Download or read book The Politics of British Stand up Comedy written by Sophie Quirk and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-11 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Palgrave Pivot questions how a new generation of alternative stand-up comedians and the political world continue to shape and influence each other. The Alternative Comedy Movement of the late 1970s and 1980s can be described as a time of unruly experimentation and left-wing radicalism. This book examines how alternative comedians continue to celebrate these characteristics in the twenty-first century, while also moving into a distinct phase of artistic development as the political context of the 1970s and 1980s loses its immediacy. Sophie Quirk draws on original interviews with comedians including Tom Allen, Josie Long, John-Luke Roberts and Tony Law to chart how alternative comedians are shaped by, and in turn respond to, contemporary political challenges from neoliberalism to Brexit, class controversy to commercialism. She argues that many of our assumptions about comedy’s politics must be challenged and updated. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the working methods and values of today’s alternative comedians.
Download or read book Comedy and Critique written by Daniel R. Smith and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2018-06-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comedy and Critique explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions. Daniel Smith demonstrates that the comic sensibility pervading contemporary humour is as much ‘speaking truth to power’ as it is realising one’s position ‘in’ power. The professionalisation of New Left humour offers a challenge to social and cultural critique. Stand-up comedy has made us all sociologists of self, identity and cultural power while also resigning us to a place where a comic sensibility becomes an acknowledgment of the necessity of social change.
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 Ironic State written by Brassett, James and published by Bristol University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-13 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can comedy tell us about the politics of a nation? In this book, James Brassett builds on his prize-winning research to demonstrate how British comedy can provide intimate and vital understandings of the everyday politics of globalization in Britain. The book explores British comedy and Britain’s global politics from post-war imperial decline through to its awkward embrace of globalization, examining a wide variety of comedic mediums, such as the popular television show The Office and the online satire The Daily Mash. Touching on issues such as empire, the class system and capitalism, the author demonstrates how comedy offers valuable insights on how global market life is experienced, mediated, contested and accommodated.
Download or read book Why Stand up Matters written by Sophie Quirk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Funny, lively and unpredictable, stand-up comedy is above all a medium to be enjoyed. Popular as a good night out and packing the TV schedules, stand-up permeates British society and culture. Ubiquitous though it is, we are generally reluctant to consider comedy's social consequences. When comedians offend we seem ready to consider the potential for stand-up to do some wider harm, yet we rarely consider the good that it might do. This book looks at the social and political impact of stand-up comedy in both its positive and negative forms. Drawing on exclusive interviews with comedians such as Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Joe Wilkinson and Mark Thomas, and examples of comic material on everything from revolution, terrorism and homosexuality, to knitting and the inefficiency of the home shower, it explores comedy's role in determining our attitudes and opinions. While revealing the conventions comics use to manage audience response, Sophie Quirk demonstrates how comedy audiences allow themselves to be manipulated, and the potential harm – and real benefits – that may arise from 'just' being funny.
Download or read book Politics of Recognition and Representation in Indian Stand Up Comedy written by Richa Chilana and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Punching Up in Stand Up Comedy written by Rashi Bhargava and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy explores the new forms, voices and venues of stand-up comedy in different parts of the world and its potential role as a counterhegemonic tool for satire, commentary and expression of identity especially for the disempowered or marginalised. The title brings together essays and perspectives on stand-up and satire from different cultural and political contexts across the world which raise pertinent issues regarding its role in contemporary times, especially with the increased presence of OTT platforms and internet penetration that allows for easy access to this art form. It examines the theoretical understanding of the different aspects of the humour, aesthetics and politics of stand-up comedy, as well as the exploration of race, gender, politics and conflicts, urban culture and LGBTQ+ identities in countries such as Indonesia, Finland, France, Iran, Italy, Morocco, India and the USA. It also asks the question whether, along with contesting and destabilising existing discursive frameworks and identities, a stand-up comic can open up a space for envisaging a new social, cultural and political order? This book will appeal to people interested in performance studies, media, popular culture, digital culture, sociology, digital sociology and anthropology, and English literature. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Funded by the University of Helsinki.
Download or read book A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar written by Caty Borum Chattoo and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges. Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change. Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.
Download or read book Stand up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms written by Ellie Tomsett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the barriers to women's participation in live comedy, and how are these barriers maintained in the digital era? In this book, Ellie Tomsett considers how the origins of stand-up comedy still impact on current live comedy production, and explains how the contemporary stand-up scene continues to reflect wider societal stereotypes about the capabilities of women. Using primary data collected from women-only comedy nights and immersive research with the UK Women in Comedy Festival in Manchester, Tomsett analyses examples of stand-up performed by contemporary comedians - including Bridget Christie, Luisa Omielan, Lolly Adefope and Gráinne Maguire - and provocatively questions how these performances relate to conceptions of feminist and postfeminist humour, as well as notions of backlash against contemporary feminisms. She focuses on live comedy that is explicitly feminist to consider how social attitudes to women, the increasing visibility of female labour outside the home, and the emergence of multiple (and sometimes contradictory) feminisms has influenced the comedy produced by women comedians in 21st century Britain.
Download or read book Stand up Comedy in Africa written by Izuu Nwankwọ and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African cultural productions of humour have increased even in the face of myriad economic foibles and social upheavals. For instance, from the 1990s, stand-up comedy emerged across the continent and has maintained a pervasive presence since then. Its specificities are related to contemporary economic and political contexts and are also drawn from its pre-colonial history, that of joking forms and relationships, and orality. Izuu Nwankwọ's fascinating collected volume offers a transnational appraisal of this unique art form spanning different nations of the continent and its diasporas. The book engages variously with jokesters, their materials, the mediums of dissemination, and the cultural value(s) and relevance of their stage work, encompassing the form and content of the practice. Its ruling theoretical perspective comes from theatre and performance, cultural studies, linguistics, and literary studies.
Download or read book Race Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy written by Jack Black and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-25 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film.
Download or read book The Politics and Psychoanalysis of Comedy written by Robert Samuels and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-11-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the political aspects of comedy and how humor is shaped by unconscious social and psychological factors within a particular cultural and historical context. Updating Freud’s work on jokes, Robert Samuels argues that any universal model of comedy must take into account the role played by distinct genres, which are themselves determined by particular political psychopathologies. In looking at contemporary comedy, we encounter a structure that is often seen throughout the world: in response to what is experienced as a Leftist super-ego censoring thoughts and speech and a Libertarian Right which promotes free speech as the ultimate value. Within this dynamic, comedians seeking to make their audience laugh by poking fun at sensitive and taboo subjects, intentionally and unintentionally, these humorists present an alternative to Left-wing political correctness and identity politics. Contemporary comedians then cannot help but to cater to Right-wing politics since the Right is centered on loudly rejecting the cultural dictations of the Left.
Download or read book Alternative Comedy Now and Then written by Oliver Double and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-05 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives is the first academic collection focusing on the history and legacy of the alternative comedy movement in Britain that began in 1979 and continues to influence contemporary stand-up comedy. The collection examines the contexts, performances and reception of alternative comedy in order to provide a holistic approach to examining the socio-political impact and significance of alternative comedy from its historical roots through to present day performances. As alternative comedy celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019, critically reflecting on its impact and significance is a timely endeavour. The book adopts a distinctive interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing theory, concepts and methodologies from comedy studies, theatre and performance, communication and media studies, sociology, political sciences and anthropology. This approach is taken in order to fully understand and examine the dynamics and nuances of the alternative comedy movement which would not be possible with a single-discipline approach.
Download or read book Transmedial Perspectives on Humour and Translation written by Loukia Kostopoulou and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative collection spotlights the role of media crossovers in humour translation and how the latter is conveyed through new means of communication. The volume offers an in-depth exploration of the entanglements of film, theatre, literature, TV, the Internet, etc., within the framework of transmediality and their influence on the practice of translating humour. Chapters focus on the complex web of interrelationships shaped by and shaping the process(es) of transformation and adaptation that take place across media and across languages and cultures. Situating translation practices and innovations within an interdisciplinary context, the volume underscores the hybrid nature and complex semiotics of humour and the plurality of possibilities for new insights that contemporary approaches offer driven by technological advancements in the industry. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of Translation Studies, Humour Studies, Audiovisual Translation, Media Studies, and Adaptation Studies.
Download or read book Alternative Comedy written by Oliver Double and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1970s, the alternative comedy scene exploded into life in Britain and completely changed the style, subject matter and politics of British stand-up. Contemporary critics talked about it as 'anti-matter comedy' that 'makes you laugh while actually rearranging large chunks of your brain'. This book draws on a wealth of archive material – including unpublished recordings of early performances – and new interviews with key figures such as Alexei Sayle, Andy de la Tour and Jim Barclay, to provide a detailed history of the early scene and an examination of the distinctive modes of performance style which developed. Beginning with its origins, the volume traces the influence of American stand-up, and in particular the significance of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce as the originators of a style of stand-up that influenced the British pioneers of alternative comedy. It shows how the opening of the Comedy Store in 1979 provided a catalyst for a new movement, which grew outward from there with the foundation of the group Alternative Cabaret and the opening of the Comic Strip. But it also looks at smaller venues and less celebrated acts that have not been as well remembered, including ranting poets and street performers. Finally, it looks at alternative comedy's legacy, showing how it was the starting point for the UK's thriving and varied live scene, which encompasses anything from small pub gigs to huge arena tours.
Download or read book The Trouble with Jokes written by Nick Butler and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’re accustomed to seeing humour as a diversion from the serious side of life, but humour also permeates some of the most troubling political developments in recent years. From the resurgence of white nationalism to the erosion of democratic norms, jokes force-feed us objectionable ideologies while we gasp and splutter at all the side-splitting shenanigans. This book explores the relationship between humour and offensiveness in contemporary society. Drawing on examples from philosophical thinkers and popular culture, it invites readers to consider the dark side of humour. Weaving together cultural analysis, political discussion and philosophical reflection, the book provides an antidote to positive thinking about laughter and a roadmap for navigating different types of offensive humour.
Download or read book Satire TV written by Jonathan Gray and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines what happens when comedy becomes political, and politics become funny. A series of original essays focus on a range of programmes, from 'The Daily Show' to 'South Park'.
