Phatic Discourse and the Death of British comedy

For anyone who happened to grow up during the 1980's, British comedy has always been a quite subversive beast.  More political than the US stand-up scene that inspired it and far more confrontational and edgy than the bland variety acts that constitute most of European comedy, it is undeniable that British alternative comedy used to be about intelligent people with axes to grind.  However, it has become increasingly clear that British comedy is moving away from a confrontational and counter-cultural idiom towards a more traditional and inclusive model that is less about telling actual jokes and more about making people feel good.

The likes of Catherine Tate and Little Britain are only the tip of the iceberg.  Contemporary stand-up acts and student favourites such as The Mighty Boosh and Josie Long aren't just an alternative to an alternative, they're actually comedians with a profoundly reactionary artistic agenda, increasingly supported by the PR infrastructure of the major British broadcasters and retailers.  Faced with such an onslaught, can the spark of rebellion and intelligence that once characterised the British comedy scene ever hope to survive?

Unlikely.

Consider the following clips…

Lou and Andy from Little Britain.

Lauren from The Catherine Tate Show.

You may not have seen these actual clips before, or even the individual episodes of The Catherine Tate show and Little Britain that they come from… but you will see the joke coming.  You will know that eventually Catherine Tate will say “Am I Bovvered?” and Matt Lucas will say “Yer I know”.  You will know this because of the format used by both the Catherine Tate Show and Little Britain.  Pioneered by the likes of The Fast Show and Harry Enfield and Friends (but arguably with much older music hall origins), the catch phrase based sketch show usually features a stable of maybe half a dozen characters, each with one or two jokes associated with them.  The “humour” in the format arises not from new jokes but rather a re-telling of the same joke repeatedly in slightly different situations.  For example, in the case of Lucas and Walliams’ Lou and Andy (the man in the wheelchair and his carer), the sketch involves one of two jokes.  Firstly, Andy saying he wants something, only for him to reveal too late that Lou was right and he actually wanted something else.  Secondly Lou turning his back for a second during which Andy gets up and engages in some robust form of physical activity including riding a horse or playing rugby.  Each member of the stable of characters will generally feature in three or four sketches each episode, with some characters featuring more heavily than others while old characters disappear and new ones appear throughout the series’ life span.

What is most remarkable about this format is the sheer scale of its success.  Spawning many imitators, Little Britain is seen by many within the British comedy industry as the most influential and important comedy programme of the last ten years.  Other examples of the format include Leigh Francis’ Bo Selecta, Lil Miss Jocelyn, Blunder and That Mitchell and Webb Look.  The success of the format is as undeniable as is the failure of many more traditional comedy series to find an audience.

When doyen of the early British Alternative Comedy scene Alexei Sayle appeared on Paul Merton’s Room 101, he nominated the British public for deletion.  Merton and Sayle then invoked the lack of British success for great US comedy series such as Seinfeld (shuffled around the schedule for years and subject to frequent cancellations) and The Larry Sanders show (which was put on late at night, if at all).  Indeed, even successful traditional sitcoms such as Peepshow and The Office have been slow to build a serious following (though some would argue that The Office’s success is due less to word of mouth than to heavy BBC promotion).  Indeed, as Armando Iannucci has pointed out, twenty years ago 14.7 million people tuned in to watch the nation’s top 5 sitcoms, but five years ago, this number was down to 6.9 million.  In fact, the popularity of sketch-based comedy is so vast compared to sitcoms that early in 2006 a number of commentators, including former ITV controller David Liddiment and former BBC Big Wig Alan Yentob, made programmes about the sitcom’s plight.

The issue that I will be addressing today is not whether this is a good thing or not (it isn’t) but rather why catchphrase comedy has become so popular and what that means for the future of British comedy.

In Who Killed The British Sitcom?, Private Eye’s editor Ian Hislop considered the possibility that reality TV killed the sitcom because rather than watching pre-scripted comedy, people now prefer to watch idiots spontaneously making themselves look foolish.  While there may be some truth to this, I think that the role of reality TV in the state of modern British comedy is far more complex.

As I pointed out above, one of the most remarkable characteristics of shows such as Catherine Tate or Little Britain is that knowledge of their jokes is not tied to knowledge of any particular sketch.  Indeed, to lines “Yer, I Know” and “Am I Bovvered?” float across the skein of our culture with no real links to the instances in which they are uttered.  People do not laugh when Andy says he knows that he has spoken about how dreadful Finland is, they laugh because he says, “Yer, I know”.  This much will be abundantly clear to anyone who has discussed comedy at work… phrases such as “Yer, I Know” or “Oooh, suits you sir!” or “Brilliant!” now form a part of British phatic discourse.

Phatic discourse is the term used by linguists and anthropologists to describe verbal communication that does not seek to convey an idea, only to facilitate social interaction.  The best example of this is the fact that people frequently ask people “How are you?” despite really having no interest in their health, it’s simply a bit of social lubrication used to convey that you’re a nice and non-threatening person.  Interestingly, the writers of the Fast Show appeared to be aware of this aspect of their comedy when Charlie Higson’s nerdy office prankster turns up at work chirping the catchphrase “I an alien!” only to discover that everyone else watched a wildlife documentary, thereby excluding him while being inclusive to other watchers of the wildlife programme.  This idea was also nicely demonstrated in the episode of Spaced where Simon Pegg’s character Tim attempts to use a quote from an old Ki-o-ra commercial (“It’s too orangey for crows… it’s just for me and my dog”) only to be horrified to discover that he has only enraged the other person more.

To put it bluntly, catchphrase comedy is popular because it makes people feel included in our society.  At a time when digital TV and the Internet have resulted in fewer and fewer people sharing the same TV viewing experiences, comedy has stepped in to provide the phatic discourse that glues our society together.  In many ways, this is similar to the role played by sports as argued by Umberto Eco is his Travels in Hyper-reality. Indeed, comic Stewart Lee has written about how Skinner and Baddiel’s Fantasy Football League served to bring a completely new audience into comedy clubs.  If Eco is correct and the role of sport is largely phatic within our culture, then Skinner and Baddiel may well be responsible for turning TV comedy into a social lubricant by virtue of closely associating it with that other bastion of British male phatic discourse: football.

As a result, broadcasters now face the choice of filling their comedy slots with comedies that, if really successful, will pull in the nation’s comedy fans or, catchphrase comedy that has the potential to bring in people who really aren’t all that interested in comedy… only fitting in and belonging.  The fact that even an unsuccessful phatic comedy can bring in far more viewers than a successful sitcom explains why so much of TV comedy is now phatic.

Another result of this demographic shift is that the skills necessary to become a successful comic have changed.  Traditionally, the way to become a successful comic was to be a great writer.  As with Seinfeld, David and many others, the comedian’s career trajectory was that you wrote your own material and performed it on stage until you were given the opportunity to write a sitcom pilot.  However, a glance at the current batch of young TV comedians reveals a different career trajectory.  Indeed, the likes of Justin Lee Collins (The Friday Night Project) and Russell Brand (Big Brother’s Big Mouth) have not moved from stand-up to sitcom, they have moved from stand-up to TV presenting.  This is because the need for comedians to be able to write their own jokes is now completely superseded with the ability to make people feel included.  This is why Justin Lee Collins has a catchphrase (“Rock and Roll!”) and spends much of his time trying to get the A-team and the cast of Grange Hill back together.  By dealing in catchphrases and nostalgia, Collins makes his viewers feel integrated into our culture.  Brand’s success is similarly not based upon any skill at writing or telling jokes, but instead his memorable style and the fact that he is rarely out of the tabloids due to his relationship with Kate Moss.  Brand also serves to close the circle between contemporary comedy and reality TV.

Despite an early (and largely unsuccessful) late night comedy show, Brand’s visibility is largely due to his presenting Big Brother’s Big Mouth.  Big Brother is phatic television at its very best.  Never conveying any ideas or even any interesting drama, Big Brother’s success is all about its status as a cultural phenomenon.  The programme is so popular that it has become a part of the social lubricant that ties our culture together.  While the programme is on air, a familiarity with its characters and goings-on is one important way to integrate you into a group of people.  Discussing Big Brother at work is not an exchange of ideas but a way of saying that you are normal, that you are a regular person and that you belong. This also explains both the appearance of the housemates in gossip magazines (celebrity gossip arguably fills the same phatic role for women as football does for men) and the British public’s tendency to turn their backs on housemates the second the programme goes off air (despite the fact that they spend the entire summer obsessing about the minutiae of their movements and mental states).  Russell Brand is a powerful icon of cultural phatic discourse by virtue of bridging the phatic worlds of comedy, celebrity gossip and reality TV.

But what does all this mean for the future of British comedy?

Firstly, it means that we are unlikely to see the trend for catchphrase comedy petering out any time soon.

Secondly, it means that we are likely to see future generations of stand-up comedians with less writing skills and more ability to make people feel included and happy while maybe raising the odd smile or laugh from time to time.  In many ways, Josie Long is a prototypical stand-up comedian.  A winner of the if.comeddies and BBC awards for best newcomer, Long’s material is conspicuously lacking in jokes.  Rather than tell actual jokes or funny stories, Long plays Boggle with her audience and makes easy to associate with observations about things she likes (a bit taken from the similarly warm and inclusive French film Amelie).  With Long winning awards and more and more comedians moving into presenting rather than writing positions, clearly the structure of British comedy has changed away from the business of delivering jokes and towards the business of making people feel welcome.

The other aspect of comedy’s phatic role has been the explosion, since the success of the sitcom friends, in the use of light drama and soap operatic plot-lines in situation comedies.  Friends’ portrayal of Ross and Rachel’s relationship remains the high water mark for such writing but the success of Sex and the City can also be associated with its role in female fashion rather than the number or quality of its jokes.  Sex and the City was a huge success not because it appealed to comedy fans, but because it appealed to women who do not normally watch comedy and made them feel a part of a gang with other women who were sexually assertive, career-minded and obsessed with buying shoes.

The third repercussion of the move towards phatic discourse in comedy is the slow decline of the ideals and ethics of the alternative comedy movement.  Before the arrival of the alternative movement, comedy had been just as phatic as the work of Long or Little Britain.  Indeed, while there were excellent joke writers during the 1970’s, much of their material focussed on unchallenging and frequently xenophobic jokes about mothers in law and ethnic minorities.  Forged in the post-war years, these more traditional comics spoke to a largely urban white working class audience.  Mother in law jokes stem from the fact that, post war, many young couples were forced to live with parents and served to make the audiences feel as if they belonged.  The racist and homophobic jokes cemented this sense of belonging by making fun of groups that were not white, urban and working class.  Alternative comedy reacted against this by performing material that challenged received opinions through stylistic experiments and quasi-revolutionary left-wing politics.  Just as Britain at large swung to the right during the Thatcher years, alternative comedy made it abundantly clear that they were underground and alienated from mainstream society (an intellectual agenda that comics shared with the punk bands that toured many of the same venues at the time).

With the rise of aphetic comics such as Russell Brand and Josie Long, comedy has returned to its pre-punk roots.  Roots that saw comedians filling the role of host or compeer on variety shows.  Profoundly reactionary, anti-intellectual and counter-revolutionary, the likes of Brand, Collins and Long are clearly the future of British comedy.  A comedy that is about being integrated into the mainstream of society rather than at odds with it.

Comments

[Bert Thung]

Excellent article

Ironically nothing makes you feel more alienated than the shallow feeling togetherness these marketed hacks engender in people you hate.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Thanks Bert,

I know what you mean and share the hatred. I think the hatred comes from the fact that phatic comedy is inherently divisive; either you get it or you don't and on a cultural level this can become quite alienating.

This in and of itself isn't a problem, I'm quite happy being alienated, what gets my goat is that part of the agenda of modern comedy is alienating people who are knowledgeable and passionate about comedy.

When Cookd and Bombd raged at how dreadful Balls of Steel is the creators promptly turned up and said that CaB regulars were nerds who needed to have a wank.

Either you get it or you don't and, more and more, if you're someone who knows about comedy then you're not "one of us".

Comedy fans aren't the demographic for comedy any more... and that is eminently worthy of hatred.

[AJ Thomas]

Smashing aricle, man.

great piece!

just as easily applied over here in the States.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Thanks guys :-)

Who would the US equivalents to Long and the Boosh be? I don't pay enough attention to what goes on over there.

Stuff like Friends/Sex and the City/Dharma and Greg are pure phatic discourse but how about stand-ups?

[AJ Thomas]

Have you read The Nation's Favourite by Simon Garfield, Jon? It contains plenty of insights into media spin (as Radio 1 went through it's regime change), but there's one bi where CHris Evans' old PR guy says that when they were working on Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, they realised the way to make the show a success was to have 3 or 4 'moments' that could be discussed by everyone in work on Monday - it didn't matter if the rest wasn't up to scratch.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I'm a Jona rather than a Jon but no I haven't read that, but I will keep an eye out for it.

Frankly, that makes complete sense.

If you look at modern sketch shows you'll have that many characters and they'll repeat the same joke several times in one episode, almost as if to make sure that you remember it.

It's a really cynical way of writing. When you have your writers' meeting you know that you only need 3 or 4 decent jokes and you can take the foot off the accelerator and coast for the rest.

[Dan Moore]

Comedy didn't go straight from racist to "alternative" in the 70s. What about Cook and Python? Around long before then, they were hardly about mother laws and darkies were they?