Carry On Joking: Freud, Laughter and the Hysterical Male in the Carry On films
The popularity of the Carry On films can be measured by the success of the series which ran for twenty years from 1958-1978. Twenty-nine films were made and at the height of their popularity in the 1960s two films a year were being produced to capitalise on the success of the series. Film after film utilised the same comedic formula often with the same actors playing the same character types telling the same jokes. The aim of this thesis is to explore a number of questions: How were audiences positioned to laugh at the same 'dirty' joke that was told over and over again? What was the relationship between the verbal joke and the visual gag? How significant were the hysterical male characters played by Kenneth Connor and Kenneth Williams in the creation of the comedy of castration, and how was a sense of humour shared between young male audiences and the producers who promoted the heterosexual ideology of a male patriarchal society? Whilst film theories of comedy have concentrated on the visual gag, and psychoanalytic film theories have concentrated on the male gaze as the source of pleasure for the voyeuristic male spectator, this thesis draws on Freud's Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious to analyse the Carry On films. Freud's comprehensive theory incorporates the verbal, the comic (visual) and the importance of sharing humour in jokes. He explains the psycho-social relationship between sexually inhibited male desire and patriarchal censorship that are necessary for the production of pleasure sought for and found in many sexual jokes. The Carry On films make a useful choice for investigating the relevance of Freud's theories of humour since the films exhibit a recurrent theoretical preoccupation with psychoanalysis. The hysterical males are a particularly useful source to investigate since the dirty jokes coalesce around them.
C800 - Psychology, Literature in its original language
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