a comedy thesis drop me some feedback

[rjd2]

heh im doing a big final year project on brittish comedy..im not sure what angle to take on it as you see their is so much of it out their.. im open to suggestions..

help me out here

[Dark Sky]

Good grief...

Well, it sounds far too vague to me.  You need to break it down.  You could quite easily have enough to write about one individual, if you so wished...  (Didn't someone here write a thesis on Chris Morris and then sent it to him and got it sent back with a post-it note saying something like "It was alright apart from the mistakes"?)

But if you really want to go so broadly...  What about something to do with the changing and developing styles of British comedy over the decades?

Or what about...reaction to British comedy from the UK public, and also how it's perceived say...in the US?  I mean, you get so many Americans saying they love "British humour", when they're talking about Monty Python style randomness, which is rather out of fashion nowadays.  

Oh I dunno.

[rjd2]

really?! yeah thanks man..i could narrow it down and focus on alternative brittish comedy and chris morris is a good example of this.. did he actually contribute to somebodys work? and who else could i focus on?

[Dark Sky]

(Didn't someone here write a thesis on Chris Morris and then sent it to him and got it sent back with a post-it note saying something like "It was alright apart from the mistakes"?)

I tell a lie, I think that was a film teacher of a friend of mine...  I could confirm that, but he may read this thread anyway.  And I don't think Morris "contributed" anything to that guy's work...just acknowledged that he'd read it...

Dunno who else to focus on, I'm not an expert on comedy.  I just like the Day Today, that's why I come to this forum!  I suppose it depends on whether you want to write about a certain style of comedy on its own, or try to compare and contrast two different styles...  Or show an evolution from one to the other or something.

Help, I'm burning the house down...damn bacon...

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

I'd suggest you pick another topic for your thesis if, as it appears, you have little or no (academic) knowledge or interest in the subject.

What course are you doing?  Media Studies?

[rjd2]

yeah i have huge interest in brittish comedy..i just like so much of it..  and im trying to narrow it down.. media studies.. yeah.. so many different parts of comedy i admire since the 60s just trying to narrow it down

[Tom Hedonist]

How about "Spike Milligan: The Grandfather of Modern Comedy."

Or "Straight men of the last 100 years. From Zeppo Marx to Bob Mortimer." I'd take the approach that the straight-men are normally far funnier than the funny men they support.

Or to steal and idea from Bill Hicks "Let's all hunt & kill Dennis Leary; how one man came so close to fucking Elizabeth Hurley without ever having an original idea."

"Satire and satirists, since the second World War."

"Comedy and the effect it has on the performer." - just argue that all great comedians go mad.

"Why Harry Secombe was the true genius behind The Goons, and Milligan, Sellers & Bentine were just hangers-on." - this one might be a little difficult to prove, but then again, no-one reads any of this nonsense, and if they disagree, they'd have to go the whole hog to proving you wrong.

Finally, if you want to be really controversial you could argue as to why women aren't funny. In this case you could title your thesis "I don't get it?!?" A catchy title is by far the most important bit. Get this right and you'll be laughing all the way to the Media Studies Dole Queue.

Good luck.

[Bogey]

heh im doing a big final year project on brittish comedy..im not sure what angle to take on it as you see their is so much of it out their.. im open to suggestions..

help me out here

I strongly recommend you improve your spelling and punctuation.
Your examiners are unlikely to take kindly to a thesis that looks like it was written by an eight years old boy. And the tired reply of, "oh, it's only the internet, I couldn't be arsed to write properly," is just bilge, frankly.
The "grammar checker" on Word is not a panacea. Here are some tips, (thanks to untitled_london for that).

[Dark Sky]

Well I tried to help without being sarcastic or abusive, anyway.

[Bogey]

So did I.

[rjd2]

And the tired reply of, "oh, it's only the internet, I couldn't be arsed to write properly," is just bilge, frankly.

ah well then im bilge then... thanks for the constructive replys much appreciated


i think i spelled that well.

[Partridge's Love Child]

I finished college five years ago.  Do your own homework.

But welcome anyway.

[falafel]

To say you're doing a thesis "about comedy" is a tad broad, isn't it?

Maybe you could do on on how British programs relate to their always-inferior US remakes (I'm thinking One Foot In The Grave, Coupling etc...)

That said, if you genuinely want to succeed then I suggest you hire a secretary and dictate your thesis. Or get someone else to write it. Was that an ironic spelling of 'replies', or what?

[rjd2]

what was that other american version of fawlty  towers that wasnt payne?

[Jemble Fred]

what was that other american version of fawlty  towers that wasnt payne?

Amanda's By The Sea. But there's been at least one more than that.

[Purple Tentacle]

If you write an essay on "British Comedy", you will fail badly.

Is this actually a thesis, or is it a GCSE media studies essay? I honestly don't mean to sound patronising, but it's an important distinction, and would help when choosing your subject.

[rjd2]

its basically a 10 000 word essay.. why would i fail badly?

[Purple Tentacle]

its basically a 10 000 word essay.. why would i fail badly?

Because you HAVE to write thesises (theseii??) on very narrow subjects.... a history thesis on "The Twentieth Century" would equally unwise.

Choose an area that interests you most about British comedy... but surely if you've got far enough through the educational system to be writing 10,000 word thesises (theseii??), you've written enough essays etc. to know what you're doing?

[rjd2]

well its a monster essay i just like the word thesis.. yeah i was thinking about the history of satirists since spike milliagan you think that would work?

[sick as a pike]

But was Spike Milligan a satirist?  A lot of his work ridiculed conventional society, but did he do so with the hope that his comedy would change it?

[rjd2]

you ansewered your own question their man.

[rjd2]

who else would most people consider legendary satarists here?

[Bogey]

I think an in-depth analysis of Americans' conception of, and understanding of, what they call "British Humor", as Dark Sky mentioned near the top, would be a very interesting read indeed.
I was staying with a family in the midwest over Thanksgiving a few years ago, and some cousin or other was the most brilliant stereotype you could ever hope to meet: an enormously fat, drawling (not unlike Stephen Fry's character from his and Laurie's "Kickin' Ass" song), Coors drinking lummox. But amazingly, (or, possibly, quite true to form), he informed me of how much he loved "Monny Paah-thouwn"*. Along with Nascar and beer, natch.
And of course, Michael Jackson is a big fan of Benny Hill.
There must be a wealth of articles from various US newspapers and magazines about the subject, if you have access to them. The New Yorker might be a good place to start - their quality of writing and depth of insight can be stunning, and the subjects they cover are so numerous, they're bound to have something.

I wasn't just trying to be a clever-clever arsey twat about the spelling by the way, I was being quite serious - you may be capable of writing correctly when you need to, but why get out of the habit? I'm sure that the more someone writes sloppily, the likelier it is, that bits of that sloppiness will permeate into the times when it counts. And, to reiterate, you cannot rely on Word to correct your every error.

Of course, you could always try running it by us when you've finished.

*Monty Python. Obviously.

[rjd2]

its a bad habit i got.. i love in good old ireland where punctuation is dire for some reason.

[sick as a pike]

you ansewered your own question their man.

Did I?  Satire is humour used to deflate or expose to ridicule for a purpose, often political.  There is an ideological drive behind it.  Do you think Milligan's work had that drive or was he most of the time trying to be funny?  Yes, Something like "The Bedsitting Room" has that sort of imperative, and certainly in his public life Milligan espoused many causes, but isn't much of his work funny because it's absurd, rather than pointed?
As to other legendary satirists- Juvenal, Pope and Swift.

[rjd2]

yeah you got a point any more recent people? e.g. 70s or 80s?

thanks for the feedback.

[Purple Tentacle]

I would suggest that if you were to write a thesis on "satire", you would spend at least 5000 words studying the beginnings, motivations and influences of the early satirists' work, reading extensively from turgid work by Thackery, or perhaps less turgidly, Dickens, before tackling how it evolved and changed into "modern" satire of the last 30 years.

The problem with studying post-modernism is that you have to extensively study modernism and traditionalism to give your work some context.

What level is this essay? MA? BA?

[rjd2]

BA

[sick as a pike]

yeah you got a point any more recent people? e.g. 70s or 80s?
thanks for the feedback.

In no particular order: Peter Cook, John Bird, John Fortune, Eleanor Bron, Richard Ingrams, David Frost, William Rushton, Fluck & Law, John Lloyd, Paul Foot, The Not the Nine O'Clock News team, Ben Elton, Angus Deayton, Ian Hislop.

[Bogey]

Does satire necessarily have to have an ideological motive behind it? Or do you mean that that ideology is, "a lot of public figures are silly and wrong and hypocritical, not just the ones we hate the most"?
I'm thinking of The Simpsons as a current example; it's hard to see any consitent ideological stance there, and that's (partially) satire, isn't it?

And it's theses by the way.