Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum: Redefining ‘Unruliness’ in London’s East End

Minor, LJ

Abstract

This chapter explores Michaela Coel and her original TV sitcom Chewing Gum (E4, 2015-) through two key concepts: 'unruliness' (Rowe, 1995) and 'intersectionality'. The argument established initially by Kathleen Rowe - that female comic performance is a form of social/cultural unruliness as well as grotesque in nature – is ultimately inadequate in exploring Coel’s black female comic performance in Chewing Gum. Instead, I contend that a new analytical conception is required to interpret the text. Intersectionality, which has become a central topic in academic and activist circles alike, is a powerful conceptual framework for examining how ‘unruliness’ has shifted from the 1990s to the 2010s. Through this, I contend that Coel offers fresh and contemporary representations of black women on-screen. She mixes cultural forms in straddling disparate spaces: Ghana/Britain, Hackney/Tower Hamlets, and upper-middle class/working-class cultures. Her intersectional experiences have thus affected how contemporary racialised, gendered, classed, and spatial politics overlap in her work. I, therefore, explore how the East End is a significant space and place to explore intersectionality, as well as the ways in which Coel’s concerns with region, heritage, and community anchor her series and shift traditional representations of London’s East End.

• Online Publication Date: Sep 20, 2023
• Publication Date: Sep 20, 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 21, 2024
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Comedy
• Series ISSN: 2731-4332
• Book Title: UK and Irish Television Comedy: Nation, Region and Identity
• ISBN: 9783031236280
• Additional Information: Projects : Reclaiming Female Authorship in British Television Comedy, 2010-2016