Pub Date : 2022-02-21DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040781
Inzamul Sarkar, Ayesha Siraj
Abstract Despite being a diverse, vibrant and multifaceted phenomenon, relatively little academic attention has been paid in analysing Indian stand-up comedy. This paper attempts to address this imbalance by offering pathways in the analysis of stand-up comedy. Employing examples from the performances of the comedians and adopting discourse analysis methodology, this paper focuses on the issues like language ideology, identity and gender embeddedness in Indian Stand-up comedy. We have argued that the comedy employs several performative techniques such as linguistic code switching and calculative pauses to create humor. Through our work, we have demonstrated how ideology and identity constructions are simultaneously reinforced and subverted within the same comic moment. Finally, the extracted portion of recorded performances shows that the whole event unfolds as an informal, naturally developing encounter between audience and comedian.
{"title":"Exploring Indian stand-up comedy through the lens of ideology, identity and gender: a discourse analysis","authors":"Inzamul Sarkar, Ayesha Siraj","doi":"10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040781","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite being a diverse, vibrant and multifaceted phenomenon, relatively little academic attention has been paid in analysing Indian stand-up comedy. This paper attempts to address this imbalance by offering pathways in the analysis of stand-up comedy. Employing examples from the performances of the comedians and adopting discourse analysis methodology, this paper focuses on the issues like language ideology, identity and gender embeddedness in Indian Stand-up comedy. We have argued that the comedy employs several performative techniques such as linguistic code switching and calculative pauses to create humor. Through our work, we have demonstrated how ideology and identity constructions are simultaneously reinforced and subverted within the same comic moment. Finally, the extracted portion of recorded performances shows that the whole event unfolds as an informal, naturally developing encounter between audience and comedian.","PeriodicalId":38662,"journal":{"name":"Comedy Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"41 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47247834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-21DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040805
Charles Lam
Abstract Previous works on Hong Kong identity and popular culture focused on films, television and music. Few studies investigate humour outside of these media and the humour of online communities. This study argues that humour is an important vehicle of identity construction, especially with the dominance of online platforms in modern communication. Using Benign Violation Theory and Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, this study demonstrates how the trolling culture online has been an effective tool to subvert and negotiate the mainstream narrative of identity, embodied by the motto of ‘You lose if you’re serious.’ This paper analyses humorous ‘trendy posts’ from the Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities in Hong Kong and shows how satire and parody in Cantonese are used in online platforms to build the local Hong Kong identity as opposed to wider, national Chinese identity. What makes trendy posts special is the heavy use of Cantonese and references to local subculture and celebrities, often with the intention to mock and defy the narrative of mainstream television channels and shrinking local film industry. This study argues that such in-group connection and identity building are often a decentralised and bottom-up process, given that online contents are generated by users, who organically negotiate authenticity and membership. Serving the need for story retelling, humour is argued to be the perfect vehicle for collective memories and identity building for online communities.
{"title":"How digital platforms facilitate parody: online humour in the construction of Hong Kong identity","authors":"Charles Lam","doi":"10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040805","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Previous works on Hong Kong identity and popular culture focused on films, television and music. Few studies investigate humour outside of these media and the humour of online communities. This study argues that humour is an important vehicle of identity construction, especially with the dominance of online platforms in modern communication. Using Benign Violation Theory and Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, this study demonstrates how the trolling culture online has been an effective tool to subvert and negotiate the mainstream narrative of identity, embodied by the motto of ‘You lose if you’re serious.’ This paper analyses humorous ‘trendy posts’ from the Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities in Hong Kong and shows how satire and parody in Cantonese are used in online platforms to build the local Hong Kong identity as opposed to wider, national Chinese identity. What makes trendy posts special is the heavy use of Cantonese and references to local subculture and celebrities, often with the intention to mock and defy the narrative of mainstream television channels and shrinking local film industry. This study argues that such in-group connection and identity building are often a decentralised and bottom-up process, given that online contents are generated by users, who organically negotiate authenticity and membership. Serving the need for story retelling, humour is argued to be the perfect vehicle for collective memories and identity building for online communities.","PeriodicalId":38662,"journal":{"name":"Comedy Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"101 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41973888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040777
Miguel Fernández Labayen, Alejandro Melero
Abstract Spanish sexy comedies of the 1970s have become an ambivalent touchstone of contemporary cinema. Both rejected by national intelligentsia and entertained by local audiences, they have traditionally been understood as a psychosocial projection of Franco’s repression, establishing a dialogue between legal and religious oppression and the social need for escapism. This article questions the limits of decency and obscenity in film comedy. Through the study of films directed by Mariano Ozores, a leading figure of sexy comedies but one of the least studied filmmakers of Spanish film history, the paper traces the different aspects of sexual representation in comedy. Turning to the genre’s cultural appreciation, political commitment and social analysis, the article focuses on three films: Fin de semana al desnudo (1974) for the study of the sexual discourse of the last years of the Franco regime; Cuentos de las sábanas blancas (1977) for the analysis of the new possibilities after the end of the censorship and, finally, El erótico enmascarado (1980) for the legacy of the sexy comedies in the first democratic cinema.
20世纪70年代的西班牙性感喜剧已经成为当代电影的一个矛盾的试金石。它们都遭到国家知识分子的拒绝，却受到当地观众的欢迎，它们传统上被理解为佛朗哥镇压的社会心理投射，在法律和宗教压迫与逃避现实的社会需求之间建立了对话。这篇文章质疑电影喜剧中正派和淫秽的界限。通过研究马里亚诺·奥佐尔斯(Mariano Ozores)导演的电影，他是性感喜剧的领军人物，但也是西班牙电影史上被研究最少的电影制作人之一，本文追溯了喜剧中性表现的不同方面。从这一类型的文化欣赏、政治承诺和社会分析来看，本文重点关注了三部电影:研究佛朗哥政权最后几年的性话语的《绝望之夜》(Fin de semana al desnudo, 1974);Cuentos de las sábanas blancas(1977)分析了审查制度结束后新的可能性，最后，El erótico enmascarado(1980)为第一次民主电影中的性感喜剧留下了遗产。
{"title":"Naked weekends, white sheets, and masked erotica. The changing limits of decency in the Spanish sexy comedies of the transition to democracy","authors":"Miguel Fernández Labayen, Alejandro Melero","doi":"10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040777","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Spanish sexy comedies of the 1970s have become an ambivalent touchstone of contemporary cinema. Both rejected by national intelligentsia and entertained by local audiences, they have traditionally been understood as a psychosocial projection of Franco’s repression, establishing a dialogue between legal and religious oppression and the social need for escapism. This article questions the limits of decency and obscenity in film comedy. Through the study of films directed by Mariano Ozores, a leading figure of sexy comedies but one of the least studied filmmakers of Spanish film history, the paper traces the different aspects of sexual representation in comedy. Turning to the genre’s cultural appreciation, political commitment and social analysis, the article focuses on three films: Fin de semana al desnudo (1974) for the study of the sexual discourse of the last years of the Franco regime; Cuentos de las sábanas blancas (1977) for the analysis of the new possibilities after the end of the censorship and, finally, El erótico enmascarado (1980) for the legacy of the sexy comedies in the first democratic cinema.","PeriodicalId":38662,"journal":{"name":"Comedy Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"28 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46869951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040782
S. Chesters
Abstract Examining Bo Burnham’s stand-up comedy special, Make Happy (2016), this article proposes the concept of comic synchrony, a mode of discourse used to speak both ironically and sincerely at once. Initially, audiences read Burnham’s utterances as wholly ironic or sincere depending upon their membership in an in-group or out-group. Comic synchrony occurs through the layering of concurrent discourse communities that complicate the use of shared rhetorical modes between speaker and interpreter. I argue that audience membership in coexisting and permeable discursive circles catalyses audience evolution so they come to understand each of the Burnham’s utterances as ironic and sincere simultaneously. Through this model, the comedian levels biting critique toward the assembled audience and, more broadly, contrived performance—meaning each attack and not meaning it at the same time. The result is a rhetorical configuration that interrogates the ambivalent relationship between irony and sincerity, emphasizing the contradictory and conflicting experience of acting out one’s life for an audience.
{"title":"In-groups, out-groups, and comic synchrony in Bo Burnham’s Make Happy (2016)","authors":"S. Chesters","doi":"10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040782","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Examining Bo Burnham’s stand-up comedy special, Make Happy (2016), this article proposes the concept of comic synchrony, a mode of discourse used to speak both ironically and sincerely at once. Initially, audiences read Burnham’s utterances as wholly ironic or sincere depending upon their membership in an in-group or out-group. Comic synchrony occurs through the layering of concurrent discourse communities that complicate the use of shared rhetorical modes between speaker and interpreter. I argue that audience membership in coexisting and permeable discursive circles catalyses audience evolution so they come to understand each of the Burnham’s utterances as ironic and sincere simultaneously. Through this model, the comedian levels biting critique toward the assembled audience and, more broadly, contrived performance—meaning each attack and not meaning it at the same time. The result is a rhetorical configuration that interrogates the ambivalent relationship between irony and sincerity, emphasizing the contradictory and conflicting experience of acting out one’s life for an audience.","PeriodicalId":38662,"journal":{"name":"Comedy Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"56 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43337445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040759
Phillip J. Hutchison
Abstract Although comedian Don Rickles was a popular-culture mainstay from the 1950s through the 2010s, scholarship has overlooked Rickles’ comedic legacy. To address this shortcoming, the present study employs Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque to illustrate how Rickles merged transgressive humor with grotesque realism to flout late twentieth-century American social propriety. In distinctive ways, Rickles employed carnivalesque humour to create a public site for inverting social hierarchies, sensibilities, and value systems. This approach to comedy not only allowed Rickles to undermine social conventions, but also allowed Rickles to encourage audience involvement in these carnivalesque antics. Theories of ritual and theories of television that posit an active audience complement this viewpoint. These perspectives show that even as Rickles denied political intent, Rickles’ comedy was eminently political: It not only inverted social hierarchies, but its ambivalent qualities also highlighted the dangers of groups over-identifying with socially constructed subject positions.
{"title":"Celebrating a carnival of insults: Don Rickles meets Mikhail Bakhtin","authors":"Phillip J. Hutchison","doi":"10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2022.2040759","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although comedian Don Rickles was a popular-culture mainstay from the 1950s through the 2010s, scholarship has overlooked Rickles’ comedic legacy. To address this shortcoming, the present study employs Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque to illustrate how Rickles merged transgressive humor with grotesque realism to flout late twentieth-century American social propriety. In distinctive ways, Rickles employed carnivalesque humour to create a public site for inverting social hierarchies, sensibilities, and value systems. This approach to comedy not only allowed Rickles to undermine social conventions, but also allowed Rickles to encourage audience involvement in these carnivalesque antics. Theories of ritual and theories of television that posit an active audience complement this viewpoint. These perspectives show that even as Rickles denied political intent, Rickles’ comedy was eminently political: It not only inverted social hierarchies, but its ambivalent qualities also highlighted the dangers of groups over-identifying with socially constructed subject positions.","PeriodicalId":38662,"journal":{"name":"Comedy Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"2 - 14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47346514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-16DOI: 10.1080/2040610x.2022.2040766
Rick Pulos
Abstract Legendary comic Phyllis Diller carved out a career in a male dominated field by goinginto spaces where women were not typically allowed. She created a stage persona thatgave her the ability to make fun of life and society. Part of her stage act was her fictional husband Fang and his cartoon-like family members including an obese mother, an alcoholic father, a scheming brother, a tooth-pick thin sister, a half-wit uncle, a midget cousin, and a slew of other family members of various design. Relying on Diller’s 52,000 joke cards archived at the Smithsonian Institution and her videotaped performances, this paper will track the history of Fang and his family and how they fit into the comedic work of Diller. A deep dive into Fang’s real and fictional history will reveal the complex worldview Diller imparts about husbands, marriage, and men in general and about American culture and life.
{"title":"Phyllis Diller and her fictional husband Fang","authors":"Rick Pulos","doi":"10.1080/2040610x.2022.2040766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610x.2022.2040766","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Legendary comic Phyllis Diller carved out a career in a male dominated field by goinginto spaces where women were not typically allowed. She created a stage persona thatgave her the ability to make fun of life and society. Part of her stage act was her fictional husband Fang and his cartoon-like family members including an obese mother, an alcoholic father, a scheming brother, a tooth-pick thin sister, a half-wit uncle, a midget cousin, and a slew of other family members of various design. Relying on Diller’s 52,000 joke cards archived at the Smithsonian Institution and her videotaped performances, this paper will track the history of Fang and his family and how they fit into the comedic work of Diller. A deep dive into Fang’s real and fictional history will reveal the complex worldview Diller imparts about husbands, marriage, and men in general and about American culture and life.","PeriodicalId":38662,"journal":{"name":"Comedy Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":"15 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41746732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：