Multicultural British Screen Comedy

Reviews / Votes

"I've been waiting for a book like this for a long time. In Multicultural British Screen Comedy: Race, Racism and Antiracism , Sarah Ilott offers a much-needed and genuinely overdue interrogation of how comedy both reproduces and challenges the racism embedded in British multicultural discourse. Comedy is so often dismissed as trivial, yet it is one of the richest, most revealing forms through which the politics of race is negotiated in everyday life. Drawing on critical race, decolonial, cultural studies and sociological perspectives, Ilott delivers a study that will be a landmark not only for critical comedy studies but for anyone seeking to understand the shifting politics of race in contemporary Britain." (Anamik Saha, Professor of Race and Media at the University of Leeds)

"In this incisive study of British screen comedy, Sarah Ilott rethinks how humour has shaped ideas of race, racism, and anti-racism in contemporary culture. Moving with ease between close reading and cultural history, she shows how comedy has helped sustain, disguise, and challenge racism on screen. Clear-eyed and persuasive without losing pleasure in the form itself, this is a book that deepens how we think about comedy - and its role in shaping anti-racist futures." (Ian Iqbal Rashid, Writer and Filmmaker (Sort Of, Touch of Pink, This Life.))

" Multicultural British Screen Comedy: Race, Racism and Antiracism is a forensic and essential examination of British comedy. Behind every joke, every sitcom, every commissioning decision lies a framework of racial attitudes and beliefs - and this book expertly exposes them. Like a magician's handbook, it reveals not just how jokes work, but what they reveal about who we are as a society. For anyone seeking to understand racism and the workings of the media, this should be required reading. But it is more than critique - it also offers hope, showing how truly great anti-racist comedy can challenge assumptions, reshape narratives, and become a powerful agent for change." (Marcus Ryder, CEO of the Film and TV Charity and co-founder of the Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity)

"In Multicultural British Screen Comedy , Sarah Ilott offers a timely, engaging, and provocative account of the politics of racism and anti-racism on the British screen over the last half century. Through critical analysis of various comedies that have aimed to grapple with questions of multiculturalism in British society, Ilott demonstrates that humor and offense cannot be isolated to matters of individual sensibilities, feelings, or taste. Instead, Ilott reveals how the broader socio-political and affective dimensions of racist and anti-racist forms of humor, comedy, and joy in Britain are bound to the histories and legacies of British imperialism, nationalism, whiteness, and white supremacy. Rendering screen comedies as a crucial site for race-making and unmaking, Ilott demonstrates why a critical analysis of humor and comedy (in Britain and beyond) is not only intellectually interesting, but aesthetically, affectively, politically, and epistemologically necessary." (Raúl Pérez, author of "The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy")

"Sarah Ilott's Multicultural British Screen Comedy: Race, Racism and Antiracism provides the most comprehensive account of British comedy in relation to race, racism and multiculturalism that is available. The book both engages deeply with comedy studies approaches to racism, and with the sociology of multiculturalism, to expand both fields with an important discussion of the role of comedy in mediating and reproducing multiculturalism, race and racism in the UK. The text also engages with detailed discussion of examples of British comedy and so documents a recent history of relevant expressions of multiculturalism on screen. This book will be essential reading for anyone wishing to critically engage with comedy, race and racism in the UK and beyond." (Simon Weaver, Brunel University of London)