Analysis of TV comedy-dramas shows "social mobility is a joke”
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A new article, co-written by Professor Jo Littler in the School of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, explores TV programmes by and about working-class women and how they express the absurdity of middle-class ideals of social mobility and meritocracy.
Sophie Willan as Alma in Alma's Not Normal, which is available on BBC iPlayer (Photo: BBC/Expectation TV/Ben Blackall)
The programmes examined included the BBC/HBO series ‘Rain Dogs’ starring Daisy-May Cooper and executive produced by Cash Carraway, British sitcom ‘Chewing Gum’ written by and starring Michaela Coel, and BBC comedy series ‘Alma’s Not Normal’ which is written by and stars Sophie Willan.
These series tell us stories about community and collective survival in the face of hostile social structures.
Professor Jo Littler
The paper titled “Social Mobility is a Joke: Working-class women and British TV comedy on ‘the social floor’” - published in European Journal of Cultural Studies - was co-written by Professor Littler and sociologist Professor Bev Skeggs.
The paper looks at three examples of British comedy TV series through the lens of ‘autosociobiography’, a term more traditionally applied to literary texts. Autosociobiography – coined by Nobel-Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux – refers to texts which blend personal memoir with sociological analysis.
Professor Jo Littler said, “A new generation of female, British, working-class writers are rejecting narratives that they just need to ‘just work harder’ in order to make it. They are turning attention towards the complexities of working-class life as it is lived, and the complexities of the communities they live in. It’s a rejoinder to the disparaging and narratives about working-class life of the ‘90s, like 'Little Britain'.
Rejecting ‘respectability’, aspirational narratives about social mobility and breaking the ‘class ceiling’, these series rather acknowledge lived experiences of seeking a ‘social floor’ - craving security and not living in precarity with constant worries about losing everything – in an often-hostile environment.
The article argues that these autobiographical TV programmes show that the 1990s meritocratic dream that ‘anyone can make it’ is now widely understood to be a joke. It places these programmes in a tradition of working-class solidarity and survival that turns tragedy into comedy, highlighting their sharp eye for social exploitation.