Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0051
Luise Charlotte Noé
ABSTRACT:Why are female stand-up performers more likely to be viewed favorably if they are designated “alternative” rather than “mainstream”? Herein this article explores answers to this question while adding to the scholarship on alternative comedy in the United States, which emerged in the late 1990s and early aughts. Focusing on stand-up comedian Kristen Schaal, this article explains the connection between aesthetics and gender by arguing that the alternative style aims to subvert previous notions of performative power. By decentering masculine codings of power, alternative comedy evades the gender expectations that alienated mainstream audiences from female performers in the past, allowing female performers further avenues to success.
{"title":"Playing with the (Gendered) Rules of Stand-Up: Alternative Aesthetics of Power in Kristen Schaal: Live at The Fillmore","authors":"Luise Charlotte Noé","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0051","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Why are female stand-up performers more likely to be viewed favorably if they are designated “alternative” rather than “mainstream”? Herein this article explores answers to this question while adding to the scholarship on alternative comedy in the United States, which emerged in the late 1990s and early aughts. Focusing on stand-up comedian Kristen Schaal, this article explains the connection between aesthetics and gender by arguing that the alternative style aims to subvert previous notions of performative power. By decentering masculine codings of power, alternative comedy evades the gender expectations that alienated mainstream audiences from female performers in the past, allowing female performers further avenues to success.","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"94 1","pages":"51 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83555040","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0004
Lisa M. Beringer, Terrence T. Tucker, Joseph Litvak, Derek C. Maus, Juniper Ellis
Editors: Reading Grace Heneks’s analysis of the Black satirical critique of the white embrace of postracialism in “‘We Cool?’ Satirizing Whiteness in Obama-Era Black Satire” made me think of Richard Pryor’s lament in his 1976 routine Bicentennial Prayer: “How long will this bullshit go on?”1 Heneks’s article documents the practices of casual racism, drawing on Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s concept of new racism, thereby pointing to the fine line between white liberalism and white supremacy: the white liberal fears being called racist; the white supremacist fears a truly postracial and pluralistic society. Both choose silence to maintain the status quo. White claims that we have entered an era of postracialialty—white claims, because Black folks know the idea is “bullshit”—shut down needed discussions of ongoing racial hierarchy and seek to make invisible the harm done by racism to those deemed “other” to whiteness. Heneks’s analysis of Key & Peele’s “Apologies” sketch and Black-ish’s scenes from the episodes “Lemons” and “Gap Year” offer an exploration of the fantasy that exists in white minds that underlies the white liberal fear of being called racist. By centering the subjectivity and humanity of Black people in these vignettes, the satirist is able, Heneks argues, to flip the narrative and deconstruct the fantasy of white liberalism, which is often (un) wittingly supportive of white supremacy. Most intriguing to me about “Apologies” is that in it Key and Peele are trying to have a conversation about Game of Thrones—a fantasy about white nobility and power structures—but they are repeatedly interrupted by white people trying to assert their “coolness.” I wish Heneks had pushed harder
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0181
Olympia Kiriakou
by Colbert’s serious monologue. Indeed, a lot of viewers might have been upset if he made jokes about a hugely serious threat to American democracy. More significantly, I do not think that the authors sufficiently substantiate their concluding argument that right-wing comedy serves as “the blowtorch that welds together contemporary right-wing politics” (187). Lacing right-wing invective with comedic elements may make it more digestible for some individuals and seeing conservative comics and performers may provide audiences with validation of their views, given the paucity of mainstream comic forms with an overtly conservative perspective. Nonetheless, it is a huge leap to say that comedy, rather than racialized grievances, nostalgia, or the increase in economic inequality over the last forty years, is the glue that binds all the different elements of the right. Despite the book’s flaws, That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them could be constructively utilized in graduate courses on media, popular culture, politics, and comedy. It is a timely examination of an important contemporary cultural phenomenon and is certainly likely to encourage class discussion.
{"title":"Hollywood Screwball Comedy, 1934–1945: Sex, Love, and Democratic Ideals by Grégoire Halbout (review)","authors":"Olympia Kiriakou","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0181","url":null,"abstract":"by Colbert’s serious monologue. Indeed, a lot of viewers might have been upset if he made jokes about a hugely serious threat to American democracy. More significantly, I do not think that the authors sufficiently substantiate their concluding argument that right-wing comedy serves as “the blowtorch that welds together contemporary right-wing politics” (187). Lacing right-wing invective with comedic elements may make it more digestible for some individuals and seeing conservative comics and performers may provide audiences with validation of their views, given the paucity of mainstream comic forms with an overtly conservative perspective. Nonetheless, it is a huge leap to say that comedy, rather than racialized grievances, nostalgia, or the increase in economic inequality over the last forty years, is the glue that binds all the different elements of the right. Despite the book’s flaws, That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them could be constructively utilized in graduate courses on media, popular culture, politics, and comedy. It is a timely examination of an important contemporary cultural phenomenon and is certainly likely to encourage class discussion.","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"5 1","pages":"181 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90119682","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0031
Shuhita Bhattacharjee
ABSTRACT:In depicting the fraught journey of a woman stand-up comedian in the late 1950s and 1960s, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel portrays stand-up as an ethical medium of truth telling and of sociopolitical protest that challenges systemic hierarchies of gender and sexuality. In this article, I show that stand-up’s foundational subversion is in its professionalism and in its departure from other forms of art. In the show, female stand-up comic Midge Maisel learns to function first as a seasoned professional and then as an ethical crusader who ultimately mounts a two-pronged attack on the sexist underpinnings of American humor and the patriarchal structure of stand-up, substantially influencing the way we receive this liminal genre of cultural expression and reframing it as an empowering vehicle of the marginalized.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0197
Jordan Hansen
{"title":"Who’s Laughing Now: Feminist Perspectives on Humour and Laughter ed. by Anna Lise Frey (review)","authors":"Jordan Hansen","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0197","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"24 24 1","pages":"197 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88700817","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0194
Owen Cantrell
{"title":"Played Out: The Race Man in Twenty-First-Century Satire","authors":"Owen Cantrell","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0194","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83676539","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0071
David B. Raymond
{"title":"Dispatches from the Farm: The Literary Craft of John Gould’s Maine Humor","authors":"David B. Raymond","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0071","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"22 1","pages":"71 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80388323","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0084
Joanne Gilbert, Todd Thompson
A funny thing happened on the way to this essay–we decided to eliminate over one hundred possible entries! Why would we do such a thing? Because, dear reader, the scholarship in humor studies published in 2021 is an embarrassment of riches. Across and within disciplines, scholars are exploring fascinating questions related to humor in diverse contexts. From discerning unique rhetorical features of a stand-up comic’s discourse to generating new humor theory, humor scholars are a prolific and provocative bunch. As has been the case in recent years, two particularly popular areas of humor research are online humor (especially memes), and humor in films and television shows. Additionally, in 2021, many scholars focused on humor about Donald Trump while others offered close readings of stand-up comedy, specifically regarding race. With the interests of our readership in mind, we have chosen to curate those publications we believe to be of greatest heuristic value in the following nine categories: literature, satire and political humor, performance, film and television, new media, empirical studies, visual humor, jokes, and theory. You’re welcome.
{"title":"The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021","authors":"Joanne Gilbert, Todd Thompson","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.9.1.0084","url":null,"abstract":"A funny thing happened on the way to this essay–we decided to eliminate over one hundred possible entries! Why would we do such a thing? Because, dear reader, the scholarship in humor studies published in 2021 is an embarrassment of riches. Across and within disciplines, scholars are exploring fascinating questions related to humor in diverse contexts. From discerning unique rhetorical features of a stand-up comic’s discourse to generating new humor theory, humor scholars are a prolific and provocative bunch. As has been the case in recent years, two particularly popular areas of humor research are online humor (especially memes), and humor in films and television shows. Additionally, in 2021, many scholars focused on humor about Donald Trump while others offered close readings of stand-up comedy, specifically regarding race. With the interests of our readership in mind, we have chosen to curate those publications we believe to be of greatest heuristic value in the following nine categories: literature, satire and political humor, performance, film and television, new media, empirical studies, visual humor, jokes, and theory. You’re welcome.","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"56 1","pages":"177 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85270932","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 : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.8.2.0360
Sabrina Fuchs Abrams
ABSTRACT:Humor by African American women writers has been largely overlooked and undervalued owing in part to the misguided expectation of feminine, subordinate behavior that precludes the expression of aggression and irreverence associated with humor. This article reappraises Jessie Redmon Fauset’s reputation as a sentimental, bourgeois female writer, looking at how she uses irony and satire to challenge racial and gender stereotypes and become a pioneering female humorist of the Harlem Renaissance. In her essay “The Gift of Laughter” and her best-known novel, Plum Bun (1928), Fauset uses humor as an indirect form of social protest to subvert racial and gender stereotypes of the New Woman and the New Negro Woman and to unsettle bourgeois, sentimental conventions of the marriage plot and the passing plot. Through a reframing of Fauset’s novel in light of recent theories of Black feminist humor, this article helps to restore Fauset’s rightful place among the leading and lasting voices of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.5325/studamerhumor.8.2.0404
Zsófia Anna Tóth
met Groucho Marx and got invited to the famous club, the first one for Jewish people in Los Angeles, regaling his readers with the tales that tickled him when he first heard them from George Burns, Jack Benny, and Danny Thomas, but the movement from 1969 to 1987 is almost instantaneous, and it is unclear exactly why he goes back to the 1960s and early 1970s before closing out this chapter. The rest of the book follows the same pattern—recollections of specific moments in history in the context of a thematic overview. Though Steinberg’s groupings are logical and the tales throughout his memoir are captivating, the narrative moving around in time confuses, like a joke that does not land well. The problem is understandable, especially when considering that David Steinberg has been active since the 1960s, has met many of the most highly regarded Canadian and American comedians since the 1930s, and tells stories from across almost a century of comedy. Nevertheless, arranging all the chapters either thematically or chronologically would have made this valuable memoir easier to follow. Overall, this book is a must read if one wants to learn more about not only David Steinberg but also the many brilliant, talented people he has known over the course of his life. He clearly treasures the many friendships he has with those still living as well as the memories he made with those who have passed on. For anyone who wishes for stories from behind the scenes, reading the memoir is worth the time.
{"title":"Becoming Carole Lombard: Stardom, Comedy, and Legacy","authors":"Zsófia Anna Tóth","doi":"10.5325/studamerhumor.8.2.0404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/studamerhumor.8.2.0404","url":null,"abstract":"met Groucho Marx and got invited to the famous club, the first one for Jewish people in Los Angeles, regaling his readers with the tales that tickled him when he first heard them from George Burns, Jack Benny, and Danny Thomas, but the movement from 1969 to 1987 is almost instantaneous, and it is unclear exactly why he goes back to the 1960s and early 1970s before closing out this chapter. The rest of the book follows the same pattern—recollections of specific moments in history in the context of a thematic overview. Though Steinberg’s groupings are logical and the tales throughout his memoir are captivating, the narrative moving around in time confuses, like a joke that does not land well. The problem is understandable, especially when considering that David Steinberg has been active since the 1960s, has met many of the most highly regarded Canadian and American comedians since the 1930s, and tells stories from across almost a century of comedy. Nevertheless, arranging all the chapters either thematically or chronologically would have made this valuable memoir easier to follow. Overall, this book is a must read if one wants to learn more about not only David Steinberg but also the many brilliant, talented people he has known over the course of his life. He clearly treasures the many friendships he has with those still living as well as the memories he made with those who have passed on. For anyone who wishes for stories from behind the scenes, reading the memoir is worth the time.","PeriodicalId":53944,"journal":{"name":"Studies in American Humor","volume":"46 1","pages":"404 - 407"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87801016","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}
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