Preface: repeat performances -- Acknowledgements -- List of illustrations -- General editor's introduction -- Introduction: why parody, and why now? -- Cricklewood vs. Hollywood: the roots and routes of British parody on screen -- Silly, really: parody, genre and realism in Monty Python's The Holy Grail and Life of Brian -- History and hysteria: The Charge of the Light Brigade, Royal Flash and Ripping Yarns -- "The shit just got real:" negotiating Hollywood in The Strike, Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz -- From distance to difference: parody, participation and the cultural canon -- Where no joke has gone before: parody as science fiction in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Paul and Moon -- Epilogue: James bond, runner beans and jumping queens -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.
Summary:
Explores the variety of ways British film culture has used forms of parody, from the 1960s to the present day. It provides a contextual and textual analysis of a range of works that, while popular, have only rarely been the subject of serious academic attention from Morecambe and Wise to Shaun of the Dead to the London 2012 Olympics' opening ceremony. Combining the methodologies of both film history and film theory, Beyond a Joke locates parody within specific industrial and cultural moments, while also looking in detail at the aesthetics of parody as a mode. Ultimately, such works are shown to be a form of culturally specific film or televisual product for exporting to the global market, in which 'Britishness', shaped in self-mocking and ironic terms, becomes the selling point. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout with a diverse range of examples, Beyond a Joke is the first book to explore parody within a specifically British context and makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on both British and global film culture.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.