If that's what you're looking for, look no further than Curry & Chips, not Johnny Speight's most glorious comedy

If that's what you're looking for, look no further than Curry & Chips, not Johnny Speight's most glorious comedy

Rather than going on, I think that the following article, "Race and Sitcom" is a very good summary indeed. Especially for people too young to remember the programmes.

One important aspect of this is that the object of a sitcom is to make the audience laugh, but amongst the audience there is the whole range of people from the worst racists to the fairest minded, and however an author may write a sitcom, he or she can't dictate the response of the viewer. So while a sitcom may be designed as a satirisation of racist attitudes, for example, that won't come across at all on screen if the studio audience is full of bigots and intentional or unintentional racists, since they will not get the joke, and will laugh at the wrong things.

Alf Garnett (as indeed this article mentions) was a good case in point; to a reasonably enlightened person, he was the most outrageous right wing racist bigot, and you laughed at him, as he was ridiculous, and intentionally so. But the fact is there was a large chunk of the population who really didn't "get" that aspect at all, instead thinking "yeah, great, now there's a man who is saying exactly what I'm thinking".

I'm not sure what a comedy writer is supposed to do about that, or if it is their job. Though it must be true that both comedy writers and actors are ATEOTD creatures of their own time, and it would be a mistake to think that somehow that makes them mistake-free paragons of righteousness, who can never put a foot wrong. So, for example, it should have been apparent that despite the intention to satirise, the way in which use was made of the words "wogs" and "coons" (for example) as a comedy vehicle was unacceptable. This does not make the writer or the actor a racist-in-hindsight (they weren't), but they would never in a million years do the same if the sitcom was being written today.

Rather than going on, I think that the following article, "Race and Sitcom" is a very good summary indeed. Especially for people too young to remember the programmes.

One important aspect of this is that the object of a sitcom is to make the audience laugh, but amongst the audience there is the whole range of people from the worst racists to the fairest minded, and however an author may write a sitcom, he or she can't dictate the response of the viewer. So while a sitcom may be designed as a satirisation of racist attitudes, for example, that won't come across at all on screen if the studio audience is full of bigots and intentional or unintentional racists, since they will not get the joke, and will laugh at the wrong things.

Alf Garnett (as indeed this article mentions) was a good case in point; to a reasonably enlightened person, he was the most outrageous right wing racist bigot, and you laughed at him, as he was ridiculous, and intentionally so. But the fact is there was a large chunk of the population who really didn't "get" that aspect at all, instead thinking "yeah, great, now there's a man who is saying exactly what I'm thinking".

I'm not sure what a comedy writer is supposed to do about that, or if it is their job. Though it must be true that both comedy writers and actors are ATEOTD creatures of their own time, and it would be a mistake to think that somehow that makes them mistake-free paragons of righteousness, who can never put a foot wrong. So, for example, it should have been apparent that despite the intention to satirise, the way in which use was made of the words "wogs" and "coons" (for example) as a comedy vehicle was unacceptable. This does not make the writer or the actor a racist-in-hindsight (they weren't), but they would never in a million years do the same if the sitcom was being written today.