Download or read book The Joke Is on Us written by Julie A. Webber and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume brings together scholars of comedy to assess how political comedy encounters neoliberal themes in contemporary media. Central to this task is the notion of genre; under neoliberal conditions (where market logics motivate most actions) genre becomes “mixed.” Once stable, discreet categories such as comedy, horror, drama and news and entertainment have become blurred so as to be indistinguishable. The classic modern paradigm of comedy/tragedy no longer holds, if it ever did. Moreover, as politics becomes more economic and less moral or normative under neoliberalism, we are able to see new resistance to comedic genres that support neoliberal strategies to hide racial and gender injustice such as unlaughter, ambiguity, and anti-comedy. There is also an increasing interest with comedy as a form of entertainment on the political right following both Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the U.S. Several essays confront this conservative comedy and place it in context of the larger humor history of these debates over free speech and political correctness. For comedians too, entry into popular media now follows the familiar neoliberal script of the celebration of self-help with the increasing admonishment of those who fail to win in market terms. Laughter plays an important role in shaming and valorizing (often at the same time!) the precarious subject in the aftermath of global recession. Doubling down on austerity, self-help policies and equivocation in the face of extremist challenges (right and left), politics foils the critical comedian’s attempt to satirize and parody its object. Characterized by ambiguity, mixed genre and the increasing use of anti-humor, political comedy mirrors the social and political world it mocks, parodies and celebrates often with lackluster results suggesting that the joke might be on us, as audiences.
Download or read book The Sanity of Satire written by Al Gini and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political humor and satire are, perhaps, as old as comedy itself, and they are crucial to our society and our collective sense of self. Satire is confrontational. It’s about pushback, dissent, discord, disappointment, and demonstrating the absurdity of the status quo. This book is an attempt to explore how these aspects of satire help secure our sanity. Aristotle famously said that humans are naturally political animals. We need political community to flourish and live good lives. But politics also entails unpopular decisions, oppression, and power struggles. Satire is a vehicle through which we reflect on and challenge the irrational, incomprehensible, and intolerable nature of our lives without becoming totally despondent or depressed. In a poignant, pithy, but not ponderous manner, Al Gini and Abraham Singer delve into the history of satire to rejoice in its triumphs and watch its development from ancient graffiti to the latest late-night TV talk show.
Download or read book A Conservative Walks Into a Bar written by A. Dagnes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conservative critics argue that modern political satire, in the age of The Daily Show, has a liberal bias. A quick review of the humor landscape shows that there are very few conservative political satirists, and using personal interviews with political humorists this book explains why. The book explores the history of satire, the comedy profession, and the nature of satire itself to examine why there is an ideological imbalance in political humor and it explores the consequences of this disparity. This book will appeal to Daily Show and Colbert fans, political junkies, and anyone interested in the intersection of politics and media.
Download or read book Because I Tell a Joke or Two written by Stephen Wagg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-01-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because I Tell a Joke or Two explores the complex relationship between comedy and the social differences of class, region, age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationhood. It shows how comedy has been used to sustain, challenge and to change power relationships in society. The contributors, who include Stephen Wagg, Mark Simpson, Stephen Small, Paul Wells and Frances Williams, offer readings of comedy genres, texts and performers in Britain, the United States and Australia. The collection also includes an interview with the comedian Jo Brand. Topics addressed include: * women in British comedies such as Butterflies and Fawlty Towers * the life and times of Viz, from Billy the Fish to the Fat Slags * queer readings of Morecambe and Wise, the male double act * the Marx brothers and Jewish comedy in the United States * black radical comedy in Britain * The Golden Girls, Cheers, Friends and American society.
Download or read book Strange Bedfellows written by Russell Leslie Peterson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A significant number of Americans get some of their "news" about politics and national affairs from comedy shows. Is "infotainment" a debasement, or a replacement, for traditional news outlets?
Download or read book No Laughing Matter written by Steven Lukes and published by Routledge & Kegan Paul Books. This book was released on 1985 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Politics of Joking written by Jana Kopelentova Rehak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages anthropologically with humor as political expression. It reveals how humor is in many instances at the center of human efforts to cope with political struggle and a significant key to understanding power dynamics in socio-political life. The chapters examine humor and joking activities across a diverse range of geographic areas and cultural contexts. The contributors consider humor as it is constituted in political anxiety, aggression and power, and when it becomes a tool to resist, repair, reconcile or make a moral claim. Collectively they demonstrate that humor can provide a powerful critique, a non-violent form of political protest and the space for restoration of human dignity.
Download or read book Humour in Society written by George E Paton and published by Springer. This book was released on 1988-04-18 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Late Night with Trump written by Stephen J. Farnsworth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political humor has been a staple of late-night television for decades. The Trump White House, however, has received significantly greater attention than that of past presidents, such as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and even Bill Clinton. In response to Trump’s strident politics, late-night comics, including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah and Jimmy Fallon, have sounded key policy notes, further blurring the boundary between news and satire. Weekly humorists, including John Oliver and Samantha Bee, extend the critique with in-depth probing of key issues, while Saturday Night Live continues to tap the progression from outrage to outrageousness. Using unique content analysis techniques and qualitative discussions of political humor, Farnsworth and Lichter show how late-night political humor, and these seven programs in particular, have responded to the Trump presidency. Employing a dataset of more than 100,000 late night jokes going back decades, these noted media scholars discuss how the treatment of Trump differs from previous presidents, and how the Trump era is likely to shape the future of political humor. The authors also employ public opinion survey data to consider the growing role these late-night programs play in framing public opinion and priorities. This book will interest scholars, the curious public, and students of politics, communications and the media, and contemporary American culture.
Download or read book Seriously Funny written by Samuel Schmidt and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Exploring the ways in which political humor has developed and operated in Mexico over more than four centuries, this is groundbreaking work argues persuasively that political jokes are acts of rebellion: their objective is not to overthrow a government but to correct its mistakes"--
Download or read book Can Jokes Bring Down Governments written by Metahaven (Design studio) and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a world where 'there is no alternative', how do you dissent? Once upon a time, graphic designers would have made political posters and typeset manifestos. Today, protest has new strategies. Enter the internet meme. With its Darwinian survival skills and its viral potential, the meme is a way of scaling up protest. Hackers and activists have learned to unleash the destructive force of a Rick Astley video. They have let slip the Lolcats of war. Pranks have become a resistance strategy. As the rise of Beppe Grillo in Italy testifies, this may be the hour to fight nonsense with nonsense. Jokes are an open-source weapon of politics, and it is time to tap their power."--Publisher's website
Download or read book The National Joker written by Todd Nathan Thompson and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover
Download or read book Comedy and Critical Thought written by Iain MacKenzie and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, comedians and clowns have enjoyed a certain freedom to speak frankly often denied to others in hegemonic systems. More recently, professional comedians have developed platforms of comic license from which to critique the traditional political establishment and have managed to play an important role in interrogating and mediating the processes of politics in contemporary society. This collection will examine the questions that arise when of comedy and critique intersect by bringing together both critical theorists and comedy scholars with a view to exploring the nature of comedy, its potential role in critical theory and the forms it can take as a practice of resistance.
Download or read book Political Humor in a Changing Media Landscape written by Jody C Baumgartner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past decade various studies have examined how political humor may influence various political attitudes and voting behavior; whether it affects learning, cognition and media literacy, how it might shape political participation; how people process different forms of political humor; and more. This book is devoted to anticipating and addressing where the field of political humor and its effects will move in the next generation of scholarship, exploring the continued evolution of the study of political humor as well as the normative implications of these developments. It includes research accounting for important changes and developments "on the ground" in the political humor landscape. These include the fact that the cadre of late-night television hosts have completely changed in the past 3 years; there are now more late night television choices; and many hosts have become more overtly political in their presentations. Recommended for scholars of communication, media studies, and political science.
Download or read book The Politics of the Impure written by Joke Brouwer and published by V2_ publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summary: It is crucial to understand that our progression through the twentieth century towards our contemporary global Crystal Palace (Peter Sloterdijk) of purity and transparency has been constantly accompanied by an almost physical desire for the pure, not just Mondrian's crystalline structures, but also the addictive taste of white sugar and white bread. This book investigates this urge for the pure, but also advocates a much deeper need for the impure, not to reinstate a new organicism, one more back-to-nature movement, but to trace that progression to a point where all modernist values reverse, where technology becomes an agent for the impure and the imperfect. Technology, long an agent for homogeneity and purity, is now turning into one for heterogeneity and global contingency.
Download or read book Lincoln s Sense of Humor written by Richard Carwardine and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Abraham Lincoln was the first president consistently to make storytelling and laughter tools of office. This book shows how his uses of humor evolved to fit changing personal circumstances, and explores its versatility, range of expressions, and multiple sources"--
Download or read book Politics Is a Joke written by S. Robert Lichter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does late night political humor matter? Are late-night comedians merely entertaining, or do they have the power to influence the way we think about politics and politicians? Politics Is a Joke! situates late night comedy in the historical context of political humor and demonstrates how the public turn to this venue for political information, and are in turn affected by it. Using exclusive data collected by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the authors conduct a detailed and exhaustive analysis of political jokes on late night TV shows dating back to 1992 in order to pinpoint the main targets and themes of late-night comedy. Politics Is a Joke! uses a wide range of examples, from jokes about politicians' physical appearance and sex scandals to jokes about Congress and even the news media, to assess and understand the impact of political humor on political institutions, politicians and their policies and behavior. Engagingly written with analysis of jokes from comedians like Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Politics is a Joke! is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the crucial role late night comedy plays in our political universe - and anyone who enjoys a good laugh.
