Fawlty Towers Stereotypes

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The clip you have just watched is a snippet from the 1975 comedy phenomena “Fawlty Towers”. The show takes place in a hotel in Torquey (Britain) being poorly run by a rude owner named Basil, his bossy wife Sybil and a dim Spanish waiter, Manuel. The show first aired in September 19, 1975 with BBC and was loved by the viewers winning a range of awards such as the best scripted comedy (1976, 1980), the best entertainment performance, and also an NME. In this particular episode a group of Germans enter the hotel. Basil upsets the female visitor making racial comments. In hope of cheering her up he attempts German stereotypes making her even more upset. The comic elements that this clip uses include stereotype irony and intertextuality. Throughout …show more content…

He marches up and down in an exaggerated way and puts his hand over his upper lip. This is also farcical as his actions are dramatically over-reacted. This is funny because it is totally crazy that a hotel manager would perform these racial actions in a way that would create great offense to the people he is accommodating. This shows that basil is socially awkward. The reactions of the German people are also funny after basil does his racial actions. The visitors look at his in pure disgust and tell him to stop mentioning the war in a furious voice. However basil still doesn’t get that what he is doing is totally inappropriate. So he answers back “you German people have no sense of humor” as if the fact that he has gone out of control is totally oblivious to him. Among the Fawlty Towers series, the sketch “don’t mention the war” is the scene that stands out the most. The clip uses an everyday scenario, however through the creative minds of John Cleese and Connie Booth and the use of intertextuality, irony and stereotype this everyday scenario has become possibly one of the greatest comedy skits of all time. It is no wonder why it ended up winning empire magazines greatest TV episode of all time. After watching this skit countless times I can truly say that I have laughed hysterically through each

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