Cringe witnessing in post-millennial stand-up comedy performances by Ali Wong and Ali Quandil

Abstract

Abstract Cringe comedy, wittily disseminating truth through the interplay between the verbal and contextual, centralizes vicarious/embarrassment as its endpoint through levels of para/linguistic incongruity and social superiority. This paper focuses on the stand-up comedian presentation along with paratextual elements that document the sociopolitical situation in two different cultures contributing to the process of perception on the part of the gazing audience. The paper questions the spectatorial gaze through post-millennial media practices that pertain to the visual among other visceral affects thus diminishing the role of the active witness whose role is beyond watching. The act of witnessing, globally foregrounded and requested by the turn of the twenty-first century, is investigated within the structure of stand-up comedy to figure out whether or not the spectator is an active witness or a by-stander. For this purpose, the study applies Andy Lavender’s model of performance modalities to stand-up comedy performances by the American Ali Wong and the Egyptian Ali Quandil; Don Wong and Mawdoa Hareemi Shweya (Some Feminine Stuff) in 2022 and 2021 respectively. Lavender’s model proposes that four modalities (the emotional, physical, discursive, contextual) turn the actor/performer into the physical medium of communication to the audience.