Researchers believe that social hierarchy holds the key to what Britons find funny,
Given that most of everything the English do revolves around class and social hierarchy this isn\’t all that much of a surprise.
Researchers believe that social hierarchy holds the key to what Britons find funny,
Given that most of everything the English do revolves around class and social hierarchy this isn\’t all that much of a surprise.
Except that the study didn’t find that.
The study found that if you’re badly educated and work as a dustman, you’ll probably think a someone Roy Chubby Brown or Peter Kay is funny, whereas if you’re well-educated and have an intellectually demanding job, you’ll probably like Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci.
The researcher assumed, for no discernible reason and certainly not on the basis of his questionnaire, that this is something to do with class hierarchies.
I’ve only seen Peter Kay a couple of times on telly, but I thought him quite droll. Are there really people who don’t find him funny?
John B,
“However, one has to posses a certain amount of cultural capital to get many of the jokes, so to revere these shows can be a way of excluding working class people.”
Laughing at The Thick of It is my way of thumbing my nose at the working class. Apparently.
John B,
Re-read your comment and now grasp your point.
Monty Python? I found this show to be reliably ,steadfastly, genuinely ,unfailingly, resolutely unfunny.
Oddly enough I rather thought this was a class thing: of young things with more than a touch of Asperger’s keen to show their superior education made them superior.Their working- class characters/caricatures were always condescending.
“Their working- class characters/caricatures were always condescending”: yes, that was one of their merits. But be fair: they were pretty unkind to women too.