The Iron Yuppie

British Sit-Coms' Winning Formula via NPR

So I've delved a little into class, but one thing that really separates us from the Brits is how explicitly we claim that we are class-free, and how explicitly they react to class. Ultimately, this manifests itself in people in England who seem to be happier than equivalently "classed" people are in the US because, I speculate, they are aware of where society feels they should be and they know how what they should be aiming for. Of course, this also manifests itself in their style of comedy, as highlighted in the above story. The author of the study is "Dr. Helen Pilcher, a molecular neurobiologist and stand-up comedian who specializes in scientific jokes"... I'd like to find two of those in the world. Anyhow, one of the key points of British comedy, she finds, is the upper class person who ends up failing miserably. Only by explicitly recognizing class do they have the ability to take delight in their failings. In the US, we have a subtext of this, where the "working class" is noble and the backbone of society and the "upper class" are rich people who have had everything handed to them. But we don't have a great story for John Delorean, who had everything and died penniless, or Mark Cuban, who started with nothing, made a fantastic sum of money but is now kind of a dick. Our society does not really know how to handle these people well... do you pity them? Do you hold them up as examples?

Which leads me into my recent viewing of The Comeback. Which is brutal. And funny. Brutally funny. The entire show is only possible to exist as a comedy because you can never really feel that badly for Valerie Cherish. She may have had success, but now, in that she feels so deserving of more, your gut probably tells you it’s ok to stick it to her.

D