Funny Tones. Music in British Film and Television Comedy
A CHOMBEC/Screen Research workshop
for the Institute for Advanced Studies
Date: 7th July 2015
Location: Lecture Room, Department of Film and Television, University of Bristol, Van Dyck
Building, Cantocks Close, Bristol BS8 1UP (Directions to the Department of Film can be found
here.)
For the last generation, screen media musicology has expanded at vertiginous speed, and
more and more genres have come into the sights (and hearing) of scholarship, with
publications on music in Westerns, musicals, horror, sci-fi, melodrama and many more.
Conspicuous by its absence from the list is music in comedy, with only a smattering of articles
and no attempt at comprehensive historiography or theory. Literature on comedy in film and
TV studies, on the other hand, often fails to discuss music at all, or does so at best in passing.
Given the fact that comedy has always been central to film and television, this gap needs to
be filled.
Part of the explanation for the academic reluctance may be the intimidating size of
the repertoire, and the cultural specificity of much humour. Therefore, this joint workshop of
the interdisciplinary Screen Research group and CHOMBEC (the Centre for the History of
Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth) at the University of Bristol begins close
to home and focuses on music in British film and TV comedy, to see and hear how tricks,
techniques and traditions of comedy and of music join forces to produce fun.
Programme
 11:00: Coffee/tea
 11:30: Introduction
 11:45: Paul Mazey (University of Bristol): Serious opera for comic ends: opera arias in
British comedy films
 12:30: Josie Dolan (Glasgow, formerly University of the West of England): From laughingat to laughing-with: Disco nostalgia and the new acceptability of old-age hetero-sexuality
in ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’
 1:15: Lunch
 2:30: Guido Heldt (University of Bristol): Screaming with laughter: music in British horror
comedies
 3:15: Miguel Mera (City University London): The comedy of audiovisual musicality
 4:00: Coffee/tea break
 4:15: Alex Clayton (University of Bristol): Music in British TV sketch comedy
 5:00-6:00: Respondent (Sarah Street, University of Bristol) and plenary
Abstracts
Alex Clayton: Music in TV sketch comedy
TV sketch comedy has its roots in the tradition of British music hall, so it is perhaps
unsurprising that music still holds a special place in the format. The parodic music videos of
Smack the Pony (Talkback, 1999-2003) and the a cappella crimping of The Mighty Boosh (Baby
Cow, 2003- ) would be notable cases in point. Yet the special contribution of music to sketch
humour remains unexplored. This workshop offers notes on three celebrated instances where
the incorporation and arrangement of pre-existing music is essential to comic effect. The
presentation will then open to workshop discussion with the aim of refining how features such
as melody, rhythm, instrumentation, cultural connotations and diegetic status are put to work
in each sketch.
Josie Dolan: From laughing-at to laughing-with: Disco nostalgia and the new acceptability of
old age hetero-sexuality in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
British cinema is increasingly addressing the now ageing baby boomer generation. Whilst
films such as Iris (2001), The Queen (2006), The Iron Lady (2011), Quartet (2012) draw on the
industry’s reputation for ‘quality’ drama and have accrued critical approval, the surprise
popular success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) [and its sequel, The Second Best
Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)] places the usually denigrated romantic comedy genre under the
spotlight. Securing its cultural verisimilitude through a storyline of pensioners who remove to
the eponymous hotel as a way of managing their reduced circumstances following the banking
crash of 2008, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel fully exploits the conventions of genre, both
romance and comedy, to shift representations of old age hetero-sexuality from shred joke to
shared pleasure. Whilst being alert to the film’s intrinsic homophobia this paper argues that
an interplay between soundtrack and on-screen action draws on disco nostalgia to achieve
this shift.
Guido Heldt: Screaming with laughter: Music in British horror comedies
The attraction of horror comedy lies in its particular form of genre hybridity: it forces together
features of genres both defined by the effect they make on (audio-)viewers, but aim for
seemingly incompatible effects – effects, though, that both on the horror and on the humour
side are often achieved by the crossing of conceptual borderlines and the breaking of taboos.
What role music has in this interplay of similarity and difference provides a test case for its
discussion with regard theories of humour (and theories of art-horror), and what role music
has in British horror comedies from The Ghost Train (1941 to Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)
provides a test case for the question of the universality or cultural specificity of humour (and
of horror).
Paul Mazey: Serious opera for comic ends: opera arias in British comedy films
This paper will investigate the use of opera arias in two British comedy film scores. It will
analyse how arias from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Verdi’s Rigoletto are employed in Kind
Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony
Asquith, 1952), respectively. It will compare and contrast these examples of pre-existing
music in order to explore both the functions they serve within the films, and the inflections
offered by their existing associations.
Miguel Mera: The comedy of audiovisual musicality
The secret to comedy is timing, or so the adage goes. Yet curiously, the role of music in
generating, supporting or even contradicting comic timing has rarely been discussed within
the literature. In this presentation I will explore some recent examples from film, television,
and YouTube which highlight aspects of audiovisual interaction and synchronisation that move
beyond a basic understanding of what has traditionally been called mickey-mousing. I will
explore some of the ways in which the musical control of rhythm, gesture, tempo,
punctuation, and phrasing can all have a strong impact on comedic effect. Recent theoretical
perspectives, such as Kevin Donnelly's notion of the ‘occult aesthetics’ of audiovisual
synchronisation (which can dissipate in the face of an awareness of its existence) and Danijela
Kulezic-Wilson's discussion of the ‘musicality’ of film, particularly the disruption of linear
temporality, provide a useful starting point for an examination of audiovisual interactions that
generate humour. Examples may include Paddington (2014), Cucumber (2015), Masterchef
(2015), W1A (2015), and Cameron’s Conference Rap (2014).