This book is the first to take comedy seriously as an important aspect of the popular mockumentary form of film and television fiction. It examines the ways in which mockumentary films and television programmes make visiblethrough comedythe performances that underpin straight documentaries and many of our public figures. Mockumentary Comedy focuses on the rock star and the politician, two figures that regularly feature as mockumentary subjects. These public figures are explored through detailed textual analyses of a range of film and television comedies, including A Hard Day's Night, This is Spinal Tap, The Thick of It, Veep and the works of Christopher Guest and Alison Jackson. This book broadens the scope of existing mockumentary scholarship by taking comedy seriously in a sustained way for the first time. It ultimately argues that the comedic performances by performers and of documentary conventionsare central to the form's critical significance and popular appeal.

Offers an altogether new approach to investigating one of contemporary film and television's most popular and persistent narrative modes Brings a number of film and television texts into critical discussion of the mockumentary for the first time Charts an entirely new terrain to existing texts on mockumentary, focusing on the significance of comedy and performance

Autorentext

Richard Wallace is Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.

Inhalt
The Fine Line between Stupid and Clever: An Introduction.-Part I Music.-Acting Naturally: Performing The Beatles .-Parodying Performance in This Is Spinal Tap.-Best in Show:.-Christopher Guest as a Mockumentary Auteu.-Part II Politics 'The Day the PM Joined The Thick of It': The Mockumentary and New Labour.-Campaigning for Authenticity in the Post-Truth Era