Comedy

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.

We revisit Aristophanes’ charge against Socratic education in the Clouds and, placing that charge in its democratic context, propose that the play is equally critical of Socratic education as it is of democracy’s narrowly utilitarian approach to learning embodied in the comic protagonist Strepsiades. The clash between the two, we claim, is the play’s main target. In the second part, we suggest that Aristophanes’ challenge is still with us and merits to be taken seriously by defenders of liberal education today. Discussing one institutional response to that challenge, we argue that if it is to be useful for modern democracy liberal education needs to address the heterogeneity of values, and that a core-text based curriculum is uniquely fit to do so.

A History of Italian Cinema, 2nd edition is the much anticipated update from the author of the bestselling Italian Cinema – which has been published in four landmark editions and will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2018. Building upon decades of research, Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni reorganize the current History in order to keep the book fresh and responsive not only to the actual films being created in Italy in the twenty-first century but also to the rapidly changing priorities of Italian film studies and film scholars. The new edition brings the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day, up to date with a revised filmography as well as more focused attention on the melodrama, the crime film, and the historical drama. The book is expanded to include a new generation of directors as well as to highlight themes such as gender issues, immigration, and media politics. Accessible, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any fan of Italian film.

What makes some jokes so funny? Can comedy really effect social change? Is laughter just catharsis—a therapeutic release of personal and social discontent—or can it also voice real opposition? Another basic question that we often take for granted, why do we laugh?  In this course, we will approach the topic of comedy from every angle, while also keeping the funny alive. We will read philosophies and theories of comedy, satirical newspapers, and social histories of stand-up. We will watch funny movies, TV shows, Internet memes, viral videos, and talk about them. And, of course, we will write and perform our own comedy in the classroom.

Satires offer themselves to the audience in all kinds of forms: from novels to pamphlets, from cartoons to ritual performances, from learned wit to slanderous attacks. This was as much the case in early modern Europe as it is in contemporary (Western) society. Still, in all their variety, satirical utterances seem to share at least one characteristic, namely their double bind to both seriousness and laughter. In this paper, I analyse this double bind with the help of two Dutch cases of satire from the late eighteenth century.

The first case consists of a political periodical from the 1780’s, that makes use of the ‘magic-lantern formula’, which means that it imitates the live performance of a magic-lantern show or raree show (peepshow), a regular feature at eighteenth-century fairs. This Lanterne magique of toverlantaern applies the ‘magic-lantern formula’ to perform slanderous ridicule. The second case is an almanac-like series of booklets, published between 1792 and 1801 by the eccentric physician Pieter van Woensel, under the title De Lantaarn (‘The Lantern’). In these illustrated booklets, Van Woensel offers his ironic critique on contemporary politics and society.

The two cases differ in many ways. The Lanterne magique is highly partisan and uses a harsh kind of humour that is solely aimed at scapegoating political enemies. Van Woensel’s Lantaarn is ideologically ambivalent and uses the weapon of irony to lay bare the ludicrousness of the day. Nevertheless the two are related through their taking together of seriousness and playfulness/jest, their shared intention to make the audience laugh but at the same time to convey to it a more serious (political or moral) message.

Perhaps it is especially this double face of satire that makes its meaning oftentimes so difficult to grasp, not only for the audience, but also for scholars and literary critics. Looking at satire through the lens of its simultaneously serious and playful intentions might thus lead to a better understanding of the working of satire in general.

Teach Communication with a Sense of Humor (Curious Academic Publishing, 2021). 'My friends say I'm argumentative, but they're wrong, and here are three reasons why ...' Using humorous examples for teaching critical thinking and persuasive communication The irate host of a late-night satire brings ninety-seven scientists on stage to make a point he shouldn't have to make; a sitcom character's strategy in a game of darts is to aim for the bullseye; a dissolute detective uses family values to justify an affair; the dean of a community college tears up a contract he doesn't understand because it 'feels' like the right thing to do; a comedian tries to convince himself a joke he's just thought of isn't funny so that he doesn't have to get out of bed to find a pen; a college student invents an epic sequence of disasters to help break some bad news to her parents; a lawyer negotiates with a drug lord over how many of his clients' legs he should break; Donald Trump boasts about modest he is, and Ide Amin loudly breaks wind. What do the items on this unlikely list have in common? They are a sample of humorous demonstrations of poor reasoning and cognitive biases I use when teaching critical thinking and persuasive communication to university students.

In Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), we watch the film’s protagonist, Theodore, as he struggles with the end of his marriage and a growing attachment to his artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha. While the film remains unique in its ability to cinematically portray the Lacanian contention that “there is no sexual relationship,” this article explores how our digital non-relationships can be re-approached through the medium of comedy. Specifically, when looked at through a comic lens, notable scenes from Her are examined for the potential they provide in affording a self-decentrement which allows us to traverse the fantasies that structure our non-relations.

This paper explores gender in stand‐up comedy based on 20 months of ethnographic research in Finland and recent media discussion involving the booking of performers for a national comedy tour. As the vast majority of stand‐up comedians are men, discussions of gender tend to focus on the anomalousness of female comedians. These debates often rely on essentialist views of women and stand‐up comedy, presenting female comedians as transgressive due to the perceived incompatibilities of women and comedy. However, the situation in the clubs and performances is more complex. I chart this territory by looking at gender in relation to ‘invention’ and ‘convention’ in stand‐up comedy performance. I explore how some of the conventional, established and expected aspects of stand‐up, such as the public use of power and threat of failure, are related to ideas of gender. I then go on to show how comedy enables invention, new and/or unique ideas and forms. This allows comedians to approach and enact gender in more digressive ways: taking indirect, experimental paths and imaginatively shifting between perspectives and positions to subvert and question roles and patterns. As stand‐up becomes more diverse, discussing gender requires a more nuanced approach going beyond a simple binary.

Funniness, in its capacity to unify and divide, is inextricably tied to concerns of harm and redress, that is, to justice. John Rawls tells us that justice can best be envisioned and dealt by people who view a situation through a “veil of ignorance” such that they do not know their stake in the system they effect – an “original position.” John E. Seery takes that train of thought to an ultimate extreme, claiming that one can only truly conceptualize just human relations if one has shuffled beyond the mortal coil and views the world from the afterlife – a “final position.” According to this orientation, then, we could understand the ethical implications of funny discourse better if we find a possibility for funniness in the original – or final – position. Unfortunately, these positions are simply thought, so the prospect for any study of real-world justice in funny artifacts seems unrealistic.
Then again, consider this: John P. Harmon published a series of hand-drawn cartoons between 1944 and 1957 in a newspaper whose audience members had been forced to abandon their occupations as well as their family ties and to redefine themselves – a sort of ad hoc original position. What’s more, most of this audience was considered terminally ill, or at least consigned to remain confined to medical care for the remainder of their lives – as much final position insight as one can attain during one’s lifetime. This newspaper, the Carville STAR, was a publication based in the National Leprosarium of the United States in Carville, Louisiana. Harmon’s cartoons about everyday life with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) provided the colony’s resident patients with mirth in their isolated and terminal existence.

Harmon’s work will help us see what funniness might look like in an original or final position and therefore what (if Rawls and Seery are to be reified) a just form of the funny might entail. Although generalizing from a single case is always risky, this case gives us some concrete play in the face of an otherwise purely theoretical field of inquiry that can bring the philosophy of humor to life in invaluable ways.

This book addresses the motif of literary twinship from the Shakespearean age until today. Twins have all too often been discussed as mere footnotes to the allegedly more nuanced motif of the doppelganger, or as a kind of 'embarrassing' secret of literary history that is said to occur merely in inferior genres like farce or horror fiction. This study, by contrast, makes a case for the complexity of literary twinship across the literary spectrum, and it demonstrates that twinship articulates bodily anxieties, dynastic troubles, and genetic concerns that the classic double trope cannot ac-commodate. While the book does not deliver a complete and unabridged history of literary twin-ship (as such a history would inevitably be one marked by long gaps), it still examines twinship in a diachronic fashion and in different historical periods in order to show how the category of twinship is frequently re-negotiated as part of larger discursive shifts. Some historical periods understand twins mainly as a biological conundrum that threatens to expose the arbitrary laws of dynastic kin-ship, others as an epistemological problem that challenges any attempt to impose clear-cut definitions.
The individual case studies trace the development of the category of twinship over time, demonstrating how the twin was repeatedly (re-)invented as a cultural and pathological type when other discursive areas (including the fields of criminology and eugenics) constituted themselves, and how it served as the battleground for ideological disputes. It is in-midst of these discursive processes that I locate literary twinship, and my goal is not to demonstrate that literature 'mirrors' scientific debates of the day. Not only is it evident that literature frequently prefigured the discussions of modern twin scholarship, it has also been instrumental in facilitating these debates and in contributing to the negotiation of power shifts, for instance by setting the stage for debates regarding kinship systems in the Shakespearean age, by engaging in the Victorian reformulation of the criminal as genetically/pathologically evil, or by contributing to the dystopian quality of cloning discourse in the 20th century.

In this essay, I examine this highly-personal, world shaping, and perhaps sometimes invisible potential for comedy to construct identities and relationships. Specifically, I examine laugh track use in two highly popular television programs, Will & Grace and Roseanne, to consider how the construction of what is or is not supposed to be funny has rhetorical implications for queer identities and relationships. These texts were selected not only for their abundance of queer characters—Will & Grace focused on a gay man/straight woman best friend relationship and Roseanne featured at least one queer character each year beginning with the third season—but also because of their
immense popularity. I argue that these two programs constitute
what I call enduring popular culture texts, popular entertainment that continues to have social relevance throughout time as it weaves itself into a variety of cultures and becomes constitutive of social understanding. As the case studies presented here illustrate, the way enduring texts are immersed in culture might be misleading and even damaging.

Comedy, which developed as a literary genre after tragedy, is a popular dramatic form in ancient Greek literature. In accordance with the periods of time through which it differs, comedy as a genre is divided into three types; Old Comedy, Middle Comedy and New Comedy. Regarded as a surviving manuscript of Old Comedy, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata provides evidence about the features of Old Comedy. Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the play by focusing on the features which Aristotle seeks in a tragedy, which he regards as the best dramatic form. Through an Aristotelian reading of the play, the study reveals that although the play as comedy shares a lot of features with tragedy, it differs from tragedy in terms of content, language and characters.

Clase perteneciente a la asignatura Ficción Seriada Audiovisual y Multimedia en la que se muestra el nacimiento y evolución del género de la comedia seriada desde sus inicios hasta su salto a formatos online. Se repasa el mercado estadounidense y español, principalmente. Se ofrece estándares de producción de estos formatos.

Abstract In this article, I analyse the unexpected quarrels and strange new alliances that formed in response to the United States' decision to go to war against Iraq in the spring of 2003. Telling different stories about Iraq, about themselves and about the nature of world politics, decision-makers reached different, conflicting conclusions. As is the case with all stories, these accounts are best analysed with the help of literary theory.

Although mediated humor is pervasive in our media cultures, media studies have largely glossed over the role of technology in the process of making humor. This article brings that topic into focus, while examining the Machinima-related subgenre of gameplay mischief video—the video montages of physical humor captured or staged in the simulated spaces of video games. Based on close reading of videos from three contemporary 3D action titles, interviews with the makers of these videos, and an analysis of humor techniques they employ, I argue that this vein of humor arises from the interaction between the player and the game. I also claim that the capacity of games to generate unexpected and contingent events is instrumental to this process.

This project will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines (including sociology, cultural studies, neuroscience, film and media studies) to investigate the experience of cringe as a key symptom of the contemporary cultural landscape. Cringe humour and other cringeworthy experiences across the media articulate a deeply-felt discomfort, one that is linked to the inability to successfully adopt political correctness, and to changing attitudes in the cultural mainstream. The experience of cringe involves the inability to extricate yourself (or to look away) from unpleasant situations, resulting in feelings of vicarious shame (Fremdschämen), for example when watching diplomatic blunders committed by prominent statesmen, uncomfortable ‘dare you’ challenges on social media platforms, and the kind of ‘unstable jokes’ to be found in transgressive comedy formats that involve protected groups like ethnic minorities and disabled people, even though the targets of the jokes are not al-ways clear.
The symposium will approach the phenomenon of painful laughter and cringing in three thematic sections: (I) psychology and affect, (II) the mediality of cringe (where ‘reality’ aesthetics and humiliation rituals play a role), and (III) the politics of cringe (where norms and values are renegotiated to indicate discomfort on a collective level).
Each of these sections will involve junior academics (including Ph.D. candidates) as well as more experienced researchers who currently work on cringe and related phenomena like awkwardness and disparagement. The aim is not just to initiate a conversation on a level playing field between participants at different career stages, with everyone contributing both as a presenter and as a respondent, but also to spark a conversation between the German and the Anglo-American research landscape.

An important challenge for communication scientists is to characterize and understand hybrid genres. Satirical news is such a hybrid genre and comprises a blend of the genres of comedy, news, and political opinion. This theoretical article aims to contribute to this discussion by further specifying the concept of discursive mode. Discursive modes designate certain communicative orientations toward a particular genre element. We make our argument concrete by introducing a typology of metaphorical humor in satirical news. Our humoristic metaphors in satirical news (HMSN) typology, demonstrates that satirists can realize and switch between 4 different discursive modes through metaphors. These discursive modes comprise different combinations of core rhetorical functions in satirical news (humor, education, and evaluation). We describe each type of metaphor in our typology and present a research agenda identifying key issues that require future research and empirical verification.

Artykuł analizuje polsko-czechosłowacką koprodukcję filmową Zadzwońcie do mojej żony (Co řekne žena, 1958, r. Jaroslav Mach) w optyce produkcyjno-kulturowej. Zostaje w nim zarysowane tło metodologiczne umożliwiające badanie koprodukcji w krajach socjalistycznych, następnie autorka przedstawia główne uwarunkowania współpracy polsko-czechosłowackiej w latach 1948-1958. Analiza powstawania filmu Zadzwońcie do mojej żony, pierwszej powojennej koprodukcji polsko-czechosłowackiej, ukazuje realizację filmu jako pole ścierania się sprzecznych dążeń i interesów.

This paper argues that Q1 is a distinct and good version of Shakespeare's play, not necessarily written for a garter ceremony, and not unpopular with audiences and readers, as it was reprinted in 1619. The fact that it is shorter and different from the 1623 folio simply suggests that the play developed through performance during its 20+ years on stage.

For decades, the figure of the Aussie bogan has riveted and been ridiculed on screen, and at its heart lie scathing sentiments regarding class inferiority. Mel Campbell examines how, unlike the bogan comedies that have come before it, the ABC television series 'Upper Middle Bogan' revels in the coming-together of people from ostensibly incompatible backgrounds.

In The Sound of Nonsense, Richard Elliott highlights the importance of sound in understanding the 'nonsense' of writers such as Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, James Joyce and Mervyn Peake, before connecting this noisy writing to works which engage more directly with sound, including sound poetry, experimental music and pop. By emphasising sonic factors, Elliott makes new and fascinating connections between a wide range of artistic examples to ultimately build a case for the importance of sound in creating, maintaining and disrupting meaning.

In the second half of the twentieth century, popular entertainers Jack Benny and Danny Kaye each raised over $6 million for orchestra pension funds, symphony halls, and music schools. They both used syncretic or physical humor, based on the routines they honed during their long careers in vaudeville, radio, film and television, in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. This article draws on theories of Rossana Dalmonte on syncretic humor and Linda Hutcheon on parody, as well as archival research from the Jack Benny Papers at UCLA and from Danny Kaye’s private family archive in Beverly Hills. It argues that in their highly popular benefit concerts, Benny and Kaye took part in a long comic tradition that sought to break down the barriers separating “high” and “low” art. Between 1944 and his death in 1974, Benny played his violin with over twenty orchestras (notably with Isaac Stern in the “Save Carnegie Hall” campaign), and between 1954 and his death in 1987, Kaye conducted almost fifty orchestras. Throughout this period, both artists were committed to “popularizing” classical music while at the same time supporting arts institutions.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first (rhetorical) investigation of Persian stand-up comedy. In the present research, a rhetorical approach is taken to examine humor styles and techniques used in seven stand-up performances. These performances were performed by two Iranian comedians, the finalists from a recent (and probably the first) Persian stand-up comedy contest in Iran. Initially, Asian stand-up comedy is briefly addressed. Then, Persian stand-up comedy is introduced within the continuum of Iranian performing traditions. Afterward, the typology, unit of analysis and the communication framework employed in this research are elaborated on. Having established the historical and theoretical preliminaries, the paper reports on and discusses the findings. Particularly, the rhetorical devices used by the comedians to create humor are highlighted. Moreover, several aspects of the interaction between the comedians and the audience are touched upon. Finally, the paper points out several directions of Persian stand-up comedy, the study’s limitations and suggestions for further research.

Inspired by the growing attention to the politics of comedy in the United States and elsewhere, this paper asks what it would mean to think critically about relations of power mobilized through cheerfulness, humor, and laughter. The paper shows that existing answers to this question are tainted by skepticism about the enduring contributions of comic acts, and it then goes on to suggest that we turn to an alternative trajectory in democratic theory, one that encourages us to focus on the empowering and pluralizing potential embedded in what the paper names  “comic power.” The wager is that attention to the potential embedded in this power can give us new traction on the conditions of democracy more broadly understood. To show this, the paper draws on two rarely paired resources—Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence and Dave Chappelle’s critique of racial discrimination—placing both of them in conversation with discussions about the mediations embedded in new media technologies.

While much has been written about what democracies should look like, much less has been said about how to actually train citizens in democratic perspectives and skills. Amid the social and political crises of our time, many programs seeking to bridge differences between citizens draw from the surprising field of improvisational theater. Improv trains people to engage with one another in ways that promote empathy and understanding. Don Waisanen demonstrates how improv-based teaching and training methods can forward the communication, leadership, and civic skills our world urgently needs. Waisanen includes specific exercises and thought experiments that can be used by educators; advocates for civic engagement and civil discourse; practitioners and scholars in communication, leadership, and conflict management; training and development specialists; administrators looking to build new curricula or programming; and professionals seeking to embed productive, sustainable, and socially responsible forms of interaction in and across organizations. Ultimately this book offers a new approach for helping people become more creative, heighten awareness, think faster, build confidence, operate flexibly and inclusively, improve expression and governance skills, and above all, think and act more democratically.

While there is ample evidence that students in higher education benefit from an instructor’s judicious use of humor in lectures and teaching materials, there is less analysis available about the benefits to student critical thinking and communication of making a formal study of the mechanisms of comedy. I created a new, first-year, general-education course for my students titled “Laughing Matters: Comedy and Satire,” because I believe such a topic is truly interdisciplinary, asking students to come to a sophisticated understanding of the interaction of psychological, sociological, historical, cultural, and artistic critical processes, while engaging actively in a classroom dynamic that requires and fosters listening, tolerance, and cooperation. Because the material of performed and literary comedy is often confrontational and offensive, such a course enables students to “lean in” to the discomfort that conversations about racism, sexism, and political debate can cause, armed with a critical apparatus and a meta-discussion of how complex cognitive processes can create productive cultural exchange. I offer descriptions of some of the readings and exercises in the course, with student responses that confirm for me that they value the critical insights developed in this course, enhanced by their enjoyment of the course’s entertaining content.

An exploration of the appeal of the comic hero who is conventionally either childish, neurotic, psychotic, or otherwise emasculated through an analysis of the comic performances of Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, and Woody Allen. Essay written for an assignment for A Case Study of Film Genre: Comedian Comedy.

Political theorists have traditionally grappled with laughter by posing a simple, normative question: 'What role, if any, should laughter play in the polis?'. However, the outsized presence of laughter in contemporary politics has rendered this question increasingly obsolete. What good does determining laughter's role in the polis do when the polis itself is to a large extent shaped by laughter? The present essay argues that Kant's aesthetic investigations of laughter in the Critique of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View offer a much needed alternative to the normative discourse. Kant theorizes laughter as an intensely dialectical experience-at once an aesthetic judgment and an affect. Laughter in Kant enacts dissensus: it disrupts and transforms sensus communis, or the ways subjects see and hear the world in common that organize and structure a political community. The essay illustrates the advantages of a Kantian conception of the politics of laughter over the normative discourse by examining Dave Chappelle's controversial 2019 stand-up comedy special Sticks & Stones. It concludes that the dissensus enacted by laughter, while not necessarily democratic, provides a privileged opening for democratic politics.