More S3x Please - We're British

Is not any public success an artificial contrivance? If an individual, song, book or film is given a high profile, is it not because the gatekeepers of culture have deemed that such individual, song, book or film will push public discourse in a direction which they desire?

That certainly seems to be the case with the slapstick farce, No Sex Please – We're British, a film and play that suggest Britons are coy in matters of the flesh. It is such a stupid, clunky piece of work, that its success can only be the result of boosting by the powers that be.

Such boosting has certainly been successful, having opened in 1971, it was one of the longest running plays in London. It has been so successful that the title itself has become a trope, a cultural node. This success has fed into the notoriously degenerate public discourse of Britain.

The film version opens with certain cultural tropes: the Household Guards marching through the town of Windsor, towards Windsor Castle, one of the principle residences of the monarch. The film cuts to a shop selling pornography, next to which is a Christian bookshop. The older woman looking out of the window of the bookshop looks askance at the purveyor of pornography.

Then we are shown a newly married couple who are living in a flat above a branch of Barclay's bank. Through innuendo it is suggested that the young wife, Penny Hunter, turn tricks to make some money. It sticks out as odd, but perhaps it was an erotic trope of the time cf. the 1967 film with Catherine Deneuve, Belle de Jour.

So the film is setting up the monarchy, banking and marriage as its targets for deconstruction.

Because the owner of the pornography shop and the distributor of said pornography are disorganised to the point of uselessness, a mistake is made in the delivery address. So, pornographic material starts arriving at the flat of the newly married couple, which was signed for by Brian Runnicles, the chief cashier at the bank branch. Panic ensues when the Hunters and Brian discover the contents of the package, because the manager of the branch, Mr. Bromley, has made it clear that he takes exception to pornography.

Soon, Penny's mother, Bertha, arrives. This gives the opportunity to play to one of the media industrial complexes favourite tropes: the mother-in-law. It doesn't matter that most people have reasonable relations with their parents-in-law, it serves the purpose of the entertainment industry's messaging to undermine normal familial relationships. The Hunters decide that they need to hide the porn that they were mistakenly sent from Bertha notwithstanding that she had been married three times so her morals would seem to be lax, at the very least. This is confirmed later on when a pornographic film is accidentally shown at a lecture about antiques and as there are screams to turn it off, she is keen to watch it as long as possible.

It is implied that Bertha's sexual incontinence are what caused the collapse of all three of her marriages. We are never told which of the three husbands sired the daughter, but obviously mother and daughter hardly know each other. Is this because Bertha was so keen on chasing her next lover, she couldn't be bothered with her daughter?

As for Penny, it is not obvious that she has a higher sense of morality by which she would be offended by porn. Many visual cues suggest the opposite. In one scene, she attempts to hide the pictures by putting them on a rocking chair. She then sits on the pornographic pictures and starts rocking backwards and forwards. The meaning could not be clearer. In another scene, delighted by her husband's cunning, they starting making out while leaning over a pile of pornography.

Brian is the butt of much of the slap-stick and is subject to jokes about pearl necklaces, mincing, being involved with the boy scouts and being followed out of the men's toilets by a household guard marching band. So he's gay. Please titter.

Mr. Bromley, the bank manager, who declares that he wants to stamp out the filth of pornography, is revealed as a customer of prostitutes, that doesn't make Bertha, the mother-in-law, lust after him any the less; but then, it is heavily implied that her judgement for partners is questionable.

The prostitutes who were sent by the disorganised purveyors of porn end up being sent to David and Penny's flat and touching up a bank inspector who, drugged up on sleeping pills, looks like he's masturbating against a wall.

But once one steps away from the slightly embarrassed tittering that the film is supposed to invoke, it's obvious that this piece of trash art No Sex Please – We're British undermines its own message.

The thrice-divorced Bertha has almost no relationship with her daughter, who considers her mother a nuisance.

The purveyors of the pornography are messy and disorganised. We are, hence, invited to infer that people in the business are unreliable and chaotic and so probably should be avoided. Indeed, it is because of their incompetence that the farce can even start; the film is telling that engaging in this type of business will lead to ruin.

The introduction of pornography causes chaos in Windsor and ultimately causes the bank branch to lose its Chief Cashier. Rather than supporting the theme of the film, a sexual free-for-all is shown to bring chaos. It proves that a well ordered society requires continence, at least in the work place. A minor character, Daphne Martin, continuously flirts with Brian. Perhaps this is supposed to distract us from the latent homosexuality, but then again it is inconceivable that a feisty woman of 1973 wouldn't be alive to Brian's leanings. Perhaps she is playing a psychosexual game in the service of her pride. Does this make her the most evil character in the film?

None of the characters' lives are improved by the introduction of pornography. On the contrary it brings chaos to their lives and undermines the functioning of society.

No Sex Please – We're British is a stupid film that sets up a straw man of Briton's hesitancy in matters of sex and then mocks it showing the characters up as hypocrites. The film's goal is to guilt trip Britons into making pornography acceptable and widely available. In this, it has been a wild success. Britons are largely addicted to it and familial, community and social bonds have all been weakened. Briton is broken. With a media industrial complex that made No Sex Please – We're British still firmly behind the gas-lighting project, who is going to have the courage face it down and to put Britain back together again?

::: {.subscription-widget-wrap-editor attrs="{"url":"https://goriwei.substack.com/subscribe?","text":"Subscribe","language":"en"}" component-name=“SubscribeWidgetToDOM”} ::: {.subscription-widget .show-subscribe} ::: {.preamble} Thanks for reading A Chronicle! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. :::

::: {.fake-input-wrapper} ::: {.fake-input} :::

::: {.fake-button} ::: ::: ::: :::