Challenge #02427-F237: The Tune Called Yakety Sax

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Explaining 'The Benny Hill Show' to future Culture classes. -- Anon Guest

Every entertainment is a product of its time and a product of its medium and a product of its culture. Nothing shows this more than the audio-visual media of the twentieth century. Here, technological progress evolves over the passage of a handful of years and highlights cultural evolution at the same time.

In this unit, we're examining a pre-Shattering comedian Benny Hill, and the show he created in his name and image. Here, we witness a grown man occupying the 'naughty schoolboy' archetype in a semi-burlesque series of sketch comedies that sometimes barely managed to sail past the censors. This is the direct result of the dying embers of prudism meeting the rising forces of sexual liberation, in an era where an older man interested in a younger woman was still not viewed as a creep.

Established values are parodied for comedic value. Here, the older man is not an authority, but rather a figure of ridicule. One that is ridiculed even further by being overwhelmed by young, virile, and powerful women. The titular player in the show is often incompetent, or accidentally beneficial in a way that offends the majority. The culmination of every episode is the chase sequence.

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