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09 May 2023 | TEL240 Inception | Proposal | 2696 words
The Cultural Differences in Contemporary Comedy Between the UK the the US
In which ways do comedy styles in the United Kingdom differ from those in the United States? The UK and the US both have a rich history of comedic styles, yet there are significant differences in the way this is presented in each country. In the UK, comedy often uses satire and wit as well as wordplay and puns, stereotypes and regionalism. In contrast, US comedy tends to be more slapstick-based, relying heavily on physical humour and referencing popular culture and trends in order to create humour. Developments in technology occurred in each country at the same time, yet have each remained distinct in the ways comedy television is produced.
This research proposal will outline the framework for my dissertation on my chosen topic of British and American television and their cultural differences within comedy. I will plan a potential chapter structure, explaining what each chapter will discuss in depth, along with proposed research methods and sources to justify my findings.
Introduction
The introduction will lay down the direction of my dissertation and establish each of my chosen topics. In the book, Laughing Matters, the authors express that comedy is an entire ‘meta-genre’, too big to define for a project this size (Mundy and White 2017: 2). For this reason, I will be focusing solely on contemporary television comedy, ranging from the 1970’s to present day.
To understand the evolution of situational comedy (sitcom), I will conduct research into the history of sitcom and how its development in the United Kingdom was different than in the United States. According to This Sitcom by Brett Mills, the classic situational comedy (‘sitcom’) typically features recurring characters within the
same premise. Often, episodes each have their own small plot, with a main problem being resolved by the end of the episode. Characters tend to either be perpetually ‘stuck’ in some kind of situation that is not easily resolved or will be involuntarily placed in some kind of difficult position involving certain circumstances. Although, nowadays there are often sub-plots that run for the entirety of a series, especially as drama and sitcom have merged over time.
Chapter One - How did public service broadcasting affect the success of the ‘sitcom’ in the uk?
The first chapter of my dissertation will explore the origins of TV sitcom and how it grew in popularity between both countries. Specifically, I will look into how Public Service Broadcasting affected the development of television in the UK and investigate whether this was the same for the US.
Sitcoms were first popular as radio shows in the 1940s but later became available to television as further technological advances enabled more households to own a television set. At the time, the three main outlets were BBC1, BB2 and ITV. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was (and still is) a public service broadcaster which means it had to provide unbiased information and entertainment to the nation, and was therefore publicly funded. After the Television Act 1954 was passed, ITV became the first commercial channel to broadcast in the UK (The Times 1955). This offered viewers an alternative to the BBC, with ITV being slightly less limited on what they could broadcast. Both the BBC and ITV produced a multitude of favourable sitcoms, suggesting that the success of each programme was not determined by whether a channel is publicly funded or not. Although on the other hand, television in
the US has always been commercial, with the market being dominated by networks such as the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) (Weissmann 2012). Ultimately, the challenge with every sitcom is to forge a compromise between artistic and commercial concerns, regardless of the countries’ political values, (Raw 2010).
Chapter Two - How are regional accents used to create humour and why are particular accents favoured over others?
The second chapter of my dissertation will focus on regionalism and how it is used to create humour across many sitcoms in the UK. I will look at how writers use stereotypes and how the public perceive this type of comedy. Additionally, I want to look into the comic use of regional accents and dialects and where this practice originated from. In its early days, British television only featured Southern middle-class voices - apart from in programmes that had been directly imported from America. The BBC strictly used ‘Received Pronunciation’, the accent that was considered ‘proper English’ and was widely used by only educated people across the South of England. Regional accents (particularly Northern) were considered to be a sign of poor education and were used to portray the lower class (Cooke, 2018). I would like to find the reasons for this when conducting further research. In the book, The North-South Divide, Jewell refers to an observation that the first time a Northern accent was used to create humour was in The Reeve’s Tale; an instalment of The Canterbury Tales, published in the 15th century by Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1975, The Canterbury Tales was reworked into ‘Trinity Tales’, a six-part-drama produced for the BBC by Alan Plater, who retained the regional identity of the characters who were
written to be Northern.On the other hand, I found very little evidence that American sitcoms use regional accents to create comedy in the same way the UK does. American sitcoms tend to focus more on the characters' personalities and interactions with each other and making fun of peoples’ accents can often be seen as offensive. I plan to investigate the reasons for this when conducting further research for my dissertation.
Chapter Three - Can transnational adaptations still be successful despite cultural differences between nations?
For the third chapter, I will investigate how British programmes have been adapted and reworked for American viewers. I have chosen a selection of British programmes that have been remade for the US and will therefore examine these American counterparts. My first chosen programme is The Office, a mockumentary-style programme that uses dry and dark humour comedic effect. Upon my first watch, the characters in the British version are pessimistic and self-deprecating, whilst the characters in The Office US are much more light-hearted. This version even included romantic subplots. Additionally, in a piece written by Jeffrey Griffin, it is suggested that the characters in the American remake have even been made more conventionally attractive. For example, a particular female character has a ‘much slimmer figure’ than in the original UK version, conforming more to the American beauty ideal.
Secondly, is This Country, which is also a mockumentary-style sitcom but focuses more on its setting of a rural village in the Cotswolds. I think it would be interesting to investigate whether viewers from more rural areas of the UK are more likely to find
this programme funny. In 2022, This Country was reworked into Welcome to Flatch, following the same plot but set in a small town in the Midwest. The key aspect I will be looking at will be whether the show has more ‘punchline-y’ jokes rather than just creating humour from the characters’ dry personalities.
Lastly, I will look at Ghosts, a comedy drama produced by the BBC that has characters relevant to events in British history. Ghosts US follows the same plot but certain characters have been completely eliminated and replaced with brand new ones as they simply wouldn't have made sense to an American audience.
Each of these programmes feature aspects of ‘dark comedy’: a term used to describe making fun of joyless, sometimes morbid situations, such as death, suffering and general misfortune (Collings 2018). Interestingly, many of these depressing characteristics are the ones that have been removed from American remakes. For example, characters being made to be more optimistic and the divides between social classes being made less significant.
When adapting programmes for a foreign audience, reculturalisation in this way is necessary to receive the best response from both the market and the viewers (McKinney 2016); otherwise, these programmes would likely have not achieved the same level of success. It’s also important to note that the reason adaptations are so common is because the industry turns to foreign scripts as it remains easier and cheaper to remake something that already exists (Chalaby 2016). It is also less of a risk to produce something that has already had success, instead of a new, original idea.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this proposed dissertation will focus on the most significant differences between British and American humour, specifically in television comedy. Comedic drama is something I am particularly interested in and would like to work in in the future so the research I will further conduct for my dissertation will ideally aid me in the choices I make when directing or writing a piece for a distinct audience in the future. I think it would be interesting to investigate whether the cultural gaps amid these two nations have been widening or narrowing over time.
Research Methods
The strength of my dissertation will be justified primarily with secondary research. As mentioned, I will also be conducting textual analysis on three chosen British programmes and the changes that have been made for their American remakes. I plan to gain a wide range of knowledge on different types of comedies by reading a multitude of books, journals and articles. These sources will be both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed so that I am able to acquire many different perspectives from many different places. This includes looking at sources from different periods of time too, from anywhere between the 1950’s to the present day.
Peer-Reviewed Sources
CHALABY, Jean K. 2015. ‘Drama without Drama’. Television & New Media 17(1), [online], 3–20. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1527476414561089 [accessed 25 Apr 2023].
COLLINGS, Beccy. 2018. ‘British Dark Comedy Television and the Bodily Aesthetics of the “Proper Person”’. Comedy Studies 9(1), 63–75.
COOKE, Lez. 2018. A Sense of Place. Manchester University Press.
GRIFFIN, Jeffrey. 2008. ‘The Americanization of the Office: A Comparison of the Offbeat NBC Sitcom and Its British Predecessor’. Journal of Popular Film and Television 35(4), 154–63.
JEWELL, Helen M. 1994. The North-South Divide: The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
MCKINNEY, Rachael A. 2016. The Role of Reculturalization in Adaptation: A Comparison of Humor Styles in the UK and U.S. Versions of ‘the Office’. MSc Thesis. Available at: https://www.proquest.com/docview/1830439671/C2DBA471511A48D5PQ/5?acc ountid=15894 [accessed 25 Apr 2023].
MILLS, Brett. 2013. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Cambridge.
MUNDY, John and Glyn WHITE. 2017. Laughing Matters Understanding Film, Television and Radio Comedy. Manchester University Press.
RAW, Lawrence. 2010. ‘The Sitcom by Brett Mills’. The Journal of Popular Culture. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2010.00790_7.x [accessed 18 Apr 2023].
WEISSMANN, Elke. 2012. Transnational Television Drama Special Relations and Mutual Influence between the US and UK. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Non Peer-Reviewed Sources
BRITISH COMEDY GUIDE. 2006. ‘What Is a Sitcom?’ British Comedy Guide [online]. Available at: https://www.comedy.co.uk/features/british_sitcom/ [accessed 9 Mar 2023].
THE TIMES. 1955. ‘Commercial Television: A Guide to the Constitution and Working of the New Service’. The Times Digital Archive, 19 Aug [online], 20–3. Available at: https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS335762707/TTDA?u=falmouth&sid=bookmark -TTDA&xid=1bdb5ea7 [accessed 17 Mar 2023].
Teleography
DE VERE COLE, Tristan and Roger TUCKER. 1975. Trinity Tales [TV Series]. BBC, 21 November 1975.
FEIG, Paul. 2022. Welcome to Flatch [TV Series]. Fox, 17 March 2022.
GEORGE, Tom. 2017. This Country [TV Series]. BBC, 8 February 2017.
GERVAIS, Ricky and Stephen MERCHANT. 2001. The Office [TV Series]. BBC, 9 July 2001.
KINGSLEY, Tom. 2019. Ghosts [TV Series]. BBC, 15 April 2019.
KWAPIS, Ken. 2005. The Office [TV Series]. NBC, 24 March 2005.
O’DONNELL, Trent. 2021. Ghosts [TV Series]. CBS, 7 October 2021.
Author: Bethan Radford
Module: TEL240 Inception
Assessment: Proposal
Classification: 2:1 / 66%
Degree: BA (Hons) Television
Submission: 09 May 2023
Words: 2696