Late-night Comedy Research Articles

You can’t do that on television (right now): Strike Force Five, late-night comedy, and audience engagement

ABSTRACT Given declining public trust in mainstream media outlets, late-night comedians are increasingly relied upon as trusted sources of political information. Connections with late-night hosts have taken on a personalized, psychological dimension and have even become a part of media users’ expression of social group identity. Understanding this dynamic, the research presents a thematic textual analysis of the twelve-plus hours of conversation and comic banter between Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver that aired across the twelve-episode run of the Fall 2023 podcast, Strike Force Five. Connecting with viewers during the 2023 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, the podcast presents a personalized view of the life of these five comedians as they dialogue about their families, the early days of their comedy careers, the history of late-night comedy programming, and their unique public friendship despite being cast by the media as competitors in the late-night ratings war. Analyzing the reach and impact of the Strike Force Five podcast is an important part of furthering an understanding of the influence of late-night comedy and political satire on our political life and popular culture.

Looking beyond the punchline: the effect of political entertainment on evaluations of political candidates

ABSTRACT This study examined the effects of three different television genres on perceptions of a political candidate during an election period. Students at a large Southeastern university (n = 172) were assigned to one of three conditions: late-night comedy, traditional news, or sketch comedy to assess differential impacts on perceived trust, evaluations, and electability of Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary period. Results showed that participants in the late-night condition rated Warren as more trustworthy than those in the traditional news condition. However, there were no differences across the conditions in terms of perceptions of electability or candidate trait evaluations. Finally, this study found that political knowledge moderated the relationship between condition and trust. More specifically, results showed that as knowledge increased, participants in the sketch comedy condition reported higher levels of trust in Warren whereas the opposite occurred for those in the traditional news condition. Perceptions of trust remained fairly high and stable in the late-night condition, regardless of political knowledge. Results demonstrate the importance of understanding how politicians (or their likeness) are perceived in different television settings and how certain media appearances could affect viewer perceptions of those politicians.

Tuning in to the personal: late-night comedy, message engagement, and the gun control debate

ABSTRACT The research (N = 265) considers the effect of exposure to personalized political comedy on the gun control debate on message discounting, perceived informativeness, and message elaboration. Results show that viewers are less likely to engage in message discounting, more likely to engage in message elaboration, and more likely to rate personalized political comedy as informative when compared against exposure to a standard late-night monologue. Importantly, the findings show that personalized political comedy content has greater message engagement effects among those with lower affinity for entertaining news, suggesting that personalized political comedy may help to expand issue engagement and audiences.

Donald Trump in US Show Saturday Night Live (1988-2022)

The author analyzed episodes of the US late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL, 1988–2022), in which Donald Trump appeared as an object of parody, a host or comedy sketch participant. The goal of the research was to define how comedy modus as well as images of Trump-businessman and Trump-politician changed, what messages the comedians sent to the public. We conducted a content-analysis of video materials, academic and media publications, and interviews with students from Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod and Lobachevski State University of Nizhny Novgorod, who watched SNL not less than once a month. The study revealed that prior to 2015 parodies on D. Trump were less aggressive, and during his work in show The Apprentice — complimentary. After Trump announced his participation in 2016 presidential campaign, he was no longer invited to be a guest on SNL. Alec Baldwin was chosen as his killer-impersonator. From 2015 to 2021, the actor showed Trump as a xenophobe, racist, unprofessional politician, and incompetent president. After the politician lost presidential elections in 2020 negative parodies continued. Management of comedy show support for the Democratic Party, SNL being one of them that is reflected in the fight of the show comedians with conservative, non-systematic politician Donald Trump.

Prosodic markers of satirical imitation

Abstract Satirical imitation is a popular format of late-night comedy shows and can provide political entertainment and education. However, little research has been conducted on how satirists mark their satirical intent to clue audiences in on their intended messaging. This study investigates the prosodic marking of satirical imitation and contrasts it with prosodic marking of irony. We conducted a detailed case study of the prosodic marking in Alec Baldwin’s satirical imitation of Donald Trump in his audiobook You Can’t Spell America Without Me contrasted with both Baldwin’s and Trump’s regular voices. The analyzed corpus contained six hours of audio material across the three sources. Through a combination of automatic and manual coding, we measured average pitch, pitch variation, and speech rate. Our analysis did not reveal marking of satirical imitation by pitch or pitch variation. The satirical imitation was only marked by a faster speech rate than both baseline voices. These findings contrast with previous studies that identified a lower pitch, less pitch variation, and a slower speech rate as markers of verbal irony. Our study provides first evidence that satirical imitation is prosodically marked differently from verbal irony, with a faster speech rate as one potential marker.

Staying Human: Jon Batiste as Acousmêtre on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

ABSTRACT Through close analysis of the supporting role played by black jazz musician Jon Batiste on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, this article examines how the legacy of minstrelsy shapes late night comedy in the twenty-first century formally, spatially, and acoustically. For the majority of The Late Show’s history, Batiste has primarily operated as a voice without a body, or an acousmêtre, incorporated into a technical apparatus that deploys his reactions in a racialized manner that recalls minstrel conventions. This dynamic is exemplified in an episode from 2017 featuring black actor Morgan Freeman as a fantastical “sidekick” for the white host, Stephen Colbert, in a skit that made explicit the connotations of Batiste’s role on the show. However, when The Late Show began recording remotely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Batiste’s relationship to the show changed. By redefining his relationship to the technology that shapes the show, Batiste has been able to transform his position on the show and exceed the technical confines of the acousmatic role he once played.

Understanding the USA through Late Night Comedy

Understanding the USA through Late Night Comedy

Neoliberal feminisms, late-night comedy, and the public sphere, or: Samantha Bee takes on Ivanka Trump

ABSTRACT The article analyzes the humor of a 2017 Full Frontal skit concerned with the publication of Ivanka Trump’s “feminist” self-help book Women Who Work. In the skit, Full Frontal’s host Samantha Bee takes issue with how the book misrepresents feminist (labor) politics, and calls out as politically dangerous the alignment of Ivanka’s neoliberal rhetoric of empowerment with the neoconservative or “retrotopian” politics of the Trump administration. The article suggests that the skit performs its critical intervention in two ways: on the one hand, by humorously appropriating Ivanka’s language in order to criticize her neoliberal resignification of feminist politics, and on the other hand, by highlighting the contrast between Ivanka’s composed, traditionally feminine behavior and Bee’s unruly comic bodily comportment. As the article shows, the skit creates humor around this contrast to call attention to the gendered mechanisms that have prevented women’s bodies from appearing both as comedians and as public speakers. The article closes with a caveat, pointing to the recent commodification of humor itself in neoliberal news media contexts, a development that severely curtails the transgressive feminist potential of Bee’s skit.

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Late Night with Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency

Late Night with Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Late Night with Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency

Late Night with Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency

We Like the Boyfriend! The Changing Nature of Political Comedy, COVID-19, and Interview Conversations with Governor Andrew Cuomo

ABSTRACT Political comedy has seen considerable upheaval during the COVID-19 era. Broadcasting from home—or not at all—or back in an audience-less studio, comedians have adjusted both the tenor and the content of their programs to reflect the current political climate and public health crisis. Focusing on interviews with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo across a range of late-night comedy programs during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic (April – July 2020), the textual analysis explores how these conversations reflect a more serious and personality-driven political comedy reality. At the same time, these interview conversations highlight three key elements central to research on political comedy and satire: (1) the discursive integration and mixed blend of news and entertainment in political comedy programming, (2) the balance between hedonic and eudaimonic motivations that drives comedy creation and viewer selection, and (3) the need for comedy to satisfy emotional gratifications and manage mood.

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States

Why do progressive voices dominate late-night comedy programming? Why is a liberal Sean Hannity nowhere to be found in the media landscape? Why have attempts at producing progressive talk radio programming failed? These are questions that scholars of partisan media have grappled with—most of the time, unsuccessfully so—since the advent of conservative talk radio in the late 1980s. In her latest book Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States (O...

Multilingualism and Subversion: Articulating Plural Identities in Stand-up Comedy in India

Laughter has become a serious business in India now. Over the last decade, the growth of stand-up comedy has been phenomenal in India. From having late-night comedy shows on televisions that employed the same stream of jokes repetitively, the comedy scene in India has evolved into an entire industry of stand-up comedians performing in pubs, clubs, auditoriums, and digital platforms like YouTube channels and other streaming platforms. The huge popularity of stand-up comedy hints at the license given to the stand-up comedians by the audience to discuss the current socio-political issues of the country. The audience’s laughter in response to the comedian’s joke might suggest a collective agreement to the stand-up comedian’s opinionated jokes. Therefore, an understanding of the relevance of stand-up comedy in contemporary culture becomes pertinent. Since stand-up comedians use the medium of language to connect with the audience to convey their jokes, it becomes important to take into cognizance the role language plays in the performance especially in a multilingual country, like India. This research paper is thus an aim to analyze the role of multilingualism in stand-up comedy in articulating issues pertinent to India to locate the contemporary pluralistic culture of India.

The Impact of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on Public Attentiveness to Science and the Environment

Prior research on the political effects of late-night comedy programs has demonstrated that by piggy-backing political content on entertainment fare, such programs provide a, gateway, to increased audience attention to news and public affairs, particularly among less politically engaged audiences. Given the heightened coverage of science and environmental topics on Comedy Central’s satirical news programs, The Daily Show, and, The Colbert Report, this paper considers whether a similar process could be at work relative to public attention to science and the environment. An analysis of nationally representative survey data finds that audience exposure to, The Daily Show, and, The Colbert Report, goes hand-in-hand with attention paid to science and environmental issues, specifically global warming. Moreover, the relationship between satirical news use and attentiveness is most pronounced among those with the least amount of formal education, who might otherwise lack the resources and motivation to pay attention to scientific and environmental issues. In this way, satirical news is an attention equalizer, reducing traditional gaps in attentiveness between those with low and high levels of education.

Research note: negative news and late-night comedy about presidential candidates

Abstract In this paper we explore the creation of jokes told on late night talk shows targeted at major party nominees for president from 1992–2008. We hypothesize that the number of jokes told about candidates are related to variations in polling numbers, mainstream media coverage, and party identification of the candidates. Our results show a positive relationship between the number of jokes told at a candidate’s expense and the amount of negative news coverage about the candidate. In addition, we find that Republicans are targeted with more frequency than Democrats. Results suggest that favorability ratings and whether or not a presidential candidate is an incumbent has no effect on the number of jokes targeting a candidate.

America’s faith in the laugh resistance – popular beliefs about political humor in the 2016 presidential elections

Abstract Taking its cue from the observation that forms of aggressive humor directed against the political figure Donald Trump are not an ephemeral aspect of contemporary American politics but have been firmly embedded in American cultural discourse for more than two years, this article will explore the ways in which comedians, journalists and other contemporary observers have described and commented on the role and functions of humor and comedy with regard to the Trump phenomenon in the context of the 2016 presidential elections and its aftermath. Drawing on a selection of material from established online news resources the essay will document how popular media outlets have presented the nation’s most prominent late-night comedy as an arena in which the format’s popular hosts deploy humor in an attempt to undermine Trump’s status and ultimately to end his foray onto America’s highest political sphere. The article will then trace the popularity of the idea that political humor is subversive in the tradition of the country’s intellectual history and check it against a selection of empirical studies devoted to the topic. In this context it will become apparent that the belief in the corrective power of humor is deeply ingrained in the American popular imagination and is being perpetuated by contemporary reports and comments in important segments of the media landscape.

Политический юмор в американских вечерних комедийных шоу, 1960-е – 1990-е годы

The author considers evolution of political humor in late night US shows, among which «Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In», «Tonight Starring Jack Paar», «The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson», «The Tonight Show with Jay Leno», «NBC's Saturday Night» («Saturday Night Live»), «Late Night with David Letterman», «Late Show with David Letterman». The main stages in history of American late night humor as well as popular comedy shows and hosts have been defined; formats of political humor, outstanding on liners and sketches have been analyzed. The research reveals that late night comedy shows entertained more than informed, while their humor on current political issues was apolitical. The format of comedy program allowed politicians (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Al Gore) to present themselves in a new image. By the late 1990s TV comedy shows turned into a stead for promoting political actors of different caliber.

Entertainment Politics as a Modernist Project in a Baudrillard World

AbstractAs “post-truth” was Oxford Dictionaries’ 2016 word of the year, late-night comedians were featured on Time magazine’s cover bearing the tagline “The Seriously Partisan Politics of Late-Night Comedy.” This article attempts to frame what is going on in theoretical and philosophical terms. By a “Baudrillard World,” we mean the post-truth era that was first announced by theorists such as Jean Baudrillard. By a modernist project, we mean that the late night comedians are making various rhetorical moves to reassert a commitment to truth incompletely secured by conventional, cool-style journalism. We identify a number of offenses against truth that the late night comedians counter in an attempt to rescue not just particular facts but the very notion of truth.