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The Comedian as the Letter I, or the Perils of Vaudeville in a Post-Modern age: On Irving Feldman (2001)

Willard Spiegelman

in Imaginative Transcripts: Selected Literary Essays

This chapter criticizes the works of American poet Irving Feldman. It suggests that Feldman can be considered a poet comedian and a multifaceted performer extraordinaire and explains that the ... More

This chapter criticizes the works of American poet Irving Feldman. It suggests that Feldman can be considered a poet comedian and a multifaceted performer extraordinaire and explains that the development of his poetry over more than four decades roughly parallels the changes of fashion in American poetry. It argues that though Feldman is connected to some of the styles and truisms of post-modern thought, he remains solidly rooted in many traditions of the 19th century.Less

Islam and humour: more than just a debate about cartoons

Jonathan Ervine

in Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy, Consensus and Contradictions

This chapter will build on Chapter Three’s focus on comedians whose material that draws on their ethnic or racial origins by focusing on French comedians who draw on their Muslim roots when ... More

This chapter will build on Chapter Three’s focus on comedians whose material that draws on their ethnic or racial origins by focusing on French comedians who draw on their Muslim roots when performing. This will demonstrate that that it is important to acknowledge that debates about Islam and humour need to go well beyond discussing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The presence of a growing number of comedians in France who evoke their Muslim roots challenges the perceived incompatibility of Islam and humour that is often evoked in debates about depictions of the Prophet. It will be shown that comedy is allowing Muslims in France, and elsewhere, to increasingly become tellers of jokes rather than merely the subject of jokes.Less

My Poor Heart Sometimes Runs, Sometimes Whirls: Meet Sa‘di the Comedian

Fatemeh Keshavarz

in Lyrics of Life: Sa'di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and Care of the Self

This chapter discusses the light-hearted ways in which Sa’di connects to his readers as a comedian. His goal the chapter argues is to infuse the most sacred and serious moments with laughter. For ... More

This chapter discusses the light-hearted ways in which Sa’di connects to his readers as a comedian. His goal the chapter argues is to infuse the most sacred and serious moments with laughter. For this purpose the chapter makes use of Sa’di’s long and celebrated poem the tarji’band, and provides the full translation of the poem.Less

Introduction

John Godwin (ed.)

in Juvenal Satires: Book IV

This chapter introduces satire as peculiar genre, which purports to tell its audience things in the manner of an old-testament prophet but with jeering mockery like a stand-up comedian. It describes ... More

This chapter introduces satire as peculiar genre, which purports to tell its audience things in the manner of an old-testament prophet but with jeering mockery like a stand-up comedian. It describes the satirist as a moralist in a bad mood with a good sense of humour, who is often intensely conservative, deplores any changes in society and manners, and longs for the good old days. It also gives an overview of Juvenal, a Roman poet, who is identified as one that has the anger of a Persius and a Lucilius and is married to the poetic skills of a Horace. The chapter focuses on Books 10, 11, and 12 of Juvenal's Satires, which talk about the folly of people who pursue money and power but end up paying the ultimate price for their misguided greed. It also mentions the state of contemporary Roman society that is full of violence and inability to trust others.Less

Early modern humour

Indira Ghose

in Shakespeare and Laughter: A Cultural History

This chapter focuses on changes in early modern humour. The first few decades of the professional theatre had been dominated by star comedians such as Dick Tarlton and Will Kemp. In the 1590s, ... More

This chapter focuses on changes in early modern humour. The first few decades of the professional theatre had been dominated by star comedians such as Dick Tarlton and Will Kemp. In the 1590s, tragedians took over. A shift in taste is discernible, away from the pratfalls and improvisational repartee of the early generation of comedians. Shakespearean clowns are largely replaced by wise fools, quibbles and puns take the place of malapropisms and scurrilous humour. A similar development might be traced in the burgeoning genre of jestbook literature. A closer look at Twelfth Night reveals that, in William Shakespeare's last romantic comedy, he incorporates many of the trends in laughter outlined so far.Less

Benny at War with the Radio Critics

Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley

in Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Jack Benny and his radio program faced numerous challenges during World War II – difficult performances at military camps, key personnel lost to the draft, mediocre comedy, and creative ennui. Benny ... More

Jack Benny and his radio program faced numerous challenges during World War II – difficult performances at military camps, key personnel lost to the draft, mediocre comedy, and creative ennui. Benny and new writers bounced back, starting in 1945, innovating with new radio characters like Mel Blanc’s violin teacher and train announcer, Frank Nelson’s obnoxious functionaries, and disdainful neighbors Ronald and Benita Colman. The “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” context brought critical acclaim. Then a new generation of radio critics, led by John Crosby, used Benny as the symbol of all that was stale and old in primetime network broadcasting. Benny and his writers alternately complained, fought back, and innovated to regain both popular and critical acclaim.Less

Maria Bamford: A/Way with Words

Rebecca Krefting

in Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals

Without being heavy-handed, Maria Bamford’s stand-up comedy tasks us with confronting social stratifications, global inequality, issues of gender parity, and negative attitudes towards mental ... More

Without being heavy-handed, Maria Bamford’s stand-up comedy tasks us with confronting social stratifications, global inequality, issues of gender parity, and negative attitudes towards mental illness. Humorous musings on her own struggles with bipolar disorder has amassed loyal fans and elevated Bamford to a position of public intellectual. This chapter by Rebecca Krefting explores the designation public intellectual—its gendered underpinnings and didactic nature—while charting Bamford’s ascendance in the public eye over time by affirming her own and others’ experiences of stigmatization, especially around matters of mental health.Less

Introduction

Gabriella Oldham and Mabel Langdon

in Harry Langdon: King of Silent Comedy

This section sets the background for the telling of Langdon’s story, which is divided into three phases. It also tells the story of how this biography came to be and expresses the author’s hope that ... More

This section sets the background for the telling of Langdon’s story, which is divided into three phases. It also tells the story of how this biography came to be and expresses the author’s hope that after many years of development, this book reflects both the hard work of the scholars involved and the memories of wife Mabel and son Harry Jr. of this man who was a comic genius.Less

Prolonged Stardom: Audio Records, TV and Film, 1961–2004

Alex Symons

in Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries: Survival and Prolonged Adaptation

This chapter focuses on Brooks's career as a film and TV comedian. Brooks, like so many other comedians, capitalised on each subsequent role by recycling material from previous appearances. In fact, ... More

This chapter focuses on Brooks's career as a film and TV comedian. Brooks, like so many other comedians, capitalised on each subsequent role by recycling material from previous appearances. In fact, his career can be usefully divided into three distinct campaigns, in which he cultivated an evolving persona. While Brooks's idiolect is certainly dependent on audience familiarity, his image is characterised by regular and significant change. Through a broad and prolonged history of intermedial adaptations, Brooks's career has been marked by transitions into various personas, ranging from his zany Yiddish goof in his 2000 Year Old Man audio performances, to his anarchic, Groucho Marx-style persona in his film Blazing Saddles (1974), to his endearing old gent ‘Uncle Phil’ in the sitcom Mad About You. These shifts demonstrate his ability to drastically adapt the material to meet the expectations of new eras as the cultural industries continue to change.Less

Where Is the Stand-Up Comedian?: Stand-Up on Stage

Ian Brodie

in A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter talks about how stand-up comedy requires the presence of someone at the comedian's performance to react and move the performance along. Taking the “unmediated performance” as a starting ... More

This chapter talks about how stand-up comedy requires the presence of someone at the comedian's performance to react and move the performance along. Taking the “unmediated performance” as a starting point, the chapter examines the possibility of an immediate and spontaneous coding and decoding of linguistic, paralinguistic, and kinesic symbols between performer and audience. Such an event is communicative, where there is at least one “encoder” (performer) and one “decoder” (audience member), between whom there is direct communication. Within stand-up comedy, the aim is to retain both the connection with the audience and the notion of the stage as a concession to performance. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of the microphone, since the use of amplification allowed for comic performances in a voice that did not have to struggle to be heard above a crowd. The microphone, together with the stage, allows for the performer to control the situation by drawing focus to him- or herself.Less

Who Is a Stand-Up Comedian?: The Social Identity

Ian Brodie

in A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter focuses on determining who the stand-up is by exploring some conceptions about what stand-up comedy is and what the stand-up comedian does. To identify oneself as a “stand-up comedian” ... More

This chapter focuses on determining who the stand-up is by exploring some conceptions about what stand-up comedy is and what the stand-up comedian does. To identify oneself as a “stand-up comedian” is to assume a social identity with various connotations and expectations. Stand-up comedians understand themselves as cultural figures: they have an informed understanding on the role of the stand-up comedian in modern society. Referring to comedian Ron James as its primary example, the chapter examines how fans and comedians understand the role of the comedian and comedy through the lens of vernacular theory. It then turns to a study of the narratives that comedians tell about themselves, which complement their onstage performances of non-autobiographic material. These narratives frame the performed material for the audience, providing the lens through which it is meant to be interpreted.Less

Who Is This Stand-Up Comedian?: The Performance of Self

Ian Brodie

in A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter considers how the stand-up comedian makes claims to further complement social identities that locate her or him in relation to the audience beyond that single pairing of “stand-up ... More

This chapter considers how the stand-up comedian makes claims to further complement social identities that locate her or him in relation to the audience beyond that single pairing of “stand-up comedian” and “stand-up comedy audience.” Comedians locate themselves and their narratives in a specific time and place; their sense of marginalization is made more explicit, and they establish a relationship with the audience in terms of shared, overlapping, or oppositional social identities that exist independent of the performance relationship. While on stage, stand-up comedians project their personal charisma and tell their stories just like other professional performers do. But stand-up comedy is a different kind of performance. Musicians, for example, perform music, and the non-musical moments are easily distinguishable from the musical ones. Such is not the case with stand-up comedy, where the narrator is understood as similar to the protagonist of his or her first-person narratives.Less

What Is the Stand-Up Comedian?: Intimate Other

Ian Brodie

in A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter delves into what the comedian says is a detached observer. In this manner, the stand-up comedian is seen as “outside” enough that what he or she has to say is interesting, as opposed to ... More

This chapter delves into what the comedian says is a detached observer. In this manner, the stand-up comedian is seen as “outside” enough that what he or she has to say is interesting, as opposed to when the comedian is seen as “inside” enough to be permitted to speak frankly with, to, and, for the audience. The chapter argues that stand-up comedy is the professionalization of everyday talk, small talk, or “talking shit”—talk that exists in the informal realm of play and leisure and is distinguished from serious talk. Professionalization brings heightened expectations of consistent competency, particularly stemming from the comedian's place within an exchange economy. The stand-up comedian is, on one level, a professional tourist, endlessly casting his or her gaze on difference, to communicate that experience of difference to an ever-changing audience.Less

Satire That Would “Gag a Goat”: Crossing the Line with Paul Krassner and Lenny Bruce

in Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America

By the early 1960s, a few performers and artists were challenging the limits of satiric irreverence with material that was even too indicting, despairing, or profane for the tastes of many educated, ... More

By the early 1960s, a few performers and artists were challenging the limits of satiric irreverence with material that was even too indicting, despairing, or profane for the tastes of many educated, middle-class audiences members. This chapter focuses on the ways in which Paul Krassner's satiric publication the Realist and “sicknik” comedian Lenny Bruce finally and fatefully transgressed the bounds of liberal satire.Less

“Well-Aimed Ridicule”: Satirizing American Race Relations

in Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America

This chapter describes how liberal satirists extended their critique into the area of American race relations. Joined by three African Americans—cartoonist Ollie Harrington and comedians Godfrey ... More

This chapter describes how liberal satirists extended their critique into the area of American race relations. Joined by three African Americans—cartoonist Ollie Harrington and comedians Godfrey Cambridge and Dick Gregory—these liberal satirists subjected to satiric scrutiny one of the thorniest and most important challenges facing Americans.Less

The Art of Stand-Up Comedy

Daniel R. Smith

in Comedy and Critique: Stand-Up Comedy and the Professional Ethos of Laughter

This chapter provides a sociological theory of the stand-up comedian. It seeks to establish a theory of humour which arises in modern societies and the sociality that drives such humour. Although ... More

This chapter provides a sociological theory of the stand-up comedian. It seeks to establish a theory of humour which arises in modern societies and the sociality that drives such humour. Although there are philosophical theories of humour, as well as anthropological theories of comedy figures – clowns, jokers, jesters, fools, tricksters – this chapter argues that a sociological theory of humour needs to be sensitive to the type of sociality, personhood and collective representations which drive contemporary stand-up comedy. To this end it outlines stand-up comedy as the art of ‘intra-personal’ relations where ‘self-other’, stranger sociality is built, improvised and performatively situated.Less

The Critique of Comic Reason

Daniel R. Smith

in Comedy and Critique: Stand-Up Comedy and the Professional Ethos of Laughter

This chapter brings together themes and arguments from the preceding chapters to outline a theory of stand-up comedians as proto-sociologists. It begins by outlining a potential ‘subterranean’ ... More

This chapter brings together themes and arguments from the preceding chapters to outline a theory of stand-up comedians as proto-sociologists. It begins by outlining a potential ‘subterranean’ history of the elective affinity between New Left, ‘Alt. Comedy’ and British sociology. From this the chapter explores the distinctive figuration of and mode of critique provided by the stand-up comedian as a proto-sociologist. This is then illustrated through a reading of four contemporary stand-up comedians and their potential contribution to sociological knowledge.Less