Mocking the "queer" stereotype in the TV series Little Britain

Abstract

This paper will analyze the sitcom Little Britain as one of the TV series which mocks and subverts the traditional British queer stereotype. The perspective of this paper is twofold. The primary purpose is to shed light on how the recurring character appearing in Little Britain’s episodes, Emily Howard, the transvestite, enacts a series of situations that satirize and spoof the British society, through a humour originating from the queer stereotype presented in the sketches. This will be better appreciated focusing on the concept of gender identity, in that it represents the central issue of this sitcom. This term has appeared recently together with other connected expressions such as gender-bender, introduced in the early 1980s. Indeed, as Glover and Kaplan state, “(…) phrases like gender role or gender identity are in fact relatively new”.