Transculturality in British Comedy

Changing Perspectives on Race and Culture

Abstract

Intercultural competencies are often called on in educational programmes and in the construction of school curricula. Given the new mainstream success of British Asian TV and film comedy productions at the turn of the millennium, this article explores the question of whether such formats of ‘intercultural comedy’ can be fruitfully employed in teaching transculturality. Through a close reading of selected sketches from the BBC comedy series Goodness Gracious Me (1998–1999), the paper analyses the jokes’ humoristic strategies of meaning creation in order to determine their education and transcultural potential. The educational potential of comedy in a transcultural classroom is shown to lie in the possibilities for changing perspectives that it creates, the breaking down of old logics and relations, and the dynamic reshuffling of meanings.