Carry On Iconoclasts

 Carry On Iconoclasts:

By Chris Balchin

The first six Carry On films were scripted by Norman Hudis. A former local newspaper journalist on the Hampstead & Highgate Express he was subsequently a playwright and B-movie writer (Carry On Line 1998). His experience as a local journalist and his contact with the institutions that controlled parochial life would help to furnish his depiction of schools, hospitals, the army and the police that formed the backbone of the early films. Hudis faithfully recreates the struggles and changing roles that these institutions had within the brave new world of a post-war and post-austerity Britain, a world in which the country was trying to comes to terms with its new place in the global scheme of things. What I wish to do in this essay is to show that the way in which Hudis tackles social change is compatible with the ideas of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly Bakhtin’s concept of the "carnivalesque". From this I also wish to argue that in issues relating to sexuality, the Carry On films were far ahead of their contemporaries, especially in their depiction of the gay male.

What Hudis does with the Carry On films is to use satire, but this is not the vicious, negative, establishment-baiting of the television programme That Was the Week That Was, but an ambivalent, gentler satire in which both sides of an argument are opened up to question without necessarily providing a definitive answer. At the same time, Hudis does not shy away from letting vice, folly and extremism undermine itself. What Hudis does not do is to undermine the actual institutions, rather they are treated as "heroes" in much the same way as historical and legendary figures are represented in menippean satire, a satire that was developed in Ancient Greek literature and characterised by its use of the fantastic and adventure "... to a purely ideational and philosophical end" (Bakhtin in Morris, 1994 p. 189). In menippean satire heroes provoke and test ideas (very often topical and contemporary issues) by being put in extraordinary situations; however, this use of parody does not mock the hero or his exploits but only their "tragic heroization" (Morson & Emerson, 1990 p.434). In other words, it is the near mythic status of British institutions and their resistance to change that is mocked by Hudis not the institutions themselves which are still treated with respect. The status of the institutions in the late 1950’s and early ’60’s was one of flux with new post-war ideas and criticisms rubbing up against the old established order. With the imminent end of National Service, the rise of the national health service, the advance of the secondary modern school over the grammar school and the changing roles of women in society, the old world was being sorely tested. Bakhtin says that

This is how Hudis uses his characters. For example, Charles Hawtrey plays obviously gay parts, yet his gayness is never an issue - only his interaction with society as soldier, patient or teacher and how each character deals with the situations that he is placed in. Likewise, it is possible to see that it is not the institution that is being tested but the buffoons who are in their employ - the harridan matron, the police inspector who thinks more of his shubunkins than fighting crime - people who are adept at delegating the blame for their own incompetence.

Menippean satire uses scenes that involve scandal, odd behaviour, actions and speech that occur in the wrong place at the wrong time, in fact all the things that inform modern farce. Bakhtin says that this "...destroys the epic and tragic wholeness of the world, they make a breach in the stable, normal ("seemly") course of human affairs and events..." (Ibid. p.191). That the Carry On team are constantly being caught in flagrante delicto - usually quite innocently (as when Hattie Jacques and Sid James are caught rolling on the floor by the inspector in Carry On Constable, or the faux pas by Charles Hawtrey in the same film when he gives Sid James the bunch of flowers "with my love") - helps to upset the perceived sense of propriety that the institutions are supposed to engender. It is these farcical elements of the films that liberate the characters from any constraints that are imposed on them by society, whether class, sexuality or status within their profession (see the wry smile from Hattie Jacques’ matron when she finds the daffodil being used as a rectal thermometer in Carry On Nurse, a far cry from the harridan she has been throughout the rest of the film).

Jacques’ roles often had her playing women who represented an official oppressive regime, whether as a "whack ’em" teacher, a tyrannical matron, a senior military medical officer or a police sergeant. The fact that she is represented as having attained such high positions in her chosen trades is remarkable considering the usual roles deemed appropriate for women at this time. Yet, even though she represents the institution in her senior roles it is her character that is attacked for its professional foibles never the institution itself. In Carry On Nurse Kenneth Williams verbally assaults Jacques’ matron when he is told not to sit on top of his bed during "matron’s rounds": "If a doctor asks me to hang by one arm from a ceiling wearing an aqualung with my birthday tattooed on my left buttock in shorthand, I’ll do it. He aims to cure me. Your rule has nothing to do with my cure, therefore it has no meaning in here." Institutional rules are fine, individuals rules are not.

This mocking of officialdom is a major part of Bakhtin’s theory of the "carnivalesque", a folk culture in which " a boundless world of humorous forms and manifestations opposed the official and serious tones of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture". (Bakhtin, 1965,1984 p.4).¹ The central tenet of carnival is that of laughter, but it is not the laughter of parody, satire or irony that is familiar from today’s television situation comedies. For instance, in the programme One Foot in the Grave the hero Victor Meldrew does constant battle with authority, institutions, other people and the restrictions of getting older. The laughter here is based on the parodic depiction of the institutions and of life in general, which is often played so over-the-top that the situations become surreal and almost absurd. An example of this is when Victor orders a rubbish skip for the outside of his house. We know that it will end up with the ubiquitous mattress in it but when he awakes and finds that someone has dumped a Citröen 2CV in the skip the humour has gone beyond the realms of reality into a satirical ridiculousness. The difference between this and the laughter of carnival is that carnival laughter is ambivalent, it is not directed at a specific object. In carnival we would not laugh at Victor Meldrew but with him as in the Carry On’s we laugh at the situations that the characters find themselves in, not at the characters themselves who seem to transcend the plot. Victor is sometimes considered to be mad, especially by his long-suffering neighbours, but his "madness" just relates to the bizarre situations that he finds himself in. "Madness" in the Carry On’s is different in that it follows the same path as that of folk culture as expressed by Bakhtin. Bakhtin says that "... madness makes men look at the world with different eyes, not dimmed by "normal", [...] madness is a gay parody of official reason, of the narrow seriousness of official "truth". (Bakhtin, 1965, 1984 p.39). Perhaps the most telling example of "madness" in the films is the scene of the operation on Leslie Phillips’ bunion in Carry On Nurse. The drunken team attempt to knock out Phillips but the laughing gas ends up affecting them all until they become rendered more and more helpless by their inane giggling. The sense of madness here is nothing to do with mental health, personal failings or being dumped on by society but just a farcical exercise in trying to undermine the gravity and the life and death atmosphere which is usually indicative of an operating theatre.

In the same way that there is a different meaning placed onto the idea of madness in the carnivalesque so there is another side to the theme of the mask. Masks are not worn to conceal or deceive but, as in Ancient Greek plays, to transform, to metamorphose and to reveal the character. While physical masks are not actually worn in the Carry On movies, the characters themselves (by representing the police or teachers or nurses) can be seen to act as masks that reveal the "... peculiar interrelation of reality and image..." (Bakhtin, 1965 1984 p.40), that is the perception of the "heroic" institutions and their follies. For Julia Kristeva, the mask allows the acquisition of a multitude of identities by the suppressing any individuality and allows life to be treated ambivalently, irreverently and with a spirit of laughter (In Lecthte, 1994 p.9). Of course, this is exactly what the Carry On’s do.

In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin lists some other features of the carnivalesque: Much of the Carry On humour can be seen to fit these categories.

Although at first the idea that there is no division between performer and spectator seems manifestly false - after all we have to physically watch the film from a position outside of it - the observation that we "live in it", that is the world represented on screen with all its familiar institutions and characterisations, suggests that we can transcend this barrier without being subject to the usual emotions attached to their representations. We can connect with the police force without any feelings of respect (or fear!), or hospitals without worry or politics. This blurring of reality with its fictional counterparts is very much a part of the success of soap-operas, many people today become so involved in the on-screen antics of the various characters that they become almost "family" and are spoken of in the same familial terms (re. the campaign to free the "Weatherfield One" after the character of Deirdre Raschid was falsely imprisoned in Coronation Street; questions were even raised in the House of Commons about the storyline). In laughing with the Carry On actors at the follies of the world at large rather than laughing at them we can feel a part of the team. Identification of the actors with their characters became so intertwined in the public consciousness that by Carry On Camping in 1969 all the main characters took on the Christian names of the actors playing them.

One of the film series strengths is in its throwing together a disparate collection of people in a hostile yet familiar environment in which the usual hierarchical distinctions are blurred. This is mainly illustrated in Carry On Sergeant, Nurse, and Regardless. The middle and working class, the macho and the effete, the sexually rapacious and the sexually inadequate, the intellectual and the ignorant are all gathered together through fate rather choice whether through being "called up" for military themselves, this is saved for the representatives of the institution in which they find themselves. One telling example of this is in the discussion in Carry On Sergeant between Kenneth Williams’ intellectual character with the practical, no nonsense sergeant played by William Hartnell in which Williams brings up the contemporary debate on atomic weapons. This is important as the government were at that time facing public dissent over nuclear research with the subsequent marches on Aldermaston and the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. During bayonet practice Williams questions the purpose of conventional warfare with "Don’t you think that this is a trifle out of date in a world bristling with H-bombs, Sergeant?" To which Hartnell replies "In answer to you question, I’ll back him [Hawtrey, maniacally stabbing a stuffed sack with his bayonet] against the H-bomb any day." Nuclear weapons are again debated in Carry On Nurse, when Williams’ (again intellectual) character tells working-class "savage" boxer Kenneth Connor that "...nuclear physics is the thing of the future", to which Connor replies that it is more savage than boxing "...pressing buttons and making explosions and giving everybody horrible weather in the summer", practical concerns that worried the ordinary people of the country. Both arguments are presented in easily understandable terms but neither are given to be the right answer, the audience is allowed to make up its own mind. By placing the "wise and the stupid" next to each other in a hospital ward gives the chance for debate between people who would not normally come into contact with each other.

The "sacred texts" of institutions and social and sexual mores that the Carry On films "bring down to earth" are often sent up by references to the body and its functions. Certainly, under Talbot Rothwell’s writing the films descended to vulgarity for vulgarity’s sake but under Hudis the sexual innuendo was more to do with exposing hypocrisy and prejudice rather than a cheap laugh. Jim Dale says:

This corresponds well with the Bakhtinian idea of the "grotesque body" and the fact that bodily functions such as copulation, urination and defecation are also ambivalent. The body is not private and personal, everything we do is the same as everybody else does. The body and all its functions are opened to the world and it is this shared experience that the Carry On films celebrate.

The idea of the "grotesque" is also present in the Carry On depiction of sexuality. Although there are attractive actors who play the "love interest" (people such as Terence Longdon and Shirley Eaton) their roles are usually played in a "chaste" almost chivalrous manner. It is down to the less attractive actors such as Sid James and Hattie Jacques to really exude any kind of raw repressed sexuality. Although more explicit in the later films it always seems to be Sid James who ends up with the attractive blondes and Jacques in her night-gown trying desperately to seduce Kenneth Williams. Again there is an ambivalence here towards some sort of Apollonian ideal; it is James’ dirty Dionysian laugh that gets the girls and Jacques earth-motherly physique that chases the boys rather than the usual stereotypical gorgeous young things.

It is in their honest depiction of sexuality that the Carry On films are at their most remarkable especially in their treatment of homosexuality, or rather, their non-treatment of it. Gay characters are introduced (mainly played by Charles Hawtrey; Kenneth Williams’ characters are virtually asexual despite being propositioned by several women) without comment or prejudice. "The [Carry On] films are oddly ambiguous - he [Hawtrey] is both "obvious" and yet not explicit." (R. Dyer in Bourne 1996). Hawtrey is a coded iconic message in that everything about his character is connoted rather than denoted and while it is easy to say that his characters are stereotypically homosexual there is never any actual definite reference to his sexuality. Camille Paglia suggests that there are two main strands of gay imagery, on the one hand that of the castrated, glamorous and flamboyant and on the other that of the perfect, architectural, masculinity which disdains femininity, personified as the hunk. (Paglia 1992 p.23). It is not hard to see where Hawtrey’s characters fit in - just listen to the different way that Hawtrey says the phrase "Oh, hello" in comparison with Leslie Phillips’, and in Carry On Nurse where with wrists flapping limply he listens to the recipes ('Camper’s Jamboree Folly') and Mrs Dales Diary on the radio. But in part this was necessary as effeminacy was one of the few ways of indicating a characters orientation.² At this time it was rare for a depiction of a gay man to fit in with the second of Paglia’s descriptions although Dirk Bogarde in Victim (1961) is as close as any. Gay men in films had always tended to be portrayed as relatively harmless effete sissies who tended to be hairdressers or designers on the periphery of the film and this is how the public identified and accepted them. Problems began when gay men became one of the main subjects of a film as in Victim and A Taste of Honey (1961). In fact, between 1955 and 1965 there were about fifty British and American films that contained some reference to gay men, whether explicit or inferred, and about a dozen plays on the British stage (Bourne, 1996; Russo 1981, 1987; de Jongh, 1992). But it was Bogarde’s sympathetic portrayal of Melville Farr as "straight acting" and with an explicit sexual desire for the young suicide, Jack Barrett, ("I wanted him!") that caused particular problems with the censor John Trevelyan, because Bogarde did not conform to the contemporary stereotype but to a more "normal" and familiar world.

Far from being unacceptable to British audiences, gay characters were approved as long as there was no mention of what they got up to in bed. If sexual practice was mentioned it tended to cause problems with the censor. The difficulty with films such as Victim is that, as Pauline Kael says "there is so much effort to make us feel sympathetic to homosexuals in Victim that they are never allowed to be gay." (in Russo, 1987 p.153) In the Carry On films there were no such problems.

In Carry On Sergeant Hawtrey plays an effete and bungling man who is always out of step with his fellow recruits. That he is tolerated at all is in itself remarkable, in the real world of National Service:

There were many gay men who were called up to join the forces who "...later ‘came out of the closet’ [admitting] that during their time in the services they adopted supertough and over aggressive attitudes to mask any suspicions that they may be homosexual." (Ibid.) This is possibly echoed in the film by Hawtrey during bayonet practice when the recruits have to charge a stuffed dummy and stab it. After various silly failures to correctly attack the dummy it is Hawtrey’s turn. After running at it he repeatedly stabs the stuffed sack with tremendous (albeit it very camp) anger, so much so that he has to be stopped from getting too carried away:

In Carry on Constable, Hawtrey - as P.C. Timothy Gorse - explains the reasons for bringing a bunch of chrythanthemums into the station:

James’ response is one of complete indifference with just a "Thank you Gorse" and a "Do something with these" (the flowers) to Thurston. This indifference is also noted towards bit players as well. After dropping off a fare in Carry On Cabby Kenneth Connor notices an earring on the seat. Shouting after the gentleman "Excuse me sir. Does this pearl earring belong to you?" the man (Michael Ward) exclaims "What! With tweeds?" All that Connor does is produce a wry knowing smile.

One of the roots that the Carry On films have in pantomime and slapstick is that of men in drag. The cross-dressing of their characters in the early films are handled in two very different ways depending on the sexuality of the character. There are three occasions in which male characters impersonate women, Charles Hawtrey in Carry On Nurse and with Kenneth Williams in Carry On Constable, and Kenneth Connor in Carry On Cabby. To start with Kenneth Connor first, the reason he has to drag up is in order to infiltrate the garage of "Glamcabs" run by Hattie Jacques. We meet him in the cafe dressed in a greatcoat under which he is concealing a lacy basque teamed up with socks and a pair of workboots. Connor looks ridiculous in this get up especially when he removes his cap to let long blonde hair cascade down to ribald laughter from the other men. It is this incongruity between women’s attire and men’s working clothes and the uncomfortability of Connor’s and the men’s characters heterosexuality which is the first way in treating drag in the films. This uncomfortability is carried further when after purloining a "Glamcabs" uniform and going out to the garage Connors has to be reminded to "Walk like a bird". His way of doing this is to raise his arm limply and mince - not like a "bird" at all. His uneasiness is also underlined by the problems he has with the elasticated knickers - "It’s like sitting in a catapult" - and the fact that he mops his brow with the stuffing from his bra. No one is fooled for a minute by his disguise, he just looks like a man in women’s clothing. In the later Carry On’s actors such as the six foot seven Bernard Bresslaw and Sid James did much of the dragging up and they both look ridiculous, unlike Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams.

Hawtrey first drags up in Carry On Nurse in which he dresses in a nurses uniform so that he can keep watch on the ward while the scene in the operating theatre is carried out; but it is his performance with Williams in Carry On Constable that stands out. In the majority of films in which cross-dressing features, the character donning the drag tends to be forced into the situation either by socio-economic necessity (such as Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie 1982 or Robin Williams in Mrs Doubtfire 1993) or as a means of hiding or escape (Cary Grant in I Was a Male War Bride 195 or Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot 1959). Conversely, Hawtrey and Williams seem to don women’s attire just for the pleasure of it. There is no real need to dress in drag to go undercover in the department store, plain clothes would have sufficed, but in probably the campest scene in the whole film series the two actors relish their parts:

The difference between this portrayal and that of Connors is that Hawtrey and Williams actually look fairly authentic. Williams is dressed very much as his grandmother probably would have done while Hawtrey is the glamorous one. Hawtrey’s comment that "...I haven’t done this since I was in the army ... at a camp concert" is an interesting line in that - despite the obvious double entendre of the word "camp" - it recalls that many contemporary entertainers started their careers in the army including Williams. The duos attention to detail goes as far as giving themselves women’s names: "Agatha" for Hawtrey and "Ethel" for Williams ("It was my grandmothers name" to which Hawtrey replies "If grandmama could see you now, she’d be so proud"). Once they enter the shop floor the two of them become so involved in their characters that they start bitching among themselves over their lack of "prettiness". When you consider that this film was released the year before A Taste of Honey, a film that had problems with the censors over the character of Geof being "too sissy" or an "exaggerated nancy boy" (Aldgate, 1995 pps. 130, 132) it seems remarkable that it attracted no comment.

T

his scene is also important as it helps to illustrate Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque as a "pageant without footlights" whose participants "live in it" (Vice, 1997 p.152). In this scene there is a constant switch between Williams and Hawtrey acting a part and playing themselves. The boundaries between art and life seem to disappear as the pair of them camp it up in front of the mirror and adjust their dress, with Hawtrey poking his tongue out at his reflection or when they are running through the street with Williams having great difficulty trying to escape in a pair of women’s shoes compared to Hawtrey’s quiet elegance. This blurring of reality and fiction lends a "freedom" to the piece which it would not have if they were just acting, and it is perhaps this freedom that gives the films their timeless appeal and popularity.

In conclusion, we can see that the early Carry On films follow a very old tradition of satirical humour, one that can be traced back through the medieval concept of the carnivalesque to the menippean satire of the Ancient Greeks. The very institutions that are the background to these films - battle discipline and fitness in Carry On Sergeant, health in Carry On Nurse, education in Carry On Teacher, marriage in Carry On Cabby - can almost be seen as the modern equivalent of the Olympian attributes and concerns of the gods in the ancient dramas. The right to access these basic tenets of existence are never questioned in the films, the institutions are ultimately the "heroes" because what ever drama is going on around them or on behalf of them the institutions always remain as a sign of stability and continuity and as such are sacrosanct. What the Carry On films do is to show up the "false gods" of anachronistic and petty minded bureaucracy - the value of the bayonet in the nuclear age, the rules of a Matron that have nothing to do with health, the use of corporal punishment to instil moral fibre ("You bend a child double in order to give it an upright character" - Kenneth Williams in Carry On Teacher) - ideas that belong in the past and are losing their relevance in the post-war world. It is the ambivalent way in which these follies are shown up by their comparison to an alternative that ultimately destroys them. Williams does not actually say that it is wrong to hit a child but justs opens the idea to criticism in the same way that Leslie Phillips’ reliance on child psychology is also critiqued. It is this non-privileging of ideas that tie the films in with their carnivalesque antecedents in which ambivalence is used to de-centre society.

This ambivalence to ideas is carried onto the depiction of "otherness" in the films. Outside the hierarchy of employment everybody is shown to be on an equal footing, whatever the gender, sexuality or attractiveness of the character. While the women can be seen to follow the ancient triumvirate of virgin, mother and crone, so the men can be seen to be immature and naive, sexually rapacious or emasculated (usually by their wives). Between these two sets of oppositions can be found Charles Hawtrey and, to a lesser extent, Kenneth Williams. It is this ambivalence towards sexuality that allows the films to include such obviously gay characters, not only Hawtrey and Williams but also some of the bit-part characters such as Kenneth Connor’s fare in Carry On Cabby and the photographers in Carry On Regardless. The gay characters are not victims or suicides or criminals but are just allowed to "be". This letting people "be" is, perhaps, the reason why the films have become such a part of modern folklore. The films are part of an ancient tradition of using humour to show up mans follies and as such are easily assimilated. They don’t need to be full of portentous "realism" and gritty dialogues to put across the same points as the "kitchen sink" school. People would prefer the use of humour to show up social ills rather than be bludgeoned over the head with them and this is one of the reasons for their enduring popularity as well as being just plain funny.

¹ It is interesting and an indictment of post-war society that the Carry On team were not brave enough to countenance making a film mocking religion.

² This was a time (April 1963) when the Sunday Mirror could still publish a two-page spread on "How to Spot a Possible Homo" - he would give you "shifty glances", have "dropped eyes" and "a fondness for the theatre". (David 1997, pps.197-8). In many ways Hawtrey is a metonymic character in that he stands for the whole of an imagined homosexual lifestyle as then understood by the general public.

³ It may seem surprising that the word "gay" here holds this meaning. The word use does not owe its origins to post-Stonewall homosexual culture but can be attested as early as 1935 (O.E.D.). Kenneth Williams uses the word frequently in his diaries as far back as 1947. For example, "Thursday, 16 January - Went round to the gay bar which wasn't in the least gay..." (Davies ed. 1993 p.8). The words first use in film is in the 1938 American film Bringing Up Baby in which Cary Grant is caught by his wife's aunt in a woman's diaphanous night-gown with fur trimmings after his own clothes have been sent to the cleaners by his wife. The aunt asks if he always dresses like that to which Grant hysterically replies "No! I've just gone gay ... all of a sudden!" (Bruzzi 1997, pps.147-8; Russo 1981, 1987, p.47).

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