extent that is not seen in all such systems around the
world. Indeed, we can see these regulations as emblematic of the ways in
which British society defines itself in terms of its sense of humour. The
problem, of course, is that societies are made up of individuals who have
different ideologies, beliefs and boundaries, and therefore have differing
ideas of what kinds of comedy are and aren’t ‘acceptable’. Regulations are
212 B. MILLS
therefore inevitably compromises, and the problems that arise in their con-
struction and application result from the necessity of making rules that
apply to all. Paul Chambers was a victim of this, whereby a rule intended
for one purpose gets applied in a manner unlikely and unforeseen; he is
one example who powerfully highlights the consequences of attempting to
regulate humour.
THE SPECIFICS OF COMEDY

The problems of regulating comedy are shown in the phrase, ‘a special
freedom’. This phrase comes from the Code on Standards produced by the
Broadcasting Standards Commission, which until being abolished in 2003,
was responsible for responding to audience complaints about broadcast-
ing standards on British television. The Code on Standards ‘aims to give
broadcasters, their regulators and the public an understanding of the fac-
tors which should be taken into account when making editorial judgments’
about programme content, and it notes that it ‘is part of the broadcasters’
duty to find ways of striking a balance between their creative freedom and
their responsibility to their diverse audiences’ (BSC 1998, 3). The Code
draws on extensive audience research, and justifies its guidance by noting
that, as much as possible, it aims to reflect the perceptions and preferences
of the audiences it claims to represent via such qualitative research.
What is noticeable is that the Code repeatedly points towards the dif-
ficulties it faces in coalescing the multiple viewpoints held by the public it
represents, as well as the inevitable conflict arising from the ambition for
innovation and creativity in broadcasting and the possible offence or upset
such programming may cause. The Code’s key areas concern matters of
representation, sexual content, and violence, and these are presented as
being those of most concern for the viewing audiences. On the whole, the
Code distinguishes little between different genres of programming, and
instead foregrounds matters of audience expectation, which, it suggests,
are predominantly a result of scheduling (1998, 4–5), promotional mate-
rial (1998, 5), and previous experience of similar programming (1998,
3). However, there is a fairly remarkable paragraph in the Code, under its
introductory section on ‘Respect and Dignity’:
Challenging or deliberately flouting the boundaries of taste in drama and

comedy is a time-honoured tradition. Although these programmes have a
special freedom, this does not give them unlimited licence to be cruel or to
humiliate individuals or groups gratuitously (1998, 6).
As such, the Code acknowledges the difficulty of its remit, as the majority
of the document asserts the value of constraint, yet here it is made appar-
ent that one of the key roles much culture has is precisely in ignoring
such boundaries. It is telling that the phrase ‘a special freedom’ is used:
in using the term ‘freedom’ the existence of boundaries is constructed as a
barrier to free expression, perhaps inadvertently acknowledging the nega-
tive, restrictive consequences of regulation; in referring to this freedom
as ‘special’ the Code positions it as abnormal. In that sense, this could be
seen as the Code giving up on its own ambition, as the document spends
18 pages outlining guidance, but then admits that it may not be applicable
to a rather wide range of programming.
Perhaps more noticeable here is that the Code does not in any way
define this ‘special freedom’; we are not told to what extent it can be
used, what its consequences are, how special it is, how much freedom it
offers, or the extent to which audiences accept this freedom as valuable.
Considering the document is intended to help broadcasters make deci-
sions about the content of their productions, there is little concreteness
on offer here which gives prescribed and specific guidance. Of course, the
Commission would insist that this is the point, and the Code’s role is not
to be overly prescriptive. However, it is easy to imagine a programme-
maker looking at this guidance and not knowing to what extent they can
exploit or rely on this ‘special freedom’.
More significant for the analysis here is the assumption that comedy
should have this special freedom. After all, if the majority of broadcasting
is bound by certain regulations and expectations, why should humorous
forms be any different? The Code justifies this via the ‘time-honoured tra-
dition’ it refers to, yet it is perfectly comfortable with rejecting other cul-
tural traditions; for example, it notes that ‘Racist terms and terms mocking
disability and mental illness have come to be regarded as deeply offensive,
overtaking some traditional terms of abuse’ (1998, 7). In that sense, why
is one ‘tradition’ held to be worth enshrining within guidance if another
is not? How come the breaking of some taboos is deemed more accept-
able—even desirable—than others?
That comedy is difficult to regulate is apparent in other documents
attempting to help programme-makers make decisions about content. For
example, the BBC publication Taste, Standards and the BBC (2009) draws
on data from a wide range of specially commissioned audience research,
using methods including in-depth interviews, focus groups and a large-
scale quantitative survey in order to try and get as broad an overview as
214 B. MILLS
possible on viewers’ perceptions of, and responses to, broadcasting con-

tent. Unlike the Commission’s Code, this study does explore material in
terms of genre, and finds that audiences insist that ‘The context in which
potentially offensive content is placed is of paramount importance, and
can make the difference between taking offence and not’ (2009, 22).
However, when looking at comedy, the report outlines findings so dispa-
rate as to be as of little use as those proffered by the idea of an undefined
‘special freedom’:
Comedy: This is such a wide-reaching genre, from mainstream family com-

edy, to edgy, niche comedy, that it is difficult to make generalisations about
the audience’s expectations of content. Furthermore, opinions of ‘offensive-
ness’ in this area are often very subjective and a matter of personal taste,
more than for other types of programmes, and most say comedy comes with
‘it’s own licence’ (2009, 24).
This section goes on to note that a number of common themes arose

in discussion with audiences about comedy, which point towards the
factors viewers take into account when responding to such material.
Firstly, ‘strong language’—however this is defined—repels some viewers.
Secondly, audiences learn to expect particular kinds of material from cer-
tain comedians and series, and therefore choose to avoid them if they
know they dislike what they do. Following on from this is an issue of
trust, and audiences state that newer comedians, for which they had no
preconceived expectations, need to ‘earn the right to push the boundar-
ies of taste and standards’. Finally, audiences are wary of the overly male
aspect of much comedy and the combative nature of such humour. What
this points towards is how insignificant actual content is compared to the
context within which it is placed, for audiences seem to insist that there is
no material that is definitively offensive or not, and the appropriateness of
comedy is fundamentally affected by the context within which it occurs.
While this may seem obvious, it does have significant consequences for
the makers of such programming and those of us attempting to examine
them, for it shows the complex ways in which comedy is understood and
the multiple factors that affect how it is received.
The specificity of comedy as opposed to other forms of broadcasting
is found in other pieces of research carried out by the BBC and other
broadcasters. For example, the report Disabling Prejudice (Sancho 2003)
draws on a wide range of interviews and focus groups about ‘disability
representation’ in order ‘to assist programme makers and broadcasters in

making judgements about material to ensure that, as far as possible, it does
not cross the offence boundary’ (2003, 6). One of the largest sections of
the report concerns humour, and it notes that ‘Comedy has a special role
in offering different perspectives on changing cultural norms and trends
in society. It is also a genre that pushes boundaries with the potential to be
controversial, especially in relation to sensitive issues’ (2003, 72). There
is, of course, a commonality here between this report noting comedy has a
‘special role’ and the BSC’s references to humour’s ‘special freedom’. Yet
the further data Disabling Prejudice offers demonstrates the complexity
of working out how this functions in practice. For example, the research
participants were asked whether or not they agreed with the statement ‘I
think any aspect of society is fair game when it comes to comedy’; 41%
agreed, 37% disagreed, and 23% neither agreed nor disagreed (2003, 73).
Yet it is hard to reconcile that 41% with the result from a different, but
related, research question. When asked for responses to the statement,
‘Broadcasters have a duty to ensure they show nothing that is offensive to
any element of their viewing audience’, 48% agreed, with 28% disagreeing
and 24% undecided. While not a majority, 48% of respondents agreeing
that nothing should offend any audience member sends a significant sig-
nal, and implies that offence is in and of itself wrong, and with no poten-
tial to have a positive impact. In essence, this suggests viewers have a right
not to be offended. Such a result places severe limitations on the idea that
comedy has a ‘special freedom’, for it is hard to see how that liberty can
survive if offence has to be always avoided.
In order to explore the ways in which offence might depend on the
content of humour the research in Disabling Prejudice also asks its par-
ticipants to state whether they found jokes about particular social groups
‘very or quite offensive’ (2003, 74). The kinds of groups covered in the
research is broad, and are constructed around a wide range of categories to
do with physical aspects (for example, ‘disability’ and ‘overweight’ are cat-
egories), sexuality (‘homosexuals’, ‘lesbians’) race and ethnicity (‘black’,
‘Asian’), nationality (‘Chinese’, ‘Irish’), and so on. While there are clear
problems in lumping such disparate categories together, this method helps
give an overview of the ways such groupings are correlated by audience
members, and signal those aspects which humour might find as a target
in broadcasting. Significantly, jokes about all but one of these categories
are found to be ‘very or quite offensive’ by the minority of respondents,
even if some of these minorities are sizeable (for example, 44% found jokes
216 B. MILLS
about the ‘overweight’ offensive, and 41% found jokes about ‘black’ peo-
ple offensive). The one category where a majority of people found offence
(65%) was the ‘disabled’. The statistics produced here offer interesting,
if often confusing, reading. For example, 35% found jokes about ‘homo-
sexuals’ offensive, whereas 31% said the same about ‘lesbians’; 29% were
offended by jokes about ‘women’ compared to only 18% for ‘men’; and
while jokes about the ‘overweight’ were found offensive by 44%, only 23%
were offended by jokes about people who were ‘short’ or ‘bald’, demon-
strating a significant difference in responses to comedy about a range of
physical characteristics. The report explores the participants’ responses to
jokes about disability further, and finds that two key aspects of such jokes
are common in such humour found to be offensive; firstly, when comedy
encourages anti-social behaviour (2003, 76), and secondly, where audi-
ences are encouraged to laugh at disabled people ‘where the focus of the
humour is aimed at their disability’ (2003, 77). It is probable that both
of these aspects apply to the other categories covered by the research too,
but these findings do suggest that there is something particular about dis-
ability that heightens the offence felt by audiences.
The fact that this research points towards the ‘anti-social’ potential of
comedy makes explicit an assumption about humour and broadcasting
that underpins all regulation in practice and the assumed necessity of regu-
lation at all. That is, there is no point in having regulation, and being con-
cerned about the content of broadcast comedy, unless it is assumed that
such comedy can affect society in undesirable ways. Of course, the debate
about media effects is one of the most thoroughly researched yet least
settled topics in Media Studies (for overviews see Barker and Petley 2001;
Kirsh 2012). Yet, like the judges that found Paul Chambers guilty, all
regulation assumes that comedy has effects, and this is such a normalised
assumption that evidence supporting it does not seem to be required when
judges and regulators present their conclusions.
The aim of this overview of some of the research into British television
comedy regulation was to highlight the tension that exists in a desire to
uphold a ‘special freedom’ and the often unexamined assumption that
mass media can have negative and widespread effects. It is rare for some-
one to argue that there should be no regulation at all, highlighting the
persistent fears mass media engender. Comedy is pertinent here, as its
‘special freedom’ is precisely problematic for those who believe that televi-
sion can destabilise the social order. The rest of this chapter will explore
these tensions via two case studies, which show the regulatory system in
action, and the ways in which those involved aim to balance the freedom/
offence problematic.
CASE STUDIES: TOP GEAR

The two case studies selected are from the same programme: Top Gear
(1977–present). Top Gear is a motoring magazine programme in which
cars are reviewed and other motoring news is covered. While a long-
running series it was relaunched in 2002 and has been a considerable
ratings success since that time.3 It has a claim to be the most watched
television programme in the world (Bonner 2010, 32), partly because it
is sold to many television networks, but also because its content is attrac-
tive to the international business community, and so it is sold to many
airlines and hotel chains for their customers. It was noted earlier that some
viewers find the overly masculine nature of some comedy problematic,
and Top Gear has repeatedly been on the receiving end of such concerns.
Its three main presenters engage in mocking banter of one another and
other people, and it has gained a reputation for containing jokes based
around race, nationality and sexuality. Indeed, the programme has such a
history of audience complaints and issues raised by particular groups that
there is a separate page on Wikipedia devoted to its controversies, which
is longer than the main entries for many other television programmes.
That Top Gear and its presenters have such a reputation is significant for
the ways in which regulators respond to complaints about it, for, as noted
earlier, expectations are assumed to be key in enabling audiences to decide
whether to watch a programme or not. However, as will be shown, the
fact that the kinds of humour covered in these case studies are precisely
the kind of thing to be expected from Top Gear is not the only factor taken
into account, because in one of these examples the complaints made by
viewers were upheld and the programme was censured, whereas in the
other this was not the case; that is, the content and perceived intent of the
humour was seen to be significant too, and therefore expectations—while
a key component of regulators’ adjudications on offence—do not trump
all other factors.
The first case study concerns an episode of Top Gear broadcast on 5
February 2012. In it the three presenters discussed the new Prius camp-
ervan, and mocked its appearance as ugly, comparing the shape of the
vehicle (which looked as if the campervan part of the vehicle had simply
been forced onto the pre-existing car) to a ‘growth’ on someone’s face. In
the final adjudication made by the BBC Trust that upheld the complaint
there is much detailed analysis of a particular piece of dialogue from the
programme, and it unpicks the acceptability and unacceptability of specific
sections of it. It is therefore worthwhile recounting that dialogue in full,
as it appears in the published adjudication:
218 B. MILLS
Jeremy Clarkson: Hey, now, you know sometimes you meet some-
body who’s got a growth on their face and it’s
actually bigger than their face?
[Richard Hammond gestures towards Jeremy Clarkson as if he were a case
in point]
Jeremy Clarkson: No, I mean one of those really ugly things. No,
this is just a face. I’m talking about a growth…
Richard Hammond: [Maintaining the gesture] That’s your face?
Jeremy Clarkson: I bring this up because there’s a company in Japan
who’s obviously used this growth thing as an inspi-
ration for their new Prius campervan. Here it is.
[Full-screen picture]
Richard Hammond: Oh, God—it’s the Elephant Car.
Jeremy Clarkson: It is. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you. I hope that
nobody knocks my cathedral over’ [slurred speech].
Richard Hammond: It’s a monster!
Jeremy Clarkson: You’ve got a double bed in the back and then
another one in that growth. That is not a car that
you could talk to at a party unless you were look-
ing at something else is it? (BBC Trust 2012, 12).
This sequence draws on references to the film The Elephant Man (David
Lynch, 1980), which tells the story of John Merrick (1862–90),4 whose
body developed large growths and who made a living exhibiting him-
self as ‘the Elephant Man’. Clarkson’s slurred speech and reference to
the ‘cathedral’ draws directly on John Hurt’s portrayal of Merrick in the
film. In its report the BBC Trust directly highlights this reference, and
asserts that ‘the audience would have understood this connection’ (2012,
12). However, the report goes on to state that Clarkson’s final statement
is not about Merrick but instead refers to disability more broadly, and
its adjudication draws directly from this distinction. That is, its finding
delineates the acceptability of making a joke about the specific individ-
ual Merrick and the category of disability more broadly, finding the for-
mer acceptable and the latter unacceptable. The report does not make
clear why mocking Merrick is ‘on the margins of acceptability’ (2012, 3)
while mocking disability more widely is not, yet it can be presumed that
a number of factors might come into play here. Firstly, that the Trust
sees a distinction between jokes about individuals and jokes about groups;
secondly, that a distinction is made between joking about people who
are dead and those who are alive; and finally that humour about a figure
such as Merrick who is known in contemporary society only via media

portrayals such as Lynch’s film is perceived differently to humour about
social categories that exist outside of media and therefore impact upon the
everyday lives of large numbers of people. That is, the humour the Trust
deems acceptable is presumed not to have implications for disability more
widely, whereas that which it condemns instead finds comedy in circum-
stances that many viewers might regularly encounter. In that sense, the
Trust seems to assume that Clarkson’s final line normalises the stigmatisa-
tion of disability, and therefore ‘encourages anti-social behaviour’ (Sancho
2003, 76), which Disabling Prejudice shows audiences find problematic
about such comedy.
A number of other factors were taken into account by the Trust when
making this decision, and some of these respond to the defence the
programme-makers mount in order to justify the broadcast. For exam-
ple, the section under discussion is performed as ad-libbed banter, and
Top Gear’s tone is one that purports to capture the unscripted interplay
of the three presenters. In fact, as the adjudication notes, some of this
exchange was scripted while other sections were not, as is common for
the programme. In defending the programme, ‘The Executive Producer
[…] said that banter such as was broadcast on Top Gear would always
be an imperfect science; it would invariably upset some viewers at some
point’. Drawing on ideas of creative freedom, he goes on to argue that
if guidelines and punishments were too strict, ‘humour or banter would
inevitably become strangled’ (BBC Trust 2012, 10). Interestingly, this
justification also refers to the fact that due process was carried out; the
BBC has a compliance process in which potentially problematic mate-
rial is referred up the Corporation’s management chain, and signed off
as acceptable before broadcast. There is, then, a managerial structure
intended to support programme-makers but that could also be seen as
passing the responsibility for programme content to those outside the
production process. Hence the Executive Producer argues that ‘if the seg-
ment was found to have overstepped the mark, the compliance system and
editorial team were as much to blame as the presenters and arguably more
so’ (2012, 13). Such a statement has interesting connotations for debates
about creative freedom, for it seems to suggest that programme-makers
(rightly) demand such freedom yet suggest responsibility lies elsewhere
if it is seen to be used for unacceptable purposes. Furthermore, there’s
a telling distinction made here between how freedom functions during
banter, and its applicability to scripted material. This might make more
sense during a live programme, where managing such banter might be
220 B. MILLS
more difficult, but considering the lengthy gap between the recording of
the unscripted banter in Top Gear and its broadcast, it is hard to see why
it is categorised differently from scripted material. There’s clearly leeway
being offered here to unscripted material which conforms to idea of live-
ness that permeate cultural understandings of television, even television
which is not live (Levine 2008; Marriott 2007). The decision to delineate
between different kinds of utterances highlights the Trust’s assumptions
about the ‘norms’ of television, and these are enshrined in the adjudica-
tion that resulted.
It is perhaps also worth noting here the long and tortuous journey this
complaint took, until it was eventually upheld by the BBC Trust. The
BBC had, in fact, responded to this complaint twice before, via different
systems, and the existence of a wide range of committees and boards that
such complaints can be referred to is testament to the BBC’s desire to be
seen to be responding to audience views as thoroughly as possible. This
long narrative is outlined in the BBC Trust’s report (2012, 9–10). In
the first instance, the complaint was directed to BBC Audience Services,
which ‘is responsible for handling all complaints, comments and enqui-
ries that the BBC receives via phone calls, emails, SMS and letters’ (BBC
Press Office 2009), and is currently contracted out to a separate company,
Capita. The complaint was investigated by the Complaints Adviser for
Drama and Entertainment who, after consultation with the programme’s
production team, decided that ‘the BBC hoped that it would be clear
from the absurdity of the context that no offence was intended’. However,
while the complaint was not upheld at this stage, ‘The Executive Producer
[of Top Gear] repeated that the BBC was sorry if it had caused offence’
(BBC Trust 2012, 9), demonstrating that the Corporation is capable of
acknowledging that offence has been caused, while justifying its inclusion
and deciding that nothing needs to be done to rectify this. Unhappy with
this outcome, the complainant then ‘escalated’ (2012, 10) their complaint
by writing to the Editorial Complaints Unit. This Unit ‘deals with serious
complaints about breaches of the BBC’s editorial standards in connec-
tion with specific programmes or items of content’ (BBC n.d., 215). The
Unit’s response was to find that the broadcast was acceptable, because
of the programme’s ‘well-established expectation that exchanges between
the presenters would be characterised by a flouting of political correctness
and a degree of hyperbole bordering on self-parody’ (BBC Trust 2012,
10). The adjudication once again, then, relies on audience expectations
and the norms that exist for particular genres or series. However, the Unit
acknowledged that the broadcast has the ‘potential’ to offend audiences,

even though this is mitigated by such audience expectations; though it
is difficult to delineate how such potential is defined, especially as the
existence of a complaint shows that this potentiality has been realised.
It was only after these two organisations had rejected the complaint that
it reached the Editorial Standards Committee, which ‘may consider any
matter which raises questions of a potential breach of the BBC’s edito-
rial standards, […] including appeals against decisions and actions of the
Editorial Complaints Unit’ (BBC n.d., 215). It was this Committee that
upheld the complaint, overturning the adjudications made by Audience
Services and the Editorial Complaints Unit. The fact that three bodies
exist to respond to audience complaints, allowing audiences a hierarchy of
institutions structures to appeal to, demonstrates the centrality of viewer
response to the BBC’s ethos and behaviour.
That the complaint against this edition of Top Gear was eventually
upheld, despite two other rulings to the contrary, highlights the difficulty
an institution such as the BBC has in making sense of audience responses,
and the care that is taken in ensuring regulations do not unnecessarily limit
programme-making. Tellingly, all three of the bodies take the complainant’s
grievances seriously, and profess regret at causing it; there is no discourse
here allowing the BBC to simply say a viewer is wrong to be offended,
or to point to the fact that such offence is a minority view in this case.
The upholding of this complaint has consequences for future programme-
making for such rulings are understood to be test cases that production
teams, for any kind of programme, should take note of. In this instance, the
complainant also requested that the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines be updated
to foreground the potential offence generated from inappropriate repre-
sentations of disability, but despite upholding the complaint the Editorial
Complaints Unit rejected this plea, arguing that ‘the Guidelines and cor-
responding Guidance together give sufficient and appropriate guidance to
programme-makers on the issue of the portrayal of minorities and vulner-
able social groups’ (BBC Trust 2012, 14). Indeed, the Unit argued that
as they were able to uphold the complaint using the existing Guidelines
there was demonstrably no need to change them. The complainant’s pleas
here turned on the specificity of disability, arguing that it was a particular
category that the Guidelines do not recognise. This may be a telling point,
as the second case study to be explored here is one that does not concern
disability and that was not upheld; it is therefore a matter of debate as to
whether the distinctions between the two cases are predicated on their dif-
ferent subject matter, or if other criteria come into play.
222 B. MILLS
So, in an edition of Top Gear broadcast on 30 January 2011, the three

presenters discuss a newly released sports car from Mexico, and their
responses to it centre on humour drawing on national stereotypes. This is
set up early in the section, as one of the presenters quickly sets up those
stereotypes in wondering why such a car would be of interest to anyone:
Why would you want a Mexican car? ‘Cos cars reflect national characteris-
tics, don’t they? So German cars are very well built and ruthlessly efficient,
Italian cars are a bit flamboyant and quick—Mexican cars are just going to
be a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence,
asleep, looking at a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a
coat (Ofcom 2011, 44).
The discussion quickly moves away from the car, and instead makes com-
ments about Mexicans more broadly:
Richard Hammond: I’m sorry but just imagine waking up and remem-
bering you’re Mexican. ‘Oh no…’
Jeremy Clarkson: It’d be brilliant, it’d be brilliant because you could
just go straight back to sleep again. ‘Aaah, I’m a
Mexican…’
Richard Hammond: … that’s all I’m going to do all day …
Jeremy Clarkson: That’s why we’re not going to get any com-
plaints about this—‘cos the Mexican Embassy,
the Ambassador’s going to be sitting there with
a remote control like this [slumps in seat and
snores]. They won’t complain. It’s fine (Ofcom
2011, 44).
The irony, of course, being that people did complain; Ofcom received
157 such complaints. The number of complaints is telling because it is
more than that received for the earlier case study, yet this was a broadcast
that, as will be shown, was deemed to be acceptable. That is, the regula-
tory system does not take into account the number of complaints, and
there’s ample evidence of regulators rejecting complaints made by thou-
sands of people, and upholding ones made by single people. Considering
the regulatory system repeatedly insists its criteria for making decisions is
based on ‘generally accepted standards’ (National Archives 2003) ascer-
tained via large-scale, quantitative, representative surveys, which suggest
the attitudes of the mass are pertinent in this context, it could be seen as
odd that the number of complaints made about a broadcast is rarely taken
into account. All such regulatory systems function with as much speed
and tenacity irrespective of the number of complainants. That a complaint
could be upheld even if it is only made by one person gives evidence
of the notion that it is assumed that no-one should be unduly offended
by broadcasting. In rejecting the complaints of 157 people here, Ofcom
makes no mention of the fact such a number is, of course, a tiny minority
of the actual viewing audience; numbers here simply don’t count, and the
system therefore allows the taboos of the individual to be valued identi-
cally to those of the group.
In its adjudication Ofcom distinguishes between the content of the
comedy here, and the context within which it is broadcast, stating that it
‘took into account that Top Gear is well known for its irreverent style and
sometimes outspoken humour’ (2011, 45). That this kind of comedy is
‘normal’ for this series is given further evidence:
We considered that viewers of Top Gear were likely to be aware that the
programme frequently uses national stereotypes as a comedic trope and that
there were few, if any, nationalities that had not at some point been the
subject of the presenters’ mockery throughout the history of this long run-
ning programme. For example, this same episode featured a competition
between the U.K.’s Top Gear presenters and their Australian counterparts,
throughout which the Australians were ridiculed for various national traits
(Ofcom 2011, 45–46).
There is, of course, an interesting side question here, as to why Ofcom

seemed to receive no complaints about the jokes about Australians, and
anthropological research shows societies have ‘implicit cultural rules’
(Davies 1990, 40) governing the acceptability of jokes about other nations
or communities. What Ofcom’s adjudication tells us more is that the regu-
lator is not interested in discussions concerning the social consequences
of such jokes, or whether national stereotypes are appropriate fodder for
broadcasting; instead their only interest is whether audiences could expect
such material within a particular programme. In that sense, by making
jokes about Mexicans and Australians Top Gear makes it clear that it regu-
larly employs national stereotypes and audiences should expect as much.
Perversely, Ofcom’s adjudication seems to advise those wanting to be
offensive in the future to start doing so now, so that audience expectations
can be put in place. The rather absurd consequence of this could be the
proliferation of humour audiences find problematic, as Ofcom does not
224 B. MILLS
seem to see such material as a problem as long as it is expected. It is an

odd regulatory system that might inadvertently encourage material audi-
ences have said they are uncomfortable with, perhaps minimising taboo by
rendering it more common.
CONCLUSION
So, what are we to make from the analysis of these two case studies? How
does a regulator go about making decisions on comic material some audi-
ence members clearly define as taboo, balancing the requirement for
broadcasting to minimise offence while upholding ideas of free speech?
How does a regulator maintain its commitment to comedy’s ‘special free-
dom’ while appropriately responding to audience expectations?
Perhaps the key finding here, and the underlying assumption that runs
through regulation, is the idea that there is some material that is taboo
and should remain so, at least in regulatory terms. It is simplistic to equate
‘censorship’ with ‘taboo’, but punishing broadcasters for disseminating
material that contravenes ‘generally accepted standards’ both prescribes
allowable material and, by extension, therefore renders it taboo. That this
kind of comedy has some kind of extra pleasure attached to it because it
is taboo is evident in the audience reactions in Top Gear, and the produc-
ers’ insistence that regulation should not be so heavy-handed as to limit
creative freedom asserts the value of not delineating boundaries too mark-
edly. Yet no party in any of these case studies—including the Twitter Joke
Trial—asserts the blanket right to freedom of speech, and no-one argues
that regulation should be got rid of completely. Taboo comedy is seen as
a problem here because it is assumed its existence and dissemination will
have social consequences, with such culture a threat to the social order. Of
course, there’s a circularity here, in which the justification by the regula-
tors for the policing of boundaries rests on audience research, yet audience
expectations are created at least partly through the norms of broadcast-
ing. That it’s impossible to define these in any concrete—or even useful—
terms, is pretty much admitted in the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines, which
state ‘In a perfect world the BBC Editorial Guidelines would consist of
one sentence: use your own best judgement’ (n.d., 2).
The freedom for comedy, then, remains a special one, but in a variety
of ways. It acknowledges the social role of comedy, and its cultural power,
and asserts its right to say and do that which would be unacceptable in
other, more serious modes. Yet it is also special precisely because it is so ill-
defined, seemingly able to allow Top Gear to make jokes about Mexicans,
but not about disability.
NOTES
1. The tweet was posted by the account @pauljchambers on 6 January 2010,
4:08 AM. Later, it was deleted.
2. For newspaper articles covering the story for its entire length see Guardian
(2012); all quotes in this overview come from articles on that site.
3. In March 2015, one of the presenters of Top Gear was suspended following
allegations of physical violence towards a producer. In response, the BBC
also ceased broadcast of the programme. The BBC also carried out an
enquiry into the alleged violence. In the end, all three presenters left the
show, and as of 2015 are making a motoring series for Amazon Prime. The
BBC’s Top Gear is slated to return to television in 2016, with new
presenters.
4. More recent research suggests Merrick’s name was Joseph, but the film
depicts him as John (Howell and Ford 1980).
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EDITORS
Chiara Bucaria is Assistant Professor of English Language and Translation

at the University of Bologna’s Department of Interpreting and Translation.
Her research focuses on the impact of censorship and manipulation in
dubbed and subtitled TV programs—with a specific interest in the linguis-
tic and cultural adaptation of controversial humour—textual manipulation
in translation, translation and humour, and the cross-cultural adapta-
tion of media paratexts. She has co-edited the collections Between Text
and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation (John Benjamins,
2008) and Non-professional Interpreting and Translation in the Media
(Peter Lang, 2015), and has published the volume Dark Humour as a
Culture-Specific Phenomenon: A Study in Audiovisual Translation (VDM
Publishing, 2009). She is also the originator of the conference series The
Taboo Conference, which aims at showcasing interdisciplinary scholarship
on various aspects of taboo in the humanities.
Luca Barra is Lecturer in Television and Media Studies at the University

of Bologna’s Department of Arts, where he teaches Television and
Broadcasting History. Previously, he has been Post-Doctoral Fellow
Researcher at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in Milan, Italy. He
also works as a senior researcher at Ce.R.T.A., the Research Centre on
Television and Audiovisuals of Università Cattolica. His research mainly
focuses on television production and distribution cultures, comedy and

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2
228 EDITORS
humour TV genres, the international circulation of media products (and

their national mediations), the history of Italian television, and the evolu-
tion of the contemporary media landscape. He published the books Risate
in scatola (Vita e Pensiero, 2012) and Palinsesto (Laterza, 2015), and sev-
eral essays in edited volumes and journals. He is consulting editor of the
Italian TV studies journal Link. Idee per la televisione.
CONTRIBUTORS
Delia Chiaro is Professor of English Language and Translation at the

University of Bologna’s Department of Interpreting and Translation, and
President of the International Society of Humour Studies. She is author of
more than 100 publications on diverse areas of Humour Studies, Audio-
Visual Translation, Sociolinguistics, and the combination of all three.
Her most recent publication is The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age
(Routledge, 2016). She is regularly a keynote speaker at various interna-
tional conferences.
Kyle Conway is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University

of Ottawa. His books include Everyone Says No: Public Service Broadcasting
and the Failure of Translation (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011),
Beyond the Border: Tensions across the Forty-ninth Parallel in the Great
Plains and Prairies (co-edited with T. Pasch, McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 2013), The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of
Western North Dakota (co-edited with W. Caraher, CreateSpace, 2016),
and Little Mosque on the Prairie and the Paradoxes of Cultural Translation
(University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).
Christie Davies is a graduate of Cambridge University (M.A., Ph.D.) and

an Emeritus Professor of the University of Reading. He is the author of
several academic books about humour, the latest being Jokes and Targets
(Indiana University Press, 2011), and has published articles about the

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2
230 CONTRIBUTORS
social origins of taboos in leading sociology journals. He has a lifetime

achievement award from the International Society for Humour Studies,
and an honorary doctorate from Galat ̦i University. He has been a BBC
researcher and producer, he is a frequent broadcaster, and he wrote and
appeared in the television documentary The Silver Road to Guanajato
(BBC, 1985).
Evan Elkins is Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture in the

Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. He
researches various issues involving digital media technologies, cultural dif-
ference, the media industries, and globalization. His research interests also
include transgressive comedy and the US television industry.
Elsa Simões Lucas Freitas is Associate Professor at Fernando Pessoa

University in Porto (Portugal), where she teaches advertising, literature
and translation. She has a Ph.D. in Linguistics (Lancaster University).
She is the author of Taboo in Advertising (John Benjamins, 2008), and
she has contributed chapters to The Language of Advertising (edited by
G. Cook, Routledge, 2007), to Intermediality and Storytelling (edited by
M. Grishakova and M.L. Ryan, De Gruyter, 2010), and to The Routledge
Handbook of Discourse Analysis (edited by J. Gee and M. Handford,
Routledge, 2013). She is currently co-editor of Media Studies Dossiers.
Brett Mills is Senior Lecturer in Television and Film Studies at the

University of East Anglia. He is the author of Television Sitcom (BFI, 2005),
The Sitcom (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), and Dumb Animals:
Animals on Television (Palgrave, 2016), and co-author of two editions
of Reading Media Theory (with D.M. Barlow, Pearson, 2009/2012),
and Creativity in the British Television Comedy Industry (with S. Ralph,
Routledge, 2016).
Kristen Murray is an interdisciplinary scholar, focusing on areas of engage-

ment between the performing arts and the social sciences. Her research
examines the communication surrounding experiences of loss in contem-
porary society. Murray also analyses current theatre practice and devel-
ops active pedagogical strategies for students of English as an additional
language. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in
Sydney, as well as a Master of Creative Arts in Theatre and a Master of
CONTRIBUTORS 231
Science in Psychology. Currently, Murray teaches in the Department of

English at the City University of Hong Kong.
Philip Scepanski is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication

and the Arts at Marist College. His research interests include American
TV and broadcast history, cultural theory, humour studies and trauma
theory. His current book project explores the ways in which US television
comedy engages and manages moments of national crisis and catastrophe.
Matt Sienkiewicz is Assistant Professor of Communication and

International Studies at Boston College. He is the co-editor of Saturday
Night Live and American TV (with R. Becker and N. Marx, Indiana
University Press, 2013) and the author of The Other Air Force (Rutgers
University Press, forthcoming).
Carter Soles, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the English

Department at The College at Brockport (SUNY). He has published arti-
cles on the rise of geek culture for Jump Cut (with K. Kunyosying) and on
Team Apatow for Bright Lights Film Journal. His ecocritical work includes
a chapter on the cannibalistic hillbilly in 1970s slasher films in Ecocinema:
Theory and Practice (edited by S. Rust and S. Monani, Routledge, 2012)
and on environmental apocalyptic themes in 1950s horror films for
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment. He teaches film
theory, genre studies and ecocinema courses at The College at Brockport.
Ethan Thompson (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Professor

of Communication & Media at Texas A&M University (Corpus Christi).
He is the producer and director of TV Family, a feature-length docu-
mentary (2015), the author of Parody and Taste in Post-War American
Television Culture (Routledge, 2013), and the co-editor of the books How
to Watch Television (with J. Mittell, NYU Press, 2013) and Satire TV:
Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era (with J. Gray and J.P. Jones,
NYU Press, 2009). In 2015, he was a research and teaching fellow with
the Peabody Awards program at the University of Georgia.
INDEX1
A Axe (Lynx), 185–6

Adult Swim, 85, 152 Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, The, 119,
Adventures of Ford Fairlane, The, 146 127
A&E, 193
All Gas and Gaiters, 31
Al Qaeda, 109, 114n13, 121, 124, B
126 Barker, John, 203
Amazon Prime, 225n3 Barr, Roseanne, 144
American Dad, 2, 126 Bateman, Jason, 61
American Family Association (AFA), Bateman, Justine, 65
141 Bauman, Zygmunt, 43, 48, 49, 54
America’s Funniest Home Video, 158 BBC, 14, 21–38, 213, 214, 217–21,
Archer, 14, 77–95 224, 225n3
Aristotle, 5 Audience Services, 220
Arkell, John, 22 Editorial Complaints Unit, 220–1
Arnett, Will, 65 Editorial Standards Committee,
Arrested Development, 14, 61, 62, 221
64–6, 68–70, 74, 75 Trust, 217–21
Arsenio Hall Show, The, 146 Variety Programmes Policy Guide
As Nasty As They Wanna Be, 141 for Writers and Producers (The
Austin Public Access, 150 Green Book), 24
1
Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote notes

Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2
234 INDEX
Beavis & Butt-Head, 158 C’est. du propre!, 193

Berger, John, 174–5 Chambers, Paul, 209–10, 212, 216
Bergson, Henri, 44, 123, 137n1 Channel 4, 192
Big Bang Theory, The, 168 Chappelle, David, 165–6
Big C, The, 41, 45–6 Chappelle’s Show, 165–6
bin Laden, Osama, 121, 124–7, 136 Charlie Brown Christmas, A, 126
Birds, The, 198 Christian Coalition of America, 150
Blazin, Denny, 160 Clarkson, Jeremy, 218–19, 222
Bona World of Julian and Sandy, The, Clay, Andrew Dice, 15, 122, 139, 140,
34 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152
Bono, 144 Cleaver, June, 85
Borges, Jorge Louis, 99–100 Cleveland Show, The, 126
Bowles, Cory, 69 Clinton, Bill, 141
Breaking Bad, 41, 53 Clinton, Hillary, 7
Britain and the Beast, 32 Code on Standards, 212
Broadcasting Standards Commission, Coloured People Time (CPTime), 7
212 Comedy Central, 15, 128, 131, 132,
Buchanan, Pat, 46, 54, 141 152, 155–6, 165–6, 168
Bugs Bunny, 126 Comedy Central Roasts, 2, 152
Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, 126 Copley, Paul, 194, 196–8, 205, 206
Busby, Linda, 68 Corbett, Harry H., 29
Bush, George, 120, 144 Cosby Show, The, 97, 98, 112
Butler, Judith, 73 Couric, Katie, 97, 98, 112
Crime Scene Investigation (CSI),
53, 98, 109
C
Campbell, Tisha, 148
Canadian Association of Broadcasters D
(CAB), 105 Dad’s Army, 37
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Daffy Duck, 167
(CBC), 97, 99, 105–9, 107, Daily Beast, The, 152
114n16 Daily Show, The, 139, 155, 169
Canadian Radio-television and Daily Star, 194
Telecommunication Danson, Ted, 144
Commission (CRTC), 104, 105 de Blasio, Bill, 7
Capita, 220 Def Comedy Jam,
CapZeyeZ, 150, 153n5 148, 149, 151
Carl’s Jr., 184 De Rossi, Portia, 65
Carrot Top, 160 Designer Guys, 98
Cartoon Network, 85 Devine, Loretta, 73
CBS, 97 Discovery, 193
Cera, Michael, 64 Disney, 92, 195
INDEX 235
Dodson, Antoine, 161 Goldberg, Whoopy, 144

Douglas, Mary, 157, 166 Golden Globe Awards, 144
Downey, Jim, 147–8 Goldthwait, Bobcat, 144
Dunham, Jeff, 15, 120, 124, 130–7 Gonzalez, B.W., 61
Dunn, Nora, 145–6 Goofy, 92
Goon Show, The, 30
Greene, Sir Hugh Carleton,
E 21–3, 28, 32
E!, 155 Grey’s Anatomy, 46, 47, 50, 98
Eckersley, Roger H., 23 Grossberg, Lawrence, 141
Edwards, Lisa, 192
Elephant Man, The, 218
Elmer Fudd, 126 H
Endemol, 192 Hale, Tony, 61
Extreme Makeover Home Edition, 192 Hall, Stuart, 62
Hamm, Jon, 151
Hammond, Richard, 218, 222
F Hancock’s Half-hour, 30
Falwell, Jerry, 150 Hansen, Ryan, 72
Family Guy, 123, 126, 136 Harris, Stephanie, 192
Father Ted, 31 HBO, 1, 84, 148, 149, 169
Fawlty Towers, 37 Helms, Jesse, 141
Federal Communication Commission Hendren, Tippi, 198
(FCC), 143–4 Here’s Harry, 30
Ferrell, Will, 160 Herr Meets Hare, 126
Fiat 500X, 186–7 Hicks, Bill, 15, 139, 140, 149–52
Fiske, John, 83–4 Hitchcock, Alfred, 198
Fox, 140, 148, 149, 156 Hoarders, 193
Fox News, 110 Hoarding, Buried Alive, 193
Freud, Sigmund, 5, 78, 80–2, 85, 86, Hobbes, Thomas, 5, 46, 175
88–90, 92, 93, 133, 157, 176 Hoe schoon is jouw Huis?, 193
Fry, Stephen, 210 Holding, Michael, 33
FX, 78–9, 84–6, 152, 169 Home Comforts, The Art and Science
FX Fully Baked, 85 of Keeping House, 199
House M.D., 41, 48
Howard, Peter, 32–3
G Howard, Sydney, 23
Garnett, Alf, 30–2 How Clean Is Your House?,
Garofalo, Janeane, 149 16, 191–4, 206, 207n1
GoDaddy.com, 184 Huckleberry Finn, 62
236 INDEX
Hunt, Tim, 7 Letterman, David, 15, 139, 149–1

Lifetime, 193
Little House on the Prairie, 113n2
I Little Mosque on the Prairie, 14, 97,
Imus, Don, 145 100, 101, 105, 106, 112
Independent Television (ITV), 21 Lohan, Lindsay, 134
Ingalls Wilder, Laura, 113n2 Louie, 169
Inside Amy Schumer, 1, 165, 166 Louis C.K., 169
It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, 31, 37 Lovitz, Jon, 145
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 79 Ludwin, Rick, 146
It’s a Wonderful Life, 145 Lynch, David, 218
It’s Marty, 30
M
J MacKenzie, Aggie, 191–3
Jackson, Janet, 144 Mad Men, 84, 151
Jackson, Michael, 69, 134 Madonna, 141
Jacob, Sir Ian, 25 Maher, Bill, 124
James, Garry, 69 Mapplethorpe, Robert, 140–1, 153n3
Jeff Dunham Show, The, 131, 136 Marino, Ken, 75
Johnston, Brian (aka Johnners), Marriott, R.D.A., 28
32, 33 Martin, 146–8
Jones, Tamala, 72 M*A*S*H, 56n5
Just for Feet, 182 MacFarlane, 126
McGivern, Cecil, 25–6
McKinney, Charlotte, 184
K Mead, Margaret, 207
Katie Couric Speaks, 97 Mencia, Carlos, 15, 120, 128–32, 136
Kinison, Sam, 144, 145 Merrick, John, 218–19
Kovacs, Ernie, 159 Mickey Mouse, 92
Midsummer Night’s Dream, 167
Miller, D., 23
L Miller, Graham, 28
Last Man on Earth, The, 41, 51 Mind of Mencia, 128, 130
Late Show with David Letterman, Mom, 2
The, 15, 139, 149 Monk, 50
Law & Order, 53 Moral Majority, 150
Lawrence, Martin, 15, 139, 140, Moral Rearmament (MRA), 32
147–9, 151, 152 Morton, Robert, 150
League of Gentlemen, The, 1 MTV, 145, 148
Leary, Denis, 149 MTV Video Awards, 145
Lessing, Doris, 122 Mulvey, Laura, 82–4
INDEX 237
Murray, Al, 210 Payne, Jack, 23

Myers, Mike, 146 Pearl Harbor, 122, 126
Mystery Science Theatre 3000, 158 Pepsi, 141
Perfect Moment, The, 141
Piss Christ, 140–1
N Plato, 5, 99, 175
National Endowment for the Arts Presley, Elvis, 71
(NEA), 141 Prewitt, Dave, 150
National Football League (NFL), 183 Prius, 217, 218
National Viewers and Listeners Pryor, Richard, 144–5
Association (NVALA), 23, 29, Psych, 165
34–6 Pushing Daisies, 41
Nawaz, Zarqa, 97, 98, 100, 101, 105,
108
NBC Standards and Practices, 145 R
Netflix, 62, 75, 152 Refaeli, Bar, 184
New York Times, 146 Richie, Lionel, 69
New York Times Magazine, 131 Rickles, Don, 123–4
Nike, 182 Robertson, Pat, 150
Nip/Tuck, 79 Robot Chicken, 125
Noah, Trevor, 139 Rock, Chris, 8, 148
Nurse Jackie, 48 Roethlisberger, Ben, 161
Rose, David, 202
Round the Horne, 29, 33, 34
O
Obeidallah, Dean, 119, 127
O’Connor, Sinead, 145–6 S
Office, The, 62 Sagres, 183–5
Ogilvie, F.W., 23 Salon, 152
Oh My God, 169 Saturday Night Live, 15, 139,
One Night Stand, 148 144–7, 151
Opie and Anthony, 145 Schumer, Amy, 165
Orwell, George, 195 Scrubs, 45
Oz, 84 Seinfeld, 123
Seinfeld, Jerry, 8
Serrano, Andres, 140
P Sex and the City, 1, 84
Paddick, Hugh, 34 Shakespeare, William, 167
Parsons, Nicholas, 24 Simmons, Russell, 149
Parsons, Tyrone, 67 Simpson, O.J., 123
Party Down, 14, 61, 62, 68, 71–5 Simpsons, The, 123
Patrick, Danica, 184 Six Feet Under, 1, 41, 44, 46
238 INDEX
Skype, 168 Twitter, 158, 169, 209–11, 224

Smith, Mike, 68 Two Broke Girls, 152
Sopranos, The, 53, 84 2 Live Crew, 141, 148–9, 153n3
Soup, The, 155 Two Ronnies, The, 37
South Park, 123, 125, 126, 136
Spark of Insanity, 131–3, 135
Special Committee on Participation of U
Visible Minorities in Canadian U2, 144
Society, 104 USA Network, 165
Speight, Johnny, 30–1 US Supreme Court, 143, 150
Standing, Michael, 24
Starr, Martin, 72
Star Spangled Banner, The, 144 V
Steptoe and Son, 28–9 Vicar of Dibley, The, 31
Stern, Howard, 145, 150
Super Bock, 184–5
Super Bowl, 1, 15, 144, 179–80, W
182–4, 186 Waldman, Ronald, 25
Warner Bros., 126
Watt, John, 23
T Weaver, Lee, 72
Talk Soup, 155, 158 Wells, Robb, 68, 86
Television Policy Censorship Code, West, Mae, 202
24, 38n8 Westwind Pictures, 98, 105
That Was the Week that Was (TW3), Whitehouse, Mary, 23, 29, 31,
28, 29 32, 34, 36, 38
Thin Line Between Love and Hate, A, Wildmon, Reverend
148 Donald, 141
Till Death Us Do Part , 29–31 Willey, Peter, 33
TLC, 193 Will, George, 144
Tonight Show, The, 144 Williams, Kenneth, 33–4
Top Gear, 16, 217–25 Wilson, Dennis Main, 30
Torrens, Jonathan, 67 Wilson, Harold, 29
Tosh.0, 15, 155–70 Woodburn, Kim, 191–3
Tosh, Daniel, 139, 155–6, 158, 164, Wright, Steven, 149
166, 168, 170
Trailer Park Boys, 14, 61, 62, 64,
66–71, 74 Y
Tremblay, John Paul, 67 Yoba, Malik, 65
Trudeau, Pierre, 103 You So Crazy 148
Tumblr, 169 YouTube, 158, 160, 168

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PA L G R AV E

EDITED BY CHIARA BUCARIA AND LUCA BARRA

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Comedy

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958102

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

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Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Taboo Comedy on Television: Issues and Themes 1

Controversial Humour in Comedy and Drama Series 19

The Rise and Fall of Taboo Comedy in the BBC 21

The Last Laugh: Dark Comedy on US Television 41

‘This Is Great, We’re Like Slave Buddies!’: Cross-Racial

Phrasing!: Archer, Taboo Humour, and

Taboo Humanity: Paradoxes of Humanizing

Controversial Humour in Variety Shows,

Dummies and Demographics: Islamophobia as Market

Excessive Stand-Up, the Culture Wars, and ’90s TV 139

Tosh.0, Convergence Comedy, and the

Crude and Taboo Humour in Television Advertising:

Filthy Viewing, Dirty Laughter 191

A Special Freedom: Regulating Comedy Offence 209

MAPPING TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION

C. Bucaria () • L. Barra

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

use of controversial comedy in different forms of television programming

niche platforms on which television content is available—affect the use

TABOO COMEDY AND HUMOUR STUDIES

commonly associated with controversial humour are superiority theory

As explored by research in psychology, key to an understanding of why

the attempt to identify the fleeting boundaries of taboo or ‘offensive’ com-

taboo. For instance, Hofstede et al.’s empirical research (2010) seems to

TABOO COMEDY AND TELEVISION STUDIES

hurting the sensitivity of the majority of the audience—and, on the other

towards on-screen personalities and by introducing sitcoms and comedy

A LARGE AND COMPLEX FIELD OF STUDY

relationship with the medium—are deeply scrutinized and analyzed from

A historical account of the responses to questionable comedy within or in

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 21

THE ERA OF THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK

Jokes about—Lavatories, Pre-natal influences, Marital infidelity, Effeminacy

Sayings of Christ or descriptive of Him are, of course, inadmissible for

The absolutism of the code is emphasized by the instruction that

themselves. Sample recordings should be submitted to the same censor-

Cecil McGivern. Television Programme Director to producers. 11 August

Poor McGivern, a gifted enabler of new programmes, was under constant

standards, notably in its indecent light entertainment programmes and

The producers of the comedy programmes were by virtue of their trade

THE GREAT CULTURE WAR

1970–1974), and Till Death Us Do Part (1965–1968; 1970; 1972–1975)

puritanical disposition, of whom there were many. But it represented only

Speight’s humour here was particularly offensive to Roman Catholics,

Dear Lord Hill,

The radio and television push acceptance of unacceptables on us in many

The harmless remark in question, a vulgar pun and innuendo, depends on

become one of the BBC’s most popular commentators on cricket matches.

Despite considerable pressure from the members of MRA to play a larger

eyes, besmirched religion or patriotism. In doing so, she foolishly drew

WHY THE CULTURE WAR WAS LOST

The Major: Strange creatures women.

The Major, who is clearly a doddering anachronism, rarely sober and

In the TV series Pushing Daisies (2007–2009), a small car full of clowns