{"id":731,"date":"2010-12-13T21:32:36","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T20:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=731"},"modified":"2011-01-25T17:55:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T16:55:02","slug":"laughing-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=731","title":{"rendered":"Laughing stock"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Within a few days of the first TV broadcasts by the OU one newspaper picked up on the comic potential of women studying by watching television. ”The whole idea of the Open University must be a cartoonist\u2019s as well as a student\u2019s dream. Just imagine the problem there may be in some homes when Dad wants to watch one channel, the kids a second and Mum is adamant that she must study for her degree’ (Aberdeen Evening Express<\/em> 15 Jan 1971). Numerous academic studies have supported the anecdotal view that humour and laughter helps to relieve tension and anxiety and can act as a buffer against the negative effects of stress through enabling a situation to be restructured so that it is less threatening. A selection of cartoons from the pages of Sesame 1973-1979 appeared in the publication to mark the first decade of the university,\u00a0The first ten years. A special edition of Sesame to mark the tenth anniversary of the Open University, 1969-1979. <\/em>These\u00a0indicate some of the ways in which humour was employed as means of coping with the disruption of norms and expectations. There is housewife watching television while eating chocolates and drinking. She is addressing her spouse and saying \u2018When do we eat? When do we eat? \u2500 You just can\u2019t get used to being married to an intellectual, can you!\u2019 Next to this cartoon is one which features a council road sweeper who appears to be studying for an OU degree. The absurdity of this idea is foregrounded by his innovative use of a book held in place on his broom so that he can read and sweep at the same time. A third cartoon features a wife listening to the radio at just after 6am while her husband is asleep. She appears to be both stressed and, in her curlers, irritated expression and engagement with the broadcast, a ridiculous harridan.<\/p>\n

Another image is of a woman who is failing to multi-task, as so distracted is she by her course book that the ironing has caught alight. Her husband, who is sitting with his paper, looks on.\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

While humour can play a part in resistance, the resistance can be to novelty or change. To the extent that jokes can reinforce societal role conceptions, they may function as a means of bolstering the status quo. In this instance the humour lies in the idea that working people and housewives should step out of role and reveal other aspects of their identities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within a few days of the first TV broadcasts by the OU one newspaper picked up on the comic potential of women studying by watching television. ”The whole idea of the Open University must be a cartoonist\u2019s as well as a student\u2019s dream. Just imagine the problem there may be in some homes when Dad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-methods-history-of-the-ou","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":961,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}