Stand-up Comedian Research Articles

Deconstructing the Sublime Kills Free Speech?

Recently, a Chinese stand-up comedian was reported for allegedly insulting the military in his stand-up comedy,which eventually led to the downfall of his acting career, a police investigation, and left significant implications on theentire stand-up comedy industry. To understand the gravity of the situation, it is necessary to go back to the roots ofChinese history and culture. In China, the military holds significant importance as a constitutional institution, a statusdeeply rooted in the country’s historical context. This importance is reinforced by the contemporary political structureknown as the Party-Government-Military Trinity. Within this framework, the Communist Party’s mass line plays a crucialrole in establishing a strong foundation for the party’s acquisition and legitimacy of political power. Additionally, themilitary’s image serves as a symbol of political authority and national security.

The Joker Unmasked: A Literary Psychoanalytic Study

Psychoanalysis primarily concerns itself with literature through the representation of the conscious and unconscious minds of characters within storylines. Sigmund Freud’s theories are often reflected in literary works, using concepts such as the pleasure principle associated with the id, the reality principle linked to the ego, castration anxiety, and defense mechanisms. Other literary theories, like reader-response theory, focus on how texts are read and interpreted by readers. Norman N. Holland suggests that understanding a literary work involves not only reading the text but also considering the author’s biography, if known, to grasp how they create their masterpieces. Literary psychoanalysis explores the psychological and emotional aspects the author embeds in their works. Even though many authors are remarkably discreet about their past, their experiences may surface through recurring themes or phrases in their writings. Joker is a film released in 2019, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role. This paper conducts a psychoanalytic study of the character Joker, whose real name is Arthur Fleck. Arthur is a stand-up comedian aspiring to be the world’s most famous comedian, despite suffering from a medical condition that causes sudden and uncontrollable laughter, compounded by traumatic events in his childhood.

“Let’s have a cup of tea” – Scandinavian crime fiction through Hungarian eyes. Zoltán Kőhalmi’s practical guide to crime writers

In recent decades, a wide range of Scandinavian crime novels have conquered Hungarian readers, providing a more sophisticated perspective on the existing image of Scandinavian cultures and societies, with their intriguing social content and appealing landscapes. This wave of crime fiction has not only contributed to a better understanding of Scandinavia, but also drawn attention to the genre itself, which culminated in a parody written by a Hungarian stand-up comedian, Zoltán Kőhalmi. In his incorporation of all the obligatory ingredients of Scandinavian crime novels, the comedian not only reuses the self-image that Scandinavian crime narratives convey, he pillories the genre requirements by exaggerating the use of the most well-known characteristics. The analysis of Kőhalmi’s satirical use of Scandinavian crime narratives serves as a case study for a closer understanding of conceptions of Scandinavia in contemporary Hungary.

SHIFTING PHENOMENON: AN ANALYSIS OF STAND UP COMEDY INDONESIA

The lengthy road of Stand Up Comedy Indonesia has not been in vain, as it has become a popular event with many followers. Stand-Up comedy is today well-known not only due to the excitement of the show but also because the content delivered is of excellent quality and suited for all audiences. However, many comedians whose careers were launched by Stand-Up Comedy have since changed careers. This is, of course, a topic worthy of further investigation. This study tries to analyze the growth of stand-up comedy in Indonesia by examining the paths of comedians who left their comfort zones for new careers. To solve the research topic, the primary issue is the path of a former stand-up comedian who now works in a different field. Consequently, this study combines descriptive qualitative methodologies with various data acquired via content analysis on social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. According to Raskin (1985), psychological theory predominantly analyses comedy. Hence humour theories from a psychological perspective are highly developed. This study demonstrates that ups and downs have marked the long journey of Stand Up Comedy Indo until it has become popular and well-liked by the people of Indonesia. On the other hand, the author discovers that at the height of their careers, the comedians who pioneered Stand Up Comedy have shifted to other fields. This study also demonstrates that Stand Up Comedy has spawned a new generation of comedians who will continue the fantastic work of senior comedians.

‘Punch up, punch down o! All I know is there is punch’: Jokes about Africa(ns) in cross-cultural contexts

Jokes concurrently produce humour and offence owing to differences in cultural considerations of funniness and taboo. With growing audience diversity and online dissemination of live events, stand-up comics are exposed to increased scrutiny for irreverent anecdotes. Yet, ‘punching up’ has become an acceptable form of benign transgression. This is more so in cross-cultural contexts where differences heighten offence, because jokes do not just make us laugh but also create discomfort, especially when the joke-teller is different from us; whether it is ‘up’ or ‘down’, a punch is still a punch. Using the stand-up acts of four African diaspora comedians – Andi Osho, Dave Davis, Urzila Carlson and Trevor Noah – this essay interrogates cross-cultural joke presentation mechanics, themes and performer–audience relations to determine how and why these jokesters variously utilize punch-up jokes. Queries guiding the study include, what performance specificities do humourists enact to mitigate offence while dealing with sensitive/volatile subjects and a more diverse, political correctness-conscious audience? What is/are the relationship(s) between identity, cultural representations and jokes? In answering these questions, the emphasis is on discussing how the selected comedians craftily erect pre-determined sets of values that establish the context(s) within which the offensiveness of their ‘punch(es)’ is/are mitigated.

The Functions of Code-Switching in Harith Iskander’s Stand-Up Comedy Performances based on Jakobson’s Theory

In sociolinguistics, studies on code-switching have been an interest to many researchers. Code-switching is the process of language alternation by a speaker from one language to another in one conversation. In comedy performances in Malaysia, code-switching is very important in entertaining audiences from different backgrounds. There are situations where failed humour happens because of the misinterpretation of the jokes. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate the use of code-switching in stand-up comedy performed by a Malaysian stand-up comedian, Harith Iskander. The transcripts from his performances were recorded and analysed using coding and thematic analysis to determine the functions of code-switching from one language to another based on Jakobson’s Theory. The results of this study show that there were four identified functions used in his performances based on Jakobson’s theory which are referential, emotive, conative, and phatic. In conclusion, the use of code-switching in stand-up comedy can enhance audience’s understanding about the jokes and eventually avoid failed humour.

“A Punch Back, . . . a Contagious Guffaw”: Feminist Humor in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and the Professionalization of the Rebellious Laugh

ABSTRACT In depicting the fraught journey of a woman stand-up comedian in the late 1950s and 1960s, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel portrays stand-up as an ethical medium of truth telling and of sociopolitical protest that challenges systemic hierarchies of gender and sexuality. In this article, I show that stand-up’s foundational subversion is in its professionalism and in its departure from other forms of art. In the show, female stand-up comic Midge Maisel learns to function first as a seasoned professional and then as an ethical crusader who ultimately mounts a two-pronged attack on the sexist underpinnings of American humor and the patriarchal structure of stand-up, substantially influencing the way we receive this liminal genre of cultural expression and reframing it as an empowering vehicle of the marginalized.

COVID-19 in Humor: Verbal Humor Construction in Indonesian Stand-Up Comedian Performances

This current study explains how verbal humor is constructed in stand-up comedian's discourse on COVID-19 pandemic issue in Indonesia. This research employed a qualitative approach by applying the content analysis method. The transcription of five stand-up comedy audio-video clips concerning COVID-19 in Indonesia that were taken from www.youtube.com provided the primary data in the form of spoken words. Videos were selected based on keywords submitted by comedians. The findings show that verbal humor in stand-up comedian discourse has variations in knowledge resources (KRs). Topics presented by comedians related to the COVID-19 pandemic are realized in various logical mechanisms (LM) such as fallacious reasoning, word repetition, insult humor, and false analogy. Another variation found is the variation in the narrative strategy, target, and situation constructed by the comedian.

IMPLIKATUR PADA UNGGAHAN VIDEO BINTANG EMON TANGGAL 9 OKTOBER 2020 DI MEDIA TWITTER

The article titled "Implicative Analysis of Bintang Emon's Video Upload on October 9, 2020, on Twitter" is a study that discusses the principle of implication in Bintang Emon's video that was uploaded via Twitter on October 9, 2020. The analysis of implicature in this paper aims to find out the actual meanings of criticism conveyed by Bintang Emon regarding the phenomenon of law enforcement. We can see this from the background of Bintang Emon, who is a stand-up comedian that active in voicing his criticism of political and social issues. The research method used is qualitative that focuses on the field of pragmatic discourse analysis with a theoretical basis developed by Sperber and Wilson (2008). Through this research, the researcher finds out that the speech on Bintang Emon's video on October 9, 2020, contains the principle of implicature with contextual meaning that is influenced by situation, place, time, and environment. The video uploaded by Bintang Emon on his Twitter account on October 9, 2020, is a form of his reaction to comments regarding the issue of the Omnibus Law which has mentioned his name on various social media sites. In the video, Bintang Emon uses a form of satire as a criticism of the government. Therefore, this is the background of the implicative in his speech.

СТЕНДАП-КОМЕДИЯ КАК МЕДИЙНАЯ СРЕДА САМОРЕАЛИЗАЦИИ СИЛЬНОЙ ДИСКУРСИВНОЙ ЛИЧНОСТИ

The article is devoted to the cognitive study of one of the new genres of modern humorous media discourse - stand-up comedy. The purpose of the work is to consider the features of this media genre, to identify conceptually significant objects of reality represented in creative practices, to establish typical ways of their evaluative conceptualization. The use of the method of discourse analysis of video content with stand-up comedies made it possible to establish the following conceptually significant objects of reality interpreted in a comic way: family relations, characteristic features of life in different countries and cities, problems of gender relations, people's appearance, health, everyday problems, communicative situations. As a result of the analysis of the facts of the Russian-language stand-up presented on the YouTube media platform we identified various creative communicative practices: reducing the situation to an absurdity or paradox, self-irony, hyperbolization, indirect evaluative characterization of the object of ridicule by referring to precedent phenomena and others. A comedian can be attributed to a strong discursive personality, who is distinguished by the cognitive ability to explicate in speech the general presuppositional fund of the audience to create such a stage image that the public will like and who will be able to cause an emotional reaction. In self-realization, a stand-up comedian skillfully uses presuppositional knowledge about what facts, situations, and speech style arouse public interest and lead to a pragmatic effect. The results obtained can be used in research on cognitive pragmatics, included in the study of modern humorous media discourse.

‘Healing the World with Comedy’: Anxiety and Sublimation in Bo Burnham’s Inside

Bo Burnham is a critically acclaimed American stand-up comedian and filmmaker. The usual themes in his works are the hypocrisy of artists, the commercialisation of art, and the role of social media in erasing the boundary between the public and the private. However, during the pandemic, he chose to focus on the theme of anxiety, a minor theme in his earlier works. Anxiety has been considered an integral part of modernity as discussed by Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman. In psychoanalysis, anxiety has been explained in a number of different ways. In current psychological discourse, anxiety is described as an unpleasant state of mind that can cause significant bodily and mental stress. The anxiety that Burnham experienced prior to the pandemic appears to have amplified during the pandemic. Two main types of anxiety are observable in the shows of Burnham—performance anxiety and existential anxiety. This paper seeks to understand Burnham’s show Inside (2021) using Anna Segal’s contribution to the concept of ‘sublimation’. We argue that in doing the show Inside, Burnham discovers a new way to acknowledge and channel his ‘depressive’ symptoms towards contemporary times, and he achieves sublimation in the process.

Dr Hammond's COVID-19 inquiry

Dr Hammond's COVID-19 inquiry

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

Chitlins and Dry Bones: A Conversation About the N-Word in Stand-Up Comedy

ABSTRACT This conversation addresses the social meanings and aesthetic role of the N-word in stand-up comedy, where its power, utility, and relation to Blackness are hashed out in performances and in dialogues among artists. We turn our attention to stand-up comedy as a vital cultural space for deconstructing and repurposing the N-word. We discuss how the stand-up comedian, as a sociopolitical commentator who subverts audiences’ expectations and calibrates sets through ongoing exchanges with the audiences, uses humor to wrestle with discomfort surrounding the N-word. Our dialogue focuses on the work of Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Wanda Sykes, and Sam Jay, with some consideration of Louis C. K., George Carlin, and Hasan Minhaj. We make the case that to discuss the N-word in stand-up comedy is to engage with public understandings of Blackness and humanity.

The Last Black (Jewish) Unicorn: Tiffany Haddish’s Black Mitzvah and the Reframing of Jewish Female Identity

Abstract This paper explores the work of Tiffany Haddish, the Black Jewish stand-up comedian and actress, both in terms of Haddish’s contributions to the well-established canon of Jewish female comedy and in terms of the ways that Haddish’s work paves new ground. Through an analysis of Haddish’s 2019 Netflix special, Black Mitzvah, this paper first traces the stylistic and aesthetic methods that connect Haddish’s comedy with that of her Jewish peers (both historical and contemporaneous) and then considers the areas where Haddish breaks new ground in her assertion of a non-paradigmatic Jewish identity that is simultaneously embraced and othered within popular culture at large. The paper then transitions into a larger discussion of the ways in which Haddish’s work challenges how popular culture “expects” Jewish identity to manifest itself; her double visibility both as a Black woman and as a Jewish woman destabilizes the hegemonic understanding of Jewishness as homogenously white and Ashkenazic. Perhaps more importantly, Haddish acts as an important case study of the shifting demographics of Jewish visibility within American popular culture, and consequently, the critical and popular response to her work demonstrates the contradictory role that popular culture—and comedy specifically—plays in confirming and subverting stereotypes.

Стендап как индикатор пассионарности: к методологии вопроса

The article deals with a scientific substantiation of the possibility to solve an essential methodological goal — social diagnosis of human capital on some concrete social practice, taken as an indicator. A humorous genre ‘stand-up comedy’ is suggested to be chosen as the indicator. Arguments: 1) It is one of the most energetically developing areas with a youth audience in Russian mass culture. 2) The economic side of the project, its capitalization in the literal sense of the word, is also actively developing. 3) High level of the individual success, which allowed for the consideration of a stand-up comedian as a local ‘growth point’. 4) The last argument allows involving the arsenal of the passion theory, reconsidering the problem from a social energetic point of view. 5) It, therefore, allows considering irregular distribution of stand-up communities localization as an effect of passion theory erosion in a particular region (The Republic of Khakasia). Stand-up was analyzed from different points of view: philosophical, historical, aesthetic, economical, political and micro-sociological. As a result of the analysis a number of provisions were put forward which allow designing empirical research programmes. For instance, by using an idea that laughter is alienated aggression, one may clarify the perspective of social tension studies. Historical analysis showed that stand-up metamorphosed from a Protestant sermon and may be the indicator of westernization of both society and its regional localizations. Political studies of the problem allowed formulating relativity of the social and aesthetic resonance of comedy. Micro-sociological analysis helped to define the mechanism and distribution tendency of passion theory tension in an audience. As a result of the study certain thematic clusters and an algorithm of their logical interdependence were defined, aimed at empirical research, which will make it possible, in short term, to implement methodologically valid study of human capital by using a stand-up comedy as an indicator.

Flippin’: Contemporary Filipino-American Stand-up Comedy and Abjection as a Tactic of In/exclusion


 
 
 The rise of new, multicultural stand-up comics in the United States appears to have created new spaces for the presentation of long-peripheralised ethnic groups in the country. Deploying the observational humour, a signal contribution of American stand-up comedy, the stand-up comedy acts of contemporary Filipino- American comic artists provide a refocusing on Filipinos, on the Philippines, on Filipino migration to the United States, and on Filipino-American hybrid practices. Thus, they grant force and leverage to Filipino-Americans as a potent American ethnic group, especially as we consider the fact that they constitute the second-largest Asian-American group in the US. Based on this background, this paper aims to interrogate the re/de/constructions of the Philippines and Filipino- ness as transnational ideations that are sifted through the performance of these Filipino-American experiences in stand-up comedy across multimedia streams. It will focus on the contemporary stand-up comic act by Jo Koy, currently one of the most ubiquitous and famous of Filipino-American stand-up comics. Thus, to examine the Filipino/Philippines as transnational originary, and Filipino- American-ness as a nexus of these transnational traffics, the paper will use Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, supported by John Limon’s adoption and critique of this concept in his reference to stand-up comedy and humour.
 
 

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy

Onstage and Behind the Scenes: Autistic Performance and Advocacy

For many autistic performers in arts and entertainment, the stage can be an important site of self-advocacy and creative expression. Whereas everyday social interactions may be unpredictable, being onstage can allow autistic performers to work from a script and anticipate audience responses. This article explores the affordances and challenges of performance for young autistic adults in Canada through interviews with four autistic performers (two singers and two stand-up comics). While solo performance was the focus, participants discussed the creative employment of diverse media platforms, from the stage to screenwriting and children’s books, and emphasized the need for autistic people to be involved in all creative realms. This research follows a Critical Disability Studies (CDS) framework which challenges deficit models of autism (McGuire, 2016), “supercrip” tropes (Clare, 2015, p. 2), and narratives of overcoming autism (Cheng, 2017). While one participant noted being uncomfortable with the sense that they were a source of inspiration for non-autistic audiences, each found it encouraging that autistic audiences relate to their work and might be motivated to participate in similar forms of self-advocacy; in particular, they noted the value of performance in building confidence. As previous CDS literature is wary of disability as spectacle (Darke, 1994), this research provides insight into how young autistic adults use their work onstage and behind the scenes to promote and perform self-advocacy.