Sunny Prestatyn Philip Larkin Analysis

only can comedy use the subversion of expectation facetiously, but it can comment on the real life rift between moral expectation, purity and the idyllic and the crass and corrupt truth of society.

Sunny Prestatyn (Phillip Larkin)

• The subject of Larkin’s dark satirical poem is the sexualised image of woman on a billboard poster luring holidaymakers to visit the once popular Welsh seaside resort of “Sunny Prestatyn.”

• The first stanza contains witty comedy in the form of puns where “hunk” both refers to clump and a colloquial word for attractive male and the word “palms” belies sexual innuendo.

• Despite its dark themes, the poem’s colloquial tone in phrases such as “slapped up” and “or something,” abide by comedic conventions.

• Sexual innuendo

• How the poem is valued and interpreted depends on the time and context of its intended audience. Though crass, sexual humour has a long history in comedy (consider the Classical Greek play Lysistrata), modest audiences may take offence.

• Comedy can evade the traditional restrictions on content and language, a characteristic of the genre which Larkin exploits to reveal the ugliness and obscenity of a flawed society.

• Incongruity Theory posits that comedy is derived from the perception of something incongruous violating our mental patterns and expectations. Sunny Prestatyn initially constructs an idyllic image of femininity only to undermine it through coarse sexual innuendo, offensive language, and violent imagery to comedic effect.

Black Adder: Dish and Dishonesty (Rowan Atkinson and Ben Elton)

• Blackadder the Third is a constructivist retrovision - that is it “self consciously reinterprets history through the meshes of genre” in order to comment contemporary issues of the late 1980s.

• The series’ primary comedic tropes include parody, hyperbole, repetition and comedic