I enjoyed the recent article on the Daily Sceptic about how life in modern Britain was becoming increasingly like an episode of Dad’s Army. Yet this prompted me to think how, possibly, an even more apt 1970s sit-com equivalency with life in our putrefying nation right now was with Rising Damp. Had anyone else thought to make a similar comparison?
Looking it up, I was happy to find a new book, called Code: Damp – An Esoteric Guide to British Sitcoms, by Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, which seemed to be drawing some kind of similarity between the rotten state of the corrupt live-in landlord Rupert Rigsby’s home for rent in the show, and the equally mouldy and damp-ridden state of the nation at large, both in terms of its crumbling infrastructure and its ailing psyche. So, I sent off for a copy. It does indeed tell us quite a bit about the parlous state of our nation today. Either the whole text is a very clever satirical joke being deliberately played upon 21st Century Critical Theory academic obscurantism, or else a quite inadvertent illustration of said academic trends’ many and manifest intellectual failings. Or, just possibly, a bit of both; like all the best sit-coms, Rising Damp included, the book is an inextricable mixture of comedy and tragedy. I have to say, I actually rather liked it, but only because it’s so very, very strange.
Rising Incomprehension
What is the book actually about? According to the publisher’s
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A shout-out here to the glorious Sokal Hoax – a test of whether a “leading North American journal of cultural studies [would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”
the full text is online – it is a classic
I usually enjoy reading Tucker’s articles but with this one, I have to admit that I have simply no idea what he’s actually writing about.
Proof, if needs be, that most arts academics are confused charlatans with some form of mental illness who would be unemployable elsewhere.
Does the fact that these Sitcoms were almost certainly filmed on a TV set, and not in the case of Rising Damp an old decaying Victorian House enter this authors reasoning?
Seems like a massive pile of twaddle, which I will avoid.
Could the author possibly be a script writer for Kamala Harris?
A fascinating article about an eminently avoidable book. Thanks.
Word salad. I never touch the stuff.
Maybe as part of your five a day – or whatever number it is now
Consider Leo Strauss’s work Persecution and the Art of Writing – many works of art contain hidden messages for the elite, and a plain sense for the uninitiated – it is an exoteric-esoteric form of writing. The authors hide their intent out of fear of persecution, but put into the domain a blueprint for future political direction. If you read 1984 or Brave new World in that light what does it tell you? Are they predictions and warnings, or blueprints?
Babylon Bee stuff. I hope in her day job she teaches people stuff that is not gibberish like this.
I suppose it is better than writing a book on how all 70s sitcoms are racist, sexist, homophobic etc.
Sitcom shows an extreme and grotesque version of its times.
Who’d have thought?
I’ll swerve. Thanks.