How stand-ups construct and are constructed by the ‘Northernness Effect’

Abstract

ABSTRACTI argue that a cultural bias I dub the ‘Northernness Effect’ impacts on perceptions of Northern English performers and expresses a classed and gendered cultural imperialism by which the region is stigmatised and Othered in relation to more socially and economically powerful South of England. I use original empirical research based on 27 interviews with Northern performers and a content analysis of 260 newspaper comedy reviews to demonstrate that this stigma is based on embodied cultural capital, mainly by means of performers’ accents. The Northernness Effect also reifies the region as stuck in the past, as exemplified by the archetype of the ‘Northern Comic’ which haunts contemporary Northern stand-ups. I argue that this figure, epitomised by the excessive comedian Bernard Manning, functions as a ‘female grotesque’ and a barbaric other to the civilised middle-class man who is England's ‘somatic norm’. I suggest that stand-up is a form in which the Northern imaginary and hegemonic working-class masculinities and femininities can be challenged and resisted, as well as potentially reinforced. I briefly illustrate how contemporary Northern stand-ups Sophie Willan, Janice Connolly and Lucy Beaumont have enacted this resistance by ‘Queering’ ways of being a Northern woman.