Michael H. Epp
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199234066
- eISBN:
- 9780191803352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199234066.003.0018
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter explores the emergence of humour as a popular genre and its role in the development of mass culture in the United States during the period 1860–1920. It also considers the ways in which ...
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This chapter explores the emergence of humour as a popular genre and its role in the development of mass culture in the United States during the period 1860–1920. It also considers the ways in which the humour industry engaged in ‘struggles over hierarchies of identity and economic profit’ in the era of the mass market, along with the rationalisation of popular humour production at print institutions such as magazines and newspapers. The chapter first provides an overview of the field of American Humor Studies before turning to a discussion of the social, economic, and political dimensions of various interests pursued by the humour industry during the period. It then looks at the articulation of humour to advertising, along with the success of illustrated humour and the emergence of comic strips. Finally, it examines the role played by two popular writers, Mark Twain and Marietta Holley, in the humour industry.Less
This chapter explores the emergence of humour as a popular genre and its role in the development of mass culture in the United States during the period 1860–1920. It also considers the ways in which the humour industry engaged in ‘struggles over hierarchies of identity and economic profit’ in the era of the mass market, along with the rationalisation of popular humour production at print institutions such as magazines and newspapers. The chapter first provides an overview of the field of American Humor Studies before turning to a discussion of the social, economic, and political dimensions of various interests pursued by the humour industry during the period. It then looks at the articulation of humour to advertising, along with the success of illustrated humour and the emergence of comic strips. Finally, it examines the role played by two popular writers, Mark Twain and Marietta Holley, in the humour industry.
Judith Yaross Lee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036439
- eISBN:
- 9781621030577
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036439.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Samuel L. Clemens lost the 1882 lawsuit declaring his exclusive right to use “Mark Twain” as a commercial trademark, but he succeeded in the marketplace, where synergy among his comic journalism, ...
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Samuel L. Clemens lost the 1882 lawsuit declaring his exclusive right to use “Mark Twain” as a commercial trademark, but he succeeded in the marketplace, where synergy among his comic journalism, live performances, authorship, and entrepreneurship made “Mark Twain” the premier national and international brand of American humor in his day. So it remains in ours, because Mark Twain’s humor not only expressed views of self and society well ahead of its time, but also anticipated ways in which humor and culture coalesce in today’s postindustrial information economy—the global trade in media, performances, and other forms of intellectual property that began after the Civil War. This book traces four hallmarks of Twain’s humor that are especially significant today. Mark Twain’s invention of a stage persona comically conflated with his biographical self lives on in contemporary performances by Garrison Keillor, Margaret Cho, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jon Stewart. The postcolonial critique of Britain that underlies America’s nationalist tall tale tradition not only self-destructs in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court but also drives the critique of American Exceptionalism in Philip Roth’s literary satires. The semi-literate writing that gives Adventures of Huckleberry Finn its “vernacular vision”—wrapping cultural critique in ostensibly innocent transgressions and misunderstandings—has a counterpart in the apparently untutored drawing style and social critique seen in The Simpsons, Lynda Barry’s comics, and The Boondocks.Less
Samuel L. Clemens lost the 1882 lawsuit declaring his exclusive right to use “Mark Twain” as a commercial trademark, but he succeeded in the marketplace, where synergy among his comic journalism, live performances, authorship, and entrepreneurship made “Mark Twain” the premier national and international brand of American humor in his day. So it remains in ours, because Mark Twain’s humor not only expressed views of self and society well ahead of its time, but also anticipated ways in which humor and culture coalesce in today’s postindustrial information economy—the global trade in media, performances, and other forms of intellectual property that began after the Civil War. This book traces four hallmarks of Twain’s humor that are especially significant today. Mark Twain’s invention of a stage persona comically conflated with his biographical self lives on in contemporary performances by Garrison Keillor, Margaret Cho, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jon Stewart. The postcolonial critique of Britain that underlies America’s nationalist tall tale tradition not only self-destructs in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court but also drives the critique of American Exceptionalism in Philip Roth’s literary satires. The semi-literate writing that gives Adventures of Huckleberry Finn its “vernacular vision”—wrapping cultural critique in ostensibly innocent transgressions and misunderstandings—has a counterpart in the apparently untutored drawing style and social critique seen in The Simpsons, Lynda Barry’s comics, and The Boondocks.
Judith Yaross Lee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036439
- eISBN:
- 9781621030577
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036439.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter shows how performances that exploit the comically unstable persona for humorous effect update Twain’s brand of humor for contemporary audiences. In American literary humor, a second ...
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This chapter shows how performances that exploit the comically unstable persona for humorous effect update Twain’s brand of humor for contemporary audiences. In American literary humor, a second hallmark of Twain’s brand lives on in the form of the comic cross-cultural contrast. Mark Twain, throughout his career, mined a nationalist strand of literary humor that celebrated American separation from imperial Britain through comically invidious contrasts of American values, language, characters, and experience with those of other cultures, especially the ostensibly more cultivated European aristocracies and their descendents among educated Americans. Stand-up comedians perform oral narratives, usually monologues, in which they appear to express themselves rather than play a role. The genre of stand-up comedy actually encompasses a broad continuum of live performances ranging from solo and small-group verbal, musical, or physical clowning to direct joke telling and social commentary.Less
This chapter shows how performances that exploit the comically unstable persona for humorous effect update Twain’s brand of humor for contemporary audiences. In American literary humor, a second hallmark of Twain’s brand lives on in the form of the comic cross-cultural contrast. Mark Twain, throughout his career, mined a nationalist strand of literary humor that celebrated American separation from imperial Britain through comically invidious contrasts of American values, language, characters, and experience with those of other cultures, especially the ostensibly more cultivated European aristocracies and their descendents among educated Americans. Stand-up comedians perform oral narratives, usually monologues, in which they appear to express themselves rather than play a role. The genre of stand-up comedy actually encompasses a broad continuum of live performances ranging from solo and small-group verbal, musical, or physical clowning to direct joke telling and social commentary.
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520295049
- eISBN:
- 9780520967946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295049.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Radio
Jack Benny was the most successful of radio’s comedians. In 23 years of weekly broadcasts, Benny indelibly shaped American humor through this powerful mass medium, and became one of the most ...
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Jack Benny was the most successful of radio’s comedians. In 23 years of weekly broadcasts, Benny indelibly shaped American humor through this powerful mass medium, and became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century. The ultimate master of comic timing, Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering “showrunner” producer/writer/performers. His modern style of radio humor (informal monologues and easy repartee with comic assistants like the famed Rochester character played by Eddie Anderson and wife Mary Livingstone) created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors products in commercials listeners loved, and how he dealt with challenges of race relations, gender ideals, creating comedy and thriving in rapidly changing American media.Less
Jack Benny was the most successful of radio’s comedians. In 23 years of weekly broadcasts, Benny indelibly shaped American humor through this powerful mass medium, and became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century. The ultimate master of comic timing, Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering “showrunner” producer/writer/performers. His modern style of radio humor (informal monologues and easy repartee with comic assistants like the famed Rochester character played by Eddie Anderson and wife Mary Livingstone) created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors products in commercials listeners loved, and how he dealt with challenges of race relations, gender ideals, creating comedy and thriving in rapidly changing American media.
Erica R. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675456
- eISBN:
- 9781452947488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675456.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter presents how curiosity, manifested in particular through parody, weds the conceptual work of contesting charisma to the playful questioning embedded in the formal workings of African ...
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This chapter presents how curiosity, manifested in particular through parody, weds the conceptual work of contesting charisma to the playful questioning embedded in the formal workings of African American humor. At the turn of the twenty-first century, American popular culture witnessed an explosion of millennial refashionings of spectacular black political leadership, even as postmodern black fiction and film contested the scenario of charismatic black political leadership as the primal and primary mode of political belonging and performance in the post-civil rights black cultural repertoire. The chapter examines Paul Beatty’s novel The White Boy Shuffle and the film Barbershop as revisionist counterstories, whose characters embrace an intuitive way of seeing that grapples with those “phantom subjects” of civil rights protest. These subjects are both the leaders they lack and the players in the drama of black political history that the leadership spectacle necessarily pushes out of sight.Less
This chapter presents how curiosity, manifested in particular through parody, weds the conceptual work of contesting charisma to the playful questioning embedded in the formal workings of African American humor. At the turn of the twenty-first century, American popular culture witnessed an explosion of millennial refashionings of spectacular black political leadership, even as postmodern black fiction and film contested the scenario of charismatic black political leadership as the primal and primary mode of political belonging and performance in the post-civil rights black cultural repertoire. The chapter examines Paul Beatty’s novel The White Boy Shuffle and the film Barbershop as revisionist counterstories, whose characters embrace an intuitive way of seeing that grapples with those “phantom subjects” of civil rights protest. These subjects are both the leaders they lack and the players in the drama of black political history that the leadership spectacle necessarily pushes out of sight.
Micaela di Leonardo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190870195
- eISBN:
- 9780190870225
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190870195.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Culture
Black Radio is a window into the most famous radio show you never heard of. The Tom Joyner Morning Show is a quarter-century-old syndicated black morning radio show reaching more than eight million ...
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Black Radio is a window into the most famous radio show you never heard of. The Tom Joyner Morning Show is a quarter-century-old syndicated black morning radio show reaching more than eight million adult, largely working-class listeners. It offers progressive political talk, soul music, humor, advice, philanthropy, and celebrity gossip. But the TJMS is not just an adult “old-school music” radio show: it is an on-air organizer, fusing progressive politics and aesthetics. It focuses on specific political issues affecting and enraging African Americans. Black Radio analyzes the TJMS’s rise in the Clinton era, and its coverage of key events—9/11, Hurricane Katrina, President Obama’s elections and terms, the murders of unarmed black Americans and the rise of Black Lives Matter, and the shocking 2016 Donald Trump electoral triumph. It showcases the varied, contentious, and blackly humorous voices of anchors, guests, and audience members. Finally, it investigates the new synergistic set of cross-medium ties and political connections now affecting print, broadcast, and online politics in anti-racist directions. Despite the dismal present, this new multiracial progressive public sphere has extraordinary potential for shaping future American politics. Black Radio, then, is more than the project of making the invisible visible, bringing to light a major counterpublic phenomenon unjustly ignored for reasons of color, class, generation, and medium. It tunes us in to an alternative understanding of the black public sphere in the digital age. Like the show itself, Black Radio is politically progressive, music-drenched, angry, and blisteringly funny.Less
Black Radio is a window into the most famous radio show you never heard of. The Tom Joyner Morning Show is a quarter-century-old syndicated black morning radio show reaching more than eight million adult, largely working-class listeners. It offers progressive political talk, soul music, humor, advice, philanthropy, and celebrity gossip. But the TJMS is not just an adult “old-school music” radio show: it is an on-air organizer, fusing progressive politics and aesthetics. It focuses on specific political issues affecting and enraging African Americans. Black Radio analyzes the TJMS’s rise in the Clinton era, and its coverage of key events—9/11, Hurricane Katrina, President Obama’s elections and terms, the murders of unarmed black Americans and the rise of Black Lives Matter, and the shocking 2016 Donald Trump electoral triumph. It showcases the varied, contentious, and blackly humorous voices of anchors, guests, and audience members. Finally, it investigates the new synergistic set of cross-medium ties and political connections now affecting print, broadcast, and online politics in anti-racist directions. Despite the dismal present, this new multiracial progressive public sphere has extraordinary potential for shaping future American politics. Black Radio, then, is more than the project of making the invisible visible, bringing to light a major counterpublic phenomenon unjustly ignored for reasons of color, class, generation, and medium. It tunes us in to an alternative understanding of the black public sphere in the digital age. Like the show itself, Black Radio is politically progressive, music-drenched, angry, and blisteringly funny.