This essay argues that comedic humility provides a powerful rhetorical strategy for disabled stand-up comedians. We posit that humility provides both a moral and ethical blueprint, granting comedians greater moral standing. When disabled comedians employ humility as a comedic strategy, they foster empathy, challenge stereotypes, counter social stigma, and protect themselves from potential criticism or backlash. Our analysis begins with a brief overview of self-deprecating humour. Then we introduce the concept of humility, defining it as a virtue and an ethical communication style that allows acknowledging human abilities as well as shortcomings. By explaining how stand-up comedian Phil Hanley humanises his pain, uses his humility as a weapon, and engages in humblehumorbragging, we illustrate the value of humility when it comes to approaching sensitive topics without making the comedian the subject of ridicule. Hanley’s style in his comedy special Ooh La La contributes to broader conversations about disability and humour, particularly regarding how comedians with disabilities represent their experiences. By approaching his dyslexia with humility, Hanley promotes a positive portrayal that challenges stereotypes and expands inclusivity in comedy.

This study investigates the emergence of political parody songs as a powerful medium of political communication in India. It looks at 18 parody songs by six creators from 2015 to 2025, focusing on their construction of political critique, use of rhetorical devices and the influence of intertextual elements. The analysis reveals that song creators subvert political authority by mocking leaders with playful nicknames, presenting policy failures as systematic features instead of aberrations and comparing the lived reality of the citizens with official narratives and political promises. Presenting English as a language of elite hypocrisy and Hindi as the language of authentic frustrations, these songs use irony, hyperbole and metaphors to make their sharp critique. Webs of meaning are created through intertextual references such as nostalgic Bollywood songs, catchy slogans and viral memes. These elements together create a mix that allows these parodies to reach millions of audiences and create counter-hegemonic narratives. However, the sophisticated cultural references in these parodies create an accessibility paradox that excludes the rural and non-English-speaking audiences they claim to represent. Moreover, by presenting all parties as equally corrupt, they risk promoting political cynicism instead of mobilising for social change. Contributing to the understanding of vernacular digital creativity in a postcolonial context, the researchers argue that YouTube enables new forms of political expression that powerfully document democratic decay but are still struggling to imagine alternatives.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) subverts neo-traditional romantic comedy expectations and pushes gender constructions into a reversal utopia, inverting a societal construct to highlight its absurdity. Appealing to more progressive, critically-minded contemporary viewers, Barbie Land centres on women leading in politics, professional careers, and social life. While the film may humorously laud this as an ideal for women, it ultimately argues that unequal opportunities for men and women are unjust, whether in Barbie Land or the United States. Barbie aligns with reversal utopian literature such as Annie Denton Cridge’s Man’s Rights; Or, How Would You Like It? (1870), one of the first feminist utopian texts written by an American woman. In Man’s Rights, men complete domestic and child-rearing duties, but without the need for such responsibilities in Barbie, men are left without any meaningful work. However, both texts feature men seeking increased rights, and ultimately, progress is made, suggesting the same is possible for women in our reality. Considering this text alongside the film highlights the latter’s combination of utopian elements with comedy, pushing genre boundaries. It also demonstrates an impulse to highlight injustice through an absurd reversal and defamiliarization, in turn highlighting the preposterousness of the injustice in our reality.

Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) made significant contributions to the development of early modern Japanese literature by using humour and satire to portray the lives of townsmen, or chōnin. His works blend realism and humour with biting social critique, focusing on the follies, ambitions, and challenges of urban life. Saikaku masterfully transformed anxieties surrounding wealth, thrift, and ambition into comedic entertainment, rendering his work both commercially successful and socially insightful. His engagement with business themes enabled him to capture the nuances of a rapidly evolving cash-based economy. Additionally, Saikaku’s ability to address the moral contradictions of the merchant class, while delivering engaging narratives, established him as a master storyteller. This article examines Saikaku’s career trajectory as he came to assume a dual role as a financially successful professional writer and a sharp social commentator. The article further explores how Saikaku capitalised on market demands and adapted his literary output to reflect popular tastes. His strategic engagement with a professional network and a growing readership allowed him to navigate the competitive publishing landscape, securing his status as a literary entrepreneur. His personal brand proved so durable that posthumous publications, some produced by collaborators, continued to find a ready market extending beyond his lifetime.

This article deepens our understanding of printed comedy as an early modern business by studying Dutch publisher and poet Hieronymus Sweerts (1629–1696) as a comedic entrepreneur. The term ‘comedic entrepreneur’ means to highlight publishers as driving forces in the production of printed comedy and scrutinise their involvement in shaping the comedy they sold. Sweerts’s entrepreneurship is scrutinised through his collection of humorous inscriptions, the Koddige en ernstige opschriften. Clues contained in the opschriften allow for a reconstruction of Sweerts’s roles as collector, editor, and poet in relation to the collection. This approach uncovers how, and to what effect, Sweerts combined the premise of comedy collected from public life with texts of other genres familiar to his readership. His decisions in the three roles illustrate how Sweerts was primarily concerned with the amusing function and commercial viability of the opschriften. The large share of commercial inscriptions from shopkeepers’ signs provide the collection with a distinct flavour of advertisement humour, which allowed the reader to reflect on the pre-capitalist economy and culture wherefrom both the advertisements and the opschriften emerged. The variety of non-inscriptions (satirical epitaphs, anecdotes, lottery rhymes), on the other hand, expanded Sweerts’s comedic toolbox with comic mechanisms not granted by the inscriptions proper. Finally, the inclusion of poems written by or about himself reveal how Sweerts employed his collection for purposes of self-fashioning as a respected poet. This case study, then, uncovers the myriad of creative and entrepreneurial decisions at the heart of seemingly derivative comic printed material.

This article examines the convergence between humour, horror, and science fiction in contemporary Brazilian cinema. Drawing on a corpus of films released after 2016 – a period marked by intense political crises and radicalised culture wars – it focuses on a relatively new phenomenon in Brazilian film culture: the emergence of narratives that blend speculative genres with comic strategies to address sociopolitical turmoil. Rather than relying solely on the mobilisation of fear, these films articulate distinct modes of comic engagement to process societal anxieties and confront institutional violence. The analysis centres on two core narrative strategies: satirical allegory and symbolic revenge. It situates these within a broader cultural landscape shaped by digital cultures, conspiracy theories, and a frequently cruel, punitive online humour. In doing so, the article highlights how comic and speculative elements operate not merely as stylistic devices, but as expressive tools for social critique and political positioning in a moment of democratic fragility.

Democracies and space for humour have always been closely associated. With scholars agreeing on democratic backsliding in India, this article attempts to look at the state of humour and comedy to examine whether India can still be called a fully functional democracy. In the article, through the study of five specific cases that took place in different locations of India, I have identified a triad of nation-state, government, and religion that cannot be joked about. These subjects remain at the top of the power pyramid under Hindutva and are essential to their strategies of governance.

Comedy interventions for people experiencing mental ill health remain opaque (Kafle et al. 2023). Existing studies typically evaluate changes in mental health indicators for participants before and after, but rarely analyse what happens during a comedy intervention. These approaches fail to do justice to the complexity and diversity of different types of comedy as artistic practice and mental health intervention. In this study, we unpack the inner workings of a stand-up comedy course for eating disorder recovery. We use a multi-method qualitative design – including interviews, journals and workshop observations – to analyse how a group of participants engaged with specific comedy exercises and other workshop content. We also analyse transcripts of comedy produced in these sessions, which is required to improve understanding of the diverse mechanisms by which comedy interventions can impact mental health recovery. We conclude that the comedy course had a positive impact on participants, specifically by cultivating comic distancing and perspective shifting, sharing lived experience and re-framing comedy as a coping skill. We also demonstrate that what happens in these workshops is a culturally significant form of comedy worthy of analysis, which has previously received limited attention in humour and comedy studies.