Mention the War: British Sitcoms and Military Masculinity

ANETTE PANKRATZ Mention the War: British Sitcoms and Military Masculinity

1. Introduction "Military virtues such as aggression, strength, courage and endurance have repeatedly been defined as the natural and inherent qualities of manhood" and "the soldier has become the quintessential figure of masculinity" (Dawson 1994, 1; cf. Braun 1996, 180; Connell 2005, 73, 213). Despite the assertive tone of these statements, military masculinity is fraught with contradictions and paradoxes. Soldiering, especially the killing of people in combat, can be seen as morally ambiguous (Braun 1996, 180). More importantly, the ideal type of military masculinity can never be reached and is enmeshed in a "dense web of double binds" (Belkin 2012, 4), that is, in disciplinary rituals that address soldiers as "girls" or "poofs" or in exercises that infantilise and feminise them (Belkin 2012, 33). Since the abolishment of National Service in 1961, serving in the army has become a very specialised occupation for a minority of the population in Britain and the warrior hero has been superseded by figures such as the "entrepreneurial individual" (Connell 2005, 254). (British) situation comedies featuring soldiers, from The Army Game (ITV, 1957- 1966) to Bluestone 42 (BBC, 2013-2015), broach this field of tensions with comic intent. They operate with incongruity between the exemplary figure of the warrior hero and its real-life performance, either by turning the norm upside down or by exaggerating and stereotyping it. The implicit juxtaposition of the ideal and its comic Other also puts into play different versions of masculinity, from the anxiously overt or the supposedly 'normal' to the deficient or explicitly dissident. The sitcoms connect these comic representations of (military) masculinities with the army as a workplace and, not always but quite frequently, with war: the First World War in Blackadder Goes Fo(u)rth (BBC, 1989), for example, or Iraq and Afghanistan in Bluestone 42 and Gary: Tank Commander (BBC, 2009-2012). In that context, the Second World War seems to hold a special position. Not only Basil Fawlty gets great mileage out of mentioning the war, but two of the most popular sitcoms of the 1970s, Dad's Army (BBC, 1968-1977) and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (BBC, 1974-1981), are set during that time as well. Both series were written and produced by David Croft and Jimmy Perry and use the conventional sitcom format. Each episode is 30 minutes long, usually shot in the studio in front of a live audience, with a limited number of sets and a fixed cast of characters. Dad's Army focuses on the adventures of the British Home Guard of Walmington-on-Sea; It Ain't Half Hot, Mum is set in India and features the members of an Artillery concert party. Both series create comedy by means of non-normative masculinities, men too old or too young to fight in Dad's Army and men unwilling to fight in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. At the time of their first broadcasting, both shows were highly successful. Dad's Army attracted eighteen million viewers at its peak and brought Croft a BAFTA in 1971 and Croft and Perry the Writers' Guild of Great Britain awards in 1969, 1970 and 1971

Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 31.2 (Summer 2020): 93-109.

(Lenz 2016, 36; McCann 2002, 100; Morgan-Russell 2004, 12). It Ain't Half Hot, Mum drew an audience of up to fifteen million. Nowadays, Dad's Army is considered a comedy classic and regularly voted into the Top Ten of British sitcoms (Lenz 2016, 36- 37). There has been a movie remake in 2016 starring Toby Jones and Bill Nighy. In 2018, the Royal Mail issued stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of the series. In contrast to this, It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, is no longer repeated on TV and most critics consider it offensive in its representations of ethnicity and gender. This indicates changes in the "humour regimes," "unwritten rules stipulating who can joke about what" (Das and Graefer 2017, 52). Jokes by white, male, heterosexual writers and performers about minorities clearly violate the rules prevalent in 21st- century Britain. Jimmy Perry as well as ardent (white, male) fans see this as 'political correctness gone mad' and counter criticism by emphasising that It Ain't Half Hot, Mum is based on authentic experiences and created in a spirit of openness and benevolence (Morgan-Russell 2004, 90). If one accepts this information at face value and reads both series as popular mainstream texts with a liberal agenda, what inferences can one draw about the humour regimes of the 1970s, especially in their constructions of masculinity in relation to class, gender, ethnicity and national identity? What does that tell us about anxieties and fault lines in British culture both in the 1970s and today? The following analysis will take its cue from the genre specifics of sitcoms, the Winter Journals combination of situation and comedy and a serial status-quo plot which always defers narrative closure (Bennett 2015, 68; Feuer 2001, 69). In the case of Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, the seriousness, historicity and facticity of the situation stand in Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) contrast to the comedy. This can be read as analogous to the dialectic "between embodied masculine performance and the larger webs of systemic relations within which they operate" (Horlacher and Floyd 2017, 15). By way of the situation, both for personal use only / no unauthorized distribution series uphold a patriarchal (and male-centred) system as the unmarked norm; at the same time, they destabilise notions of one uniform and stable model of masculinity. In a similar dialectic move, the historical frame evokes nostalgia and a sense of national importance, and, on the other hand, it emphasises the pastness of the past. The tension between situation and comedy produces polysemy and ambivalence. The humour of sitcoms in general is neither wholly subversive nor affirmative, it both includes and excludes (cf. Horlacher 2009, 35-36; Mills 2009, 13). As part of the mass media, sitcoms frame prevalent discourses in a culture as possibly not completely serious and thus enhance divergent reading positions. They disseminate cultural knowledge and highlight contradictions, paradoxes and anxieties in a culture and thereby prompt flexibility, the ability to live in a changing world and to observe constructions of these worlds by the mass media (Böhn 2009, 55; Räwel 2005, 44).

2. Sit: Army and War While early sitcoms were usually set in families, their focus broadened in the 1960s and 1970s. Workplace sitcoms gained more prominence and pointed towards an opening of the comic spaces and a move towards greater diversity (Hartley 2001, 67). The army as a traditionally all-male workplace "decentres the dominant ideology of the

family" (Gray 1994, 84; Healy 1995, 254) and – at least potentially – opens up alternative and subversive spaces. Military rank and the fixed chains of command serve as the precarious status quo that is undermined and restored at the end, only to be turned upside-down in the next episode. Men living and fighting together evoke what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls the "continuum between homosocial and homosexual" (1985, 1). In a mass medium like TV, this was a rather delicate balance, as homosexuality and queerness were kept under tight control (Morgan-Russell 2004, 81). By excluding or marginalising women, masculinity appears as unmarked and representative; this holds especially true for the army, which was traditionally considered "an apparent microcosm of British society" (Stewart 1996, 85). But in its basic constellation – funny men shouted at by their superiors (Howard and Stokes 1996, 10) –, queerness and femininity often resurface in the form of insults. Setting the series during the Second World War adds connotations of heroism and patriotism. Britain won against Nazi Germany, associated with a dictatorial regime and the industrialised mass murder of ethnic, political or sexual Others. In contrast to the First World War, which is remembered as a traumatic caesura (Kamm 1997, 266), the Second World War was perceived as a just war and a "People's War" (cf. Calder 1969). It directly affected the British population, mainly due to the German air raids and the fear of a German invasion, and everyone – at home and abroad, men, women and children – was expected to contribute to the war effort (Kamm 1997, 268; Stewart 1996, 81). At least in war propaganda and in hindsight, this "summoned up a complex of moral and political commitments that, for a time, could be represented as 'pulling together'" (Howard and Stokes 1996, 5). Both series mobilise "popular memory" (Bowes 1990, 133) of "the last time when Britain was truly great" (Korte 2002, 12). Simultaneously, they show soldiers comically "muddling through" (Lenz 2016, 46). When Croft and Perry first suggested this premise for Dad's Army, BBC officials were sceptical. Head of Light Entertainment Tom Sloan asked: "Were we making mock of Britain's Finest Hour?" (qtd. in Sommer 2011, 202). Despite the initial doubts, the combination of reverence and mockery proved very successful and fit the zeitgeist of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with protests against the Vietnam War on one side and Britain's backward-looking search for its lost greatness on the other (Korte 2002, 14). The writers and actors in both series manage the tightrope walk between making fun of the warriors and cherishing Britain's successful engagement in the war. But there is a difference between using the Home Front and imperial India as a backdrop. While Walmington-on-Sea can stand for mainstream Britain and its average men 'pulling together,' the space on the margins of the British Empire lends itself to the representations of a more diverse spectrum of masculinities and the spirit of a nation 'pulling together' is substituted by notions of an eroding Empire.

2.1 Home Front Dad's Army is set between 1940 and 1942 in the seaside town of Walmington-on-Sea. By 1940, the German Army had invaded Poland and occupied France; the British fought on the side of the French, but they had to retreat in May and June 1940. After

the disastrous evacuation of Dunkirk, a German invasion was imminent and German planes bombed British cities during the time of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, which led Minister of War Anthony Eden to call for volunteers to defend their country (Sommer 2011, 199). This is replayed in abstract form in the title sequence. Arrows move across a map of Europe (figure 1). On French territory, three Union Jack arrows are persecuted by three snakelike and phallic arrows marked with swastikas. Before the 'Germans' can capture the 'British,' the latter shrink and deflate and flee across the Channel. From there, one tiny Union Jack triangle takes up a defensive posture. The precarious military situation is contrasted by the cheerful, upbeat tune performed by Bud Flanagan, a singer known for his wartime songs. The lyrics claim: "Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler, / If you think we're on the run. / We are the boys who will stop your little game, / We are the boys who will make you think again. / So, who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler, / If you think Old England's done?" (Kamm 1997, 269-270; Lenz 2016, 40).

Figure 1: The title sequence of Dad's Army (S3E1, "The Armoured Might of Lance Corporal Jones," 0:02-0:29). The first series is set in 1940 and replays historical events rather closely. In the first episode, Eden's radio broadcast triggers bank manager George Mainwaring's decision to form a branch of the Local Defence Volunteers, as the Home Guard was originally called. The subsequent episodes follow the gradual development of the Walmington- on-Sea platoon: getting uniforms and weapons, learning military drill and going on patrol. The series adapts funny myths and legends around the real Home Guard, the men use pepper and spears as weapons and requisition arms from a museum (Lenz 2016, 41; Sommer 2011, 199). The later series are less specific in time and the focus widens on Walmington society as well as the private lives of the Home Guard. The humour of the series is sustained by the knowledge that "Old England" was indeed not "done" and that the British would win the war. Realistic costumes and props as well as authentic wartime songs as incidental music further enhance the nostalgic

atmosphere (Lenz 2016, 40; Richards 1997, 360). By choosing a sleepy seaside resort as the setting, the sitcom avoids showing death and destruction and manages to uphold the cultural memory of the Second World War in Britain as a time of national unity and solidarity (Crowther and Pinfold 1987, 115; Lenz 2016, 45-46; Richards 1997, 360).

2.2 Empire The regular soldiers in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum also live far away from potentially lethal combat, and the series evokes the patriotic wartime spirit in some of its songs and inserted newsreels, but the situation on the whole is more ambiguous than in Dad's Army, because it is more distant and less prone to British triumph. The sitcom is set in Deolali in India (and later in Burma) between May and August 1945. The war in Europe is over, but Japan has not surrendered yet. The Artillery Depot holds British troops before they are sent to the front in Burma to support the US army. In contrast to Dad's Army, the war waged in the background does not have much to do with the British characters, and the soldiers going to the front are hardly ever shown. Instead, the series focuses on the protests and demonstrations for Indian independence and on Britain being on the cusp of losing its status as a world power. Gandhi's slogan "Quit India" turns into the recurring phrase "British Pigs Go Home." While the fight against the Germans in Dad's Army appears as a matter of national survival, defeating the Japanese and upholding British rule in India seem doubtful, if not futile. This is indicated by the title sequence of the very first episode, again featuring a map, this time of the British Empire. To the tune of "Land of Hope and Glory," a sonorous upper-class male voice gives a brief historic overview: India the brightest jewel in Great Britain's crown of empire. For 200 years, many famous heroes fought to keep the Union Jack flying over this vast continent. [Historical paintings of the respective men replace map, A.P.] 1757, Clive of India. 1826, Colonel William Sleeman who suppressed the thugs. 1857, General Havelock, hero of Lucknow. 1945, this great tradition of Empire is defended by a new generation of heroes. Then a piano sets in, seven men in purple costumes stand on a rather rickety stage, move in unison and sing "meet the gang 'cause the boys are here, the boys to entertain you" (figure 2). The image of British imperial masculinity and of the Empire as a "penetrating phallic entity" (Gittings qtd. in de Waal 2017, 216) evoked by the map and the enumeration of history book heroes is deflated by the chirpy melody and the theatrical set-up.

Figure 2: The title sequence of It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (S1E1, "Meet the Gang," 0:03-0:47).

3. Com: Funny Soldiers By their titles and title songs, the two series signal very clearly that they undermine conventional notions about soldiers, soldiering and the army. The real army might still harbour the ideal of soldier heroes; Dad's Army, however, suggests a cuddly and stuffy paternalism. Similarly, the title It Ain't Half Hot, Mum turns the soldiers into sons dutifully writing home and complaining about the weather. In both songs, the "boys" exude a spirit of bravely whistling in the dark. But can "boys" be genuine heroes? And how does one separate them from the real men?

3.1 Country of Childish/Old Men The term "boys" attains further ironic overtones in Dad's Army, because most of the protagonists have reached old age. Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) and Sergeant Wilson (John Le Mesurier) are in their sixties, Lance Corporal Jones (Clive Dunn) and Private Frazer (John Laurie) are seventy. Private Charles Godfrey (Arthur Ridley) does not talk about his age but seems to be about eighty years old. The first and very obvious effect of the characters' age is to highlight their unfitness: they easily run out of breath, have problems with their short-term memory or their bladders. The series uses this for a lot of slapstick, showing the men in different stages of undress, revealing their non-normative bodies, beer bellies and spindly legs. This is sustained by the plots, which often focus on questions of age. In "The Showing Up of Corporal Jones" (S1E5), army headquarters demand that Jones master an assault course, crawling under tarpaulin and climbing over obstacles within fifteen minutes. He only survives the test because the rest of the platoon helps him cheat. Similarly, in "Keep Young and Beautiful" (S5E2), the War Office plans to restructure both Home Guard and Air Raid Wardens along the lines of age and fitness. Mainwaring covers his

bald head by a toupee and Wilson starts wearing a corset. Frazer, Jones and Godfrey use very heavy make-up and hair-dye meant for corpses (Frazer is a funeral director). They do look younger, but the paints and fillings also hamper their facial expressions and, as Mainwaring remarks, they look like something "out of Madame Butterfly," exotic and feminised. All these cases foreground mechanisms of military humiliation – feminisation and infantilisation (Belkin 2012, 21-36) – with the double binds serving as basis for a comic blurring of boundaries, which manages to keep the implicit disciplinary logic intact. It is not fitness that is made fun of, but the men's attempts to fit in. The exceptions to this pattern of superannuated protagonists are Privates Pike and Walker. Walker (James Beck) deals on the black market and successfully avoids entering the regular army by means of his connections and a system of bribes and blackmail. Pike (Ian Lavender) is seventeen and too young to be called up. Like Walker, he is physically fit. Intellectually, however, he seems to be between ten and thirteen, a whiny boy pampered by his mother, who forces him to wear a scarf on parade and in one episode even insists that he wear a fluffy bunny balaclava (S1E5). What unites the members of the Home Guard is their general boyishness. Irrespective of their age, everyone except Mainwaring indulges in soldiering as a game. Very obviously so in "Big Guns" (S3E7), when the platoon practices using their new heavy gun with the help of tin cans, matchboxes, toy soldiers and toy vehicles. With zest, Jones imitates the engine noises of his van ("num num num"), Pike complains that he is represented by a measly soldier without a head, and the rest move their figures on the make-shift gaming board (Morgan-Russell 2004, 43; Richards 1997, 263). The comedy of insufficient age and "human frailty" (Terry Lovell qtd. in Morgan- Russell 2004, 43) is enhanced by conflating the professional, private and soldierly lives of the main characters. Jones is the local butcher and nominally too old to serve, but he manages to bribe his way into the platoon by means of steaks and sausages for the officers. As bank manager and supposedly very important public figure, Mainwaring automatically assumes command of the Home Guard and expects his male staff, Wilson and Pike, to serve under him. As the series progresses, the audience learns more about his motivation to commit himself wholly to parades and patrols. It is not so much patriotism or a sense of duty, but the wish to avoid his wife Elizabeth and her temper tantrums. Mrs Mainwaring never appears on screen, but the audience sees the effects she has on her husband, regularly sending him into a panic when she calls on the phone and one time even giving him a black eye (S3E9). In Dad's Army, the masculinities of the protagonists are constructed by juxtaposition with regular soldiers and movie stars on the one hand and women on the other. Compared with regular British soldiers or their slightly fitter comrades from Eastgate, the members of the Home Guard appear as deficient. The German enemy forms a category of its own. In the imagination of the characters, Germans appear as cold and brutal, very efficient and masculine killer machines. In the reality of the show,

however, they are not. Germans hardly ever appear, and when they do, they are often frightened and quickly surrender.1 Explicitly heroic warrior masculinity only appears in the movies and is ineptly adapted by the Home Guard. Especially the avid film fan Pike thrives on cinematic role models when he fires his machine gun like a Chicago gangster or when he disguises himself as a Native American, as seen in a Gary Cooper movie (S4E1). "The Two and a Half Feathers" (S4E8) offers the most sustained juxtaposition of filmic ideal and Walmington reality. The plot is loosely based on Zoltan Korda's monumental epic Four Feathers (1939), celebrating the British victory at the battle of Omdurman under the command of General Kitchener in 1898 (Richards 1997, 57). Jones is accused of abandoning a comrade to save his own life in the battle. He receives anonymous letters with white feathers, denouncing his cowardice, but in the end manages to clear his name. While he tells the platoon what really happened, the audience sees a flashback in which scenes from Korda's film are intercut with sequences featuring a young Jones and his comrades from Walmington, with Air Raid Warden Hodges (Bill Pertwee) and the rumour-monger Frazer dressed in Arab garb as the villains of the piece. Omdurman evokes "exemplary imperial masculinity" (Dawson 1994, 83), characterised by white British superiority, discipline, sense of duty and self-restraint. Korda's Four Feathers perpetuates and glamorises this ideal (Richards 1997, 57). By transferring the heroism to Jones and anachronistically projecting the rivalries and enmities of Walmington society onto the battle of Omdurman, Dad's Army highlights the outdatedness of imperial ideals and domesticates them. Jones risks infamy, because he does not want to tell people about his commanding officer having an affair with the wife of a comrade. In the light of both 1940s and 1970s culture, this decision seems rather old-fashioned and unnecessarily chivalrous. Casting Hodges and Frazer as enemies undermines the traditional imperial battle lines between British Self and foreign Others and highlights internal dissensions among the British instead. The battle of Omdurman and the theme of imperial heroic masculinity are one of the running gags of the series. Corporal Jones loves to go into long, rambling reminiscences about his time in the Sudan fighting the "fuzzy wuzzies." He also remembers the First World War and the fact that the Germans were not keen on bayonets: "They don't like it up 'em!" (cf. McCann 2002, 149; Richards 1997, 360). Occasionally, the sexual connotations of the catchphrase gain homosocial if not homosexual overtones when Jones informs his colleagues that the soldiers in the Sudan were "cuddling up" in the desert (S3E2). While no one doubts Jones's heterosexuality, other characters are given attributes associated with homosexuality. Private Godfrey is a sweet and mild-mannered confirmed bachelor, who admits to having been a dandy in

1 With one famous exception: In "The Deadly Attachment" (S6E1), the platoon has to guard the crew of a German submarine. Pike taunts the Germans with the popular song "Whistle while you work / Hitler is a twerp," the U-boat commander threatens him with "Your name will also go on the list. What is it?," after which Mainwaring commands "Don't tell him, Pike." The punchline is considered one of the funniest moments on British TV (McCann 2002, 4; Sommer 2011, 201).

his youth, a conscientious objector in the Great War, and who has worked in a department store (McCann 2002, 148). He brings along a duvet for weekend training exercises and thrives on measuring and altering uniforms. Godfrey may be homosexual. Or maybe not. The same goes for the vicar (Frank Williams). His effeminate behaviour and enthusiasm for seeing Pike in short trousers could be read either as homosexual or as upper-class and clerical mannerisms. Dad's Army keeps allusions to queerness sparse and in the closet, as it were. All these representations of deficient masculinities do not amount to a subversion of patriarchy, though. While the 'real' men are fighting abroad, Britain is the country for old men. At the apex of the social pyramid stand the two father figures Winston Churchill and George VI, both visibly present by way of their portraits in the church hall and the occasional newsreels. In some episodes, they even visit or plan to visit Walmington-on-Sea (S1E6; S6E3). Right after them come Mainwaring and his men. The Captain tries to maintain a statesman-like poise and when his picture is taken for the local newspaper as "A Man of Action" (S7E2), he gives the Churchillian V sign. Women are relegated to subservient positions as mothers, sisters, wives, secretaries or dinner ladies. By comparison with them, the members of the Home Guard still appear as sufficiently masculine. In "Mum's Army" (S4E9), women petition to join the Home Guard and turn out to be even worse at the drill than the old men.2 In at least one episode per series, the Home Guard shows genuine bravery. In "Something Nasty in the Vault" (S3E5), for example, a bomb falls on the bank and Mainwaring and Wilson calmly and with a stiff upper lip hold the bomb until the expert from the disposal unit arrives. The men might be funny, but the series as a whole manages "to uphold the pre-eminance [sic] of the ordinary, amateurish British male" (Morgan-Russell 2004, 54).

3.2 Masculinities in Hot Spaces To a certain extent, this also holds true for It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. Most of the protagonists represent average and supposedly normal men (Morgan-Russell 2004, 87), but they are younger and the series as a whole presents more diverse versions of masculinity, including queer and non-white Others. The members of the concert party are regular enlisted soldiers and physically fit; this is emphasised by often showing them bare-chested with glistening torsos. The men avoid being sent to the front by performing for the troops, which brings them into conflict with shouty and aggressive Sergeant Major Williams (Windsor Davies), who links show business with effeminacy. Williams's bullying highlights the non-normative bodies of some of the performers, most prominently, Gunner Sugden (Don Estelle), who is slightly overweight and underheight, wears short trousers and a pith helmet. Sugden's "infantilised body" (Morgan-Russell 2004, 84) contrasts with his resonant tenor voice. The rest of the ensemble, however, are amateurs. Their incompetence becomes very obvious in cross-dressing acts that aim at presenting stars like Marlene

2 In 1943, the Women's Home Guard Auxiliaries had been founded at the instigation of women intent on 'doing their bit' (McCann 2002, 28), but they obviously did not have a branch in Walmington-on-Sea.

Dietrich or Ginger Rogers. The wigs and gowns do not fit, the men cannot walk in high heels, and by their body postures and clumsy movements they also indicate discomfort with their roles (S2E6). The comic incongruities between role and performance, the sex of the performers and the gender they perform at first sight naturalise and essentialise masculinity: real men can never successfully act like women. Moreover, they obviously do not want to. The exception in this respect is Gunner Beaumont (Melvyn Hayes), who specialises in female impersonation and carries over his performance of "male femininity" (Medhurst and Tuck 1982, 50) into his off-stage life, going by the nickname of Gloria and behaving like an oversensitive diva. But even he indicates that only women can perform femininity properly and convincingly. Although he takes great care with dress, make-up and hair removal, he still looks like a man in a dress (Morgan-Russell 2004, 78). His hysterical outbursts and camp effeminacy replicate stereotypes of the "sitcom queen, all wrists and sibilants" (Medhurst and Tuck 1982, 49). The Indians are structurally equivalent to the female characters in Dad's Army. For the most part, they serve as exotic background. This also holds true for two of the three regular characters, Char Wallah Muhammed (Dino Shafeek) and Punkah Wallah Rumzan (Garbar Bhatti). They provide the occasional gag but are stuck in their roles and positions (Rumzan quite literally so, as he has to sit outside the officers' building and move the fan). Bearer Rangi Ram (Michael Bates) moves between and among all the groups – Indians, officers and concert party. He often triggers the disturbances of the status quo and closes the episodes with comments directed at the audience. As one of the main speaking parts, Perry and Croft argued, he had to be played by a white actor (Morgan-Russell 2004, 91).

4. Fault Lines: Stereotypes and Divisions In the 1970s, no one, or rather, no one in a position to be heard, took offense at white actors in blackface, exotic Orientals and sitcom queens, and most viewers were simply amused and found everything naturally funny (Morgan-Russell 2004, 68). But from the outset, the show was not unequivocally cherished by the queer and black community (Medhurst and Tuck 1982, 51). Like Till Death Us Do Part (BBC, 1965-1975), the series walks a thin line between satirising and endorsing homophobia and racism. This points towards some of the fault lines and paradoxes of 1970s culture, the attempts to make alternative masculinities visible without disturbing the overall system. It Ain't Half Hot, Mum presents non-white and not-quite-straight characters, it makes fun of British imperialism and military masculinity but still upholds the notion of a homogenously white heteronormative British national identity.

4.1 Queerness One of the running gags of the series is Williams addressing the soldiers as "poofs," "nancy boys" and "lovely boys," because they do not drill or fight, but prefer to spend their days rehearsing and performing instead. Williams's homophobic outbursts regularly provoke laughter from the live audience, because most of the members of the

concert party are marked as heterosexual (Morgan-Russell 2004, 83). In that respect, 'Gloria' stabilises the homosocial continuum, because the outré and stereotyped figure ascertains the heteronormative credentials of the rest of the group by way of comparison. But the separation between norm and dissidence is volatile and constantly undermined. Although the subversive potential of the stage performances is limited, the sitcom as a whole does have a Butlerian dimension because exaggerated gender performances appear as parodies. Beaumont's camp complements Williams's belligerent "hyper- masculinity" (Morgan-Russell 2004, 83). Both characters are equally theatrical, stereotypical and constantly on the brink of comic failure; the more so, when the plots enforce slippages from homosocial to queer. Williams likes to show off his naked upper body, and in one episode the size of his sexual organ is hinted at and admired by the natives (S2E7). Although he despises show business, he sometimes ends up on stage when the other performers are unfit to play and someone has to make up the numbers. Thus, he plays a Mexican with a walrus moustache who suspiciously looks like a clone, the gay parody of normative masculinity (S3E2). In another episode, he wears a dress, a blond wig, sits on a swing and tries to look as dainty as possible despite his moustache (S3E1). Williams's masculine gruffness is related to his lower-class, no-nonsense Welsh background, constantly emphasised by taunting "La-di-dah Gunner Graham" (John Clegg) who holds a B.A. from Cambridge with his "h'university h'education." This also betrays anxieties about rank and hierarchies, because Williams has to accept the "la-di- dah"-ness of his commanding officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Reynolds (Donald Hewlitt) and Captain Ashwood (Michael Knowles). Both are portrayed as "upper-class twit[s]" (Morgan-Russell 2004, 85) who keep away from the regular soldiers and insist on their privileges. The apartness of the duo also lends itself to queer readings. Especially Ashwood shows great enthusiasm for the performers and appreciates Beaumont's acts as "first class," accompanied by flirting glances between the two men. Ashwood and Reynolds not only behave like a couple, they also have moments of physical closeness with sexual innuendo, for example, when they are sharing a shower in order to save water (S2E3).

4.2 Ethnicity The Indian characters represent Orientalist stereotypes and are shown as "servile, foolish, lazy or devious" (Duguid n.d.). Rangi Ram, an Indian version of the clever servant, theoretically serves as vantage point for the audience, directly addressing them at the beginning and end of an episode. He likes to contrast "us British" with "those damn natives." Just as with Williams, the joke is on Ram, because his language, clothes and behaviour mark him as one of "those damn natives," speaking with a heavy Indian accent, using malapropisms ("cocky tails") and coughing up phlegm (Morgan-Russell 2004, 94). Try as they might, the series implies, just as men will never be able to be women, natives can never be British. But, of course, they can be played by white British actors.

Reiterating 19th-century stereotypes about Orientals (Sedgwick 1985, 183), the Indian characters are feminised by way of menial tasks such as making tea or cleaning usually associated with women. They are also de-individualised, replicating the stereotype that 'all look the same,' because a small set of actors – Renu Setna, Minoo Golvala, Ahmed Khalil, Ishaq Bux – takes over the roles of perfunctory Indians in exotic scenarios, as haggling street vendors that have to be shooed away, holy men with nail beds or snake charmers. At the same time, the series makes very clear that it is the white British who are the foreigners in India. They are the only ones who sweat profusely, get the "Bombay trots" (i.e. diarrhoea) and catch infectious diseases. Only the officers think that the British are superior and that the Empire will last another thousand years. Ashwood and Reynolds express this politely with a condescending upper-class twang; Williams shouts it at the top of his lungs. Together with the knowledge in hindsight that India will gain independence in 1947 and the Empire will end, this undermines all pretensions to imperial glory. Hypothetically, the combination of Orientalism and anti-colonialism undermines traditional constructions of the British Raj, the concrete results, however, appear less clear-cut, as the title "The Natives are Revolting" (S2E3) already implies. The episode focuses on Indian resistance against British rule. Someone has rearranged the stones in front of the officers' building to read "British Pigs Go Home" and has replaced the Union Jack by the Indian national flag. The concert party seems unperturbed by the acts of sabotage and Beaumont comments sarcastically: "We all want to go home, but we're not pigs." The only one to go berserk is Williams. He summons the Indian staff for interrogation and rips the flag to shreds: "I will show you who is the masters here. [...] I'll show you what I think of your tinpot rag." Enter Ashwood, Reynolds and the new District Officer (Renu Setna), who is deeply offended by this desecration and demands a public apology, which Williams refuses. The set-up implies that both men are equally responsible for the impasse because of their one-sided nationalism. Before his violent clash with Williams, the District Officer had confronted Ashwood and Reynolds with the question what 200 years of British rule have given India. The officers can only come up with three answers: the end of suttee, the railways and teaching the Indians how to drink tea "properly," i.e. with milk and sugar, bread, butter and jam. The script could have given the District Officer some punch lines – or at least a sceptically raised eyebrow – to highlight British hubris. Instead, his reactions indicate priggishness and ignorance: Ashwood: We did build the railways in 1845. District Officer: If we Indians had been in charge, it would have been built in 1825. [Titter from the live audience.] Ashwood: But they weren't invented then. District Officer: That's beside the point. [Laughter from the live audience.] The concert party manages to deflate the potentially explosive situation by singing "We All Make Mistakes, and We're Sorry." Visibly moved, Williams shakes the hand of the District Officer and Rangi Ram concludes: "Well, once again, we British have

compounded the situation. There is a very old Hindu proverb which says, 'If you have to eat humble pie, make sure you have plenty of jam on it.'" The plot reduces the colonial conflict to the formula that erring is all too human, and that both sides made mistakes. That may well be, but it is doubtful whether an apologetic song is enough to do justice to the fault lines of British rule in India or to multi-cultural Britain in the 1970s.

4.3 Class Compared to Deolali, Walmington-on-Sea seems to be much more homogenous and harmonious: all the characters are white, more or less middle-class and "suburban" (Richards 1997, 356). Within the historical frame of the Second World War, the series appears to affirm traditional values and solidarity across all classes. Critics have therefore claimed that Dad's Army upholds the "social structure of the past, in which people do not look beyond their social positions and authority is undermined, not by deliberate subversion but by mounting, unintended chaos" (Wagg 1998, 14). But one can also detect anxieties about social change and class divisions in the 1970s. In "War Dance" (S3E9), Mainwaring considers Pike's choice of dancing partner unsuitable, because the young woman's mother cleaned at the Mainwarings', an attitude that is as old- fashioned as Jones's squeamishness about his superior's sex life in "The Two and a Half Feathers." The longer the series goes on, the more allusions one finds to the end of the war, the end of class barriers and more democracy, which evokes a nostalgia for the immediate post-war period when these promises were still believed in and hoped for. Dad's Army presents a fractured community only briefly united by a common enemy. On the whole, there are constant fights and rivalries in the platoon based on class and status, most obviously between Mainwaring and Wilson. The bank manager had to work his way up from the lower-middle class, while Wilson was born into the upper class and effortlessly went, or rather sauntered, into banking (McCann 2002, 124- 125; Wagg 1998, 13-14). Positioning the two men against their supposedly common- sensical and natural places in society creates a precarious dynamic which highlights the differences between nominal meritocratic rank and inherited economic, social and cultural capital. Both as bank manager and Captain, Mainwaring feels threatened by Wilson and compensates this by his brash and pompous behaviour. Wilson in turn exudes superiority by his relaxed style and the smiling and polite catchphrase "do you think that's wise, Sir?," thereby constantly challenging Mainwaring's authority. Wilson represents an Establishment that relies on its traditional entitlement without being willing or able to take responsibility. When Wilson briefly leaves Walmington (S4E11), when Mainwaring loses his rank as Captain (S3E6) or when Jones's position is challenged (S1E5; S5E6), the others compete for their places. When they are not openly fighting one another, the members of the platoon follow their own agendas as butcher, black marketeer or dutiful son. The platoon, in turn, fights against other Walmingtonian institutions from the Air Raid Wardens, whose leader they deem socially inferior because he has dirty fingernails and runs a greengrocer's, to the vicar and verger and the town clerk, whom they think too snobbish.

Historically, it should have been the Germans that keep the deeply divided society united, but in most of the episodes of Dad's Army this is not enough. In order to collect money for the Spitfire Fund, the Home Guard decides to stage the fight between St. George and the Dragon, marked as German by painted swastikas. Of course, George Mainwaring insists on impersonating St. George, the rest of the platoon play the dragon in pantomime fashion. At the village fete, the platoon learn that the Air Raid Wardens had the very same idea and the episode culminates in a showdown. What started as patriotic gesture to bolster national unity turns into another inter-Walmington battle: St. George fights St. George and dragon fights dragon (S9E3).

5. Conclusion By the time of the first broadcast of Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, the soldier as an aggressive, courageous and heroic fighter for his nation had become slightly outdated and ridiculous. Both series debunk military masculinity, and make fun of the army and soldiers. The sitcoms draw attention to the broad scope of masculinities and the volatility of ideal types. But this does not mean that the patriarchal system has been replaced. Especially Dad's Army rehabilitates the leadership of old men and both series show ordinary men making the best of a difficult situation. Despite all their shortcomings, the "boys" are alright and the army still serves as a microcosm of Britain. Moreover, the figure of the warrior hero is kept in circulation by default, in Dad's Army with additional patriotic and nostalgic overtones. The combination of destabilising the representations of hegemonic masculinity and purporting to keep the patriarchal system intact points towards areas of moral panic and anxieties in the 1970s, a "new racism" (Hunt 1998, 51) personified by Enoch Powell and later the National Front, and yet another crisis of masculinity, triggered by Second Wave feminism and the Gay Rights Movement (ibid., 56). Compared to British culture at large – from Glam Rock and Carry On movies to the Second Wave of playwrights – the sitcoms offer rather tame deconstructions of normative gender models,3 but even these mainstream media texts offer opportunities for resistant readings. It Ain't Half Hot, Mum was one of the few TV series that showed Indians and hired BrAsian actors. It did not really 'bring them into representation' (in the sense of Stuart Hall), but it made the BrAsian community visible and historicised immigration (Morgan-Russell 2004, 90-91).4 To a more limited extent, this also holds true for the representation of queer characters. Implicitly, both series also offer new, alternative models of hegemonic masculinity: the manager and the creative artist. Mainwaring and his platoon manage to muddle through not because of their military prowess, but because of their ability to

3 Even Peter Nichols's rather mainstream Privates on Parade (RSC, 1977) was more daring in its strategies of representation. Like It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, the play shows the life of a concert party, but female impersonator Terri Dennis as well as several other characters are portrayed as openly and often flamboyantly homosexual. 4 Sharat Sardana, writer for Goodness Gracious Me (BBC, 1998-2001) and The Kumars at No 42 (BBC, 2001-2006; ITV 2014), recalls watching It Ain't Half Hot, Mum as a child and not finding it racist: "they spoke Urdu for godsake" (Ducray and Sardana 2004).

tick the right boxes, remain polite, service-oriented and flexible. The concert party survives the war because of show business and creative performativity both on- and, more importantly, off-stage, rescuing difficult situations by staging the right song or making the right face at the right moment. Both formations forego soldierly aggressive dominance and achieve hegemony by (more or less clever) negotiation and team work (Reckwitz 2017, 117-120). In the context of the 1970s, It Ain't Half Hot, Mum risked more by opening to the margins – what Dad's Army uses as material for occasional risqué jokes, returns as part of its basic constellation of characters – and by choosing a setting that undermined facile nostalgia, but it also replicated racist and homophobic stereotypes. Does the series' disappearance from TV then indicate a change in the representation of non- hegemonic masculinities? The effeminate queen still dominates representations of homosexuality in sitcoms, whether in Gimme Gimme Gimme (BBC, 1998-2001), Vicious (C4, 2013-2016) or Benidorm (ITV, 2007-2018), but the 'humour regimes' have changed. The series are written by homosexual authors like Jonathan Harvey and/or performed by openly gay actors like Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellan. In order to make fun of minorities by way of clichés, one should belong to these minorities (Das and Graefer 2017, 52). At the same time, the soldier and military masculinity have seen a comeback since the 1980s. In the USA, Vietnam action heroes like Rambo indicate a "remasculinization" (Jeffords 1989) which, to a certain extent, has been exported to the West in general. In Britain, the Falklands War and recently the 'War on Terror' revitalised notions of heroic soldiering (Bennett 2015, 72). This also feeds into recent sitcoms. In contrast to the Home Guard and the Artillery concert party, the characters in both Bluestone 42 and Gary: Tank Commander are professional soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war may be unjust and the situations absurd, the two series imply, but at least the soldiers deserve respect, for 'doing their bit' (Bennett 2015; de Waal 2017, 257).5 But those funny soldiers no longer represent the most popular sitcom figures the way they did at the time of Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. Aggression and bullying are rather associated with spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) in Armando Iannucci's political satire The Thick of It (BBC, 2007-2012). Mainstream masculinities are better (and more successfully) represented by incompetent managers like David Brent (Ricky Gervais) in The Office (BBC, 2001-2003) or Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) in Twenty-Twelve (BBC, 2011-2012) and W1A (BBC, 2014-2017). Moreover, recent sitcom smash-hits feature funny women, from the BAFTA and Emmy winner Fleabag (BBC, 2016-2019) to Derry Girls (C4, 2018-). They may not be "doomed" (as Private Frazer would put it), but mentioning the war and soldiering are no longer necessary to keep the nation amused.

5 Intriguingly, with the character of translator and wheeler-dealer Faruq Harrif (Keeno-Lee Hector), Bluestone 42 brings back the sly native, using many of the stereotypes represented by Rangi Ram.

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