Pub Date : 2020-11-26DOI: 10.1080/2040610x.2020.1850098
Eric Shouse
Abstract Greg Giraldo, a Harvard Law graduate, achieved notoriety thanks to regular appearances on the popular Comedy Central roasts. The success that Kendrick Kang-Joh Jeong, MD (‘Dr. Ken’) had as a stand-up comic earned him roles as Ben Chang on the television series Community and Leslie Chow in The Hangover I, II and III. In this paper, grounded in a series of in-depth interviews with working stand-up comedians with graduate-level educations, I probe the relationship between intellectualism and humor production, and describe the degree to which ‘aca-comics’ can integrate their identities as comedians and their professional lives. To cite just a few examples, I will share the story of a young woman employed by the Center for Disease Control who uses a stage name and never discusses work for fear of damaging her professional reputation, a PhD in Psychology who markets himself in the professional speaking world as a psychologist who is also a comedian, and an Assistant Professor of African History who longed for tenure so he could ‘come out’ to his colleagues about his other life as a stand-up comic in New York City.
摘要Greg Giraldo毕业于哈佛大学法学院，因经常出现在喜剧中心的热门节目中而臭名昭著。Kendrick Kang Joh Jeong，医学博士（“Dr.Ken”）作为单口相声演员的成功为他赢得了在电视连续剧《社区》中扮演Ben Chang和在《宿醉I》、《宿醉II》和《宿醉III》中扮演Leslie Chow的角色，并描述“aca漫画”能够在多大程度上融合他们作为喜剧演员的身份和他们的职业生活。举几个例子，我将分享一位受雇于疾病控制中心的年轻女性的故事，她使用艺名，从不讨论工作，因为担心损害自己的职业声誉，以及一位非洲历史助理教授，他渴望获得终身教职，这样他就可以向同事们“讲述”他在纽约市的另一段单口相声生涯。
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Pub Date : 2020-11-26DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1850102
L. Giuffre
Abstract Released in June 2018 across most of Netflix’s worldwide outlets, Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special Nanette has gained intense attention. Widely described as a ‘game changer’ for challenging what stand-up comedy can achieve, the special has been called ‘post comedy’ by commentators and other comedians – although this is not always used as a complimentary review. The Netflix version of the live show, which Gadsby has nicknamed “Nanettflix”, was filmed live at the Sydney Opera House in January 2018 after the show had already won many international awards including in Melbourne, Edinburgh, London and New York. This article considers Gadbsy’s live show Nanette and the subsequent Netflix special as an innovative combination of comedy content and (post television) form, exploring how the combination of the artists’ distinct and masterful voice was delivered to an international audience via the internet distributor Netflix. To build this argument, segments of the special itself are analysed, as is commentary about the show’s reach, testimony from live audience members, an interview with producer Madeline Parry and related press. Importantly, the comedian’s articulation of how comedy works in terms of identity will be explored in terms of existing comedy scholarship, with her challenges to key ideas around ‘tension’ and ‘release’ considered as fundamental the final screen special’s effectiveness.
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Pub Date : 2020-11-25DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1850105
P. Parashar, Parul Tewari
Abstract Humour traditionally referred to any type of speech, writing, or composition that was ludicrous or amusing. In the past few decades, humour has been rapidly included in the online world, often in the form of visual media. From stand-up and satire, to sketch comedy and parodies, YouTube has emerged as a flexible medium of communication. With the expansion of what is considered “funny,” various niche forms of comedy have emerged, including absurdist comedy. The Lonely Island is a sketch comedy trio comprising of Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone. It has gained massive popularity on YouTube and the American show Saturday Night Live. This paper attempts to understand the essence of the humour used by The Lonely Island by analyzing their most formidable digital short, The Shooting (Dear Sister), and two of their songs (Like a Boss, and YOLO). In this process, the paper explores how absurdist or ‘stupid comedy’ is rich with data that provides insight into millennial and internet psychology. The analysis of their original content is aimed at providing a deeper understanding of the manner in which absurdism can be transformed into a unique brand of humour that is both popular and contextually relevant.
传统上，幽默指的是任何形式的演讲、写作或作文，都是滑稽可笑或有趣的。在过去的几十年里，幽默以视觉媒体的形式迅速融入网络世界。从单口相声和讽刺，到小品喜剧和恶搞，YouTube已经成为一种灵活的交流媒介。随着“搞笑”的扩展，各种小众喜剧形式出现了，包括荒诞喜剧。《孤岛》是由Akiva Schaffer、Andy Samberg和Jorma Taccone组成的喜剧小生三人组。它在YouTube和美国节目《周六夜现场》上获得了巨大的人气。本文试图通过分析the Lonely Island最强大的数字短片《the Shooting》(《Dear Sister》)以及他们的两首歌曲《Like a Boss》和《YOLO》，来理解他们幽默的本质。在这个过程中，论文探讨了荒诞主义或“愚蠢喜剧”是如何丰富的数据，提供了对千禧一代和互联网心理的洞察。通过对其原创内容的分析，我们可以更深入地了解荒诞主义是如何转化为一种既受欢迎又与语境相关的独特幽默的。
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Pub Date : 2020-06-10DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1729486
J. Purcell
Abstract In November 1936, the BBC premiered its first serialised situation comedy, The Strange Adventures of Mr. Penny. In its use of many of the hallmarks of early situation comedy, the popular fifteen minute comedy is important in understanding the evolution of sitcom on early BBC radio, but also in recognising the ways in which BBC light entertainment sought to participate in, and shape, the interwar rhetorics of national character in the introduction of its own ‘Little Man’. On the surface, the BBC’s ‘Little Man’ might suggest a crisis of masculinity between the wars, but ultimately it was a positive and reassuring version of English masculinity and national character.
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Pub Date : 2020-03-26DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1729487
E. Sullivan
Abstract Given a dominant visual discourse predicated upon stereotypes concerning menace, sexualisation, and abjection, African American visual production is often obligated to effect a correction by producing responsible, even didactic art. While this imperative remains a potent force, in this paper I focus upon work that is determinedly irreverent, even comic in its forthright address of race. My case studies are three African American artists: William Pope.L, a performance artist self-styled as the “Friendliest Black Artist in America”; a visual artist, Sanford Biggers, and a conceptual artist, Dave McKenzie. I suggest that all three create work that, in favouring the comic rather than the tragic modality, extends the affective possibilities for black expression. The comedy is not necessarily about generating laughter, rather, as a form of what Lauren Berlant calls ‘deadpan aesthetic,’ its ambivalence engenders a deliberate and productive uncertainty.
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Pub Date : 2020-03-06DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1729485
J. Caron
Abstract The ubiquity of satire in contemporary American popular culture suggests an opening for contributing to theory about that particular kind of comic artefact. In addition to a sketch of the necessary elements for satire to appear, I offer some theoretical remarks about the field of study—humor studies as it is usually called, The Comic as I term the enterprise. Potential meanings of comic laughter are explored in order to probe the nature of satire and its reception by audiences and readers.
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Pub Date : 2020-02-27DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1729491
M. Bidgoli
Abstract William Shakespeare’s King Lear abounds with features both tragic and bitter. It is, as suggested by many critics, one of the most painful demonstrations of the human predicament in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. But with the introduction of the Fool, Shakespeare artistically threads through the tragic elements of his work a delicate strand of comedy. The Fool is described by some Shakespeare scholars as a bitter character and by some as a mysterious and enigmatic one. This paper does not aim to subvert or polemicize such readings, but attempts to look at the Fool from an ethical perspective: he will turn out to be a comically responsible and ethical figure Shakespeare employs to galvanize his audience and enforce the ethical concerns behind this tragedy. The main focus of this paper, then, is to study the bitterly comic, but responsible, role of the Fool in King Lear in the light of the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. It is through Levinas’s account of “the ethical” which is prior to “the ontological” (e.g. language) that this study tries to analyze features of irony and comicality embedded in this tragedy with regard to the Fool.
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Pub Date : 2020-02-27DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2020.1729488
Deepali Yadav
Abstract In a postcolonial country, colonial cartoons prove an indispensable source for voicing contemporary public opinion either for initiating resistance towards colonizer’s leadership or for suppressing the colonized who dared to launch resistance in the first place. Simultaneously, humour generated through these cartoons is valuable in identifying the iconicity of an individual as the extent of distortion employed in caricaturing them explains the level of popularity enjoyed by them. This implies that a cartoon can effectively increase/decrease the number of followers of a person who is either glorified or belittled through distortions. In this article, I argue that colonial cartoons despite of their attempts to ridicule Mahatma Gandhi for his rivalry with the British administrators paradoxically went on to glorify him. Cartoons converted him into a popular icon, the one who was easily recognized by masses. Their intention of generating humour by depicting Gandhi in cartoons made people visualise enormous trouble that he was creating for colonizers thus turning him into a celebratory figure against British in South Africa. This moral shaming created from visual depiction of inhuman British rule led to withdrawal of many horrendous acts and laws which were primarily meant for exploitation of Indian immigrants in South Africa.
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