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Friday 9 January 2009

What a carry on

James Walton suggests reading George Orwell in order to understand the appeal of Carry On films

Orwell’s essay may even hold the key as well to the much-debated question of why the Carry On films declined so markedly in the 1970s. Various, largely true theories have been advanced for this: that they were eclipsed by the more explicit Confessions films — co-starring, let’s not forget, Cherie Blair’s dad as Sidney Noggett; that Sid James finally began to look too old to be chasing young women; that the later films were rubbish. Yet, surely the main reason is that by then the whole Carry On world existed in a vacuum. ‘All societies,’ wrote Orwell innocently, ‘have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality.’ In that context, ‘a dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack upon morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise’. Once things had actually become otherwise, no such rebellion was necessary and the Carry On jokes were left looking not so much unfunny as entirely pointless.

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