Ambivalence in the stand-up acts of Nigeria’s Klint da Drunk and Mr Paul

Abstract

In a progressively permissive world, stand-up art is experiencing repressions and censure for its dependence on potentially politically incorrect jokes. Stand-up’s primary purpose is to instigate laughter, but its greatest ambivalence is that its mirth comes primarily from abuse/insult. Through performance analyses of the humor acts of Mr Paul and Klint da Drunk, this paper discusses their use of non-traditional stand-up forms, underscoring how these jokesters balance offence and abuse, and the complexities of being different. Specifically, Mr Paul builds his jokes around non-sequitur meandering narratives riddled with implausible claims, while Klint enacts the stock character of a drunk who depends heavily on heckling, direct insults, and disparaging jokes for the evocation of mirth. Though not using the more established joke-telling patterns, these two still elicit laughter, entertain audiences, and provide politically charged critiques of the harsh and unsavory socio-political conditions in Nigeria, albeit conveyed through the agency of humor.