Cameras, reality and Miranda

ABSTRACT

The increasing presence of surveillance cameras has had profound implications for comedy. Sitcom once habitually gave hints that its characters possessed an inner life, often one that was creatively inventive. ‘Reality’ television shares sitcom's assumption that ordinary lives are funny, but tends to create its own stereotypes and record them in ways that fail to acknowledge that they have any other dimensions. Sitcoms like The Royle Family (Aherne and Cash, 1996) and The Office (Gervais and Merchant, 2001) have developed some strategies to resist this, using the style of documentary but allowing characters to hint at their inner lives and their feelings about the camera itself. The paper explores twenty-first century BBC sitcom Miranda (2009) as a subversive new example of this practice, looking at the way the camera is ‘tamed’ by Miranda Hart's transparency in relating to it.

KEYWORDS:

• sitcom
• camera
• reality tv
• stereotype
• comic
• gender