Stand-up Comedians Research Articles

Racism Through the Lens of Stand-up Comedy: Digital Ethnography of Netflix Specials

Comedy scripts the monotony of life in a language that humours all and mirrors the disruptive social reality of private life. Today, stand-up comedy is a multibillion-dollar entertainment business, and its practitioners are revered figures in popular culture. The article compares the performances of two American celebrity stand-up comedians, D. L. Hughley and Kevin Hart, through their respective Netflix specials. Their content is drawn from the lived experience of growing up Black in America, yet they differ in comic style. While D. L. Hughley traverses the highs and lows of African-American lives in the States, presenting a satirical take on social issues, Kevin Hart paints a self-deprecating portrait of his personal life. He is animated and free-spirited and exaggerates anecdotal familial episodes to humour the audience. Their performance sheds light on the significance of humour in Black lives and highlights the importance of comedy beyond the realm of amusement as a public communication tool.

Truth and Autobiography in Stand-up Comedy and the Genius of Doug Stanhope

Abstract It is common for stand-up comedians to tell stories as well as, or instead of, jokes. Stories bring something extra to the performance, and when presented as true add a further layer of appeal. However, most stories told as if true by comedians are not true. A categorizing of forms of comedic story is presented involving the dimensions of grammatical person and truthfulness. Some advantages of comedians’ employing true first-person stories are discussed, and these considerations are then explored through the role of autobiography in the work of Doug Stanhope. Many aspects of Stanhope’s (highly unusual) life find their way into his shows, and true stories and his personality more broadly are folded into other elements of his act (such as his political views). Links are made with Søren Kierkegaard’s notion of “inwardness,” and it’s argued that authenticity is a prerequisite for the quality of self-disclosure that is basic to Stanhope’s excellence.

Humor and identity in the performance of a stand-up comedian with disability

Being a stand-up comedian with medical issue requires the ability to apply certain techniques to create humor when performing stand-up comedy. Josh Blue (JB) is one of those well-known stand-up comedians diagnosed with cerebral palsy. This study aims to investigate the linguistics aspects applied by JB in delivering his jokes and how these aspects relate to identity JB wants to present. This research employed a qualitative descriptive method to analyze the data. The results reveal that JB uses irony in his stand-up comedy. In terms of linguistic features, JB mostly applies silent pause, while in joke technique JB applies self-ridicule. These findings suggest that the linguistics aspects used by JB present that disability can be a special identity that affects people’s perception and their ways of interaction with other people. JB linked each of his experience of being disabled by wrapping it well as his joke technique. JB has privilege in processing his disability into a primacy in joke technique without sounding condescending and even sarcastic.

The Psychology of Comedy

The Psychology of Comedy

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

This volume appears at just the right time in recent history. After the election and presidency of Donald Trump, many pundits said over and over again that his speeches and policies were immune to comedic resistance, at least on the surface level of social media and entertainment television. However, this volume poses a different question: Are certain comedians American versions of the public intellectual? It’s a fascinating question, and anyone interested in public intellectualism in its present forms should definitely check out this volume whose editors stress that comedians were afforded power “in the public sphere as knowledgeable and creditable articulators” of ideas in the early days of humor (4). Are they, however, afforded this power now? If so, what can they do with it?The comedians that are presented and critiqued in this volume present a wide range of perspectives, and each brings their own particular form of questioning of the status quo to the stage. Like public intellectuals of bygone days, none is without faults, some more glaring than others, as a chapter by David Gillota on Louis C. K. foregrounds. Phil Scepanski’s historical treatment of the transformation of Chris Rock’s comedic writing in more progressive directions over the life of his career makes a similar point about his work. A chapter by Rebecca Krefting on Maria Bamford probably goes the furthest in making the case, both generically and in the particular case of Bamford, for the comedian-as-public intellectual thesis that frames the volume. As she writes, “Because they ‘see’ our culture from many angles, comedians can use humor to make the normal seem strange, so that we might reexamine our behaviors. In other words, comics scrutinize aspects of life so we have to rethink our norms” (56).The chapters are organized in aptly titled sections. The first, “Comedic Bodies and the Body Politic,” features essays on Mo’Nique, Tig Notaro, Bobby Henline, and Maria Bamford. These chapters outline the relationship of the performer’s body to the audience and also highlight the role of “cringe” in the complicated politics of timing, bodies, and audiences, a crucial endeavor given that we are experiencing enormous upheavals in our politics and that the public itself seems so out of touch with our changing environment and the relationship of bodies to it, even while it itself is a part of it. Living in truly bizarre times in which politicians and media influencers desperately try to shore up a kind of fake sense of “normalcy” is bound to produce opportunities for comedians to highlight cringe moments to bittersweet effect. These were enjoyable essays to read.The second section, “Complicated Subjectivities,” looks beyond the physical (whether in words, performance, or bodies) to the way that comedians explain identity and the shifting relevance of it to audiences who may not be as savvy or even paying attention. The comedians featured (Chris Rock, Lisa Lampanelli, and Louis C. K.) all perform contradictions in their routines: Rock on race and class, Lampanelli on racism and parody, and C. K. on sexism and professionalism. Raul Perez’s chapter on Lampanelli is especially adept in its tracing out of the gaping moral problem presented in her mid-2000s performances (she has since retired the act), pointing out that her protestations in interviews that she’s “not performing racism” remind the reader of other comedy examples from the time period, like South Park and The Office (British version).The third and final section (there’s no conclusion, although I might have recommended one) is “Changing Values in America,” which centers on the increasing encroachment of technologies that shift our values on us, and the anti-intellectual response to or avoidance of such technologies. The section starts with essays on W. Kamau Bell’s “hashtag” approach to revealing racial contradictions through media and Aziz Ansari’s anthropology of social media. In the middle, we are treated to a lively chapter on Stewart Huff, whose alternation between “thin” and “thick” description to unpack stereotypes of the southern redneck help him to interrogate those who question science. An essay on Larry the Cable Guy’s “antipolitical correctness” and another on Doug Stanhope’s classic libertarian stand-up round out the section.All of the essays in Taking a Stand hew to the theme of the volume. The editors’ introduction is brief but effective. The sections are usefully organized, and each theme is carefully chosen. One limitation of the book is that most of the comedy (not all) will be interesting only to older audiences. The editors perhaps chose to focus on this comedy because younger generations don’t seem to treat comedy as a formal enterprise, preferring instead to find humor buried in forms such as reality television, influencers, TikTok, and certain cartoons.

Introduction: Black Laughs Matter

Introduction: Black Laughs Matter

Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century United States

Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century United States

Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades

Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades

Stand-up comedy and the performance of race and identity in Trevor Noah’s It Makes No Sense and Learning Accents

Stand-up comedy has thrived as a popular form of entertainment in Africa, and it has been used as a tool to question the postcolonial relationship between the West and the Other, which promotes racialized assumptions. Similarly, African stand-up comedians like Trevor Noah, a migrant from South Africa to the United States, who was born in South Africa to a Swiss father and a South African mother, have become global entertainment icons and demonstrate how migrants can use humour to confront prejudice and institutional racism. Drawing from Noah’s mixed racial backgrounds, this study examines how Noah’s identity shapes his artistry using two of his performances It Makes No Sense (2020) and Learning Accents (2021). The study engaged the Superiority, Relief and Incongruity theories of comedy, and observed that intersectional identities and marginalization are the main themes explored in the two comic acts, and Noah presents humour as a site of resistance used to subvert assumptions of stable racial and identity categories that promote the marginalization of Blacks and people of colour.

Dramatising Education in Comedians and Arcadia

This paper analyses the dramatisation of education in two contemporary British plays: Trevor Griffiths’s Comedians and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Both plays encompass different features of classrooms, pupils, teaching methodologies, types of tutors, however at the same time they dramatise the schooling process in England during different epochs. The first section of the paper deals with adults who attend a night school and aspire to be professional stand-up comedians. Griffiths’s Comedians reflects the idea of how adult workers have to attend classes in order to enhance their employment opportunities in post-war Britain. The play also shows Mr Waters’s endeavour to teach his pupils the significance of stand-up comedy and its cathartic role in life. In Stoppard’s Arcadia, the dramatisation of education predominantly takes place in the Victorian ear. It becomes apparent that Septimus is a different kind of a tutor, as he has to teach and inform young Thomasina not just about different branches of science, but also about various aspects of life and experiences which Thomasina has to face and comprehend on her own. The paper emphasises the idea that real education exists everywhere, even outside the traditional classroom setting, and thereby children and adults, as well as teachers, always remain learners who obtain different pieces of knowledge and understanding.

Humour of religious satire and linguistic dexterity of Nigerian stand-up comedy

Stand-up comedy, as a humorous performance, is a quintessential narrative that chronicles sociological realities of human endeavours. Its humour, as a new subgenre of comedy, fused the roles of performers and their audiences in a scintillating way that provokes laughter and, at the same time, gives great excitement. The performers and their audiences are major stakeholders in the performativity of stand-up comedy. Existing scholars have largely examined its realities as a product of entertainment and laughter to the neglect of its deeper sociological realities of religious satire and linguistic dexterity. Therefore, this paper investigates how stand-up humour serves as a tool for critiquing societal foibles of religious gullibility and bewitchment within the Nigerian socio-political space. Besides, the paper examines the linguistic techniques employed by the selected stand-up comedians. This is in a bid to show how stand-up comedians serve as gatekeepers, watchdogs, and social critics of their societies through their humour. Schechner’s Performance, Freudian, and Jungian psychoanalytic theories were used to analyse the embodied behaviours of the stand-up comedians. Three digital discs of live performance recordings were purposively selected. They were: Halleluyan Volume 1 and Ward 2 Comedy Klinic by Godwin Komone Gordons and A Nite of a Thousand Laughs Vol. 13 by Francis Agoda (I Go Dye). The selected live recordings were based on informing religious realities, choice of satiric humour, and performative styles of the performers. Data were subjected to performance and literary analyses.

Stereotypes and the Ambiguities of Humour in Kenya: The Churchill Show

ABSTRACT The Churchill Show is a weekly live and recorded comedy show, originally staged at the Carnivore Grounds in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and later hosted in various parts of the country. The live recordings were disseminated on Kenya’s NTV television network and published on YouTube by Laugh Industry Limited and NTV Kenya. The Churchill Show’s theme song includes a reference to bringing Kenyans back together, and the so-called ethnic jokes in the show are presented as a celebration of Kenyan multiculturalism and as a counter to what is popularly known as negative ethnicity. I show in this article that these negative ethnic narratives are situated in colonial and postcolonial archives such as harambee, nyayo philosophy, patriotism and tujenge Kenya ideologies that have been imposed on citizens, as a way of shifting the burden of nation-building onto ordinary Kenyans. I use selected stand-up comedians’ performances that were uploaded on YouTube and TV interviews to explain the prominence of the show in the country, how the humour in the show borrows from historical archives of the country, and how the ethnic-themed humour inadvertently re-constructs negative stereotypes.

Christianity and the Triumph of Humor: From Dante to David Javerbaum by Bernard Schweizer

Reviewed by: Christianity and the Triumph of Humor: From Dante to David Javerbaum by Bernard Schweizer Jahdiel Perez (bio) Christianity and the Triumph of Humor: From Dante to David Javerbaum Bernard Schweizer Routledge, 2020. vii + 254 pp. $160 cloth, $48.95 paperback, $44.05 ebook. Schweizer's Christianity and the Triumph of Humor is a well-written gem of interdisciplinary research. Its synthesis of religious studies, theology, social science, and humor research into a coherent argument is insightful and impressive. [End Page 229] Chapter one questions and refutes the notion that humor is an inherently liberal phenomenon, that "all laughter has an anti-authoritarian function" (14). Schweizer observes how humor has historically thrived under authoritarian conditions. He notes that the Nazi regime encouraged jokes as a way to alleviate grievances against totalitarian policies. Then, Schweizer draws upon the social scientific data of a "humor appreciation survey" he conducted in 2016, which studied how nearly 800 liberals and conservatives responded to twenty-four different jokes. He found that there was no significant influence of political ideology on humor appreciation. In chapter two, statements from the Bible and some Patristic theologians, like Tertullian, Basil, Augustine, and Jerome, among others, seem to denounce laughter and festivities. Since these statements are listed in isolation from relevant context, Schweizer's analysis here is objectionably thin. However, his citation of the 1431 condemnation of the Feast of Fools, the 1534 ban of popular mystery plays by English Protestants, and the prohibition of Easter Laughter throughout the 1670s as examples in which church authorities "sought to curb the people's inclination toward mirth and levity" (51) supports his overall point. A significant shift occurred in the 1970s, when some Christian theologians sought to overturn this "long and regretful history of denunciations of laughter" by affirming the theological significance of levity and comedy (31). These "theologians of laughter" include Conrad Hyers, Richard Cote, Karl-Jusef Kuschel, J. William Whedbee, Gerald Arbuckle, James Martin, Jaqueline Bussie, Charles Campbell, and Johan Cilliers, among others. Schweizer criticizes their approach by denying three propositions that he thinks most of them affirm—namely, that laughter is a gift from God, that Scripture is replete with humor, and that laughter can be neatly divided into positive and negative expressions. Chapter three is a diachronic view of religious comedy from the Middle Ages to the present century. Schweizer selects several works that he thinks represent the high points of religious humor: Dante's Divine Comedy, Boccaccio's The Decameron, Erasmus's In Praise of Folly, Rabelais's Gargantua, Voltaire's Candide, Twain's The Mysterious Stranger, France's The Revolt of Angels, Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk, Morrow's The Godhead Trilogy, Currie Jr.'s God is Dead, and Javerbaum's The Last Testament. The account Schweizer offers here is that of a gradual progression up a hierarchical scale of comic objects. The lower-order targets of the hierarchy range from laypersons to lower clergy like monks and priests to higher-ranking clerics like bishops, cardinals, and the Pope. The higher-order targets range from ecclesiastical institutions to orthodox doctrine to Scripture to the Trinity and religion in general. Where Dante playfully ridiculed individual Christians and lower clergy, Javerbaum irreverently mocks the Bible and the Trinity. [End Page 230] Admittedly, the inclusion of such atheistic or "misotheistic" authors (76) as Voltaire, France, and Javerbaum into a historical survey of specifically religious humor is innovative, some might even say objectionable. However, it is only problematic if one understands the term to mean humor produced by and for religious people. Schweizer defines religious humor as humor about religion (203), which does not refer to the religious sensibilities of its producers or intended audiences. As such, he can group Christian and atheist writers into the same historical account of religious humor. A synchronic view of religious comedy in contemporary Anglo-American popular culture is provided in chapter four. Schweizer begins with Christian stand-up comedians Mark Lowry, Brad Stine, and Anthony Griffith, proceeds to the Life of Brian film by Monty Python, the atheist YouTube channel DarkMatter2525, and ends with comic skits by Rowan Atkinson, Robin Williams, Stephen Colbert, and Steve Carell. The point Schweizer makes...

ORALITY AND HEALING IN THE STAND-UP COMEDY PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED NIGER DELTA COMEDIANS

Stand-up comedy is a sub-genre of oral literature or orality. It involves a comedian standing in front of an audience to crack jokes and tell funny stories in order to make people laugh. It is also a therapeutic tool used to heal wounds through humour and comedy and this eventually leads to mental balance, happiness, peace and tranquility among the people. In line with the above, this paper attempts to explicate the various ways selected Niger Delta stand-up comedians have achieved this therapeutic or healing function among the people of that region. It also studies the psychological effects this brand of comedy has on the audience especially Niger Deltans of Nigeria. The selected stand-up comedians used in this study include I Go Dye, Gordons and Liki Liki Mouth. It is discovered that in relation to the basic functions of the arts generally and literature in particular, the selected Niger Delta stand-up comedians have, in no small measure, contributed their quota in bringing peace, harmony and a stable mental health to the people of the region.KEYWORDS: Orality, Stand-up Comedy, Niger-Delta, Healing, Performance

Humor in French Postcolonial Literature and Culture: A Paradox?

From black face, sexist jokes, anti-Semitic caricatures to anti-Muslim cartoons, comedic discourses have targeted minority groups. The aim of my dissertation, however, is to demonstrate the ways in which minorities who have been targets of jokes, have in turn themselves become its creators, using humor as a medium to deal with complicated questions of identity. In this overview of my dissertation, I outline how a selection of Francophone Maghrebi, Caribbean and sub-Saharan African writers, graphic novelists and stand-up comedians repurpose colonial stereotypes. Of interest is not humor writ large, but comedic play whose hallmark is a sense of ambivalence—it deals with issues of gravity with a sense of levity; and it simultaneously coopts yet subverts colonial representations of alterity. I argue that such comedic play with official discourses allows these humorists not only to delegitimize simplistic Metropolitan representations of alterity, but also to furnish ludic alternatives in their place. By using humor in their creation, postcolonial humorists laugh at misery and play with images of cultural alterity without necessarily propagating them, instead reappropriating them in ways that more accurately reflect the contemporary diversity and heterogeneity of modern France.

American Muslim Comedians Use of Humour as a Persuasive Agent to Counter Islamophobia

This paper aims to explore the humour discourses of American Muslim standup comedians in response to Islamophobia in the post 9/11 era. There has been extensive research on how American Muslim standup comedy evolved through time, audience perception about Muslim standup comedians and the link between Muslim standup comedy and Islamophobia. For this purpose, three American Muslim standup comedians are selected through purposive sampling; Maz Jobrani, Hasan Minhaj and Muhammad Amer. Discourse analysis is conducted for selected comedians' Grand Netflix videos to study their humour discourses. This research adopts ‘Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of Carnivalesque’ as a theoretical framework to answer the research question. The findings suggest that comedians employed the incongruous humour function the most, then relief function and rarely employed the superiority function of humour in their standup discourses to counter the subjugation and discrimination Muslims have to suffer in western societies. Muslim comedians are successful in countering Islamophobia through humour but are unable to overthrow it from American culture. Nonetheless, the efforts of American Muslim comedians in highlighting and countering Islamophobia through humour discourses cannot be neglected.

CONSUMING CONCERNS: LANGUAGE STYLE OF HUMOUR ON FOUR FEMALE STAND-UP COMEDIANS

Comedy is a male-dominated world as sociolinguistics theory also mentions that women employ less humour compared to men. However, female comedians also appeared on television. In Indonesia, Stand-Up Comedy Indonesia (SUCI) is a popular stand-up comedy competition broadcasted by a reputable national network channel, Kompas TV. Interestingly, numerous young female stand-up comedians also took part as participants of SUCI. This study aimed to analyse humour performed by four female comedian finalists from different cultural backgrounds such as Arab-Indonesian, Chinese-Indonesian, British expatriate, and Indonesian with Batak ethnicity. This study employed a qualitative method by applying various techniques such as video selection, downloading, transcribing relevant data, reducing data, applying theories, and concluding. The data were analysed using the theory of women's language and the theory of types and functions of humour. The study found that women employed humour in stand-up comedy to speak up their minds and share their concerns with the audiences using various language styles, including rhetorical questions, hypercorrect grammars, taboo words, and rising intonations. The humour was employed primarily to share their concerns toward sensitive cultural issues such as stereotypes and identity, sexism, relationship and gender equality, and body positivity. In addition, it contributes to enriching the theory of women's language style and humour.
 Keywords: humour, stand up comedy competition, women's language style, identity

Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs

Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs

From Blackface to Black Twitter: Reflections on Black Humor, Race, Politics, and Gender

From Blackface to Black Twitter: Reflections on Black Humor, Race, Politics, and Gender

From Blackface to Black Twitter: Reflections on Black Humor, Race, Politics, and Gender

From Blackface to Black Twitter: Reflections on Black Humor, Race, Politics, and Gender