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Mention the War: British Sitcoms and Military Masculinity

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Mention the War: British Sitcoms and Military Masculinity 93 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army has become a very specialised occupation for a minority of the population in Britain and the warrior hero has been superseded by figures such as the "entrepreneurial individual" (Connell 2005, 254).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. Anglistik, Jahrgang 31 (2020), Ausgabe 2 © 2020 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) 94 ANETTE PANKRATZ (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 Anglistik, Jahrgang 31 (2020), Ausgabe 2 © 2020 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) MENTION THE WAR: BRITISH SITCOMS AND MILITARY MASCULINITY 95 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.
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