“Britishness,” humor and national identity in two comedies 50 years apart

“British humor” is a term that never seems to call for elaboration. Innuendo, satire, absurdity, sarcasm, practical jokes and the macabre, combined together with parodies of stereotypes and affection for the eccentric, seem inherently linked to the idea of British humor and, consequentially, to “Britishness.” In the world of cinema, humor can be seen as very particularistic, concerning itself with culturally specific aspects of society, and it is therefore a pertinent standpoint for the exploration of “Britishness” and its conceptualizations in film. In the 2005 Aardman Animation comedy Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit and the much earlier Ealing Studios comedy The Ladykillers (Mackendrick, 1955), humor is not used not only to showcase Britishness abroad, but also to reinforce the sense of a common national identity at home.

“Culture is not directly linked to history; it is linked to itself, in an unstable cycle of meaning making.”

Dark humor, satire, parody: A post-war search for identity

Although the cultural specificity of humor becomes undeniably connected to—and ostensibly inseparable from—a nation’s unique historical background, the logocentric idea that it arose directly from that background is illusory. We inhabit “second-hand worlds,” actualities determined by meanings that we receive from others. Thus, experience is always mingled with imaginings, and it is the nation’s second-handed awareness of its history that gives its cultural texts a seemingly stable underlying structure. British society concretized “British humor” as a national trait by pre-supposing the existence of a latent core that gives rise to manifest expressions of culture, but this structure is actually arbitrary and in constant flux. As Roland Barthes states, “Everything is disentangled, nothing is deciphered. The structure can be followed, run (like a thread of a stocking) at every point, at every level, but there is nothing beneath: the space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced.” Culture is not directly linked to history; it is linked to itself, in an unstable cycle of meaning making, an ungraspable identity whose only definition springs from its difference from other cultures.

In fact, British humor began to take a clear and recognizable form at time when Britain was ravaged by World War II and struggling to regain a sense of identity and belonging. “Ealing [Studios] had a duty to make films that projected Britain and the British character, […] independent but community minded, steadfast but eccentric.”[1] Distinctively “British” humor therefore arose from an endeavor to give central, absolute and fixed meaning to the British nation. Yet although associated with specific historical circumstances, this attempt at symbolic national unity remains an impossibility, a volatile construct subject to change. “[…N]ational identity is always hybrid, unstable and ambivalent, negotiating between private interests and the public significance given to those interests. This ambivalence means that the nation inevitably excludes certain interests even as it attempts to incorporate them.”[2] It is an ever-shifting system of meaning-making that helps to formalize a sense of collective experience. Michael Balcon did not wake up one day and tell himself: “I am going to invent ‘Britishness’ in comedy.” The creation of British national identity was—and is—a retrospective phenomenon, constantly re-created. It is this retrospectivity that gives the idea of “British humor” its imaginariness. All of the elements attributed to British humor are actually present in all cultures. Britain didn’t invent dark humor, satire, or parodies of stereotypes. These elements could be assumed by any nation. What makes Brazil or Monty Python so endearingly British is the object of the satire, stereotypes and eccentricity—the British government, British history, aspects of contemporary British society, etc.—not the elements in themselves. It is only because of a search for identity in the aftermath of the war that these elements have been engraved into the idea of “British humor,” and have consequently been used as the image of Britishness.

The mythistory of a nation, these ‘invented traditions,’ are never completely imaginary

As Carol Gluck states, each country creates for itself a national ‘mythistory’, a mix of stories and history “in which the myths are as important as the history and both are continually reworked.” [3] The illusiveness of the idea of British humor is betrayed by the fact that, in British cinema, it is always recreated, re-represented and reformed depending on its target audience and mode of production. The Britain of the Wallace and Gromit films is a lighthearted, cozy Britain.[4] It is not the scruffy, young and diasporic London of My Beautiful Launderette (1985), or the cold, blue-grey Ireland in Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant (2013). It is a parochial little town somewhere in the north of England, a setting more internationally recognizable as “so-very-British,” and therefore more exportable.

Yet we cannot deny that many British people genuinely identify with the concept of British humor and its representation in film, and that it is very much engrained in everyday social reality. The mythistory of a nation, these ‘invented traditions,’ are in fact never completely imaginary; “rather, they almost always need to resonate with the inherited experiences and memories of ordinary people if they are to be accepted and internalized.” (Burgess, 2010). The notion of ‘imagined communities’ does not necessarily mean that these cultural entities are not real; it simply stresses that members of a nation possess a deep mental image of their unity, even though they have never—and will never—meet more than a few thousand of their compatriots. Many contemporary critics argue that with the rise of transnationality and globalization, the concept of national identity is disintegrating. Yet an equally growing counterforce to this seems to be the media, such as film and television, which, though often produced, funded, or casted transnationally, are always given national labels—“American,” “Anglo-French,” “Italian,” “Japanese,” etc. With the highly debatable exception of otherworldly genres like fantasy or science fiction, films continually instill a relatable yet fabricated reality with deeply cultural resonances, which the national community collectively identifies with, and consequentially, replicates into an objective social reality.

Showcasing national identity abroad

Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit is a very pertinent example of a film that, through culturally-specific humor, showcases a unique national identity to audiences abroad. BBC calls the quirky characters of the Wallace and Gromit films “some of the best-known and best-loved stars to come out of the UK”[5] and another British source states that they are “the epitome of the English character,” doing more to improve the image of the English across the world than would any diplomat.[6] The Wallace and Gromit films balance foreign elements with ones that are relatable across cultural barriers. “It keeps things endearingly British, recalling the heyday of the Ealing Comedies or the Carry On double entendres without ever feeling laboured or crude.”[7] The world of Wallace and Gromit is a lovable, recognizable, transnational image, a Britain purely made for a positive reassertion of a national character.

The film draws on the uniqueness of British accents and ways of speaking as a source of humor. Phrases like, “What the Dickens?” and “Mental” appear throughout the film, as well as double-entendres based on British pronunciation. When Wallace receives a phone call from Lady Tottington about a pest problem, he tells her, “We’ll be with you in an—aaahhh!” Although the last word is an exclamation, as we see Wallace being swept into the air by his malfunctioning housekeeping machine, Lady Tottington replies, “In an hour? I can’t wait an hour!”  This type of parody enforces an internationally recognizable aspect of “Britishness”—the distinct pronunciation of “r.” Similarly, Wallace’s very defined West Yorkshire accent, which, together with many recognizable phrases—“I’m just crackers about cheese!” or “Well done, lad!”—make him iconic not only through distinctly English vocabulary but through his anti-heroic, jaunty voice, which calls back grainy black and white records of George Formby playing the ukulele. When Lady Tottington’s cruel suitor Lord Quartermaine is praised for having supposedly killed the were-rabbit, an old man comes up to him and says, “Kiss my ar—tichoke!” The British slang word “arse” is underhandedly added into a very innocuous script. This isn’t exactly the crude, rude, naughty gags and puns in the Carry-On comedies of the 60’s, but it hints to it.

Animation built entirely of “Britishness,” from scratch

Directed and written by two English stop-motion filmmakers, Nick Park and Steve Box, voiced by a British cast including the world-renowned comedian Peter Kay, and distributed by United International Pictures, Wallace and Gromit could be said to be “purely British.” It’s only American contributor is DreamWorks Pictures, which co-financed and distributed the film in the United States.[8] And fact that the film is an animation sets it as genuine symbol of what it means to be British. “More so than live cinema, animation is produced and regulated as an Other to what is real […] but animate characters are not cut from whole cloth. In animation, the real and the idea vie with each other.”[9] Wallace and Gromit is built from scratch on the idea of Britishness, fusing aspects of social reality with idealized imageries, and drawing on stereotypes for its characters and setting. Wallace is the quirky English inventor with large ears, a bald head and funny teeth, peculiar mannerisms, a perfectly orderly lifestyle, and checkered slippers—not to mention his Frankensteinian role in “tampering with nature”—and part of a parochial community living in quaint houses, tending to English gardens and using the Church as communal meeting-place. Animation always works with stereotypes to convey humor, but, unlike real-life genres, retains its jovial innocence despite drastic categorizations.

Though the film can thus be said to be inherently British, it is also, like all cultural texts, consciously British—made British. Interestingly, the Wallace and Gromit films are atemporal, more connected to previous representations of Britishness, than to political and historical aspects of a past or present Britain. The event of the vegetable competition bears some resemblance—though exaggerated and presented as comedic—to the provincial concerns of the tight-knit working class community in the 1930’s quota film Say it with Flowers, whose very inexportability had made them, as some critics argue,[10] genuine representations of Britishness. The most explicit influences on the film are aspects of the Ealing Comedies, particularly the role of Alec Guiness in The Lady Killers (1955). In an interview for BBC, Nick Park states, “Ealing is what defines Britishness in film. That seems to be where British films are not trying to mimic any other tradition. They just kind of found their own style and voice and confidence” (BBC, British Comedy). The mystery of the were-rabbit indeed seems to draw on the kind of comedic, eccentric plot we see in The Ladykillers.[11] Just as the kind, old-fashioned Mrs. Wilberforce in The Ladykillers discovers that the robbers the police are looking for are actually the five men she has hosted in her house, an unsuspecting Gromit—the sentimentalized dog who is often shown knitting in his bed with flowered tapestry in the background, or serving tea—discovers from footprints in his home that the rabbit monster is actually his master, Wallace.

“Nick Park states, ‘Ealing [Comedies] is what defines Britishness in film. That seems to be where British films are not trying to mimic any other tradition.’”

Humor born of Victorian anxieties

The Ladykillers was the last of the Ealing Comedies, and was also produced, casted and directed by British filmmakers and actors, save for the American scriptwriter, William Rose. Rose had lived in England, however, and his highly successful script for The Ladykillers won the BAFTA award for Best British Screenplay in 1956. (page 228) He states that, “The fable of The Ladykillers is a comic and ironic joke about the condition of postwar England.”[12] Mrs. Wilberforce, a kindly old lady who says good afternoon to just about everyone she crosses in the street, lives in an old Victorian town house with St. Pancras station—an icon of an earlier period[13]—occasionally shown in the background. Yet Mrs. Wilberforce lives in a dead-end, in the last row of townhouses overlooking the busy, modern railway station, threateningly close to the symbol of traditional England. The first shot inside the house follows the memories of the past: photographs of her late husband, who was a captain in the navy, and the lively parrot General Gordon, who belonged to him and who she continues to take care of. When the gangsters arrive at the house, everything seems to go according to the sinister “Professor” Marcus’s plan, as the lovely old lady unsuspectingly gives them shelter from the police, and even helps in the robbery by retrieving the luggage from the train station.

However, when they finally try to leave the house, the instrument case containing the precious loot gets stuck in the door and the money falls to the ground, revealing the gangsters’ true identity to Mrs. Wilberforce. Afraid that she may tell the police, they are forced to stay with her until they think of a way to get rid of her. As she is hosting a tea-party with old friends of hers, all humorously talkative and carefree, a comic sequence ensues in which Mrs. Wilberforce stands authoritatively in front of them and reproachfully tells them to “Simply try for one hour to behave like gentlemen.” As Geoff Mayer states on this scene:

“The men are, in effect, emasculated by […] the manifestations of Victorian values. While U.S. scriptwriter William Rose and director Alexander Mackendrick […] may have intended this scene, to satirize English stasis and complacency, it also perpetuates the film’s dominant theme—the triumph of tradition over contemporary corruption and superficiality.” (Mayer 2003: 227)

The humor is thus derived from very contemporaneous, English social issues, on fear of the recklessness of modern society and the threat of the changing world on traditional values. When, at the end of the film, the robbers have “disappeared” and police let Mrs. Wilberforce keep the stolen £60,000, she gives a small donation to the street artist working on a portrait of Winston Churchill, another icon of Victorian values.

A very “British” aspect of the film is its comedic representation of murder scenes. It is reminiscent of earlier British films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) in which the heroic role played by Alec Guiness is presented as a joke.[14] The gangsters attempt to kill Mrs. Wilberforce, who, despite having become a kind of archetypal mother figure for all of them (except for the sinister masterminds “Professor Marcus” and “Mr. Harvey”), remains a threat to their plan. The plan goes astray as they are unable to decide who will do the deed, and they end up in conflict with each other. They kill each other one-by-one, disposing of the evidence by throwing the bodies on trains passing on the railway, unsuspected to the good old lady. When a confused Mrs. Wilberforce goes to the Police to return the stolen money, the officers do not believe her story about the five robbers. She then surprises the policemen with her oddly precise background knowledge on the robbery, as though the flowery old lady had been the evil mastermind herself.

Embellishing, refining, retelling and reforming

Humor stands out of the ordinary and the real. It is the unexpected, the eccentric, the strange, the “funny.” And yet it is so intrinsically human, that our cultures adopt it as fundamental building blocks of their national identities, linking it to heritage, history, and “national character.” Wallace, Gromit, Mrs. Wilberforce and Alec Guinness become engraved in the idea of “Britishness” in film. They take part in conceiving and defining the narrative of the British nation. But between actors, stories and humor, what is real? Determining whether a country’s national traits are true, or if the idea of such a collective experience is imaginary, is a chicken-or-egg debate to which there is no definite answer. However, the retrospectivity of a nation’s idea of it’s cultural heritage—the fact that it consists of random events of history reformed into a coherent narrative—proves the instability and indefiniteness of national identity. Man is the storytelling animal, in Salaman Rushdie’s words. We embellish, refine, retell and reform, constantly seeking to give meaning, to represent, identify and understand. We live in a mythistory, in art, in stories, in music, and in film.

[1] British Film Forever - Sauce, Satire And Silliness - The Story Of British Comedy. Dir. Neil Dougan. 2007. BBC Broadcast, 2007.

[2] George Handley. “Nation and Narration by Homi K. Bhabha.” Qui Parle 5.2 (1992): 148. Print.

[3] Chris Burgess. "The ‘Illusion’ of Homogeneous Japan and National Character: Discourse as a Tool to Transcend the ‘Myth’ vs. ‘Reality’ Binary." The Asia-Pacific Journal, 2010. Web. 05 January 2014. <http://japanfocus.org/-chris-burgess/3310>. All further references to this source are cited after quotations in the text.

[4] Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit. Dir. Nick Park, Steve Box. (Aardman Animations, 2005) [on DVD].

[5]  Ian Youngs. “Wallace and Gromit's cracking careers.” BBC News entertainment, 2005. Web. 04 January 2014. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4295048.stm>.

[6] Icons, “Wallace and Gromit.” Icons: A portrait of England, 2005. Web. 04 January 2014. <http://web.archive.org/web/20090101211807/http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/wallacegromit>.

[7] Jack Foley, “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit review.” Indie London, 2005. <http://www.indielondon.co.uk/DVD-Review/wallace-gromit-the-curse-of-the-were-rabbit-review>.

[8] David Litterick. “Curse of Wallace & Gromit hits Dreamworks.” The Telegraph, 2005. Web. 05 January 2014. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2925803/Curse-of-Wallace-and-Gromit-hits-Dreamworks.html>.

[9] Daniel Goldman, Charlie Keil, eds. Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood. London, England: University of California Press, 2011. 134.

[10] Laurence Napper. “A Despicable Tradition? Quota-quickies in the 1930’s.” Robert Murphy ed The British Cinema Book (London” Palgrave/BFI, 2009). 49.

[11] The Ladykillers. Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. (Ealing Studios, 1955) [on DVD].

[12] Martin Chilton. “The Ladykillers was 'a cartoon of Britain's corruption.’” The Telegraph, 2011. Web. 06 January 2014. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/8862110/The-Ladykillers-was-a-cartoon-of-Britains-corruption.html>.

[13] Geoff Mayer, Guide to British Cinema. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. 228. All further references to this source are cited after quotations in the text.

[14] Kind Hearts and Coronets. Dir. Robert Hamer. (GDF, 1949). [on DVD].