Stand-up Comedy Research Articles

Career gatekeeping in cultural fields

This paper presents a comparative analysis of career gatekeeping processes in two cultural fields. Drawing on data on appointment procedures in German academia and booking processes in North American stand-up comedy, we compare how gatekeepers in two widely different contexts evaluate and select candidates for established positions in their respective field and validate their decisions. Focusing on three types of gatekeeping practices that have been documented in prior research—typecasting, comparison, and legitimization—our analysis reveals major differences in how gatekeepers perform these practices across our two cases: (1) typecasting based on ascriptive categories versus professional criteria, (2) comparisons that are ad-hoc and holistic versus systematic and guided by performance criteria, and (3) legitimation by means of ritualization versus transparency. We argue that these differences are related to the social and organizational context in which gatekeepers make selection decisions, including differences in the structure of academic and creative careers and the organization of the respective labor markets in which these careers unfold. These findings contribute to scholarship on gatekeeping in cultural fields by providing comparative insights into the work of career gatekeepers and the social organization of career gatekeeping processes.

What can scientists learn from stand-up comedy?

What can scientists learn from stand-up comedy?

‘Essex girls’ in the comedy club: Stand-up, ridicule and ‘value struggles’

This article presents findings from a qualitative study carried out on how audiences of stand-up comedy are entangled in ‘value struggles’. It focuses on a group who through classed and gendered ridicule are often drawn as valueless – women from Essex or ‘Essex girls’. The article explores how a group of women from Essex negotiate their value in the face of Essex girl–based ridicule, experienced while part of a live comedy audience in a London comedy club. The analysis reveals an ambivalence in how the group utilise and view their ‘Essex girl’ status, which challenges the view that this is a valueless identification. They oscillate between the joy of revelling in the Essex girl role and disidentification from the shame of this disreputable status. It concludes by highlighting how ridicule does not necessarily perform a disciplinary function and considers if the joy of ‘being Essex’ has any hope of escaping into everyday life.

The Issues of Black Racial Stereotype and Race Relationship Used in The Transcript of Chris Rock's Standup Comedy Entitled Never Scared

This research aims to answer how the issues of Black racial stereotype and race relationship are being used in the Chris Rock’s standup comedy entitled <em>Never Scared</em>. The issues of Black racial stereotype and race relationship are analyzed through the portrayal of living in US as Black people in the eyes of Chris Rock, an influential American Black comedian. This research is a descriptive qualitative research which uses Arthur Asa Berger’s techniques of comedy theory as an approach. As a result, this research finds that living in US as Black people is likely to be exposed by racial violence involving White people. The result also signifies how Black people are considered as inferior race in US society which then leads to the mentioning of racial discrimination towards Black people.

Laughing matters: Stand-up comedy and enjoyment in the age of late capitalism

Stand-up comedy has emerged as an immensely resonant youth-oriented pop-cultural form within the Indian landscape. This article studies the form and content of stand-up comedy to foreground its implicit banality. By analysing the subtleties of this banality, we argue that contemporary stand-up comedy has the capacity to produce a peculiar kind of enjoyment. The moment of laughter and the consequent enjoyment instills a sense of fleeting thought. This unintended contemplation, coupled with banality, has the potential to produce an enjoyment and a cultural form that can possibly resist complete appropriation.

A Pragma-Linguistic Study of Egyptian Stand-up Comedy: A New Paradigm of Satire

This paper aims at providing a pragma-linguistic analysis of the complex speech act of satire in selected instances of Egyptian stand-up comedy. In particular, the focus of the research is on stand-up comedy as a satirical humorous communicative act; that is, it is a genre of entertainment that employs a humorous form to fulfill a satirical function. The objective of the study is twofold. First, it introduces an innovative theoretical conception of satire according to which it is treated as a function of language rather than a literary genre; thus corresponding to the functions of language labeled as illocutionary acts. By incorporating some modifications to the current version of speech act theory, the researcher arrives at the assumption that satire is an indirect complex illocutionary act. Second, the study proposes an eclectic model of linguistic deviation to explore how the complex illocutionary act of satire is realized locutionarily by means of linguistic deviation. It detects how stand-up comedians manipulate language in such a way as to generate humour which, in its turn, serves the satirical intention of the comedian. Correlation between this humorous form and satirical function is the basis of this paper. By investigating the ways in which Egyptian stand-up comedians evoke humour and laughter to fulfill their satirical intentions, this paper unveils the dominant strategies of linguistic deviation manipulated by Egyptian sand- up comedians, and examines the implications of these strategies

El posicionamiento del “ethos” como estrategia retórica en la comedia de “stand-up” de Valladolid

El presente trabajo pretende mostrar un análisis del género de la comedia de stand-up desde una perspectiva retórica. Se propone un análisis de actos y rutinas de artistas vallisoletanos de stand-up con el objetivo de explicar la influencia que tiene el posicionamiento del ethos del comediante respecto a la audiencia y respecto al asunto con el que se pretende el humor. Se trata, por tanto, de una estrategia retórica con una evidente influencia cultural, por lo que es posible abordarla desde los principios de la Retórica cultural propuestos por Tomás Albaladejo.This study aims to show an analysis of the stand-up comedy genre from a rhetorical perspective. A review of the actions and habits of some stand-up artists from Valladolid is proposed in order to explain the influence of the position of the comedian ethos has with regard to the audience, and to the matter which is the subject of the humour. Therefore, this is a rhetorical strategy which has an evident cultural influence that could be addressed from the principles of the cultural rhetoric suggested by Tomás Albaladejo.

RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF STAND-UP COMEDY PERFORMANCES BY THREE FAMOUS AMERICAN COMICS

This research aimed at finding the rhetorical of narrative section based on Labov’s model and the stand-up comedy techniques which dominantly used by Jim Jefferies, Ricky Gervais, and Bill Burr on their performances. The observation checklist was used in this research. Fifteen different topics performance from each stand-up comedian were analyzed by using descriptive method, using quantitative as well as qualitative data. From the result it was found that three stand-up comedians used narrative section suggested by Labov. The narrative section is abstract, orientation, complicating actions, resolution, and coda. Also, the most frequent techniques used by three stand-up comedians are rule of three and one liner technique. Those techniques are the most effective technique that can trigger audience laughter. The last finding of this research, there are two common patterns created by three stand-up comedians based on Labov’s model of narrative sections.

Breaking the Crass Ceiling? Performing Irony and White Femininity in Amy Schumer’s Mostly Sex Stuff Stand-Up

ABSTRACTDespite the long history of stand-up comedy in popular culture, there has been little sociological attention to the “cultural work” of stand-up. Engaging the sociological imagination, comedy has the capacity to undo cultural assumptions and create new meanings, often revealing the constructedness of social life. The popular and controversial comedian Amy Schumer is emblematic of a recent emergence of women comedians who subtly encourage their audiences to rethink taken-for-granted assumptions about gender, race, sexuality, and other issues. Drawing from Goffman-inspired symbolic interactionism in conjunction with feminist media sociology, this paper analyzes Amy Schumer’s Mostly Sex Stuff stand-up performance as a narrative text and discusses how Schumer plays with, and often challenges, dominant cultural discourses on sex, gender performance, and race through comedic storytelling.

Interview with Incoming GODORT Chair

Favorite spot in Fargo / North DakotaMy favorite spot is Island Park. It is near the river, has music and dancing during the summer, and wonderful, big trees. It is like a little forest in the middle of Fargo.Favorite pastime/hobbyI am a cos-player. It mixes some of my passions: science fiction, sewing, and art. I enjoy the challenge of taking something that was a 2-D image and making something that works on a real human. I’ve also started doing standup comedy.

Maxim of Cooperative Principle Violation by Dodit Mulyanto in Stand-up Comedy Indonesia Season 4

This study focuses on cooperative principle violation done by Dodit Mulyanto in Stand Up Comedy Indonesia season 4 using Grice’s theory. Grice expressed cooperative principle to suggest that in conversational interaction people work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is in operation, unless they receive indications to the contrary. The aims of this research are to classify the maxims of cooperative principle and to explain how Dodit Mulyanto violates cooperative principle to raise humor in Stand Up Comedy Indonesia season 4. Besides, this research is also directed to discover the types of violation maxims, the most dominant violation maxim, and to explain the causes of the most dominant violation maxim in Dodit Mulyanto’s Stand Up Comedy Indonesia season 4. This research is conducted using qualitative method. The sources of data are the 17 videos of Dodit Mulyanto’s speech during his performance in Stand Up Comedy Indonesia Kompas TV season 4 by downloading from YouTube site. The data are the utterances of Dodit Mulyanto which considered contain the violation of cooperative principles. The data are collected using the check list instrument and then analyzed based on the violation on each maxim. At the end, the researcher draws the conclusion which is in accordance with the research finding. The results of the analysis shows that all types of maxim were violated; 12 utterances violation maxim of quantity (24,4%), 13 utterances violation maxim of quality (26,5%), 22 utterances violation maxim of relation (44,9%), and 2 utterances violation maxim of manner (4,1%). The most dominant type of violation maxims was the violation maxim of relation because Dodit Mulyanto delivered too much message, which is unmatched with the topic or changed conversation topic abruptly or did the wrong causality, than is required to raise humor in Stand Up Comedy Indonesia Kompas TV season 4.Keywords: Cooperative Principle, Maxim Violation, Stand Up Comedy.

What’s so funny? Audiences of women’s stand-up comedy and layered referential viewing: Exploring identity and power

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I discuss audience reactions to stand-up clips by Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Margaret Cho. Women’s comedy is arguably at the height of its popularity, but there is a seeming lack of research on audience interpretations of humor produced by women. This research builds on and extends current notions of “referential viewing” in audience research. Utilizing focus group analysis, I elaborate audience decoding practices and the role of identity in layers of referential viewing. Audiences in this research centered their discussions on identification of the comedians, identification of the targets of jokes, and identification of whom they perceive to be the intended audience. Discussed are implications for how audiences understand various power dynamics through humor and distinctions created between comedy that “laughs with” or that “laughs at.”

Ageing, Temporality and Performance

Joan Rivers’ performance in the public sphere revolved around the visibility and cultural inscription of an ageing and older woman. Linking aesthetic, professional and physiological processes, her body, work and performance merged as and in an extended and finite professional practice. A pioneer of stand-up comedy as a genre, and one of its most significant and visible female practitioners, Rivers is known for her aggressive and often outrageous wit, which was directed at both herself and other celebrities, as well as her extensive plastic surgeries. When she died in 2014, at the age of 81, she was still fully engaged in a relentless schedule of live performances and televised appearances. By then, Rivers was well established as an ubiquitously present elder who refused to conform to long-standing stereotypes of asexuality, able to thrive in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape of surgically enhanced bodies, surveillance as entertainment and public confession. At the heart of the discussion in this article is the spatio-temporality of the performing body, borrowing from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the body as a ‘nexus of living meanings’ and Jacques Derrida’s development of Merleau-Ponty’s use of the term ‘invagination’ to embrace generic textual strategy. In stand-up as a genre, both originality and continuity are paradoxically valued by audiences in equal measure. Success – that is, laughter – is largely determined by the extent to which these align coherently with the comedian’s bodily presence and her onstage social, cultural and/or political positioning. Focusing primarily on the expression of Rivers’ persona via a variety of mutually reinforcing cultural texts in the final three years of her life, this article analyses how her performing body in every medium was importantly always made present through its sexual difference and attendant gendered ageing processes.

The Function of Humor Applied in Margaret Cho�s Stand-Up Comedy: PsyCHO

This article discusses the function of humor in Margaret Cho's Stand-Up Comedy entitled PsyCHO. The aims of this research are to explain the humor function applied by Margaret Cho in creating humor situation in her stand-up comedy. The data in this research are oral data which is transcribed into written form. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method. According to the research in the stand-up comedy entitled PsyCHO, the researchers found that Margaret Cho tends to use humor function to create solidarity with the audiences. This is dominated by sharing strategy which is often conveyed by Cho in her stand-up comedy. Keywords: humor, stand-up comedy, pragmatics, jokes

“You Think I'm Joking”: Examining the Weaponized Comedy of President Obama's Stand-Up Addresses at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner

ABSTRACT Satire and stand-up comedy are forms of cultural examination generally perceived as tools used by everyday citizens against the powerful and not by the powerful themselves. This article examines the less-analyzed side of stand-up comedy and satire as malleable instruments of cultural interrogation when employed by powerful agents such as President Obama. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of carnival and Henri Bergson's concept of humor as a form of social corrective in my textual analysis of his stand-up addresses, this article interprets how Obama's on-the-offensive, comically insulting addresses provided a unique way for him to attempt to normalize political criticisms and controversies, such as the “birther theory” and his administration's drone program. In its interpretation of a substantial satirical and comic strategy within Obama's stand-up addresses, this article reflects on the nature of modern satire and stand-up comedy and their complex relationship with forms of American power.

Hannah Gadsby: On the Limits of Satire

ABSTRACT Hannah Gadsby's widely viewed stand-up comedy special Nanette tackles pressing social justice issues like gender violence, sexual assault, and homophobia. Along the way, she challenges stand-up comedy as a masculinist cultural form and systematically exposes the limitations of satire, speaking the truths we dare not disclose for fear of losing the funny. Satire necessarily requires a play frame and seeks to elicit laughter. Privileging humor as vehicle for serious critique runs the risk of undermining the importance of human rights issues such as those raised by Gadsby. Satire has also proven to be advantageous for some but not others to deploy. Social conditioning informs reception to satire, meaning that certain identities will find it difficult to pull off this comedy style with the same ease and success as others occupying dominant categories of identity.

Wit, Wisdom, and Hard Work Make a Model Medical Director of the Year

Wit, Wisdom, and Hard Work Make a Model Medical Director of the Year

LANGUAGE STYLE OF HUMOR ON STAND-UP COMEDY VIDEO

This research explained about language styles which used in stand-up comedy script brought by Chris Rock. Chris Rock owns famous joke material that is affected by the black comedy pioneers like Richard Pryor and Redd. He attacked the subject of much avoided by comics such as politics, race and celebrity. Openness and honesty witch extremely bold that what makes Chris Rock as one of the most successful and a famous comic in modern comedy. Chris Rock is known for his insulting comedian, he is also known for using satire and surreal in his joke. Language style has several functions in its uses. Stand up comedy brought by Chris Rock is usually shows about the different in human right between black and white skin.Based on the description above, the researcher decided to research language style in stand-up comedy brought by Chris Rock. In this research the researcher uses Keraf (2007) to analyze the language styles. This research is a qualitative descriptive research. This research source of data is stand-up comedy script with tittle “kill the messenger” brought by Chris Rock. Based on research, there are 2 language styles used in “kill the messenger”, there are 10 rhetorical language styles and 17 figurative language styles. Based on the data, hyperbole rhetorical language style is dominantly used in “kill the messenger”. And Epithet figurative language is dominantly used too.The reason is because Chris Rock is still try to persuade the white skin American to be humble to black skin American and must respect to each other. Keywords: Language Styles, Humor, Stand-Up Comedy

SKEMATA WACANA HUMOR STAND UP COMEDY INDONESIA

This qualitative research design was conducted to describe the schema, cohesion, coherence, and context contained in the stand-up comedy performed by famous comics (performer of stand up comedy) in Indonesia. The data were in the form the text of stand up comedy performed by Raditya Dika, Ernest Prakarsa, and Pandji Pragiwaksono. The source of the data was video-audio stand up comedy on Youtube http://www.youtube.com. The data gathered and analyzed grounded in theory of schematic, cohesion, coherence, and humorous discourse. The results show that the schemata appear in the setup section and each schema appears based on the experience of comics. The schema appears variously including dating, children, family, education, personal experience, social and so forth. The cohesion found in the stand-up comedy performed by the comics is only a few and without coherence in it. The context rising also depends on the main theme of stand up comedy.

Call for Papers A Special Issue of Stand-Up Comedy and Philosophy (publication date: November 2020)

Call for Papers A Special Issue of <i>Stand-Up Comedy and Philosophy</i> (publication date: November 2020)