Willy Russell's Conventions Of Comedy

Initially, following much analysis, one can hypothesise that to a greater extent, Willy Russell, does synthesise ‘conventions of comedy’ with messages that relay serious social issues in his play. At one instance, He advocates to the audience the mode in which the lower class society were manipulated by the upper class to live a life of misdirection, to live a life of hardship obscured behind the illusions of amusement and play. For instance, Rita elucidates that ‘they’ll (the working class) tell you we have got ‘culture’, doin the pub quiz , goin’ the club’ but ‘there’s more culture in a pot of yoghurt’. Willy Russell depicts the hard truth about the working class; intertwined with the comically conventional technique of sarcasm, to disparage

To be brought up entirely by women enriched his views and allowed him a unique attitude towards. The upbringing provided him with a rich perception of the true worth of women in society, therefore, placing him in the ideal position to criticize the oppression of working class women through comical convention. He embeds into his play, an understandably biased opinion of the treatment of women entirely in their support; empathising the predicament women face: stripped off the right to live freely independent of any man. One such issue Russell appears to concentrate much attention on, is the deprivation of education for working class women. Willy Russell’s 1980’s audience comprised of both male and female audiences, thus, his advocating of views were adapted such that they suited both, genders. This entailed that he would rather criticize the men’s outlook on the education of women subconsciously rather than out rightly; due to the fact that he would lose their reception if they thought of him to be a criticizer of their attitudes towards women. And also, he would suit his message to allow women an insight to the advantages an educated life entails. At one point, operating Rita as his mouth piece, relays to the women of that generation to the idea that to educate oneself is to empower oneself. It provides one with choice rather that allowing men to decide your fate. As Rita, nearing the end of the play, finally educated, suddenly seems to be spoilt for choice. She says, ‘I dunno. I might go to France. I might go to me mother’s. I might even have a baby. I dunno’. The comedic convention of the repetition of ‘I dunno’ is made use of by Russell to convey this idea of empowering women with education The repetition may induce a form of nervous laughter across any audience in any time frame, the idea forming in the minds of the audience, questioning to how effective