Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy: Speaking Truth to Power [1 ed.] 9781032156408, 9781032267258, 9781003352808

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“The current times are such that one must stand up and be counted, stare straight into the eyes of the nefarious powers that be, throw punchlines well above one’s weight, and laugh out loud. And this is what this very timely book teaches and beseeches us to do. A must-read for all those who, even in these grim times, believe that truth must be spoken to power, and that too with a smile, nay a gufaw!” Professor Saugata Bhaduri, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India “This intricate analysis of punching up is timely and fascinating. The contributors use diverse methods and approaches to explore what it means to punch up across a range of contexts. The international focus is particularly welcome, with discussion of both established stand-up comedy scenes and more recent additions to stand-up’s increasingly global presence. A brilliant book.” Dr Sophie Quirk, University of Kent, UK

PUNCHING UP IN STAND-UP COMEDY

Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy explores the new forms, voices and venues of stand-up comedy in diferent parts of the world and its potential role as a counterhegemonic tool for satire, commentary and expression of identity especially for the disempowered or marginalised. The title brings together essays and perspectives on stand-up and satire from diferent cultural and political contexts across the world which raise pertinent issues regarding its role in contemporary times, especially with the increased presence of OTT platforms and internet penetration that allows for easy access to this art form. It examines the theoretical understanding of the diferent aspects of the humour, aesthetics and politics of stand-up comedy, as well as the exploration of race, gender, politics and conficts, urban culture and LGBTQ+ identities in countries such as Indonesia, Finland, France, Iran, Italy, Morocco, India and the USA. It also asks the question whether, along with contesting and destabilising existing discursive frameworks and identities, a stand-up comic can open up a space for envisaging a new social, cultural and political order? This book will appeal to people interested in performance studies, media, popular culture, digital culture, sociology, digital sociology and anthropology, and English literature. Rashi Bhargava is currently an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru. Prior to joining Christ, she taught at the Department of Sociology, Maitreyi College, and other colleges in University of Delhi for almost a decade. She completed her doctorate from the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research interests include politics and culture in North-East India, sociology of gender and urban spaces, visual culture and disciplinary practices of sociology and social

anthropology in South Asia. Her recent publications include Social Scientist in South Asia: Personal Narratives, Social Forces and Negotiations co-edited with Achla Pritam Tandon and Gopi Tripathy and Materiality and Visuality in North East India: An Interdisciplinary Perspective co-edited with Tiplut Nongbri. Richa Chilana is currently teaching at the School of Liberal Studies, UPES, Dehradun, as an Assistant Professor. She has a decade-long experience of teaching English Literature at the Department of English, Maitreyi College, University of Delhi. Her doctoral thesis titled “Negotiating the Veil: Purdah in Twentieth Century Indian English Writing” (Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) engaged with the complexities of purdah as a garment, an ideology and division of space on the basis of gender. She has taught, has an avid interest and has published research articles and book chapters in the felds of gender studies, Indian English writing, popular fction, and literature and cinema.

PUNCHING UP IN STAND-UP COMEDY Speaking Truth to Power

Edited by Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

LONDON AND NEW YORK

Designed cover image: Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. With the exception of Chapter 9, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapter 9 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-15640-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-26725-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-35280-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors Foreword Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

ix xiii xvii 1

Part I

Punching In and Punching Up: Origins, Limits and Possibilities

29

1 The History of Moroccan Stand-Up Comedy: From Storytelling to Charged Humour Mohamed Bassou and Rebecca Krefting

31

2 Standing Up for Speaking Up: Stand-Up Comedy in the Indonesian Context Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati

49

3 The Jamel Comedy Club: (Mis)understanding Stand-Up Comedy’s Relationship with Urban Culture in France Jonathan Ervine

75

4 Stand-Up Comedy as Escape: Caste and Media Infrastructure in Mumbai Aju James

91

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Contents

5 Voices from the Comedy Contact Zone: Regarding Performative Strategies Toward Race and the Transnational Body Rachel E. Blackburn

110

Part II

Gendered Experiences and Stand-Up Comedy

129

6 Humour as Antihistamine in the Discourse of Persian Stand-Up Comedy: Female Stand-Up Comedians in Iran Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

131

7 Asserting Cultural Citizenship through Situated Comedy: Female Comedians in India Madhavi Shivaprasad

149

8 Notes on Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, Adorno’s Kulturindustrie and Feminism Christian Berger

170

Part III

Comics and the Audience: Connections, Ethics and Effcacy? 9 Awkward Connections: Stand-Up Comedy as Afective Arrangement Antti Lindfors

179 181

10 The Revolution Will Be a Joke: Semiotic Ideologies of Ethics and Efcacy in Stand-Up Comedy Marianna Keisalo

197

11 Standing Up for a Cause: The Cathartic and Persuasive Power of Stand-Up Comedy Margherita Dore

214

12 Which Direction Do We Punch? The Powers and Perils of Humour against the New Conspiracism Chris A. Kramer

235

Index

255

CONTRIBUTORS

Mohamed Bassou  holds a PhD in Language and Culturalism, a Master’s degree in Moroccan American Studies and a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Studies. He is a professional stand-up comedian in Morocco and fuent in Arabic, Tamazight, French and English. Domains of interest include culture, philosophy and humour studies. Christian Berger  is an Expert at the Department for Economic Policy, Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour and Lecturer at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, the Medical University of Vienna and at the Universities of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna and Wiener Neustadt. Christian Berger has a background in anthropology, socioeconomics and law. His work focuses on structural change, industrial policy and especially the digital transformation of work, economy, gender and society. His research interests are social theory and feminist political economy, especially the relationship between production/reproduction and public/private, as well as foundations and strategies of equal treatment. Rachel E. Blackburn  is currently an Assistant Professor at Columbus State University, USA. She has enjoyed a rewarding and transnational professional life, directing and performing around the globe with stints in London, Dublin, Toronto and New York City. She has delighted in teaching and developing curriculum for comedy, acting, improvisation, performance history, public speaking and other graduate and undergraduate courses and workshops. She has long been passionate about comedy and performance as tools for social change and progressive social consciousness, and her research and writing refect these intersections of humour, race, gender, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, transnational and performance studies. She currently resides in the Atlanta area with the love of her life and husband, Neil, and likely a dog.

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Margherita Dore  is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Italy. She is the author of Humour in Audiovisual Translation: Theories and Applications (Routledge, 2019). She edited one essay collection on translation practice (Achieving Consilience. Translation Theories and Practice, 2016), a special issue of Status Quaestionis on audiovisual retranslation (2018), one special issue of the European Journal of Humour Research on Multilingual Humour and Translation (2019) and (with Klaus Geyer) a special issue of InTRAlinea on dialect, translation and multimedia. She (co)authored several papers on humour in translated audiovisual texts and in a range of other contexts, including stand-up comedy. Jonathan Ervine is Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Bangor

University. His research focuses on aspects of contemporary French culture and society such as comedy, cinema, sport and videogames, and often has a particular focus on minority communities and debates about identity. He is the author of Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy, Consensus and Contradictions (2019) and Cinema and the Republic: Filming on the Margins in Contemporary France (2014). Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza  holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics. He has

worked on diverse aspects of humour and language play from pedagogical, sociolinguistic, gender and discursive perspectives. His studies have appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as HUMOR, Gender Issues, the International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Society, the TESOL Journal and Adult Learning. Aju James is a PhD candidate in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green

State University. His research focuses on new national and global identities in India, specifcally how new identities are produced through the intersection of digital media infrastructure and urban planning. He is currently working on a book manuscript on stand-up comedy in Mumbai, India. Marianna Keisalo  is a grant-funded researcher and Docent in Social and Cul-

tural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. Her doctoral work focuses on ritual clowning in Northern Mexico, and her post-doctoral project looks at stand-up comedy in Finland. As part of her feld work, she started performing stand-up herself. Her research on the semiotics of comedic performance analyses the meanings and efcacy of comedy, the creative processes involved in developing and performing stand-up, as well as the broader cultural and social contexts of comedy. Chris A. Kramer  completed his PhD at Marquette University in 2015, with a dissertation on “Subversive Humor.” He teaches philosophy at Santa Barbara City College. His interests and publications intersect across the philosophy of mind, religion, informal logic, existentialism and phenomenology, and especially

Contributors xi

ethical issues surrounding humour and oppression. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and two diminutive philosophers, Milo and Lola, who continually test his epistemological prowess with their infnitely regressive queries. Rebecca Krefting is a Professor in the American Studies Department and Direc-

tor of the Center for Leadership, Teaching and Learning at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. She is the author of All Joking Aside: Humor and Its Discontents (2014) and has published widely on stand-up comedy. She serves on the editorial board for Studies in American Humor and will serve as President of the American Humor Studies Association from 2022 to 2024. Anisa Larassati  is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities at Universitas Dian

Nuswantoro, Indonesia where she has been a faculty member since 2010 and received her undergraduate degree. She completed her masters at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Her research interests lie in the area of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language and culture, as well as language and gender. Her research articles in these areas have been published in several journals and international conferences’ proceeding. She is currently assigned to teach linguistics in the English Department and is the Deputy Dean of student afairs. Antti Lindfors is a cultural researcher who has specialised in folklore studies and linguistic/semiotic anthropology. Having written his dissertation on stand-up comedy as a performance of self-presentation and an economy of relatability, his ongoing project for the Academy of Finland centers on an ethnography of biohacking as an ethos of self-optimisation and the ramifcations of its cybernetic imaginary for our shifting understandings and political contexts of the self. Nina Setyaningsih  is a member of the Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Dian Nuswantoro (UDINUS), Indonesia. Her research interests include linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, language and culture, and humour studies. She earned her bachelor and Master’s degrees from Diponegoro University, Indonesia, majoring in English and Linguistics, respectively. She has written research articles published in several academic journals and conference proceedings. She is currently based in the English Department in UDINUS in which she is assigned to teach English and introductory linguistics and manage the department’s journal publications. Madhavi Shivaprasad completed her doctoral degree from the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. Her areas of interest are disability studies, media, humour studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Her doctoral dissertation explores the discourse of gender and sexuality being constructed within and around the Indian stand-up comedy industry; through this, she delves into the possibility

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Contributors

of humour and its interaction with the larger Indian as well as global feminist movements. She has formerly worked with Mount Carmel College in Bangalore as a Lecturer for English Studies. She has also published in the IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film recently. She has written on gender and comedy for feminist blogs Feminism in India and Skin Stories.

FOREWORD

Punching Outwards In a remembrance of the late American comedian Harris Wittels shortly after his death, comedian and podcast host Scott Aukerman recalled a conversation the two had had the week prior on the role of comedy, what people who watch or listen to it want from the experience, and what it means when comedians like Louis CK (prior to his fall from grace) are trying to “do something” with their stand-up. “Y’know, a lot of people want to do serious stuf with their comedy,” Wittels opined, “but I just think motherfuckers want to laugh” (Aukerman 2015). The one thing we can say with any assurance about stand-up comedy is that it presumes laughter: a performance—however profound its message—that doesn’t elicit laughs is considered a failed performance, while another—however banal, insipid, uninspired or facile—that gets laughs is a success. We, the critical, exegetical classes, may lament this truth, thinking the latter less deserving of the name, and thus reserve our attention and energies for comedy that attempts profundity, but we do so at our peril. What is said on the stage is intended to be appreciated by the audience to whom it is directed as an aesthetic text for which the appropriate afective response is laughter (see Antti Lindfors in this volume for a more graceful articulation of this point). The conversation need not end there, but there it must start. I do not think it is mere phantoms of functionalism that impel us towards arguments for stand-up comedy “doing something”: rather it is just as much our hesitation about speaking of afectivity and mirth, because our academic vocabulary for joy is thin. One of the foundations of joy, however, is communion. When anthropologists and religion scholars consider festival and ritual, it is the gathering together and mutual participation in acts that diferentiate themselves from the everyday that occasion a sense of collectivity and, what is more, one where the hierarchical diferentiations that may exist in that same everyday are temporarily suspended.

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At this moment, through these acts, we are an us; it is I and Thou. Such is the aspiration, at least, however rare its full realisation may be: whether church or dance foor, collective joy at its height on both occasions and is occasioned by a sense that we are more alike than not. Arguably something similar is attempted at the stand-up comedy performance. Disparate people are present to each other, sharing little more than their mutual yet heterogeneous expectations for this art form. The person on the stage, using little else but voice and gesture, speaks words that are aesthetically shaped to delight and that carry a semantic content that is comprehensible and meaningful yet unanticipated, building on “a” shared worldview. This shared worldview is the conceit of performance, and it is often constructed by contrasting the present us with the absent them: in this I and Thou, the absence of the Them is a relief. The venue of the stand-up performance parallels Erving Gofman’s idea of backstage space, where we drop the fronts required to present ourselves in our everyday life and become truly ourselves (1959: 113–116). Capturing the ephemerality of any one intimate performance through broadcasts or recordings—whether intended by the performer or bootlegged by the audience—shatters that conceit, yet the suggestions of intimacy and communitas are maintained because such are the expectations for the form. As I’ve argued elsewhere (2014; 2020), stand-up is invariably a performance of counterhegemony, where the comedian suggests that somehow we are outside the corridors of power and can do little but point that fact out. The emphasis is on “performance”: how much the assumed hegemon correlates to the real world the audience and performers actually inhabit is fundamentally moot. That “system of oppression” can be as pale as “the world is run by and for fools,” and you and I, in this room, laugh and sigh at the everyday inconveniences and frustrations observable because of others outside of it. In more sinister contexts, people of inordinate privilege—like myself, in my North American world, where my coloniser cisgender heterosexual able-bodied male self enjoys an embarrassing amount of liberty and agency—somehow see the slow empowering of the heretofore disempowered as a political threat, and while the similarly-minded use their still very real political heft to obstruct that progress, some use comedy (including stand-up) to shape that message of threat, mocking the new “oppressor” on stage and page: it is punching down, in the guise of punching up (see Quirk 2018, especially chapter 2; Sienkiewicz and Marx 2022). And power is intersectional. We see that in the current controversies around the recent work of American comedian Dave Chappelle, who has spent a generation articulating (hilariously, I would boldly suggest) the omnipresence of systemic racism, white supremacy and police brutality in the United States, while simultaneously using his admirable comic skill to attack the trans community (Robinson 2021). Madhavi Shivaprasad (2020) and Aju James (this volume) both make the case for stand-up comedy in India as simultaneously charged in critiquing the draconian politics of Narendra Modi while conspicuously silent on the issue of caste. We cannot expect perfect moral rectitude from our comedians,

Foreword

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but we nevertheless wish it, in large part because the art form invites us to build a (para)social relationship with the person on the stage, and we are implicated in their failings like we are with those of our real-world friends. All stand-up comedy is political, in that it suggests a polis, a society with a heterogeneous population living in close proximity, too large to be efective without cooperation and specialisation, or to be managed by personal connections, and thus subject to implicit and explicit conventions that purport to meet the needs of the collective and yet are strained by the frailties of individual appetite and ambition. The ebb and fow of everyday life consists of navigating this system that is not of our own creation and, often, out of our control to alter. Yet here, in this garrulous space, we gather and are present to each other in a reprieve from that ebb and fow, taking note of the imperfections in the system and how the real is never coterminous with the ideal. We may share little beyond our mutual participation in that system, and some of us may be more on the benefciary end of its imbalances than others, but we become bound in its critique, which one of us—the person on the stage—articulates wittily and well. Perhaps—perhaps—we leave inspired to efect change, and it is wonderful when that happens, but the reprieve found in joyful communion is an end in and of itself because, as was once said, sometimes motherfuckers just want to laugh. Ian Brodie Professor, Department of Literature, Folklore and the Arts, Cape Breton University, Canada

Works Cited Aukerman, Scott. 2015. NOT Farts and Procreation 4. Comedy Bang! Bang! [Podcast], episode 336. 22 February. https://www.earwolf.com/episode/not-farts-procreation-4/ Brodie, Ian. 2014. A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-up Comedy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ———. 2020. Is Stand-Up Comedy Art? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78.4: 401–418. Gofman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City: Anchor Books. Quirk, Sophie. 2018. The Politics of British Stand-up Comedy: The New Alternative. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Robinson, Russell K. 2021. Call Out Dave Chappelle’s Transphobia, But Don’t Erase His Critiques of LGBTQ Racism. San Francisco Chronicle 4 November. https:// www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Call-out-Dave-Chappelle-stransphobia-but-16590293.php Shivaprasad, Madhavi. 2018. Humour and the Margins: Stand-Up Comedy and Caste in India. IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication & Film 7.1: 23–42. Sienkiewicz, Matt and Nick Marx. 2022. That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them. Oakland: University of California Press.

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When the Covid-19-induced lockdown left us locked up and miserable in our homes, in addition to the love and support of family and friends, we turned to numerous stand-up comedy specials on OTT platforms to provide us with the much-needed distraction, joy and laughs. One year later, we did what most academicians do, considered turning our interest and fascination with the genre into an academic project. Transcending our initial inhibitions to delve into something new, we fnally conceptualised the idea behind this edited volume. We were particularly intrigued by various ways in which observational comedy was performed, especially the ones that were Punching Up! Thus began our exciting journey of (re-)watching the videos, reading scholarly work, looking up the interviews and social media handles of the numerous comics and unending often hilarious chats on the theme. As we probed further into the theme, we realised that all comedy is political even though it may not identify itself to be so. Our own discomfort with ubiquitous structural discrimination, societal inconsistencies and power-laden relationships provided further impetus. Exploring the relationship between comedy and politics, then, became the backdrop of our volume. But what became so special about this project was our intention to bring culturally diverse, glocal narratives to the fore. It is rare to be working on an edited volume that makes you laugh every time you read it, either to write to the contributors with suggestions or edit and fnalise the manuscript to be sent to the publisher. We not only laughed, we laughed at the same jokes again and again, knowing fully well that we had laughed at those jokes the frst time we read them. In retrospect, it seems quixotic that we looked for academics on academia.edu, who have written tomes on stand-up comedy and expected them to agree to contribute to our volume. We are eternally grateful to all our authors, Rebecca Krefting, Mohamed Bassou, Antti Lindfors, Chris A. Kramer, Rachel E. Blackburn, Margherita Dore, Marianna

xviii Preface and Acknowledgements

Keisalo, Jonathan Ervine, Christian Berger, Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza, Aju James, Madhavi Shivaprasad, Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati who agreed to our volume being a suitable home for their fascinating ideas. We are thankful to them for their acute analysis of their respective contexts, their sensitivity, emphasis on humour with humility, their supreme creativity in coining new words and pushing the boundaries of ideas and language, belief in the ability of comedy to bring about cultural awareness and change, and create a sense of belonging and community by the very act of laughing together. We were certainly reaching for the unreachable when we approached Ian Brodie, Sophie Quirk and Saugata Bhaduri to contribute a foreword or an endorsement to the volume. Now that we have reached the last lap of the journey, it still seems unbelievable that all of these people whom we read, cite and look up to said yes to us and were extremely generous in their support and guidance. We are indeed grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions, comments and criticisms that helped make our arguments more robust, precise, and clear. We are also thankful to Sophie Quirk for her comments on the introduction that certainly helped us in refning our arguments. An edited volume such as this with its geographical diversity and reach wouldn’t have been possible without institutional and logistical help at our respective places of work. We are grateful to Prof. Shubhashis Gangopadhyay, Dr Ram Kumar Sharma and Dr Atri Nautiyal for their unending support, understanding and consideration. We are also thankful to many of our fellow scholars with whom we had discussed the idea and received valuable feedback. In particular Samarth Singhal with whom one of us collaborated earlier for a conference on Humour and Politics in South Asia which in retrospect was possibly the genesis of this mammoth project. We would also like to thank Shoma Chowdhury for believing in our idea and guiding us through the long winding process of publishing. Shloka Chauhan and the entire team at Routledge too deserve a special mention. Research and writing is an excruciatingly long and sometimes painful process which is made bearable by the love and patience of family, lovers (Arnab Datta with his patience, loving understanding and humour is a godsend) and friends, all of whom are comics themselves in their own unique, idiosyncratic ways. It goes without saying that all the insights and joys this volume brings to the readers are courtesy of our contributors and all the shortcomings are completely ours. We are also indebted to all those comics, who not only comforted us and made us think and rethink the known and the unknown with their jokes but also became the subject matter of our work. May the laughter and questions generated by the laughter continue and may their tribe increase!

INTRODUCTION Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

Really what a trickster is, is an agent of change.1 (says the humourist Emily Levine)

The ambiguity of meaning inherent in humour and comedy gives it a distinct form more so when it is used to express discomfort or dissent against politics of domination, suppression and authoritarianism. Because of its ambivalent nature, comedy is also perceived as an “amorphous beast” (Davies and Illott 2018) when it comes to the issue of identity and its representation. It has been used “both to mock the weak and to provide a space in which to challenge and upturn social conventions that serve to stigmatise and alienate those marginalised by mainstream society” (Davies and Illott 6). The very ambiguity in humorous expressions relieves the performer of the responsibility of what she or he says while at the same time facing the possibility of not being taken seriously. British comedian Jo Brand (Interview in Wagg 2009: 117) while talking about alternative comedy in Britain describes the genre as imbued with “licensed irresponsibility”. That is to say that one can be child-like and share any words, phrases or ideas that may not be voiced in many social settings. This “licensed irresponsibility” that Jo Brand talks about is also visible in ‘shock’ comedy with profane comic personae which rarely has “thoughtful cultural critique” and appeals to audience because of its “apolitical correctness” (4). If a comic fnds the pressure to be politically correct all the time when talking about other races, or sexualities, shock comedy ofers an opportunity to say what they wish to say as shock comics are what Russel Peterson 2 names, “equal opportunity ofenders” (149) who target everyone, “When everyone is the target there is little substantive critique and thus shock comedy maintains proftability by being “nihilistically ‘neutral,’” refusing to cater to social justice issues or any single community, DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-1

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Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

ideology, or set of politics” (4). Thus, when comics also employ shock humour as one of their many styles and for a rhetorical function, it does not mean they believe or practice the things they say in their acts. Previous studies on the political dimension of stand-up comedy such as that of Krefting (2014), Davies and Illot (2018), Sophie Quirk (2018) and Willett and Willett (2019) to name a few underline the issues of representation, subversive nature of comedy from below and how stand-up by or about those on the periphery asserts their claims to cultural citizenship.3 Thus, comedy, particularly stand-up, by its very defnition can transgress boundaries like no other, thereby imbuing it with an inherent political potential. This is, of course, following the established notion within contemporary discourse on politics, that nothing is apolitical. This potential, however, cannot be seen as absolute. This gives the genre of stand-up comedy a distinctive disposition. The unique and unusual sites of performance such as pubs, clubs, cafes, etc., with an urban, elite, mostly young, middle class audience and the implications of the entertainment industry that govern production, distribution and reception of the act demands a deeper analysis of the relationship between politics, humour, identity and subversion. A stand-up performance is a communicative act, predicated on the performer’s connection with the audience by breaking the fourth wall, unlike many other modes of artistic expression where the performer feigns oblivion of the presence of the audience. Ian Brodie in his book, A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand Up Comedy (2014) has argued that notwithstanding the various defnitions of stand-up comedy,4 it is people’s art, performed for the people with a close and intimate interaction between the performer and the audience. Thus, a stand-up comic, at the very least, is a professional storyteller bound by the structures of the culture industry that informs the art. In the case of stand-up audiences, the negotiations may be of various kinds since the comic sphere may touch upon many difcult, unsayable and unapproachable topics within the hegemonic culture. He further argues that one of the main aspects of this form, especially observational comedy, is the use of locally situated knowledge and worldview that the performers make use of in order to entertain their audience. They make them laugh while drawing their attention to societal inconsistencies and injustices. Through this, they make themselves relevant and interesting and use the interactive space of the performance to intersperse their jokes with strong opinions with a hope that it might have an efect on the consciousness of the audience. The audience, then, responds to this performance in various ways, thus making stand-up, both a communicative and a collaborative act. This act/form may then create its own politics of identifcation, recognition and representation. The relationship between comedy and the representation of various markers of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, caste, etc. is a matter of discussion in various contemporary discourses. For instance, where do we draw the line when it comes to humour aimed at marginalised groups, as can be seen in the cautionary note sounded by the stand-up comic, Hari Kondabolu5 who said, “there’s a lot of things people fnd funny that are

Introduction 3

really just bullying”? Does humour in addition to eliciting a laugh, make the audience rethink or revisit their assumptions and create a sense of belonging and camaraderie between those on the margins? Can we look at stand-up comics as present day parrhesiastes who use ridicule and irony to lay bare the arbitrary and oppressive nature of social, cultural and political norms? Is a stand-up comic a “licensed spokesman”? (Mintz 1977) Does stand-up comedy lead to a radical change in terms of public policy, leading to a more equitable distribution of resources and creating a fairer world? Is comedy which aims to question, critique, contest hegemony seen as ‘proftable’ and successful as compared to ‘safe’ comedy? Is there any such thing as ‘limits’ to punching up because the situation itself is so absurd that it cannot become a comedy? Or as Kunal Kamra, an Indian stand-up comic in his recent interview with The Telegraph, Calcutta said “This is where even I stop laughing…Even, I as a comedian, am struggling to satirise this absurdity” (24 June, 2021). Stand-up comedy is often assumed to have originated in the United States and the United Kingdom, thereby establishing a frame of reference for the practice of the genre and the form in the rest of the world. The United States is mostly known for its political comedy by members of the minority groups (Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl to name a few) in the 1960s6 who used humour for social commentary and cultural critique. Britain, on the other hand, is known for its alternative comedy movement in 1970s–1980s7 which democratised “socially critical comedy” and brought marginal groups (the ‘Others’) into the mainstream comic sphere in Britain (Wagg 1998). Wagg (1998) further argued that both in the United States (between 1940s and 1950s) and the United Kingdom (1980s), comedians had an important role to play especially because of their infuence on popular opinion and its refection in the responses to their jokes in the age of radio and TVs. This was heavily infuenced by factors like consumption, free market, advertising and competition. Thus, it is no surprise that the popularisation of the genre of stand-up in the 21st century can be closely tied to certain social, economic, political and most signifcantly technological processes. It is important to note, however, that although stand-up comedy as a form of humour can be seen as embedded within the regional contexts of the United States and the United Kingdom, humour as a form of expression and performance, challenging the powers that are and the powers that be and creating a community, even if transient, is found in almost all societies. For instance in India, folk humour forms like Haasya and Vibhatsa Rasa in Natyashastra, Jaatra in Bengal, Nautanki in Uttar Pradesh, Bhand Paather in Kashmir, to name a few have a long history. With the coming of television, shows like Haasya Kavi Sammelan, The Flop Show, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge and more recently The Kapil Sharma Show which have humour and comedy underlying the performances became popular. The chapters by Mohamed Bassou and Rebecca Krefting, Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati and Heidari-Shahreza (in this volume) too trace the history of stand up in their respective contexts and the role of traditional forms of humour in shaping contemporary forms of stand-up comedy.

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Notwithstanding the existence of traditional forms of humour in many societies which may have facilitated the popularisation of the genre, stand-up is an individuated performance/ performed by a lone performer using original material and can be said to have its origin in a specifc socio-economic, cultural and political context. Its professionalisation, commodifcation, mediated deliverance and global reach makes it distinct from traditional comic expressions or narrative performances. Some of the traditional forms of humour have been overtly satirical in their content but contemporary stand-up comedy is more infuenced by American and British comedy than the traditional forms. How do we then understand the ways in which these processes unfold in various glocal contexts and the infuence of the United States and the United Kingdom on them? The present volume, thus, attempts a geographically diverse and closer analysis of this communicative and collaborative act within glocal contexts that tries to punch up to understand its embodiments, dilemmas, negotiations and limits of attempted subversion. The variegated nature of identity, intersectionality and the existence of multiple, multiplying and intersecting hierarchies is the thread that ties all the twelve chapters of this volume together. The chapters by Mohamed Bassou and Rebecca Krefting, Jonathan Ervine, Aju James, Rachel Blackburn, Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati engage with the precursors of contemporary stand-up comedy, identity politics of race, caste and ethnicity, looking at the socially disempowered as agents of humour and the limits of punching up. Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza, Christian Berger and Madhavi Shivaprasad look at gendered experiences and the intersection of gender with other dimensions of identity. The chapters by Antti Lindfors, Marianna Keisalo, Margherita Dore and Chris Kramer analyse the genre of stand-up comedy through linguistic anthropology, semiotics, politics of language and ableism and what Kramer calls bullpropashitacism/Propashitaspiracism unravelling the complex dynamic of comedy, ethics and efcacy.

“I am done with politics” Says Chris Coltrane, but Are We Done with Politics? Chris Coltrane8 announced in Left-Wing Propaganda Machine, in 2015, “I wanna trust them, but I’ve been burnt by political parties So. Many. Times. In. The. Past”. As can also be seen in the case of India where stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra’s conspicuous target might be the ruling government but he also says that we honestly don’t have any other option and should probably call Simon back.9 The earlier belief in the workers of the world, coming together to overthrow the system is no longer relevant to achieve radical political change: We live in the wake of the collapse of revolutionary grand narratives, in which the idea of a social totality that can be grasped, overturned and fnally emancipated through revolutionary praxis is no longer operative … There is no longer a distinct centre of power, no symbolic Winter Palace

Introduction 5

to storm. We are confronted instead with a perplexing feld of power relations which take the form of a network rather than a hierarchy, a feld into which we are inserted and with which we are, in many ways, complicit. (Newman,10 48) Earlier forms of revolutionary activity have been replaced by ‘autonomous insurrection’ (Newman vii) where people’s actions are not directed at the state, those who gather in squares and public places, such as Tahrir Square look towards each other. In this world of “postmodern politics” ( Jones 2010), there is a shift from association and afliation with political parties to a more nuanced engagement with issues which have a more personal bearing. Sophie Quirk (2018) in her work, The Politics of British Stand-up Comedy, analyses this shift in great detail in the context of Britain. Her major contention, which we build upon in this volume, is that contemporary forms of comedy can be viewed through the emergence of a new moment in politics which needs to be acknowledged and accounted for to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the genre and its relationship to politics. Thus, we see a discussion on diverse issues such as mental health (Daniel Fernandes’ Shadows engages with the theme), identity politics, environmentalism, etc. leading to the forging of temporary alliances. For instance, Vir Das, an Indian stand-up comic performed Outside In: The Lockdown Special, from his Mumbai residence for an audience spread all across the world and raised 3.5 million rupees for seventeen diferent Covid relief charities. The changing contours of what constitutes politics (which began in mid-20th century) and the emergence of “multiplicity of political realms” (Wagg 1998: xi) which includes politics of the personal and that of consumption and desires urges us to revisit the theoretical and methodological frameworks within which we explore and analyse politics and its relationship to society, history and culture especially in the post-truth era. The present volume is one such attempt at revisiting the way ‘political’ is perceived, explored and engaged with. It is informed by the following factors: the move from prioritising institutionalised politics to incorporating politics of diversity, identity and everyday forms of negotiation, resistance and survival in studies on politics; the growing acceptance of the idea that personal is political; the focus on unravelling the power dynamics that underlie every aspect of our social reality; the ever increasing partisan politics; the disregard for truth, logic and reasoning in contemporary political rhetoric that is evident globally and reafrms that global and local histories can no longer be seen as constituting two separate arenas. The heightened visibility of the global south in the discourse is just another reason why it is important to pay attention to the sites at and the ways in which global, regional and local (glocal) interact and intersect. Just like politics, humour, too, is very difcult to conceptualise but it does allow us to look into social relations, structures and ideologies. Michiel Swinkels and Anouk de Koning state “…while it is difcult to conceptualise humour in an univocal way, it provides us with a treasure trove of insight into the pleasures and

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tribulations of social life and the intricacies of power and contestation” (2016: 10). The role and signifcance of humour have been discussed at length by many humour theorists, prominent being Peter Berger (2014) and Paolo Virno (2008) who have put forth relief (comedy as comic relief ), superiority (pleasure one derives by an assertion of others’ inferiority and reafrmation of one’s social and cultural standing), incongruity (the laughter generated out of violation of expectations), and play (playful, animal antics) theories. In his study of wit, Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation (2008), Virno suggests that comedy operates “at the exact point when a form of life cracks and self combusts”. These theories have been used by many scholars to understand humour of various kinds including stand-up comedy which is evident in the contributions to this volume as well. However, the present volume is not limited to the application of these theories in understanding stand-up comedy; rather, it takes these as given and builds upon them further. The intention to drive home a particular (read: radical) worldview/ideology is certainly there in some forms of humour, especially in what Krefting calls, “charged humour”. Krefting argues that all forms of humour locate itself in a particular social, cultural, political context but “charged humour” does it selfconsciously with the intention to create a more equitable world by challenging its divisions and cultural exclusion. There are some jokes that are “tears in the fabric of our beliefs” forcing us to notice how unfair and stratifed the world we live in is (2). But Stephen Wagg states that “comedy invariably has a political thrust and, potentially, political consequences; it isn’t only political when it is practised by a Marxist or when it involves a joke at the expense of the Prime Minister” (1998: xi). Following from this, our contention is that all stand-up performances are political and no jokes are innocent11 even though they might appear to be so. The strong connection between humour and politics which was earlier manifested in political satire12 can be now found in stand-up comedy especially in observational comedy. Contemporary genre of stand-up has the capacity to critique or visibilise dominant structures which are not only statist but social and cultural. It may also expand the very boundaries of what constitutes the dominant or mainstream structures by including the peripheral thereby creating alternatives, if only on stage. But despite the extension of contemporary understanding of what constitutes the political, there are some performers of comedy who make a distinction between overtly political or politically charged humour and the ones which touch upon quotidian topics, consequently earning the title of ‘safe’ comedy. Brodie (2014) has stated that no matter how much ‘licence’ a stand-up comedian can have, there is never free rein since the issue of taste and ofence has implications on their livelihood, popularity, etc. This distinction is often myopic and has become more pronounced within the current political dispensation of the world where many stand-up comics have explicitly stated why they do not make political jokes. For instance, one can look at Kenny Sebastian in the context of India, who in his act, Why I don’t do Jokes about Politics In India (2018), underscores the possible ramifcations of doing political comedy in contemporary India. He

Introduction 7

also categorises his audience into “positive audience”, “feedback audience” and “negative audience”. The last of these three categories, according to Sebastian, hate comedy and jokes and fle FIRs (First Information Report) against the comedians which is taken seriously by the police ofcials too, who would not take action against other important issues but will be extremely enthusiastic about this (0:21–1:20 mins). Interestingly, in his own subtle way, Sebastian is inadvertently engaging in charged humour. Sebastian’s fears were not unfounded since many comedians (Kunal Kamra) and comedy collectives (e.g. All India Bakchod (AIB)) in India have FIRs and complaints fled against them. The most recent addition being Munawar Faruqui (a Muslim comedian) who was arrested in January 2021 for a joke he didn’t even tell in his act in a cafe in the city of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India. The complainant had used Faruqui’s YouTube upload in April 2020 to fle a case against him for ‘hurting’ Hindu sentiments (Faleiro 2021). Such an incident not only highlights the agency of the audience but also how previous performances and subsequent categorisation of certain comedians as political in popular public imagination can have implications on the perception of and reactions to their future performances. An atmosphere such as this where stand-up comics are perpetually surveilled, trolled or arrested for their jokes also eventually leads to fear and self-censorship. With something as subjective, transient and context driven as humour, it is difcult to gauge the impact in terms of perception or actual tangible changes, “it’s called a sense of humor. It’s a sense, like smell. Like some people like pizza, some people don’t. Some people think some things are funny, some people don’t” ( Judy Gold quoted in Krefting 2014: 9). It can thus be proposed that comedy in its various avatars not only addresses socio-political issues but it can also have political consequences since the very act of making a joke is to take a subject position that allows for a rendition of reality in a way that might not have been done before. Such a rendition may have many unintended consequences, more so in the contemporary digital world. There is a diference between a joke cracked between friends and that made by a popular stand-up comic but the easy access to social media has blurred the boundaries between public and private, In the age of social media and screen shots, it is not only the personal which is political when it comes to humour; the private always runs the risk of becoming public as well. Social media has given us all the potential to be comedians, but also the access to an audience beyond our reach which might hold us accountable for our utterances. (Davies and Illot 17) Thus, it is difcult for a performer to create a spatiotemporal distance like in the past through the use of diferent objects like the stage, mic, dress, etc. The earlier distinction between live audience and broadcasting audience has been dismantled as their acts and performances are not only available on OTT platforms like Netfix, Amazon, YouTube but one can also fnd glimpses of those on their

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social media handles. This allows the audience to access excerpts of their performances/gigs anytime and go back to it as many times as they want, sometimes to the efect of creating a dialogical space as will be discussed later. Consequently, even though some time may have passed after the performance of the act, it can still be used as a reference. This may become more pronounced in a politically volatile context which determines how the jokes made by stand-up comics will be received not only in real time but also later. As mentioned earlier, stand-up comedy is not only a form of entertainment but is a space occupied by professionals who are governed by market dynamics. Unlike safe comedy and to some extent shock comedy, charged humour is not proftable because it tells us that our frmly held beliefs about the equal, fair and just nature of our world are an illusion. It is often assumed to be too cerebral, performed by and directed towards intellectual elites and an understanding of it might require the audience to possess a certain social, political, ideological and historical understanding. Because of its ability to polarise the audience, appeal to some and be loathsome to others, comics might not want to engage in charged humour when they are starting out. They may instead choose to perform “profitable comedy” that might guarantee commercial and fnancial success. Those who create “‘safe’ comedy or material, which is characterised by apolitical jokes that focus on shared social concerns and experiences without calling into question the terms of their construction or exclusivity” are often more successful (Krefting 2014: 3). Sometimes, just saying a joke can be powerful while at others, the way the audience relates to it. Although a cursory look at the history of stand-up comedy indicates that audiences are more open to hearing critiques of systemic injustices in politically volatile times such as the 1950s and 1960s in the United States when comics doing charged comedy like Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, Robin Tyler and Richard Pryor were popular. But in more recent times, for multiple reasons, charged humour is a two edged sword. In many contexts, it neither gets good fnancial returns nor does it safeguard the comics who are labelled as charged comedians. The expectations of the audience play a pivotal role in this. The chapter by Bassou and Krefting in this volume discusses this in detail in the context of Morocco. However, a more recent but widespread view in India entails that stand-up comedians speak against the establishment as it has become proftable. There is also a growing pressure on many stand-up comedians to include ‘political’ issues in their acts. This can be read as coming from the assumption as well as expectations of the audience13 that stand-up comedians are truth tellers in a society and given their social identity, they cannot ignore what is happening in their immediate social and political environment. Thus, we fnd certain comedians making conscious eforts to engage with politically relevant themes and topics. This could also be because in this brave new world of celebrity culture, identities could be forged and served to the audience as a commodity. They could be seen as “commercial auto-ethnographies-a presentation of self engaging in cultural critique and interpretation” (Krefting 6–7) and audiences as consumers have the liberty

Introduction 9

to put a monetary and cultural value to these identities. For instance, Indian comedian, Rahul Dua started his recent act (2019) with “I have started to read news now. Kab tak aisa karte rahenge Punjab se aaye hai, girlfriend bhag gayi, jeans nahi pehen sakte... Blehhh” (I have started to read news now. Till when can I continue making jokes about coming from Punjab14 (or) my girlfriend dumping me (or) I can’t wear jeans….Blehh). His act can be seen as an attempt to establish the point that he is not a ‘frivolous’ comedian who only talks about relationship problems or regional/linguistic/ethnic stereotypes. To reafrm the basis of this particular performance, he also takes a jibe at his audience when pronouncing the name of North Korea President Kim Jong-ho or Russian President Vladmir Putin or Mexico (Meh-hee-co) or Shawshank Redemption. Though his style in this particular act is consistent with his earlier performances, the content is overtly ‘political’ which makes him an “intellectually stimulated comedian now” (Dua 2019, 4:35 mins) and he has joined the league of ‘cool’ and ‘woke’ comedians. Although it seems that Dua is only discussing Donald Trump’s presidency, he tries to connect the situation in the United States with that of North Korea, Russia and India alluding to the fact that leaders of similar political dispensation stick together. Noteworthy here is the point that Dua too falls into the trope of defning the political through a statist and institutionalised lens and categorises woke comedians as the ones who engage with these. The invisibility of the other aspects of the political that has been recognised of late is dealt with in the following sections.

Punching In and Punching Up: Origins, Limits and Possibilities The questions that we engage with in this section are the evolution of the form of stand-up comedy and how radical15 can its comic potential be? In addition to looking at the infuence of American and British comedy, we also need to engage with the unique specifcities of the global south and unravel the connections between traditional/folk forms of humour and its infuence on structures, style and content of contemporary stand-up comedy. The chapter “The History of Moroccan Stand-Up Comedy: From Storytelling to Charged Humour” by Mohamed Bassou, a professional comedian himself, and Rebecca Krefting engages with the use of the term, Kahlouch, which means black by Abdellah Barkaoui, a Moroccan stand-up comic and the furore caused by the usage. When used by a white person, the term is pejorative but it is a term of endearment for those who are black. The attempt at subversion through charged humour by investing a derogatory term with power and pride was lost on the audience, since it was seen as an afrmation of negative labels in a society where comics are designated by geography and not by their race or ethnic identity. The chapter also makes a strong case for how “charged humour” a concept, initially developed in the United States could be a useful theoretical tool in other contexts, such as that of Morocco as well since the preoccupation with identities and a stand-up comic’s attempt to connect across identities can be seen across nations and contexts. Bassou and Krefting outline a fascinating history of Moroccan stand-up

10 Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

comedy whose origins could be traced back to pre-theatrical performance traditions such as Labsat and Sultan Talba, modern forms such as al-halqa which drew upon folk tales and myths, and comic theatre which had a generous sprinkling of humour, social critique and connection with the audience as would be seen in stand-up comedy later. The chapter also traces the evolution of the form of stand-up comedy and charged humour performed by Moroccan comics such as Bassou by looking at three generations of stand-up comics since the 1970s. In a manner similar to many other socio-cultural contexts, women are not perceived as funny, hence Hanan El Fadili is the only female stage comedian performing the kind of charged humour done by men. The complex connections between traditional forms of humour and contemporary stand-up comedy is also analysed in the chapter titled “Standing Up for Speaking Up: Stand-Up Comedy in the Indonesian Context” by Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati in a South East Asian setting. The chapter outlines the history of stand-up comedy in Indonesia by talking of traditional comedic art forms such as ketoprak and Dagelan Mataram in Central Java and Yogyakarta and ludruk in East Java, the stand-up competitions held since the 1950s and Comedy Cafe started by Ramon Papana in the 1990s. Drawing on the conceptual framework of Arthur Asa Berger (2011) and his categorisation of the forms and techniques of humour, the chapter argues that the incongruity between the build-up and the punchline is the cause of laughter (Dynel 2009). The monologue in the beginning of the act by Srimulat, an Indonesian comic group, reveals the possible infuence of ketoprak on contemporary stand-up comedy. The scathing critique of Japanese colonialism in ludruk indicates the tradition of politically charged comedy in the country. Following from this, the chapter engages with how contemporary Indonesian stand-up comedians like Abdur Arsyad, Arie Kriting, Coki Pardede, and Tretan Muslim touch upon the predicament of religious minorities in this multicultural and multi-ethnic country. In the 1980s and 1990s under the presidency of Soeharto, Warkop DKI, a popular comedy group which attacked the policies such as restrictions on freedom of speech and pretensions of the ruling class, were often censored and interrogated for what they said. Yet they encouraged each other and the audience to “Tertawalah, sebelum tertawa itu dilarang” (Laugh, before laughing is banned). During the Presidential election of 2019, jokes were directed at the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Republik Indonesia – DPR RI or the Indonesian house of representatives. Political humour in Indonesia comprises denigration jokes aimed at individuals or groups or exposure jokes that focus on issues faced by the society (Wijana 2018). Stand-up comedy is thus a modern day Trojan horse (Amy Billingsly) that appears familiar and disarming to the onlookers but attacks not only those who are in power but the false assumptions and beliefs of the audience. The chapter “The Jamel Comedy Club: (mis)understanding Stand-up Comedy’s Relationship with Urban Culture in France” by Jonathan Ervine in addition to tracing the emergence of stand-up comedy in France, reveals the limited potential of stand-up in bringing about societal changes or making it a more

Introduction 11

inclusive social space. The author draws from two extended interviews with Jamel Comedy Club performers Noom Diawara and Dédo conducted in 2017 for his work. He reveals that notwithstanding the impact of the club in popularising stand-up comedy in France and expanding its boundaries in terms of venues, clubs, performers and subject matter, thereby providing opportunities to an entirely new generation of stand-up comedians in France, it has failed to obliterate the stigmatisation and othering of the ‘visible minority’ groups or banlieues or the performers from that area. Reassessing the overly simplistic portrayal of the club by French media as a space that brought the French minorities from the banlieues into the mainstream, Ervine argues that the term ‘“humour communautaire” is being used disproportionately – and potentially inaccurately – to classify ethnic minority comedians as others and treat their humour as un-French thereby delimiting the potential of the club and what it intended to do. The chapter uses the case study of Jamel Comedy Club, a Canal Plus television show hosted by Jamel Debbouze and broadcasted from 2006–2016 to explore the emergence of a more popularised, visibalised and Americanised version of stand-up comedy in France after the 2005 unrest. According to Ervine, an analysis of the same requires a more nuanced reading which is undertaken by the author through a comparison with a short lived television programme, H.I.P H.O.P in 1984 in France and black comedians as representative of the comedy by minority groups in the United States since 1960s–1970s. His chapter highlights the role/signifcance of the global fow of information, processes and genres especially from the American context and its local variations in France. Thus, H.I.P H.O.P emerged from a larger socio-political cultural context connecting major cities like Paris and its banlieues while Jamel Comedy Club emerged as a reaction to a specifc event of 2005 both attempting to redefne what it means to be French and appeal to a certain specifc demography. However, despite the similarities with hip hop, stand-up comedy in France is still in a nascent stage where the performances by members of visible minorities are pigeonholed and categorised as community specifc thereby limiting its potential to be recognised as possessing universal ethos. As the chapter by Ervine reveals, comic renditions can be constrained by what Giselinde Kuipers (2011) calls “humour regimes”, which is defned as “the unwritten rules that defne who is entitled to humour, about what and when” (Kuipers 2011 in Swinkels and de Koning 2016: 8). In addition to this, who is entitled to perform in certain sites has also been highlighted by Aju James in his chapter, “Stand-up Comedy as Escape: Caste and Media Infrastructure in Mumbai”. Drawing on ethnographic feldwork on the Mumbai comedy scene, the chapter highlights the Indian stand up comedians’ silences on caste structures, worldviews and identities in their performances and their privileged access to the structures of stand-up comedy in India. The author states that caste is invisible in most performances, emerging only in caste based humour and not as a social issue, notwithstanding the progressive and liberal label that stand-up comedy in India has earned in the last few years. James uses the theme of ‘escape’ to drive

12 Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

home the point that most stand-up comedians in Mumbai simultaneously escape the very same social locations, upper caste-upper class and structures that makes stand-up in Mumbai possible and establish Indian-ness sans caste identifcation on the global stage. However, on closer scrutiny, it emerges that the comedy scene in Mumbai relies on those very caste-class structures apparent in the larger world views of performers, producers, and production workers that it seeks to escape. By drawing connections between the stand-up comedy scene and flm and television in Mumbai, the author provides an insight into implications of the changing contours of Mumbai flm and television industry, its relationship to global mediascape and the growing distinctions between the masses and the elites, on the structures and form of stand-up comedy in Mumbai. Aju James’s chapter foregrounds the theme of social reproduction especially in (higher) educational institutions and professional settings that is implicated in the comedy scene in the context of the contemporary neoliberal global networks of information, market, capital and consumption. Through his analysis, James reveals the limitations of ‘woke’ comedy in bringing about social change because of its embeddedness within the larger structures of (caste-class) dominance and subjugation and its dependence on these structures for survival. Consequently, the desire to fully escape their situation is constantly deferred and the contradiction unresolved. Unlike the Indian context, contemporary comics in the United States are drawing upon their own global awareness and transnational ties in their comedy which parodies the intersections between race, ethnicity, nationality, origin, class, etc. and how that intersection determines the varied perception of their identities in diferent locations. Rachel E. Blackburn in her chapter, “Voices from the Comedy Contact Zone: Regarding Performative Strategies Toward Race and the Transnational Body”, looks at comics of transnational origin like Tehran Von Ghasri, Trevor Noah, Gina Yashere and Aamer Rahman and the way they adapt their performative strategies when they perform in diverse locations such as the United States, Kuwait, Israel, the United Kingdom, Germany, UAE and Australia. Comics who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour) are perceived diferently in diferent locations especially with regard to their racial identity. Racial construction is not only about skin colour, it is dependent on social, cultural and political context and how diferent markers of identity intersect with race in those spaces. Blackburn calls these “comedy contact zones” (Pratt) where the colonised like Caliban use the coloniser’s tongue to contest, critique and parody the ideological framework of the coloniser. In an interview, Von Ghasri mentioned how he tried to challenge the conventional all white male line-up and tokenised representation by curating shows which gave mic time to a diverse set of voices. Blackburn argues that the critical race humour of these comics is a “form of public pedagogy” which provides tools to adopt a critical approach towards racial identity and the ability to transform it. Blackburn’s analysis can be further applied to look at Hasan Minhaj, another stand-up comedian in the United States whose Homecoming King (Netfix 2017) ends with a segment on how to break the cycle of racial and religious (especially

Introduction 13

post 9/11) discrimination. He urges the members of the brown community to recognise that they are as much citizens of the United States and the whites to recognise the same and be accepting of the diference. Minhaj’s strategy in his special is to use events of his own life, put himself in the centre and connect to diferent transnational characters to construct a narrative. This also connects to the idea of citizenship which has been defned, understood and experienced in diferent ways by diferent people at diferent moments of time in history. We experience citizenship “as both a legal arrangement and a cultural arrangement unique to our social coordinates” (Krefting 19). As mentioned earlier, charged humour, and in this case critical race humour, performs the function of enacting cultural citizenship by indicating the gaps between the promises of citizenship and the actual lived experiences of those on the margins. Cultural theorists have pointed out that the source of our pleasure from humour may not always be a sense of superiority but rather a sense of belonging and community. The act of laughing together creates a community which is not monolithic or based on fxed and rigid identities but born out of “a shared dislocation out of customary lines of identity” (35). It is humour that privileges “agency, community, and redress” (28) and is “always political and strives to ofer solutions” (Krefting, 2014: 26). For instance, Wandy Sykes’s humour goes beyond rigid notions of identity such as race, gender and sexuality, creating a sense of belonging and community which is not based on identity, it is rather a consequence of “positive energy for a visceral connection and felt solidarity”. She says, that it is “harder to be gay than it is to be black” forcing her audience to rethink conventional understandings of racial identity (Willett and Willett 2019: 42). A minority like Muslim Americans making light about the discrimination sufered by them is an example of what Fine called “gallows humour”, humour produced by subjugated people making fun of those who oppressed them. This humour elicits a “laughter of recognition” (Levine 1977) which makes the audience recognise their concerns in the comic’s act, creating a camaraderie and a sense of belonging to a community. For a minority that is constantly demonised, it also creates, “positive group association” (Michael 2013: 12). Although this inside outside dynamic of humour can contribute to social cohesion and foster group solidarity, humour directed at the members of one’s own group to perform a “disciplinary” (Billig) function could also create divisions. Many Muslim American comics like Azhar Usman and Beatrice Moss make fun of ‘weak’ Muslims who underplay their identity to protect themselves from prejudice and discrimination. Moss says in one of his acts, “I love it when Muslims give a hearty salaam. It makes me feel better about me. Have you ever been in that odd position when you give salaams to a Muslim, and he’s not ready, or she’s not ready, or worse – they’re not comfortable?” Azhar Usman makes fun of “Uncle Letmeexplainyou” – a frst generation migrant who does not speak good English but is a very eager spokesperson on issues that concern his community and is featured on various channels. It is a question worth asking if this humour which is directed at reform of an individual contribute to social change.

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The above discussion on Trevor Noah’s profciency in six languages, use of “linguistic whiteface” (Carpenter), Minhaj’s use of accented Hindi and voice modulation and Azhar Usman’s humour directed at members of his own community to dismantle stereotypes and a parallel attempt by Indian comics to construct a global Indian-ness sans caste, class, gender diferences complicates the understanding of otherness in “comedy contact zones” and transnational frameworks.

Can the (Gendered) Subaltern Speak? Hell Yeah and Laugh Too! Humour is valued when it is perceived as cerebral or intellectually stimulating, something that is difcult to grasp and allows those who grasp it or in other words, those who have humour literacy to take pride in their intellectual prowess. But when it comes to subaltern laughter, the erasure of the socially disempowered from the status of the comic, and thus the agent of true humour, is part of a persistent historical narrative and a master game plan that has come to defne the construct of the rational (and funny) man. There are a few charged female comics who are successful, but when it comes to long-term success such as being headliners in comedy clubs, flm, TV, etc., it has mostly been men, “it will take more than a spattering of vulvas in the sea of dicks writing our world every day” (Krefting 2014: 8). Thus, humour from below is seen as lowbrow and is equated with pure, unadulterated emotion such as the kind women, children and socially disempowered sections of the society display. Susan Purdie argues how the comic and his audience are “masters of discourse” with the liberty to twist and manipulate language, which is emblematic of their “full human subjectivity” (1993: 5). She points out how “the ‘Butt’ […] is constituted by the joking exchange as excluded from the Teller-Audience relationship and, in being so, reciprocally confrms the collusion of these two positions as masterful jokers” (58). The refusal to see the socially disempowered as agents of humour instead of being the butt of ridicule, and “register the social power of subaltern laughter”, by dismissing their humour as mere relief is a bias that can be seen in philosophical and popular understandings of humour (Willet and Willet 2019: 4). While talking about the debate generated by Christopher Hitchens’ “Why Women Aren’t Funny” Krefting says that it missed a very seminal issue about the economy of artistic production and consumption and how we as individuals are taught to value certain things over others and made to identify with those in power and that identifcation promises material and cultural capital. Therein lies the reason why charged humour isn’t economically viable: I suggest that the gender gap may be explained by the lack of economic incentives to identify with or consume charged humor— much of which is produced by women. There is no payof for buying into women’s points of view, especially if it reminds audience members of continuing inequalities. This creates a market favoring male humor and those performing apolitical (safe), shock, or character comedy and modern-day minstrels who secure

Introduction 15

laughter by selling caricatures, recapitulating stereotypes, and reinforcing the worst of audience beliefs and expectations. (7) However, what is often missing, is a recognition of and the discussion on intersectional identities within this sphere. The stand-up act by Muslim woman stand-up comic based in England, Shazia Mirza (Stockholm Live – Shazia Mirza (S1 E6), 2009) brings together her religious and gender identity and how she has been perceived by Muslims and others. She bases her act on her experience of being a Muslim woman comic who faces a lot of abuse in her everyday life irrespective of what region she is in. She also receives regular hate mails by Muslim men, calling her a prostitute, to which she responded in her act – “I had to point out to him, you know that prostitutes earn more money. But what he doesn’t realise is that now I am using him as material. So efectively he is my pimp” (2009, 1:16–1:46 mins). Her act is particularly signifcant since she is not only gazing outward but also inward to provide a more thorough analysis of perceptions about Muslim women which is often missing in the performances of male Muslim comics.16 The humour which comes from the margins could be a “a source of empowerment, a strategy for outrage and truth telling, a counter to fear, a source of joy and friendship, a cathartic treatment against unmerited shame, and even a means of empathetic connection and alliance” (Willett and Willett 2019: 2) but it might also face criticism when it challenges the perceptions, norms and expectations within the community. The laughter of the audience is also noteworthy as it can be seen as an evidence of the connections that many women in the audience share with the performer. Thus, despite her focus on her religious and gender identity, Mirza’s religious identity does not appeal as much as her gender. Some of the contemporary female stand-up comics across the world are challenging dominant views to question conventional hierarchies. We can specifcally look at female comedians in diferent regional settings be it the United States (Ali Wong and Taylor Tomlinson), India (Kaneez Surka, Sumukhi Suresh), Australia (Hannah Gadsby and Zoe Coombs Marr), Italy (Marsha De Salvatore in this volume) or Iran (Shaghayegh Dehghan and Elika Abdolrazzaghi in this volume) who through their acts have deconstructed gendered notions of humour as well as patriarchal structures, worldviews and ideologies. The stand-up comedian performing her biography through her performance might enable creation of community, celebration of creativity, orality/aurality and performativity in addition to critiquing structural (racist, sexist, ethnic, class, caste), gendered, cishet and (hetero-)sexual politics. Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza analyses gendered comic personas of the performers in their attempts to contest patriarchal conventions in his chapter, “Humour as Antihistamine in the Discourse of Persian Stand-Up Comedy: Female Stand-Up Comedians in Iran”. Focusing on two female contestants in an Iranian stand-up comedy show in 2016, the chapter explores the emergence and potential of feminine humour, categorised as antihistamine, a phonological pun on the Persian word ‘his’ meaning ‘hush’. The author begins with the contention

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that with the launch of the show Khandevaneh on Iranian TV channel Nasim, female comedians have found a voice in humour to address their own as well as many women’s gendered experiences. They connect these experiences to larger, often controversial themes of gender inequality and power dynamics within Iranian society which is increasingly bound by an Islamic code of gendered identity and conduct in the post-revolution era. Feminine humour, thus, can be classifed as anti-hush i.e. possessing an ability to reveal issues of gender inequality and skewed gender relations that concern all Iranian women and subsequently establish an egalitarian society. However, the resurgence of humour on nationalised television had its own challenges. There was a constant need to not only follow government guidelines about acceptable and unacceptable humour but also to perform safe comedy that will not hurt the sentiments of the diverse communities that make up the socio-cultural and ethnic landscape of modern day Iran, drawing attention to cultural connotations of ‘social appropriacy’ and ‘politeness’. The interesting aspect of their performances is the comic personas that they created for the stage. Both Shaghayegh Dehghan and Elika Abdolrazzaghi are actresses who have acted in many comedy flms and hence used their experiences as well as characters to construct and aid their performances on the TV show. Thus, the former uses her character Ms. Shirzad, a ‘silly’ secretary in the Iranian TV comedy series, Building of Doctors (2011) as her comic persona which allows her to speak up about important issues but in a silly manner while the latter performs in a self-deprecating style by using her regional (rural) background and her native dialect to construct her comic persona of an unwanted child (because of her sex) who is obscure in the family memories. Using Foucault’s concept of reverse discourse, the author highlights how the use of these comic personas enables the two performers to turn the terms of the gendered discourse on its head and contribute to the wider discourse of feminism in Iran. Within the framework of communication, the author uses the content analysis approach and Aristotelian mode of persuasion to deconstruct the performances of these two female contestants who had been active in Iranian comedy cinema but were performing as stand-ups for the frst time. After the successful running of the show, they became pioneers in the female stand-up comedy scene in Iran inspiring many after them to perform stand-up. It is this situated knowledge (Haraway) that Madhavi Shivprasad talks about in her chapter “Asserting Cultural Citizenship through Situated Comedy: Female Comedians in India”. Stand-up comedy, which boomed in the late 2000s in India, is a relatively novel form of artistic expression that could play a crucial role in the ways we defne ‘political’ art especially because of its reach through live and digital spaces. The chapter argues that what is defned as political comedy in the Indian context is performed solely by Hindu men, indicating the masculinist nature of the defnition and the current hypernationalist environment. A commentary on electoral politics, governmental policies and attacking political leaders or parties is considered political comedy. By drawing upon feminist humour theorists such as Sevda Caliskan, Shivaprasad argues that when men perform they

Introduction 17

perform from a position of power and privilege while making claims of universality. On the contrary, women perform what can be considered “unauthorized discourse” from a particular location, or what Haraway calls “situated knowledge”. Although the “diversity quota” (Mittal) of neoliberal markets makes room for a diverse set of voices, it does not recognise the political nature of comedy by women or “chick comedy” which foregrounds questions of identity and sexuality. A closer look at the “situated comedy” performed by women such as Aditi Mittal, Agrima Joshua and Sumaira Sheikh reveals the multifarious ways in which the State attempts to control and circumscribe their bodies and how they enact or make claims to cultural citizenship through their acts. Stand-up comedy by women is diferent from the folkloric humour outlined by Bakhtin or the humour from below defned by Krefting since it is often located in urban, elite environs, rarely addressing the intersection of gender, caste and class. Similarly humour that might appear subversive or defant might be regressive if the lens is shifted. This indicates how humour such as this could be both inclusive and exclusive, casting doubt on its ability to bring about any change (Michael 2013). Hannah Gadsby, an Australian stand-up comic, suggested that there needs to be a radical overhaul in the form of stand-up comedy to accommodate diferent voices and bring about a change in the society. Now, stand-up comedy is not just performed on stage in elite clubs, it is also available on several OTT platforms and the covid induced pandemic has further revolutionised the points of access with stand-up comics like Azeem Banatwalla who released his one hour special, Between the Lines (2021) on YouTube17 exclusively for members of his channel. In “Notes on Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, Adorno’s Kulturindustrie and Feminism”, Christian Berger uses a materialist-feminist lens and feminist dominance theory along with the concept of Kulturindustrie to look at the unholy alliance of patriarchal conventions and economic concerns that governs the culture industry. The “reproduction of the old” (Horkheimer and Adorno) in the culture industry leads to the afrmation of existing hierarchies of power. Since the Industrial Revolution, there has been a separation and polarisation in terms of meaning and signifcance of economic production and social reproduction, leading to a continued devaluation of women’s labour. The culture industry is dominated by representations of dominant, strong, heterosexual masculinity and sexualised and submissive femininity. Stand-up comedy is a manifestation of the intersection of politics, culture and economics where the ‘other’ is homogenised, objectifed and laughed at. An unskilled female worker who is associated with the domestic domain, a career woman who is perceived as “unfeminine” or a woman who uses her body to gain power are often the butt of ridicule in mainstream comedy. However, as outlined by Berger through an analysis of Gadsby’s act and her aversion to self-deprecating humour and punchlines, humour can also be subversive. Gadsby’s narrative about homophobia indicates that sexuality and labour is “that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away” (MacKinnon 1989: 3) and because of her deviation from gender norms, she is subjected to gender specifc devaluation and violence or what Bourdieu calls “symbolic violence”. Gadsby

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touches upon various traumatic episodes from her life while announcing her decision to quit stand-up comedy and its tendency to reduce lived experiences to punchlines. The ethics of grappling with trauma in stand-up comedy and the efcacy of the form to bring about a change are dealt with in the last section of the volume.

Comics and the Audience: Connections, Ethics and Effcacy Brodie (2014) and many others before and after him have extensively touched upon the construction of the public image of comedians as cumulative that results from pre, during and post performances, as mentioned earlier. Sometimes the comedians create this image consciously through their performance of self beyond the acts performed in a stand-up setting. Usually, the biography of a performer is established through her/his interviews, publicity material and more recently in their tweets and other kinds of social media presence which allows them to share their opinions in their acts and which may not fully be directed to entertain the audience. After having established themselves as a certain kind of performer or reaching a certain status, the performers have made themselves known to the audience outside their “performative moments” which can be called their “non-comedic performance” (Brodie 2014: 94). The socio-cultural situatedness of the content of stand-up comedy and the comic persona fows into the realm of interpretation by the audience (face-to-face and mediated, both). Thus, it is not only the comic that establishes a subject position but also the audience who react to her/his jokes and may take hegemonic ideas, positions and narratives head on. Vir Das, who is currently hailed as one of the most successful Indian comics, bridging cultural gaps in global mediascape, in his recent act, Ten on Ten episode titled Who has Freedom of Speech? addressing the audience stated, “…They are afraid of you. The scariest sound that this establishment can hear is not the wording of my jokes. It’s the energy in your laughs” (2021; 12:50–13:00 mins). His statement can be read in two signifcant ways: one, he reafrms the idea that laughter can be dangerous, that jokes can oust bullshit, propaganda and rhetoric and two, the audience is not a passive receiver but an active agent and thus has the power to challenge the hegemonic and the dominant. We can use Gledhill’s idea of ‘pleasurable negotiations’18 to describe this process (1988, quoted in Maggie Andrews 1998). Although Andrews uses the idea by Gledhill in the context of portrayal of women, especially housewives, in sitcoms, it can be easily applied to the audience of stand-up comedy too. Thus, even if a comic performance may not necessarily lead to any drastic change, it can defnitely be instrumental in busting myths, representations and ideologies and alter the way people at the margins think about themselves and those at the centre. Authorial intention is one possible lens through which we can examine humour, although the intention of a stand-up comic might not awlays translate in the form of the audience reaction he/she was working towards. In such a case, the

Introduction 19

audience (especially the ones at the margins) may make attempts and fnd ways to reclaim their subject positions vis-à-vis the stand-up comic. The contemporary digital space does allow for such a process to unfold. For instance in a recent incident, a fan who identifes as non-binary called out Vir Das19 for his joke on the transgender community and stated, “you (Vir Das) of all people know punching up is how comedy works and yet you chose to punch down, if only as a set up”. To this, Das took full responsibility and responded, I did a joke on the new ten on ten episode that my friends in the trans community felt hurt by. I see why. My intent in the moment, was to say Trans people have courage the Govt messed up. It had the opposite efect and trivialised your struggle. Articulating my intent efectively is my responsibility, not yours. This conversation, whose screenshot was shared by Vir Das on his instagram handle indicates how digital space creates a space for dialogic communication and ofers a glimpse into authorial intention or how sometimes the intent might not translate into the act or the personal life of the stand-up comic. In another instance, Aditi Mittal ofers a caustic critique of sexism in Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say, while on the other hand, she was herself accused of sexual harassment by another comic. When the #MeToo movement laid bare the deep, dark secrets of the stand-up world, three comedy collectives in India, All India Bakchod (AIB), Schitzengiggles Comedy (SnG) and East India Comedy (EIC) either fell apart or saw the loss of some of the founding fgures. How do we then look at their “subversive humour” or the reinvented relationship between the performer and the audience in this heavily mediatised world? Antti Lindfors, in his chapter, “Awkward Connections: Stand-Up Comedy as Afective Arrangement”, indicates that stand-up comedy cannot be defned in an individualistic way by focusing solely on the performer since it is an “economy of relatability” (Lindfors 2019) or a “duet with the audience” (May 2021) as part of which the performer has to establish and manipulate afective relations with the audience. The empirical basis of the chapter is an earlier research on Finnish comedians, which was supplemented by a study of Finnish podcasts and interviews with Finnish stand-up comedians. Phaticity, a notion that emerged in linguistic anthropology, is the lens deployed by Lindfors to look at stand-up comedy’s ability to facilitate social communion or connection with the audience, a connection which could be built even if the performer and audience do not share similar experiences. Stand-up comedy is a phatic activity in an artifcial setting with a predefned goal but when that goal is not achieved it leads to an awkwardness, an idea that is also grappled with by Hannah Gadsby in Nanette. The relationship that a comic has with their comic/stage persona is analogically parallel to that of an individual and his/her public persona. Spontaneity can ensure success is a truism in the world of stand-up comedy, hence, an ill ftting or awkward comic persona throws into sharp focus the question of who is and isn’t allowed to be

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themselves in various social situations and the social and political environment that mediates the attempt at connection and exchange. The fexibility of the discipline of cybernetics will also be analytically useful to study stand-up comedy especially in conjunction with feminist and queer theory to understand the varied responses to diferent performers. The chapter also engages with the thermodynamic vocabulary of practitioners which constitutes the “organising imaginary” of the defnition and conceptualisation of stand-up comedy. Theorising on the phatic and behaviourist dimension of stand-up comedy and its sign i.e. laughter enables an insight into the conventions, patterns and social and moral expectations from the genre while also making us revisit and rethink theories of humour which focus more on the individual and less on the embodied nature of stand-up comedy. Touching upon the theme of interplay of conventions and inventions from a diferent perspective, the chapter by Marianna Keisalo, “The Revolution Will Be a Joke: Semiotic Ideologies of Ethics and Efcacy in Stand-Up Comedy”, provides the readers an ethnographic glimpse into infuence of comedy styles and subject matter in the United States and the United Kingdom as clearly evident in English comedy in Finland. Keisalo talks briefy about elements like traditional forms of theatrical comedy in Finland, Finnish linguistics ideology and socio-cultural norms of speaking and listening which made stand-up seem foreign at frst but over time has made it an interesting genre in the cultural and media landscape in Finland. She contends that the very existence of stand-up comedy is a radical enterprise in Finland and it is often evaluated on the basis of the laughter it elicits but does the laughter actually stimulate change or does it lull the audience into thinking they have done something? Consequently, ethical evaluation of the jokes is closely tied to their efcacy in a particular situation. She argues that over the years, stand-up comedy has become socially engaged and politically charged. Playing on George Orwell’s quote, “every joke is a tiny revolution”, the author brings out the inherent ambivalence and contradiction in humour through her title ‘revolution will be a joke’ which carries two possibilities – joking can be used as a device to send a strong message but it also allows the person to avoid any responsibilities of the claims made. Keisalo undertakes a detailed analysis of the relationship between the incongruity and ambiguity of comedy and semiotic ideologies of communication. Such an analysis requires us to go beyond the consideration of a joke as text and bring together various elements of the performance including the intent of the performer which is guided by their context and ideologies. Expanding on Roy Wagner’s (1981) model of culture as a dynamic combination of convention and invention, Keisalo provides her readers with a new framework that goes beyond the usual analysis of comedy in its form and content, creating new grounds for further inventions that will throw open the potential meaning and efects of the genre. Such a framework allows us to look at humour not as a refection of semiotic ideologies but as a mode of semiotic action. A similar kind of an attack on false assumptions, conventions and stereotypes can be seen in Margherita Dore’s chapter, “Standing Up for a Cause: The

Introduction 21

Cathartic and Persuasive Power of Stand-Up Comedy”. She brings forth how we are taught to identify with able bodied and socially, culturally, economically and politically powerful people. The corollary is the perpetuation of stereotypes and caricatures of those who are diferent which is what Dore talks of in her chapter. The chapter looks at Marsha De Salvatore’s 2013 stand-up routine DM55 which revolves around her struggles with Beta-Thalassemia Major, an ailment that makes her dependent on blood transfusions. Salvatore is a semiprofessional Italian-American stand-up artist based in Italy who founded Rome’s Comedy Club with Stephanie Tyrrell. Through a linguistic analysis of her act and a semi-structured interview with her about her motivations, process, writing style and response of the audience, it examines how stand-up comedy can persuade and lead to a purging of emotions for both the performer and the audience. Dore taking cue from Double makes a strong case for comedy that raises awareness and money about various issues. Salvatore’s act is a political intervention in terms of the way it makes light of her struggles with Beta-Thalassemia Major, mixes comic and non-comic elements, does not elicit the audience’s pity and challenges stereotypes about the diferently abled by attacking the normative assumptions of the able bodied. The act is what Sandahl (2003) called a “solo autobiographical act” in which the artist performs episodes from their life, connecting them thematically or chronologically through the use of ‘real’ selves or comic personas and constantly engaging with the audience. What we are ofered is truth fltered through the consciousness of the artist, a truth that has perhaps acquired comic potential after a considerable temporal gap between its occurrence and the performance. Code mixing and code switching between American English and Italian indicates Salvatore’s confdence about the audience’s grasp of both languages. It also creates a sense of belonging to a group and a shared identity. DM55 has been received diferently in diferent countries indicating how social, cultural and political context plays a crucial role in the reception and impact of stand-up comedy. Although the show is “local” as it is confned to the cities Salvatore performs in, the ability to convince people to donate blood makes the show transcend its spatial limits. The sensitivity with which such issues need to be handled is heightened when the act draws upon the past trauma of the artist or a family member, leading to an ethical conundrum about performing personal trauma in a humorous way. In the interview with the author, Salvatore expressed her scepticism about stand-up comedy’s ability to radically transform the world, although she admitted that it does draw attention of the audience to various issues and if the comic is successful, convince them to donate or contribute for a cause. The relationship of power, privilege and authority raises questions about the ethics and efcacy of humour that sometimes attacks misled but well meaning individuals instead of those who mislead. In a world rife with propaganda where it is difcult to separate the chaf from grain, stand-up comedy that attempts to contest the dominant ideology has to grapple with the thorny question of what to do about people who are victims of this post-truth era. Do they deserve a

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similar ridicule or scathing criticism as those who disseminated propaganda? Will punching up in this case end up becoming punching down? It is this question that Chris Kramer grapples with in his chapter, “Which Direction Do We Punch? The Powers and Perils of Humour against the New Conspiracism”. Kramer contends that laughter seems the only appropriate and sane response to the epistemic errors, logical faws and inefective reasoning in the post-truth era. But how will that happen? Analysing the contemporary political scene in the United States and drawing upon conspiracy theories given by Jason Stanley, Muirhead and Rosenblum and analytical framework of Harry Frankfurt, Kramer’s chapter brings forth the moral predicaments of stand-up comedians in their attempts to punch up to Trumpism or QAnon which has spread among many who are impoverished, disempowered and bullshitted to and hence have been at the receiving end of injustice themselves. Consequently, the comedians can laugh at people like Trump but not his supporters. His supporters need a more empathetic treatment, and constant eforts should be made to make them see the combination of bullshit and propaganda that is fed to them. Kramer discusses the concept of bullshit at length, distinguishing it from lie, highlighting its disregard for truth or rational ideological beliefs, consequently becoming an ideal companion for propaganda. In the post-truth era, propaganda inhibits the ideals of public reason and is marked by lack of sincerity in the search for truth or knowledge. It then leads to conspiracism which de-legitimises democracy. Kramer has coined the terms bullpropashitacism/Propashitaspiracism to address these phenomena. Interestingly, those who are in power can withstand the onslaught of derisive laughter and reinvent themselves as victims. No humour of any kind, Kramer argues, will bring about any change in the attitudes of powerful propashitaspiracists. Hence, to make any diference, it has to unveil the diferences between the powerful and their followers. Thus, subversive humour that worked as an actual mode of resistance earlier is not efective anymore, comedy too needs to reinvent itself to meet the demands of the contemporary times. It should begin by questioning the idea that humour is a means to truth and be directed at ideas and not people. Kramer’s chapter provides the readers with a renewed potential of comedy - the epistemic repair which is only attainable through three epistemic virtues: humility, curiosity/diligence, and open mindedness. It should not aim to track the ‘truth’, rather be instrumental in uncovering error, motivating others to not only see diferently but also with openness and even humility and in collaborating with others (audience). The implicit rule of comedy that one punches up, not down is also difcult to navigate since there are many who imagine themselves as victims despite their privilege.

Concluding Remarks We began this volume with an intention to explore the subversive potential of stand-up comedy given the conventional understanding that comics have more courage and licence than the political leaders in contemporary global politics to

Introduction 23

bring forth the issues that need attention. One of the contentions in this volume is that an analysis of stand-up comedy helps us revisit our notion of what constitutes the political and vice versa. In contemporary discourse, it transcends the confnes of statist, governmental structures, institutions and processes and incorporates within it individual and collective experiences, relationships and political subjectivities in the everyday. It highlights the existence of power dynamics within societal relationships both at the micro and at the macro level and the various factors that have a bearing on it. The notion of citizenship thus holds a new meaning in this context; it is not only legal but also social, cultural and historical. As discussed at length, stand up as a genre has made a signifcant contribution in bringing politics out of its narrow confnes of academic, scholarly, intellectual and activist spheres and helping it reach a wider set of people. But this has been possible only because of the emergence of a new moment in politics as underscored by Quirk (2018). As a communicative and collaborative art form, it can be said to address the gap between lived experience and power equations, ideology and representations in a society. Although contemporary stand-up comics are seen as parrhesiastes or Horatian in their attempt to ofer pleasurable instruction, the cathartic laughter of the audience also makes us wonder if catharsis is all it ofers or is there something else that changes ever so slightly when we hear the ‘truth tellers’, For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house… the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor that is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships. (Lorde) How far and how deeply have the ‘master’s tools’ infltrated stand-up comedy that punches up especially when most of them speak from a position of power and privilege is a question that we need to constantly ask and attempt to answer. The potential of stand-up to engage with these diverse political issues however needs to be analysed in terms of economic and commercial viability as well. Not all comic performances can be said to be commercially successful since these performances are bound by the very foundation of the art form – to elicit laughs and the logic of the professional entertainment industry. Both of these are very closely connected to the expectations of their audience who have their own ideas of what is funny (read: appropriate) and what is not. This keeps the stand-up comics on their toes to constantly gauge what is expected of them in terms of content, form, style and performative strategies in specifc contexts. Hence, they do have their limits in terms of efcacy. Can they be, then, called the “truth-tellers” of a society? And does the absence of a wider public imagination vis-a-vis the contours of what constitutes the ‘political’ makes the public and in this case the majority audience susceptible to adhering to dominant hegemonic view/s? Furthermore, it can lead to categorisation, stigmatisation and cancelling

24 Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana

of certain stand-up comics and their performances. Does this mean that the comedian no longer holds ‘licensed irresponsibility’ and there are possibilities of comedic backfre (a term used by Chris Kramer in this volume)? It is clearly evident that the genre of stand-up comedy has its limitations in addition to the possibilities that it ofers. These limitations need a thorough examination – as has been done by chapters in the volume – if one attempts a more comprehensive understanding of the comedy that punches up and if one wants to avoid the tendency to romanticise any and every act that claims or attempts to punch up. The gendered, class, caste, religious, regional defnitions of what can be considered as ‘political’ and ‘woke’ comedy serve as an exclusionary tactic, maintaining the status quo with the socially advantaged as “masters of discourse” (Purdie) and the others as the butt of their ridicule. One such limitation that is highlighted in the volume is the lack of refexivity even amongst the stand-up comics with regard to their own privileged socio-economic and cultural locations that sometimes makes it difcult for them to turn the gaze inwards. Additionally, the very art of stand-up comedy is restricted to certain specifc spaces and sites. A genre that started in comedy clubs and elite spaces and was possibly governed by purely commercial motives of production, circulation and reception makes us wonder who they are really speaking truth to. It can be argued that the reception and appreciation of politically charged comedy is often limited to the already converted who share experiences, expectations, perceptions and ideologies with the comics while for the other kinds of comedy, the hidden politics in it is barely visible and comprehensible. The role played by the culture industry and the global fow of information and market is highly signifcant in this. Moreover, with the availability of new sites of performance, for instance, artists’ homes during the pandemic and through other virtual means before that, are the artists able to evade the forces of production and consumption of the global market? The answer to this question is not an easy one. The transnational fow of capital, ideas and individuals; the infuence of the form as practised in United States and the United Kingdom; and the explosion of digital space in the forms of OTT platforms and social media also problematise our existing notions of identity and the complex and ever shifting relationship between art, the artist and the audience. Netfix has a segment called Comedians of the World (2019) with representations from 13 countries which entails that stand-up comics are possibly seen as representatives/spokespersons for their cultures with a burden of representation like other transnational artists since Netfix and other streaming platforms have a global reach. In the global fow of capital and information, the situation is much more complex than before, more so with regard to issues of reception and censorship, both by the authorities and the audience. When a stand-up comic comes from a disenfranchised group or a minority community, there is also the fear that the comic will be pigeonholed and expected to do community specifc comedy, as pointed out by Ervine in his chapter. A geographically diverse volume that looks at various glocal contexts and intersectional identities cannot be exhaustive and raises more questions than it

Introduction 25

can possibly answer. Some of the themes, questions and feld/s of enquiry that the volume attempted to touch upon but could not delve into deeply can also be a treasure trove for future research on stand-up comedy. For instance, Madhavi Shivaprasad, Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza, Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati and Marianna Keisalo make a strong case for the role played by shows aired on TV in the popularity of stand-up, as against the United States and the United Kingdom where pubs and clubs played an instrumental role in catapulting the form to fame. Additionally, the inextricable link between stand-up comedy, traditional forms of humour, flm, TV, rap, and other forms of media would make an interesting study to understand various genres and the logic of the marketplace. Stand-up’s ability to bring together highbrow and lowbrow culture as done by Hannah Gadsby and Marsha De Salvatore with their background in art history can also challenge conventional binaries and classifcations of art and culture, also making us speculate about the possibility of a stand-up canon. Similarly, the linguistic politics of the genre is a landmine, as in a country like India with multiple languages, comics performing charged comedy in regional languages are subject to a more severe backlash as compared to those performing in English. Ethnographic studies on the art form, network of distribution, consumption and reception and the link between stand-up mediascape and urban landscape (such as those of Aju James) set in tier two and tier three cities would certainly contribute tremendously to the growing research on the form and its local adaptations and variations. Although the volume grapples with the origins, evolution and limits of the subversive potential of stand-up comedy, taking cue from Ian Brodie and our contributors, we still believe that the joy, communion, sense of belonging and solidarity, empathy, humility, possibilities of (limited) transformation and laughing in the face of the powers that are and powers that be, that the form promises and delivers to the laughmakers and their audience is worth noting, investigating and celebrating.

Notes 1 Emily Levine’s “Theory of Everything,” Ted, www.ted.com/talks/emily_levine_s_ theory_of_everything.html. Cited by Krefting, p. 12. 2 Cited by Krefting, p. 4. 3 William Flores and Rena Benmayor defne cultural citizenship as a “process manifested in particular types of cultural practices that embody symbols, discourses, practices, values and identities by which a subordinate community establishes a social and cultural space within which to afrm its collective sense of identity, solidarity, common historical experience and struggle to reclaim their rights. The term cultural citizenship recognizes and afrms both the legitimacy of a dominated people’s culture, their resistance and their innate rights which have often been ignored in the legal canon of a society…. Rather, cultural citizenship identifes the claims of social, human and cultural rights made by communities which do not hold state power and which are denied basic rights by those who do” (1989 cited in Krefting 2014, pp. 16–17). 4 For various defnitions of stand-up comedy, see Ian Brodie (2014, pp. 13–15). 5 cited in Krefting (2014, p. 196).

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6 Stephen Wagg (1998) has outlined three phases of stand up in the United States – during 1930s, WWII and post-WWII period between 1930s and 1960s onwards (post-Vietnam war period). 7 Sophie Quirk (2018) defnes alternative comedy as “the triumph of audacious experiment and left-wing politics over the bigotry of trad. comedy, the elitism of ‘Oxbridge’ satire, and the formal sterility of both” (7). 8 Cited by Quirk, p. 104. 9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Su_ydENa2w&t=29s 10 Cited by Quirk, p. 114. 11 Here, we refer to the distinction made by Freud between jokes that are innocent and have an intellectual appeal for us and those which are controversial because they express repressed urges or obscene ideas (1960). 12 Peter Berger (2014) has defned Satire as “deliberate use of the comic for purposes of attack”. This attack is often directed against (autocratic) political and religious institutions and its representatives. It might ofer a counter-hegemonic perspective to challenge statist narratives. 13 See Sebastian’s (2018) narration of a feedback by an audience who urged him to talk about more important issues. 14 A number of comedians in India from the federal state of Punjab within the Indian Union use their Punjabi identity and experience, often exaggerated and stereotyped as the content of their performances. 15 In asking this question, we are particularly reminded of Jacques Ranciére. In his book Aesthetics and its Discontents (2009), Ranciére explores whether ‘critical art’ can lead to world transformation. If we look at stand up as a critical art, we can, then, interrogate its potential or lack thereof, for world transformation. 16 A point made by Jaclyn Michael (2013) in her article, “American Muslims Stand Up and Speak Out: Trajectories of Humour in Muslim American Stand-Up Comedy”. 17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR-S_QLamdw (uploaded on June 4, 2021). 18 This idea accounts for the agency of the consumers “whereby the consumers of texts negotiate their meaning in order to make sense of them within their own particular social or cultural framework” (Andrews, 1998 50). 19 A screenshot of this conversation was shared on 15th August 2021 by Vir Das on his instagram handle – https://www.instagram.com/virdas/?hl=en

Works Cited Andrews, Maggie. “Butterfies and Caustic Asides: Housewives, Comedy and the Feminist Movement.” Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Diference, edited by Stephen Wagg, (pp. 50–64). London: Routledge, 1998. Banatwalla, Azeem. Between the Lines, June 2021. Retrieved from https://www.youtube. com/user/azeemthegr8 Berger, Arthur Asa. The Art of Comedy Writing. New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publisher, 2011. Berger, Peter. L. Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience, 2nd Edition. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2014. Brodie, Ian. A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand Up Comedy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Brooks, Albert. (Director). Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2006. Caliskan, Sevda. “Is There Such a Thing as Women’s Humor?” American Studies International, vol. 33, no. 2, October 1992, pp. 49–59. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/41279344.

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Carpenter, Faedra Chatard. Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014. Coltrane, Chris. Left-Wing Propaganda Machine. (Online Video), October 21, 2015. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERMjNu26F3I (accessed September 1, 2017). Das, Vir. Ten on Ten Episode 2 Who Has Freedom of Speech? (16:26 mins), 2021. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQbm8XKi_xw Davies, Helen. Sarah Ilott. Ed. Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak. Switzerland: Macmillan, 2018. Double, Oliver. Alternative Comedy: 1979 and the Reinvention of British Stand-Up. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Dua, Rahul. Trump | Stand Up Comedy by Rahul Dua. (12:52 mins), 2019. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wG7K3jV1To Dynel, Marta. “Beyond a Joke: Types of Conversational Humour.” Linguistics and Language Compass, vol. 3, no. 5, 2009, pp. 1284–1299. Faleiro, Sonia. “How An Indian Stand Up Comic Found Himself Arrested for a Joke He Didn’t Tell.” Time, February 10, 2021. Retrieved from https://time.com/5938047/ munawar-iqbal-faruqui-comedian-india/ Fernandes, Daniel. Shadows (A Stand-up Comedy Special by Daniel Fernandes) (1 hour 19 mins), 2019. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IkTLiU5Q0k Fine, Gary A. “Sociological Aspects of Humor.” In Handbook of Humor Research, edited by Jefrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (pp. 159–182). New York: Springer, 1983. Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Translated and edited by James Strachey. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960. Gledhill, Christine. “Pleasurable Negotiations.” In Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television, edited by E. Deidre Pribram (pp. 64–89). London: Verso, 1988. Gold, Judy. Voices on Antisemitism—A Podcast Series, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Retrieved from http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/ antisemitism/voices /transcript/?content=20100204 (accessed February 4, 2010). Jones, Jefery P. Entertaining Politics: Satiric Television and Political Engagement, 2nd Ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2010. Kamra, Kunal. Kunal Kamra | Stand Up Comedy 2019. (12:02 mins), 2019. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Su_ydENa2w&t=29s Kenix, Linda Jean. Alternative and Mainstream Media: The Converging Spectrum. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. Kondabolu, Hari. In Anna Sterling, “The Feministing Five: Hari Kondabolu and Janine Brito.” Feministing, July 7, 2012. Retrieved from http://feministing.com/2012/07/07/ the -feministing -fve -hari -kondabolu -and -janine -brito/ Krefting, Rebecca. All Joking Aside: American Humour and its Discontents. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2014. Kuipers, Giselinde. “The Politics of Humour in the Public Sphere: Cartoons, Power and Modernity in the First Transnational Humour Scandal.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2011, pp. 63–80. Levine, Emily. “Theory of Everything.” Ted. Retrieved from www.ted.com/talks/ emily_levine_s_ theory_of_everything.html (accessed August 18, 2011). Levine, Lawrence Levine. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Lindfors, Antti. Intimately Allegorical: The Poetics of Self-Mediation in Stand-Up Comedy. Doctoral dissertation, 2019. Turku: University of Turku. Retrieved from https:// www.utupub.f/handle/10024/147073 (accessed March 2, 2021).

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Lorde, Audre. “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefning Diference.” Sister Outsider (pp. 123–33). California: Crossing Press, 1984. May, Julian 2021. Stewart Lee interview: “Stand-Up Is a Duet with the Audience. It Doesn’t Mean Anything Unless People Are Laughing. Or Booing.” Songlines.co.uk. Retrieved from https://www.songlines.co.uk/explore/features/stewart-lee-interviewstand-up-is-a-duet-with-the-audience-it-doesn-t-mean-anything-unless-people-arelaughing-or-booing?f bclid=IwAR1gXhr444iaDPNv1JSkyUxe9BaJBsdVaZ2iP58mR0YoQd_f KByrj0hGV2U (accessed March 2, 2021). Michael, Jaclyn. “American Muslims Stand Up and Speak Out: Trajectories of Humour in Muslim American Stand-Up Comedy.” Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, vol. 7. 2013, pp. 129–153 Minhaj, Hasan. Homecoming King. Netfix Special, 2017. Mintz, L. “The ‘New Wave’ of Standup Comedians: An Introduction.” American Humor, vol. 4, 1977, pp. 14–19. Mirza, Shazia. Stockholm Live - Shazia Mirza (S1 E6) (6:18 mins), 2009. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGEY8cZuGF4 Moss, B. “Allah Made Me Funny Comedy Tour.” Resource Document. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v0p25hTk716Jw. 2009. Accessed 04 January. Newman, Saul. Postanarchism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. Peterson, Russell. Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession, 1991. pp. 33–40. Purdie, Susan. Comedy: The Masters of Discourse. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2013. Quirk, Sophie. The Politics of British Stand-Up Comedy: The New Alternative. Canterbury: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Quirk, Sophie. Why Stand-Up Comedy Matters. How Comedians Manipulate and Infuence. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. Ranciere, Jacques. Aesthetics and its Discontents. Boston: Polity, 2009. Rossing, Jonathan P. “Critical Race Humor in a Post-racial Moment: Richard Pryor’s Contemporary Parrhesia.” Howard Journal of Communications, vol. 25, no. 1, 2014. pp. 16–33, doi:10.1080/10646175.2013.857369. Sandahl, Carrie. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer? Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” GLQ, vol. 9, no. 1–2, 2003, pp. 25–56. Sebastian, Kenny. Why I Don’t Do Jokes About Politics in India. (12:44 mins), 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azFe8b6yf b0&t=536s Swinkels, Michiel and Anouk de Koning. “Introduction: Humour and Anthropology.” Etnofoor, vol. 28, no. 1, Humour, 2016, pp. 7–10. Retrieved from https://www.jstor. org/stable/43823939 on 20-01-2020. The Telegraph, Calcutta. This Is Where Even I Stop Laughing, June 24, 2021. Retrieved from https://epaper.telegraphindia.com/calcutta/2021-06-24/71/Page-1.html Usman, Azhar. Square the Circle: American Muslim Comedy of Distortion. Videodisc. Astrolabe Productions, LLC. 2004. http://www.astrolabe.com Virno, Paolo. Translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito & Andrea Casson. Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) 2008. Wagg, Stephen. (Ed.) 1998. Because I tell a Joke or two: Comedy, Politics and Social Diference. London: Routledge. Wijana, I. Dewa Putu. “Political Humor in Indonesian.” KnE Social Sciences, vol. 3, no. 5, 2018, p. 312, doi:10.18502/kss.v3i5.2340. Willett, Cynthia and Julie Willett. Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

PART I

Punching In and Punching Up Origins, Limits and Possibilities

1 THE HISTORY OF MOROCCAN STAND-UP COMEDY From Storytelling to Charged Humour Mohamed Bassou and Rebecca Krefting

In Arabic, the term kahlouch means to be black or blackish. If used by a white person the word may be extremely ofensive, but people of dark skin commonly use it afectionately among one another. Sounds familiar? In November 2018, a young Moroccan comedian named Abdellah Barkaoui known by the majority of the public through his YouTube channel by the pseudonym Kahlouch used the same word to self-identify as a Black person while performing during a comedy competition aired on Moroccan national television. The use of this word caused unending debate and viewers expressed criticism following the broadcast of the episode. Despite the comedian self-designating as Black, many considered the use of the term gratuitous and unacceptable. When asked in an interview why this incident would spark outrage, Barkaoui states: “…although I am Black, I am not permitted to address myself as a Black person because I am not the only one.” Put diferently, Barkaoui may label himself in this way in other mediums with impunity because it is clear, it is self-appointed. Used on television, the comic may be misunderstood as reafrming negative aspects of such an epithet and/or exploiting a term for professional gain. Stand-up comedians use their own identity to forge connections with their audience. On television in Morocco when you cannot control the interpretation of infammatory labels, the public can easily misinterpret a subversive move like the one made by Barkaoui to reinvest power into his own identity using a derogatory term like kahlouch. The misinterpretation of this joke extended to Black fans watching who expressed ofence. While impossible to control for reception, a cause célèbre like this can shape and potentially shift public opinion both in ways that strengthen and maintain social inequalities and in ways that call injustices into question. The incident makes clear the ways the majority of the public may reify cultural norms informing behaviour and social interaction even when those norms aren’t codifed by laws

DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-3

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governing social organisation and activities. The word is not outlawed and yet the de facto ruling based on public reaction was that Barkaoui crossed a line by using the term. While Barkaoui doesn’t consider himself to be a comedian, what happened to him is not unusual for entertainers working in comedic contexts. In Morocco, there is a small but growing group of professional comic actors and comedians, some of whom perform charged humour, a kind of humour intending to combat social inequalities and injustices (Krefting 2014). Because charged humour strives for equity—in resources and among social identities—and how we construct identities varies across cultural and national contexts, is it possible that a concept developed in US contexts applies in Moroccan contexts? Our answer: absolutely and here’s why. First, identities share commonalities across nations. How we structure and organise identity varies from one nation to another but all cultures construct identities through which we derive meaning (Solomon et al. 2015). Regardless of national comedy trends, performance venue, or audience make-up, comedians use their identity as the basis upon which to forge connections with their audience—geographical, religious, ethnic, or otherwise. Shared identity ofers means to connect and comedy refects one’s positionalities, thus it is possible to connect across identity categories; indeed, humour scholars have long cited a comedian’s “role as our comic spokesperson, as a mediator, an articulator of our culture and as our contemporary anthropologist” (Mintz 75). Second, all societies establish laws and cultural norms to which members are accountable. The social contract is predicated on nations conferring rights and, in return, citizens have responsibilities to their nation. Comics have public license to deviate from the agreed upon norms using the available arsenal of linguistic and rhetorical instruments to persuade the public. But only to the extent broader political and social forces allow. Comedians across countries do not work in the same social and artistic circumstances. For example, Americans revel in breaking taboos and vehemently protect freedom of speech whereas Moroccan culture restricts that same freedom such that comics must fnd innovative ways of using humour to challenge the multifaceted forces hindering and monitoring artistic creativity and cultural critique. They usually do that through adopting characters on stage (a mimicry of someone else doing the complaining) or via verbal scorn carefully crafted so as not to roil listeners. Third, charged humour hinges on addressing grievances wrought by inequalities exacted upon specifc social identities, calling attention to social injustices. This remains consistent across cultures and nations; however, the social injustices and the identities upon which they are enacted will vary. A comedian may use the stage to skewer cultural biases, religious hypocrisy, and avaricious leaders but they may also lead their audience to celebrate communal heritage—an act that proves radical if the nation marginalises that heritage. The ability to stand in for a community to speak on behalf of a larger body of people makes comedians powerful and efective advocates for social change.1 They are additionally empowered by the form itself which deploys laughter to help dull the sting of social and political critique.

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The point is that charged humour knows no national boundaries. According to professional comedian Mohamed Bassou, “the public needs comedians and public fgures in general to be the voice of the voiceless community…to be organic intellectuals…to establish a counter ideology that is capable of fghting the dominant one.”2 Morocco may beneft from comedians performing charged humour but not all Moroccan comics elect to do so. If the people have an appetite for this socially just and community afrming comedy, comedians will provide it. Consumer demand is the key ingredient for charged humour to fourish in any country or culture but other considerations must include how various cultures construct identity and the environment in which the comic operates, namely the customs and mores shaping performances. Societies construct identity diferently yet there are three similarities in the ways in which we devise, organise, and contend with identities. According to Kwame Anthony Appiah, one commonality is that “every identity comes with labels, so understanding identities requires frst that you have some idea about how to apply them” (2018, 8). Regardless of the ethnic diversity embedded in Moroccan society, comedians are rarely classifed in terms of a specifc race or ethnicity (Almeida 2016). Formal use of terms indicating someone as Black or white, for instance, rarely happens in Moroccan stage humour because of the sensitivity that surrounds the terms. This explains why Abdellah Barkaoui sustained the wrath that he did. Hysterical public response following Barkaoui’s use of kahlouch is just one example of the public dictating a collective will about how the word should be used in public speech—that is to say, not at all and certainly not in a defant act of ethnic self-identifcation. Another commonality among identities is the importance we place on them across cultures. Appiah argues that identities “matter to people…because having an identity can give you a sense of how you ft into the social world. Every identity makes it possible, that is, for you to speak as one ‘I’ among some ‘us’: to belong to some ‘we’” (9). In Morocco, comedians identify in terms of the geographic region to which they belong—either with the nation’s central regions or as belonging to peripheral and more rural regions. In comedy competitions and other variety shows, emcees introduce comedians to the public leading of with regional information. Comics usually open their monologues by referring to their geographic origin; they are far less likely, unlike Barkaoui, to reference ethnic or racial belonging. The third commonality among identities, and this will come as no surprise, is that identities afect social treatment. Appiah clarifes that “the most signifcant things people do with identities is use them as the basis of hierarchies of status and respect and of structures of power” (11). Because social identities are constructed in hierarchical ways, charged humour has a great deal of fodder in any country or nation-state. To continue with the example of geography in Morocco, it is not just that geography shapes the individual but that geographies are ranked and the ranking determines treatment of the individual. In this case, Moroccans regard those living in the central regions of the country as superior to those living in the regions peripheral to Morocco’s centre. These regional hierarchies exist, in part, due to histories of imbalanced

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industrial/cultural development and economic growth. There are modern eforts aimed at regionalisation, national initiatives to make all regions independently prosperous and resourced, i.e., self-sustainable. Charged humour can work to remedy sources of disenfranchisement by rendering regional biases visible. That said, stand-up comics seeking to do that work must still operate within the restrictions placed on speech in Morocco, whether by law or social policing. Public squabbles over political correctness exist in all cultures though it may be called something else like breaking cultural norms, social boundaries, or taboos. The socio-cultural context in Morocco presupposes that comedians respect public restrictions regarding language in all performances. For example, in 2019, young comedian Zohir Zair mentioned Elqadi Ayyad, a well-known Moroccan religious fgure, in one of his sketches on Moroccan television. The context in which he used the name was entirely benign. Nevertheless, this sparked public outrage among viewers. Regardless of the fact that many Moroccan comedians are themselves Muslims, the public regards as sinful any implicit or explicit mentioning of the names of prophets or any other religious symbols. A scan of the majority of the comments responding to Zair’s religious gafe illustrate the intense anger stoked by his joke. The public denigrated him as ignorant, refused to accept his apology, and called for him to be jailed (Zair). When the content of humour is provocative, at times because it addresses sensitive issues such as sexuality, ethnicity, or religion, responses to the comments are a barometer of just how far the comedian has gone. As spokespersons, comedians are highly attuned to political and social regulations. Certainly, these regulations vary depending on audience composition and on media format (pace: Barkaoui who used the term kahlouch without consequence on YouTube). Actress Latefa Ahrar describes Moroccan comedians as prisoners surrounded by dozens of linguistic and cultural restrictions to which they must attend to, before and while performing, so much so that comedians practice self-censorship. Indeed, Zair was pushing back against this rhetorical mandate and public comments made clear that, as a Moroccan, he should have known better. He believes he has a right to reference religious leaders but audience response indicates that he violated the norms of his national and religious identities. Censoring oneself makes charged humour all the more difcult to achieve, yet Moroccan charged comics deftly navigate political and cultural minefelds in order to weaponise humour. And, as the rebellious US comics Lenny Bruce and George Carlin illustrated when they continued to use illegal profanity and criticised the government in their performances, refusing to censor speech in order to advance critiques of powerful institutions and people is itself an act of defance, a challenge to the status quo and another way of deploying charged humour. This analysis of comedic performance traditions accomplishes two important things: we ofer a cultural history of Moroccan stand-up comedy and the early cultural forms giving rise to stand-up; and, using ethnography—interviews and participant-observation with six high profle comic performers—we contemplate Moroccan charged humour, its practitioners, critiques, and challenges. Charged

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humour is a form of comedy that targets social injustices and seeks to empower the disenfranchised by ofering solutions, albeit silly and preposterous at times. It is a kind of humour meant to create community and engender cultural citizenship when existing in a society that eclipses the history and accomplishments of certain groups of people—whomever is designated as inferior. Because inequality exists everywhere, charged humour arises wherever comedy proliferates though it is not always proftable for a comic to speak truth to power—and in some national contexts, as we see with Zair, neither is it safe. After two days of intense public pressure, the comedian apologised: “It was a mistake. I direct my profuse apologies to all Moroccans. It was not my intention to insult our great religious scholar. I am sorry” (Zair). Lucky for Moroccan comedians, most comedy performances don’t end in apologies but in laughter. With a rich tradition of laughing over the centuries, many performance traditions shaped stand-up comedy but none so much as the pedestrian wordplay of al-halqa performers, the humorous crooning of musical troupes, and the witticisms and horseplay emerging in comic theatre.

Early Comedic Cultural Forms The tradition of Moroccan stand-up comedy draws from an array of cultural forms—some humorous and some not. Documentation of Moroccan theatrical and comedy practices dates back to the 17th century and includes performance traditions such as Labsat and Sultan Talba. Labsat was an extravagant performing arts festival celebrating the monarch. Performers presented the frst shows of this kind inside the King’s palace during the reign of Sultan Mohammed ibn Abd Allah (1757–1790). Sultan Talba (translation: King of students) were theatrical celebrations associated with the students of University of al-Qarawiyyin, a seasonal festival during which a student played the role of the king for a week. The origin of this celebration goes back to the era of Sultan Moulay Rashid’s reign, the founder of the Alawite Empire (1666–1679) (Hamdaoui). These popular pretheatrical practices were the cultural precursors to the art of the more modern alhalqa. Halqa means circle and so al-halqa involves storytellers surrounded by their audience (Sehlaoui). Early nationalistic performances gave rise to al-halqa, which in turn contributed to and shaped other performance practices with elements of humour such as music troupes and comic theatre.3 Morocco was colonised between 1912 and 1956 and after decades of French colonial dominance over artistic practices in the country, al-halqa, musical troupes, and comic theatre emerged as distinct comedic cultural forms post-independence in the mid-20th century. This post-independence period in Morocco is known for social instability, political corruption, and class disparity. Because of this, it took Morocco about a decade following independence to prioritise cultural production at the federal level, which had been merged with education. In 1974, a separate and permanent position was created to support the cultural arts: State Minister in charge of Cultural Afairs (Adam). Comic theatre and performance

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traditions did not have the same support that later cultural forms including stand-up comedy would enjoy. Despite this, talented comic actors managed to give birth to the frst generation of stand-up comedians who commonly worked in comic duos in the 1970s. There was fnally a clear trajectory to success as an early stand-up comic. Before working independently as performers of stage humour, early solo comedians were required to have stage experience, and this could only be possible through being recruited by one of the many music or comic theatre troupes fourishing in the country at that time. With new technologies came a rise in venues for performance that catapulted comedy from theatres and on to television as well as various social media platforms. So, too, the capacity to circumvent the theatre circuit and to speak to a growing national audience eager to laugh.

Al-halqa Al-halqa performances ofer a way of connecting and entertaining people with their own culture. Al-halqa varies in substance and style though it always draws from folk tales and cultural myths passed along via oral traditions for centuries. If you were to happen upon an al-halqa performance in a public square of Marrakesh (which is still possible), you may fnd that the performance includes: “proverbs, riddles, tales, nursery rhymes, legends, myths, epic songs and poems, charms, prayers, chants, songs, and other dramatic performances” (Sehlaoui 194). Performances take place throughout Morocco, but the western region DoukkalaAbda and province Al Haouz are regions rich with many al-halqa performers. People there are known for a sense of humour and savvy use of language and wordplay. Not unlike stand-up comedy today, al-halqa delivers a performative documentation of history. Researchers in the felds of linguistics, sociology, and cultural studies have mined this rich performance archive to understand the underlying structure of Moroccan culture. Abdelilah Salim Sehlaoui argues that al-halqa performances are responsible for “transmit[ting] knowledge, values, collective memory and play[ing] an essential role in the cultural vitality of Moroccan society” (194). Some of the practitioners have inherited the art of oratory and storytelling from their ancestors and others have learned it from watching local veterans of the art form. A few of the pioneers and long-standing practitioners of the art of al-halqa include: Ibrahim Iagholimi, Mohamed Doukali, Mohamed Lekrimi, Mohammad Jabiri, and Weld Qerrad.4 Nowadays, Moroccans are aware of the signifcance of the ancient practice of halyqi to the rich history of popular culture, even as they are becoming a dying breed (Simons).5 Their tales of battles, religious stories, and cultural lore refect and celebrate national heritage—contemporary and ancient. The tradition of al-halqa created a cultural appreciation and fascination for entertainers telling stories about their lives. Stand-up comedy as a performance tradition would seem familiar to Moroccans used to hearing skilled orators weave comical tales in the main squares of cities across the country.

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Music Troupes In the 1970s and 1980s, popular music troupes contributed to the emergence of other young comedians, particularly comedy duos. Each comedy couple performed with a particular music troupe; comedians usually initiated the show with jokes before the troupe sang. Troupes like Messsnawa and Tagada would feature young comedians from Casablanca like Abdelilah Ajil, Hassan Foulan, Abdelakhaleq Fahid, and Mohamed Dahera. Comedians Ahmed Senoussi, Elhoussine Beniaz, and Baji Abdelkarim hosted performances for popular music groups like Lmchaheb, Jil-jilala, and Nas-lghiwan. Successful comic performers opening for music troupes went on to establish careers as members of the frst generation of stand-up comics in Morocco. The popularity of these troupes among the public made for high stakes for the comedians opening for them, who were constantly jockeying for respect from their fellow performers and audience. This was a time when impressing the right people could gain someone entrance into a premiere music troupe that would help catapult performers on to solo careers as stand-up comedians. As comedian Mohamed El Khyari attests: In one of the shows, I had to go on stage and present jokes alone because my partner was sick. I attracted the attention of Laarbi Batma, leader of Lghiwan’s group, and it was a new beginning of my career as a solo comedian…I worked with Batma for many years; he was not just a musician, he was a poet and a playwright. We performed many of his plays and he is the founder of the popular theatre troupe Masrah Alhay. Masrah Alhay goes on to become wildly successful combining musical numbers with comic theatre. This and similar models served as training ground for future stand-up comics. El Khyari’s career ofers a valuable blueprint for how comedic performers moved between and among the cultural forms.

Comic Theatre In the 1980s, in part spurred by public enthusiasm and exposure to musical troupes, comic theatre emerged as a response to rising cultural interest in humorous real-life concerns. In a typical show, performers regaled audiences with comedic plays ranging in length from one to two hours. The plays followed recognisable narrative conventions of introducing characters, establishing confict, and working towards a resolution. The content could be light-hearted while also introducing salient social issues. In the cosmopolitan cities of Rabat and Casablanca, young professionals focked to the theatres. There the shows used humour and cultural critique to entertain while also connecting with real-life experiences—certainly a precursor to stand-up comedy. Theatre troupe Masrah Alhay became the new model in Moroccan theatre because of its focus on the daily matters of the masses. Its popularity soared and thousands of people would

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gather in front of theatres to buy tickets on opening day. The troupe managed to bring the audience back to theatre halls, releasing many successful plays such as Hassi Messi (Without Noise), Charah Mellah (Well-Explained), and Hab Otben (Mission Accomplished).6 Abdelilah Ajil, Hassan Foulan, Norddine Bekr, and Ibrahim Khay are among the notable comic theatre practitioners contributing to this genre of theatre that paved the way for young comedians to embark on solo careers. Though it did not have staying power, comic theatre saw immense popularity for about twenty years and along the way morphed in ways catering to audience demand for stand-up comedy.7

Moroccan Stand-Up Comedy In Morocco, the success of traditional humorous performance traditions like al-halqa, music troupes, and theatre comedians made cultural space for comic duos and later stand-up comedians. Early comic duos were the frst pioneers of stand-up comedy in Morocco who managed to crystallise stand-up comedy as a new comedic orientation in the 1970s. They and a smattering of comic performers in music and comic theatre troupes constituted the frst generation of stand-up comics. By the 1980s, the form had grown in popularity enough to be recognisable across the country, modelling its comic play after the physical humour and wordplay of US comedy dynamos Laurel and Hardy (Gehring 1990).8 Oftentimes, Moroccan duo sketch comedy drew on humorous juxtaposition between the cultural customs of city dwellers and country residents, addressing various social topics such as poverty, family conficts, rural exodus, and relationships between men and women. Most comedians at this time recycled earlier sketches instead of writing original comedic material, a habit that would shift as stand-up comedy evolved alongside audience expectations for content refecting the zeitgeist. Duo comedy became even more popular when street performers (like al-halqa performers) and entertainers of wedding parties recorded their performances on LP records and cassettes. New communication technologies ushered in the ability to distribute entertainment widely to a fan base increasingly hungry for comedy. The beginning of the 1980s witnessed an unprecedented demand for and production of duo comedy recordings sold by vendors in markets all over the country. Famous comic duos constituting the frst generation of stand-up comics include: Mohamed Bechar and Ali Bechar (known by Qechbal and Zeroual); Abdeljebbar Lewzir and Mohamed Belqas from Marrakesh; Abdelhadi Tiqar and Mohamed Tiqar (known by Tiqar); Ithami Lhnawat and Mohamed Lahnawat (known by Lahnawat); and Ahmed Senoussi and El Houssin Beniaz (known by Baz and Bziz), to mention just a few.9 Perhaps none were more famous than Qachbal and Zeroual, who started their career in the big souks or markets of the Chaouia region in the 1960s inspiring other duo comics in the country. From music-loving parents, singing the malhoun they carved out a presence in both alhalqa and television by poking fun at people’s behaviours and cultural practices,

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as well as diferences between urban and rural lifestyles (El Miftahi).10 In the early 1970s, Qachbal and Zeroual were the frst duo comics to perform on television in the comic musical tradition of the frst years after independence from France in 1956. Widespread visibility would help to endear stand-up comedy to the public. Another comic duo popular at the time, Baz and Bziz presented a distinctive urban style of humour in a time when the majority of humour production stressed the rural. Unlike earlier comic actors in the theatre who fell into monotonous repetition of rural-based humour, Baz and Bziz were able to redirect the audiences’ focus towards the city evoking modern issues such as technology, transportation, administration, and progressive political orientations (El Fad). This is a crucial era in the history of Moroccan comedy that pushed the coming generation of comics to document their own escape from the rural space into a more modern one rife with incongruities. Baz and Bziz also used comedy to subvert by directly criticising highly-ranked politicians in the country, including the monarch at that time, King Hassan II. Their televised sketches attracted a mighty following but in 1998 were suppressed by the state and banned from all media channels in Morocco; later the two comedians decided to work independently. Despite censoring agents, Ahmed Senoussi (Bziz) maintained the same style of charged humour and controversial political satire in his stand-up comedy, moving into the role of solo comic and performing outside the country. With most other comedians joking within parameters of social acceptability, Senoussi was an exception in Moroccan comedy as well as the whole Arab region. He dominated the Moroccan comedy scene during the 1970s and 1980s. Armed with black humour, sarcasm, and a love for the incongruous, his famous audio sketches were full of thought provoking remarks on politics and social inequalities. He believed in the right of artists and activists to advocate their own views as the primary condition for any social or economic progression in the Arab world (Aljazira). He would go on to become one of the biggest names in stand-up comedy and one of the most articulate purveyors of charged humour. In the late 1980s, comedy fans ardently supported comic duos and a second generation of single comedians began to emerge. Also, known for his political and social commentary, Baji Abdelkarim, another solo comedian from the southeast of Morocco, was one of the most infuential comedians of the 1980s. A variety of humorous performance traditions (like al-halqa and comic theatre) ofered opportunities to move across mediums, broadcasting to bigger audiences whose children would come of age and demand more laughter in the 21st century. Stand-up comedy was booming in the United States in the late 1980s for many of the same reasons it was in Morocco: cheaper transportation costs, access to televisions, plus the demand for comedy generated a rise in venues and opportunities for performance and higher wages for comedians who could earn a living wage. All of these factors laid the foundation for the second generation of comics to emerge. Spanning the 1990s and 2000s, those talented notables include: Mohamed El Khyari, Abdelkhalek Fahid, Hassan El Fad, Hanan

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El Fadili, and Said Naciri. Said Naciri was arguably one of the most famous comedy stars of the 1990s, producing several stand-up comedy albums and sitcoms.11 Once televisions became a standard feature in Moroccan homes, there was typically a spike in comic programming and movies during the month of Ramadan. The surge in content led to increased demand for new comic material throughout the year and not just one month. Moroccan television channels 2M and Alaoula hired famous comedians like Naciri to attract bigger audiences. His popularity as a stand-up comic segued into producing and starring in comedy flms. His was a prolifc career as comedy flmmaker that inspired and established the genre of comedy flms in Morocco.12 He and others listed above were the chief pioneers of Morocco’s second generation of stand-up comics performing in the nineties and early aughts. Importantly, this generation of Moroccan comedians has managed to fnd professional success for more than three decades, presenting a tremendous number of televised, theatrical, as well as cinematic contributions. By the time the second generation of comedians established notoriety and success, stand-up comedy was ofcially an industry in Morocco. In the 2010s, enter the talented third generation of contemporary Moroccan comedians who were able to emulate successful models in the industry and reap the benefts of an entire country excited to see how these new comics would make them laugh next. Popular contemporary comics include: Mohamed Bassou, Driss Chalouh, Mehdi Azkri, Abdelali Lamhar, Youssef Yassar, Rachid Rafq, Said Halim, Wadea Erraji, Abderrahman Eko, Zohir Zair, and Ayoub Idri. Contemporary Moroccan comics benefting from relaxed media censorship are more eager to disclose the socio-cultural transformations that the country undergoes. Other comedians do not care to broach such issues. Hassan El Fad criticises contemporary Moroccan comedians who, according to him, don’t tackle the chief concerns of the audience in part because they don’t know their society well. The implication is that comedians have responsibilities to their audience—ethical and otherwise— though not all comics or fans see it that way. This latest generation has beneftted from an unprecedented rise in demand for stand-up comics to perform in national and regional arts festivals, television and radio programming, and comedy flms. As comics have been able to do for quite some time, they migrate from theatre to other forms of entertainment, like situation comedy and movie acting, achieving considerable success in multiple cultural forms. While early Moroccan humour associated the rural with exotic folklore, contemporary Moroccan stand-up comedians focus less on emphasising regional folklore and more on lived experiences shaped by social and political institutions. This new breed of comics broaches new content and experiments with new styles. Innovative joking has brought in even more fans, increasing incomes for jokesters. This, alongside less rigid speech restrictions, created the space to accomplish what El Fad and younger third-generation charged comedians believe should be the ultimate goal of comedians: “diagnosis of the group of merits and/or defects within a given society.”

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Moroccan Charged Humour Comic speech that points towards social injustices does so in whatever manner acceptable within the restrictions placed upon public speech. Thus, charged humour will be specifc to the culture in which it is produced. For example, American comedians of diferent backgrounds have successfully inspired social, political, and intellectual debate and so have Moroccan comics, but with differing approaches and to diferent ends. Aesthetically speaking, Moroccan and US comics are doing their best to be funny but when it comes to cultural clout and political authority, US comics are granted greater allowances for politicised comedy than Moroccan comics. This does not mean that the history of Morocco was without satirical literature and art. Satirical writers like Miloudi Shgoum, Driss Khori, and Mohamed Zafzaf, for instance, used the pen to ofer philosophical and intellectual critique of Moroccan culture and politics. Regardless of the socio-political climate fraught with repression and fear, satirical writers were able to make fun of rulers and of authority with strategically comedic approaches. In the 1970s, Morocco witnessed the emergence of charged comedy led by early comedians like Ahmed Senoussi (Aarras). Similar to American comedians Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor, Senoussi was the frst Moroccan comic to inaugurate a genre of comedy criticising systemic failures and corrupted institutions (Aarras). For his troubles, he was banned from all media in 1998. A decade later, in one of few televised interviews with Senoussi on Faisal Alqasm’s talk show on Aljazira channel, he explains that in Morocco: “talk show comedians and journalists are granted this liberty to criticise their politicians and comment on their decisions. Contrarily, in most of the Arab and developing nations everything is under control and most artists and journalists are mere agents of the State” (Aljazira). He goes on to argue that the existence of democracy in any nation necessitates more freedom of speech for artists, journalists, and media agents. In other words, media censorship is a pervasive aspect in non-democratic states. Senoussi’s nomadic movement between comedy forms as well as his penchant for charged humour became common amongst stand-up comics emerging in the second and third generations in Morocco but censorship continued to contour humorous critique. Rarely were charged comics able to capitalise on the television boom as a pathway to long-term success as a stand-up comic but the third-generation comics meeting with success increasingly use charged humour. In the 21st century, new programming ofered a unique opportunity for comedians. Reality television and competition programmes featuring stand-up comedy ascended in popularity among Moroccan viewers. According to Latefa Ahrar, “It was an opportunity for young Moroccan jokesters to go on stage and tell funny stories to an audience who is eagerly thirsty to experience this new genre of laughter on national channels.” Given strict legal, religious, and cultural mores, the remaining question, according to Ahrar, is how to accomplish this task of performing charged humour. In other words: how can one be an agent of change under such circumstances? She identifes the handful of comics

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successful throughout history in both ways—performing charged humour and having a knack for navigating myriad comedy forms and entertainment mediums that restrict speech: Regarding the socio-cultural and the political role of the Moroccan comedian, I think that, with the exception of Senoussi, Lkhyari, Naciri, Bassou and few others, who were able to touch sensitive topics due to the nature of their humorous texts and their provocative attitudes, almost the rest of other comedians were unable to tackle the main concerns of the oppressed masses or socially create any meaningful debate. (Ahrar) As comedians interviewed attest, it is difcult to carefully craft charged humour amidst the cultural and political rhetorical minefelds in Morocco. Yet, charged comedians became increasingly adept at exhibiting sensitivity to social restrictions while also making political statements. Comedy seeking to create positive social change varies from one nation to another depending on legal allowances and cultural norms. In Morocco, charged humour takes as its target beliefs and ideologies that maintain inequalities or impede justice. This could be suppression of speech or criticism towards authority fgures, particularly those who have the capacity to use their position to make positive changes but opt not to. For example, national projects are more oriented to the metropolises (Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, and to a lesser degree Marrakesh) assuring these areas economic growth and cultural progress. These are the most important hubs for regional and international connections, commerce, and communication. Accordingly, in these regions, industry and opportunity thrives and occupants are granted greater prospects for economic security than other Moroccans in rural and southern areas. Mohamed Bassou hails from the rural south of Morocco and uses the stage to critique regional economic disparities. When asked to describe his own charged humour, he answers: The majority of my jokes on stage tackle this area of socioeconomic inequality and compare the centre of the country to the remaining peripheries. The public is calling for well-educated artists to represent them and speak for their concerns because in people’s imagination the discourse of an educated person is more convincing. Comedians can repaint the image of a particular society by combating socio-cultural stereotypes. (Bassou) Not always easy or rewarded, still comics like Bassou use the stage as a mouthpiece for pointing towards social ills and political inequalities. Hanan El Fadili is one such comic performer who illustrates the varied concerns charged humour can tackle across multiple entertainment forms. Because comedians are typically visible to the eye, comedy is always gendered. In other words, audience members work to interpret the gender identity and presentation of everyone they meet which is expected to be consonant with

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one’s biological sex. In the United States, the discourse that men are funnier than women proliferates and does so because of the way femininity is socially constructed as passive, quiet, deferential, etc. Nevertheless, female stand-up comics can make a living wage and represent approximately 20–25% of professional comedians in the US. Though they don’t have to nor always do, many women use the stage to fght gender discrimination and sexist representations of women. For women to make these strides in the comedy industry, it took a great deal of advocacy (male comics vouching for their lady peers), targeted training (creation of female-only spaces for performing comedy), and cultural shifts in beliefs about women (this coincides with the rise of third and fourth wave feminisms). In Morocco, like early US stand-up comedy, venues and performance opportunities are seldom available to women and cultural conditioning reinforces that men are natural purveyors of humour, not women. The absence of an alternative female comedy scene that can efectively compete with the other sex was and remains a way of restricting female comedic voices in Morocco. Cultural allowances are not made for women to perform humour; they do so in opposition to social constructions of Moroccan femininity. Having not been acculturated to women as funny, there are far fewer professional female comedians and, as in the United States, Moroccans believe that women are less funny than men. Regardless of the growing number of theatre practitioners who ofered solo performance and stand-up comedy in the 1980s, Hanan El Fadili is the only female stage comedian in the second generation of comics who managed to compete with the pioneers of stand-up comedy at that time. Technically, having not performed traditional stand-up comedy, she is more of a comedic actress and performance artist than she is a stand-up comedian. But she is the only female performing in ways analogous to the male-dominated performance tradition of stand-up comedy. This gender imbalance refects deep-seated beliefs about who is allowed to evoke laughter. Despite being one woman in a sea of men, she has produced numerous one-woman shows and appeared in many sitcoms. Her charged humour uses imitation and characters to draw on political and cultural incongruities. Born into a family of artists, El Fadili was allowed to start a comedic career at the early age of eight by imitating Moroccan stars. El Fadili’s father, Aziz El Fadili—artist, comedian, and writer—was a public fgure recognisable to many. She grew up steeped in her father and grandmother’s antics: Even my grandmother was a big lover of personifcation. When women are alone in the house my grandmother used to imitate a man’s character, wearing a beard and man’s clothes and talking in a man’s voice in order to scare other women. At the age of seven, I was already able to imitate dozens of people either in the family or TV actors and actresses. (El Fadili) When she was seven, El Fadili joined Tayeb Seddiki’s theatre troupe for a role in a play called We Are Made to Hear Us. She went on to enrol for two years in theatre training at Cours Floren, France. Upon completion of her training, she

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returned to Morocco in 2006 to present a series of sketches, showcasing her skills in impersonation and acting that charmed and amused audiences. In 2018, she made her return to the stage after stepping away for eight years. She presented the highly successful Hanane Show, an amazing spectacle in which she plays the role of more than ten characters, transforming herself for the duration of the whole show into a car keeper, saleswoman, cook, singer, and model. She trusts her characters will convey the intended political and social messages. Her selection of female characters illustrates that there are few Moroccan women in leadership and positions of authority and charges the audience to support better treatment for all women. Her depiction of an illiterate woman, for instance, champions the rights of rural women to education and opposes social and political discrimination against them. She uses charged humour to confer value to women’s domestic contributions and as vital to the socio-economic development of society, while problematising the limited roles available to Moroccan women as mother, wife, cook, and housekeeper. Channelling myriad characters and never sacrifcing comic appeal, El Fadili deftly delivers critiques of female disenfranchisement through means of exaggeration, irony, and incongruity. El Fadili is fully aware of the expectations and responsibility of Moroccan comedians to convey the concerns of people. She is up to the task but blames Moroccan social media and journalists for neglecting to amplify the voices of comedians when they do speak out: I certainly believe that Moroccan comedians are able to create change inside and why not outside their environment…There should be wellstructured media coverage and a strong press that echoes their voice to the large audiences; otherwise their works will be limited to a restricted number of people and places. Social media and journalists contribute to the visibility of comedy and artworks, in general. Unfortunately, nowadays no one [ journalists] is interested in meaningful content [from comedians]. (El Fadili) This lack of media support disallows important messages from reaching broader bases. El Fadili’s assertion illustrates that the muting of Moroccan charged comedy is not related to a lack of talent or expertise. It is, rather, due to the socio-cultural and political forces silencing certain discourse. No matter how intelligent and insightful those comedians are, El Fadili argues, if there are limited mediums and means for their voices to reach the public, let alone decision makers and leaders, then it remains impossible to change mentalities or create any kind of debate among people. In the 2010s, as the third generation of comedians emerged, some female comics sought to disarm audiences with their jokes. None of them managed to capture audience interest and garner invitations for acting work or comedy gigs.13 Sadly, today Hanan El Fadili continues to be one of the few female voices in the comedy scene serving as a model to young women aspiring to use the stage as a pulpit for challenging inequalities, gender and otherwise.

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Comedy ofers a window into people’s history and charged humour unmasks social inequalities, making it a valuable tool for social change but a tricky one to wield in Morocco where censorship and public backlash can efectively gag comedians who criticise the government or defy religious mandates. Despite controversy about the political efcacy of comedy, we know comedy can introduce meaningful debates so long as the public is willing and able to engage with those debates. Hanan El Fadili and scores of other women have the intellectual and creative capacities to generate charged stand-up that combats gender inequality but as long as a dominant majority rejects women as comedic spokespersons, she must continue performing according to the ways Moroccans structure and organise identities. El Fadili’s careful weaponisation of comedy illustrates that the challenge of Moroccan comedians resides in how to be brave and provocative while not shocking. Brave in the sense that they are able to touch on sensitive and serious issues and not shocking in the way they use language to broach this sensitivity. This complex double function afects not only the artistic creativity of comedians but also their relationship to an exigent audience who want to laugh and to think, but do not necessarily desire to be shocked. Crafting charged humour can be difcult and as great a challenge as being heard. As Mohamed Bassou says: Our mission is not that easy, we want our comedy to be well developed, but we are asked to take into account the particularities of our conservative society. We need to respect the group of accumulated principles and ethics because families are still watching TV together and we have to give them inclusive and easily digested products. Every country has its way of thinking and behaving, ours is special in the sense that history and religion are of paramount impact on our perceptions. I craft humour in an intelligent way taking into consideration all the variables mentioned before. I usually tackle serious issues and political subjects in a smooth and acceptable way because it simply rests on how you approach things and not why. Finally, I am sure that we are able to create change and debate in our society. We just need to be more educated and endowed with the sufcient courage and talent on how to exploit language and humour in the service of human values. Bassou is not alone in seeking to use comedy as a platform for stoking social change. Members of this generation of comedians are participating in this rhetorical dance unique unto the culture from which it hails. This is true across the world. The current uptick of consumers clamouring for stand-up comedy— whether in Morocco, the United States, Nigeria, India, Australia, and the list goes on—signals the growing platform comedians have to shape worldviews, identities, and behaviours while forging connections within and across communities: national, racial, political, or otherwise. There exists plenty of demand for humour that heaps humiliation upon communities less powerful. That isn’t likely to change. But well-informed, socially conscious people make up a sizable portion of consumers. Global demand for charged humour may challenge religious

46 Mohamed Bassou and Rebecca Krefting

and cultural conventions and herald a relaxing of restrictions. For Moroccan women that could allow safe entry into stand-up comedy. Moreover, worldwide proliferation of charged humour can ofer evidence for the ways that this humour—deployed respective to a society’s laws, norms, and organisation—can instigate measurable change in the service of social and economic justice.

Notes 1 Comedy/humour studies scholars have long attended to subversive comedy and this moment is no exception. Two impressive examples focus on comedians who integrate activist and social justice sensibilities like combating white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and gender violence into their stand-up performances: A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice (2020) by Caty Broum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman; Katleyn Hale Wood’s Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth & Twenty-First Century United States (2021), which explores the “highly skilled and diverse Black feminist comedic artists as shapers and critics of US citizenship, history, and social justice movements” (21). 2 One of the co-authors, Mohamed Bassou, performs in two distinct roles in this exploration of Moroccan stand-up comedy—as a highly successful, established comedian and television personality and as a humour studies scholar. In order to acknowledge these two roles and the diferent information they bring to bear on this analysis, quotations from him come from personal interviews and conversations refecting on his professional comedy career. 3 It is beyond the scope of this article to ofer comprehensive detailing of early performance forms and its practitioners. For additional information on the history and traditions of Moroccan performance, see: Khalid Amine and Marvin Carlson. The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia: Performance Traditions of the Maghreb; Daniel F. Chamberlain and J. Edward Chamberlin, editors. Or Words to That Efect: Orality and the Writing of Literary History; Aicha Rahmouni. Storytelling in Chefchaouen Northern Morocco: An Annotated Study of Oral Performance with Transliterations and Translations; Al-Halqa: In the Storyteller’s Circle (documentary). 4 Because al-halqa took place in public areas rather than formal venues, there are limited records of performers. As such, this list does not accurately capture all or even many of those skilled in this art form. 5 Halyqi: plural for halqa; halyqi refers to multiple performances and/or a group of performers practicing the art of al-halqa. 6 The titles of these plays are common Moroccan proverbs and translated literally will not accurately convey their meanings. The supplied translations capture the closest denotation of these idiomatic phrases. 7 Full exploration of this rich performance tradition is beyond the scope of this work. For additional information on Moroccan theatre, see: Hassan Manai. 1974. Abhat f Al-masrah Al-maghrebi [Studies in Moroccan theatre]. Meknes: Matbeat Sawt Meknes; Abdelouaheb Ouzri. 1997. Le Théâtre au Maroc: Structures et Tendances. Casablanca: Les Editions Toubkal; Hassan Bahraoui. 1994. Al-masrah Al-magrebiy Baht f Al-usul As-sosyu Taqafa (Moroccan Theatre: A Study of the Socio-cultural Roots). Casablanca: almarkaz althaqafu alearabiu. 8 Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892–1957) were famous comedians in the early-to-mid 20th century. 9 Instead of referring to a comic duo by saying the names of both actors, performers billed themselves with a single name, often a shared surname. 10 Also known in Morocco under the name of qasida (meaning a poem), malhoun is a traditional music that is based on poetry that frst emerged in the regions of Taflalt in the south east of the country before its popularity spread in the rest of the Maghreb.

The History of Moroccan Stand-Up Comedy

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11 Said Naciri’s comedy shows include: Tetanos (1995), Mes Amis les Ministers (2003), 100% Morocain (2007), and Do You Speak English (2014). 12 Said Naciri’s movies include: Lbandia (The Bandits, 2003), Laaib Maa Diaab (Game with the Wolves, 2005), Abdou Inda Lmowahidin (Abdou among the Almohades, 2006), Sara (2013), and Lkhtaf (The Transporter, 2015). 13 Without records of these performances, we do not have names for these brave funny women who attempted to break into stand-up comedy.

Works Cited Adam, André. “La politique culturelle au Maroc.” Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, Editions du Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifque. Presses Universitaires de France, 1973. pp. 107–129. Ahrar, Latifa. Personal interview. 2019. Al-Halqa: In the Storyteller’s Circle. Directed by Thomas Ladenburger. Cinema Guild, 2010. Aljazira. ‫ د ودح ال ب‬- ‫[ ي س ونس لا د محأ‬Ahmed Senoussi: Without Borders]. YouTube, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GISe_ JMDiVg Accessed 8 August 2020. Almeida, Cristina Moreno. “Race” and “Blackness” in Moroccan Rap: Voicing Local Experiences of Marginality. In Alex Lubin and Marwan M. Kraidy (eds.), American Studies Encounters in the Middle East. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. pp. 81–105. Amine, Khalid and Marvin Carlson. The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia: Performance Traditions of the Maghreb. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Liveright, 2018. Arras, Mimoun. “Al’adab Alssakhir f Almaghrib, Eindama Tuajih Almawhibat Alqame Walkhawf ” [The Satirical Literature in Morocco, When Talent Faces Oppression and Fear]. Hespress, 2019. www.hespress.com/art-et-culture/442346.html Accessed 20 November 2019. Barkaoui, Abdelah. Personal interview. 2020. Bassou, Mohamed. Personal interview. 2021. Chamberlain, Daniel F. and J. Edward Chamberlin, editors. Or Words to that Efect: Orality and the Writing of Literary History. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016. El Fad, Hassan. Personal interview. 2019. El Fadili, Hanan. Personal interview. 2019. El Khyari, Mohamed. Personal interview. 2019. El Miftahi, Said. “L’art Du Melhoun, Son Histoire, Ses Richesses” [The Art of Malhoun, Its History and Riches]. Yabiladi.com. www.yabiladi.com/article-musique-14.html. Accessed 25 January 2021. Gehring, Wes. D. Laurel & Hardy: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. Hamdaoui, Jamil. Almasrah Almagharibiu Bayn Alnash’at Waltatawur [Moroccan Theater from Its Origin to Its Evolution]. Dar Ar’rif. Nador, 2019. pp. 94–220. Krefting, Rebecca. All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Mintz, Lawrence E. “Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Meditation.” American Quarterly 37(1), 1985. pp. 71–80. Rahmouni, Aicha. Storytelling in Chefchaouen Northern Morocco: An Annotated Study of Oral Performance with Transliterations and Translations. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2015.

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Sehlaoui, Abdelilah Salim. “Moroccan Professional Storytellers: An Endangered Species.” Storytelling, Self, Society 5(3), 2009. pp. 193–217. Simons, Marlise. “Keeping a Moroccan Tradition Alive, One Tale at a Time.” New York Times, 2006. www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/world/africa/keeping-a-moroccantradition-alive-one-tale-at-a-time.html. Accessed 1 February 2021. Solomon, Sheldon, Jef Greenberg and Thomas A Pyszczynski. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House, 2015. Zair, Zohir. “My Apologies Go to the Moroccan People for Insulting Elqadi Ayyad.” Facebook, 2019. www.facebook.com/chouftv.maroc/videos/385646502009687/ Accessed 26 July 2020.

2 STANDING UP FOR SPEAKING UP Stand-Up Comedy in the Indonesian Context Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati

Tertawalah, sebelum tertawa itu dilarang. — Warkop DKI (Laugh, before laughing is banned.)

Introduction Humour is an inherent part of our lives. We engage in various humorous activities in our daily lives by not just producing but also enjoying humorous texts. Some jokes are told to make people laugh, some to criticise, while others are meant to ofend. Although humour might be seen as an unserious afair as it generates laughter, it needs imagination and its understanding is infuenced by things such as background knowledge and culture. The ability to produce verbal humour is part of the creative and artful use of language (Nadia 2014: 13). Verbal humour may be found in various kinds of life interactions and discourses. It has appeared in the form of entertainment shows on television, comic strips, sitcoms, and stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedians, as Schwarz puts it, “plant themselves in front of their listeners with their microphones and start telling a succession of funny stories, one-liners or short jokes, and anecdotes, which are often called “bits”, in order to make their audience laugh” (2010: 17). Although usually stand-up comedians are not much supported by props, some of them use props, as exemplifed by Indonesian stand-up comedian Dodit Mulyanto, who occasionally uses a violin to support his performances. In Indonesia, the contemporary stand-up comedy has gained its popularity after the national channel Kompas TV Indonesia started the Stand-Up Competition Indonesia in 2011. Despite its recent popularity, a similar type of comedy has long existed in the country in the form of traditional performances, commonly found in ketoprak1 and Dagelan Mataram2 in Central Java and Yogyakarta, DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-4

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and ludruk in East Java. Another traditional form of comedy is one performed by an Indonesian legendary comedy group, Srimulat. Srimulat’s comedy shows often centred their plot on daily lives of an urban household with a rich family and their domestic help. The show usually began with a Srimulat member who acted as a domestic assistant on stage presenting a monologue, sometimes complaining about his or her employer. Domestic assistants played an important role in the show as they presented the actual condition of the country. The character was often used as a medium to criticise the powerful or privileged groups and their behaviour, thus refecting class division and socio-economic inequality in Indonesia. Therefore, comedy performances not only function to amuse the audience, but they have also become a form of media used to present social issues in Indonesia, especially those faced by marginalised people. History has shown that comedy always becomes a powerful medium of critique. In the colonial era in Indonesia, comedy performances were not only used to entertain but also to criticise the Dutch and the Japanese. Ludruk 3 became a medium of people’s struggle against colonialism. Cak Durasim, a famous ludruk comedian, was sent to jail by the Japanese in 1944 for his kidungan (a type of poetry) on Japanese colonialism that caused a lot of misery to Indonesian people at that time “Pagupon omahe doro, melok nippon tambah sengsoro”.3 In the 1950s, stand-up comedy started to develop, and comedy competitions were held. Bing Slamet won the competition in 1953, while others such as Eddy Sud, S. Bagyo, and Iskak became the winners of such competitions in 1957 in Yogyakarta. In Bandung, West Java, there was Us, well-known as the Jerry Lewis of Indonesia.4 In the following years, particularly in the New Order5 era in the 1980s–1990s, critiques were aimed at the government and its policies. The most celebrated comedians from Warkop DKI, a legendary comedy group whose members (Dono, Kasino, and Indro—with Indro as the only surviving member after Dono and Kasino passed away) starred in numerous movies and did many stand-up comedy acts. They have been known as a group that often critiques the upper class and those in positions of authority. They were often subjected to police interrogation, censorship, and on several occasions were not even allowed to perform since it was suspected that they would criticise the government in their performance. Laughing and making people laugh became a “crime” back then, hence the famous quotation cited in the beginning of the chapter “Tertawalah, sebelum tertawa itu dilarang” (do laugh, before laughing is banned). Following the resignation of President Suharto (the New Order) in 1998, Indonesia has been in the transition period known as the Reform Era (Era Reformasi). In contrast with the New Order era and its censorship as freedom of expression was limited by the government, the Reform Era provides a social and political environment that is more open and liberal. Freedom of expression has improved as political debates and expression in the arts have increased. With relaxation in the rules of censorship, Indonesian people are encouraged to express their ideas and thoughts through diferent media. The contemporary form of stand-up comedy performance in Indonesia was probably started in the 1990s by Ramon Papana with his Comedy Café. He

Standing Up for Speaking Up 51

created open mic programmes, i.e. events held in comedy cafes for amateur stand-up comedians as a trial performance, which gave a platform to the now famous Indonesian comedians, including Taufk Savalas. In 2004, Taufk Savalas became the main performer in a Comedy Club show which was broadcast on TV. The show was a collaboration with Papana and it was initially named Comedy Café. However, not only was there a diference in how Papana and Savalas viewed stand-up comedy, the lack of viewers also fnally caused the show to be taken of air.6 Savalas’ comedy was more of a retelling of a street joke, while Papana argued that stand-up comedy should tell the stand-up comedian’s personal experience from his/her point of view. Stand-up comedy in Indonesia is now a booming industry. Many other notable Indonesian stand-up comedians, such as Iwel Wel, Pandji Pragiwaksono, Raditya Dika, have had an important role in making stand-up comedy popular in the country. In 2011, they uploaded their open mic sessions on YouTube and received positive responses. Two private TV stations, Metro TV and Kompas TV, held special stand-up comedy competitions which later made stand-up comedy popular. Metro TV created Stand-up Comedy Show and Battle of Comic, while Kompas TV held Stand-Up Comedy Indonesia (SUCI) in 2011. In 2015, Indosiar also held a similar talent show called Stand-up Comedy Academy (SUCA). Later, with the increased interest in stand-up comedy, open mic programmes fourished on and of air, and new stand-up comedians appeared. Furthermore, as technology became more advanced, many stand-up comedy shows not only appeared on TV but they are also available and accessible on online platforms like YouTube. Various social media platforms have become preferable idea sharing sites as well. Many fnalists and contestants of stand-up comedy competitions have also become popular in the online world, as can be seen from the number of their social media account followers. Those who are popular mostly have strong personas and specifc themes that they address, e.g. Eastern Indonesians Abdurrahim Arsyad (Abdur) and Arie Kriting who talk about inequality issues in East Indonesia, Ernest Prakasa on problems faced by Chinese Indonesians, Sakdiyah Makruf on the issues of women who don the hijab, and currently Coki Pardede and Tretan Muslim, who became famous for their controversial jokes on religion especially Islam and Christianity and later received death threats7 and accusations of blasphemy8 over their video about cooking pork. All in all, stand-up comedy gives a “stage” to these stand-up comedians to voice their concerns. Here, we will look into how Indonesian stand-up comedians deliver their thoughts on religious issues, predicament of the minority groups, and the Indonesian government and members of the House of Representatives. We will focus on several stand-up comedians including Pandji Pragiwaksono, Abdurrahim Arsyad, Arie Kriting, and Kiky Saputri.

Understanding Humour Humour occurs when a message is phrased as a joke, considered ludicrous, or worth laughing at. Nilsen and Nilsen (2008: 248) state that in mediaeval

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physiology, humour or humorous is concerned with the bodily fuids described as yellow and bile, phlegm, and blood. When a person’s bodily fuids are out of balance, s/he would probably become emotionally unbalanced. People who are eccentric or out-of-balance, or those obsessed with a certain thought, make ‘normal’ people laugh and are considered humorous characters. This idea can be seen as one of the many that inspired today’s meaning of humour. Today, humour is considered anything that makes people laugh in enjoyment because they are surprised by something absurd, ludicrous, or exaggerated. The responses to humour can range from pleasure, surprise, to disgust. Traditionally, theories of humour are classifed into three, namely incongruity theory, hostility theory, and release theory (Raskin 1985 as quoted in Attardo 2008:103). Attardo (1994, quoted in Attardo 2008: 103) then reproduced these into a tripartite classifcation. While these classifcations have many synonyms, incongruity, superiority, and release theories are commonly used (Table 2.1).9 Incongruity theory argues that humour arises because there is a diference or inconsistency between what we expect and what we get or what actually happens. It means that they are based on several objective characteristics of a humorous text or act (situation, event, picture, etc.). In superiority theory, humour is considered to be directed against a certain person or group, usually based on politics, ethnicity, or gender. Our laughter is an expression of the sudden realisation of our superiority towards subjects inferior to us, since there is a sudden glory that comes from the conception of superiority compared to the others. Thus, in superiority theory, humour is directed against some person, or group, typically on political, ethnic, class, or gender issues. In the context of stand-up comedy, this theory is displayed in the form of self-deprecating humour as it allows the audience to feel superior to the stand-up comedian. Release theory mostly focuses on the recipient of humour. According to Raskin (in Jakoaho 2012), humour functions as a mechanism to ofer relief due to tension caused by hostility, anxiety, or confict. This implies that laughter is the result/release of all the repression experienced by people. Berger (2013) argues that the incongruity theory is the most commonly accepted. In the writing of humour, as explained by Schopenhauer (quoted in Berger 2013), there is a sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real object which has been thought through in some relation. This in TABLE 2.1 Tripartite classifcation of humour as given by Attardo (2008)

Incongruity

Hostility

Release

Contrast Incongruity/resolution

Aggression Superiority Triumph Derision Disparagement

Sublimation Liberation Economy

Standing Up for Speaking Up 53

turn causes laughter as an expression of such incongruity. In creating humour in stand-up comedy, where the performance is actually based on a written script, a stand-up comedian needs to consider the way the jokes are presented. We normally adopt diferent styles when writing or speaking to diferent audiences. To create a stand-up comedy script, a stand-up comedian uses humour techniques. Berger categorises humour into four basic types (Berger 2011): 1. 2. 3. 4.

humour involving identity humour involving language humour involving logic humour involving action or visual phenomena

These categories are broken down into the following techniques. Berger also argues that every humorous work uses these techniques in many variations and combinations. Berger’s Categories and Techniques of Humour LANGUAGE

LOGIC

IDENTITY

ACTION

Allusion Bombast Defnition Exaggeration Facetiousness Insults Infantilism Irony Misunderstanding Over literalness Puns, wordplay Repartee Ridicule Sarcasm Satire

Absurdity Accident Analogy Catalogue Coincidence Comparison Disappointment Ignorance Mistakes Repetition Reversal Rigidity Theme/variation Unmasking

Before/after Burlesque Caricature Eccentricity Embarrassment Exposure Grotesque Imitation Impersonation Mimicry Parody Scale Stereotype

Chase Slapstick Speed

As a type of verbal humour, i.e. humour produced by means of language or text (Dynel 2019), stand-up comedy is based on a script mainly consisting of a build-up or set-up, which is commonly built of a narrative; and a punch line, which contains elements of surprise resulting in incongruity with the build-up (Dynel 2019). In line with Berger’s idea, with such a composition in the script writing, stand-up comedy thus needs the knowledge of techniques of writing humour. As an illustration, in a roast, when writing the script the comedians need to conduct research on the roast targets (roastees) before they actually present their materials to the audience. Some of these techniques, particularly in the

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language category, have been applied by Majelis Lucu Indonesia (MLI)10’s stand-up comedians, to roast their targets, with insults, satire, and infantilism being the three most used techniques (Munandar et al. 2020). Using these techniques in the script, the stand-up comedians are not only able to create laughter but also show their close relationship with the roastees. Carrying out a scripted comedy, stand-up comedians barely improvise their performances. In the Stand-Up Comedy Indonesia (SUCI) show, these comedians (contestants) usually planned and rehearsed their performance in front of the audience prior to the fnal performance. The information of this Open Mic session was published on SUCI Kompas TV Twitter account (@StandUpKompasTV), and people who were interested in attending the session could directly come to the live venue for free (in this case, a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Tebet, Jakarta). Therefore, while most stand-up comedians commonly practise with friends or fellow comics as their audience, the contestants of SUCI would have to rehearse in front of various audiences comprising not only SUCI Kompas TV team, stand-up comedy enthusiasts, but also total strangers. In Indonesia, stand-up comedy is often considered as smart and witty comedy. In contrast to slapstick, stand-up comedy enables the performers to present their concerns and “restlessness” about current issues and to portray actual problems and reality of the society. Stand-up comedy hence does not only mean standing up in front of an audience literally; it becomes a medium to stand-up for their ideals as well. Stand-up comedy can also be a tool for political criticism.11 Amy Billingsly, a feminist philosopher, maintains that “this refashioning can become a ‘war machine,’ warping the wonted words in such a way that they are initially seen as a familiar formation (like the Trojan Horse) but then revealed as revolutionary and shocking” (quoted in Holmes 2017: 22). In a stand-up comedy show, the comedian has the skill of infltrating political, social, and cultural discourse. In a similar vein with the Trojan Horse metaphor, the audience of the stand-up comedy performance are the Trojans welcoming the arrival of the Trojan Horse with great joy. They expect to get pleasure from watching stand-up comedy. This makes them naive and leaves an opportunity for the stand-up comedian to carry out her/his hidden “assault”. According to Holmes (2017), there is an informal comedic code of ethics wherein a comedian should direct her/his comedy at those who are in a privileged position in the social hierarchy. Simply put, the comedy is aimed at those who are more powerful, as it is assumed that comedy will do relatively little harm to those who have power, whereas the less powerful already sufer even before the comedians’ ofence. This act is commonly referred to as punching up. On the other hand, a stand-up comedian should not be punching down, that is, making those who are marginalised the target of their comedy. Holmes (2017) adds that punching up deals with the informal comedic code of ethics that does not allow the exploitation of the stand-up platform to trivialise and perpetrate violence against marginalised or oppressed communities. In contrast, charged humour, as Krefting calls it (2014), requires that comedians deliberately create humour that challenges social inequality and cultural exclusion. A stand-up comedian

Standing Up for Speaking Up 55

who punches up avoids making jokes that normalise societal hierarchy, whereas charged stand-up comedians use comedy to confront such systems of power. As a form of critical discourse, charged humour is aimed at criticising and presenting radical thoughts by means of laughter and discomfort. However, it is worth noting that stand-up comedy is not a way of abusing and harming others. Thus, stand-up comedy attempts not only to entertain but also to persuade. In Indonesia, political humour is often developed from irony, satire, aggressive humour, sarcasm, and self-deprecating humour. Wijana’s research on political humour (2016) fnds that political humour in Indonesia can be categorised into denigration jokes and exposure jokes. Denigration jokes are made to criticise individuals or political leaders, social groups, and political slogans, while exposure jokes are used to criticise social conditions namely corruption, indiscipline, unhealthy environment, and laziness. Focusing on stand-up comedy in Indonesia, we will also address political issues, along with two other major issues viz. ethnicity and religion in Indonesian stand-up comedy performances. Thus, even though the topics addressed by the stand-up comedians in their performance vary, we will focus only on three major issues, i.e. politics, ethnicity, and religion. These topics require the stand-up comedians to not only be funny on the stage but also pursue their mission or voice their discontent to the society in a humorous way. Further discussion on the examples of stand-up comedy performances and their background issues are presented in the next section.

Making Fun of the Politicians: Delivering Criticisms in a Humorous Way Being a multicultural and multi-ethnic nation/society, with diverse political and religious beliefs, Indonesia’s political situation has been through its ups and downs. Since its Independence in 1945, Indonesia has had to deal with various conficts which often involve violence, ranging from the long history of battling the coloniser, struggling with the internal conficts among diferent groups, coping with corruption, to maintaining unity among its diverse population. Conficts and controversial news are presented enormously by the mass media, particularly after the Soeharto era (the New Order era, from 1967 to 1998) when freedom of speech was restricted and censorship was incessant. During the New Order era, the government banned and revoked the publishing permits of several mass media which were considered disrupting the political stability. For example, Tempo, one of the biggest news outlets in Indonesia, has been banned several times between 1982 and 1994 for publishing news about the biggest political party at the time. Tempo also criticised the government’s decision to buy 39 secondhand warships from East Germany. After the collapse of New Order era in 1998, the media began to get back their rights. Conficts and controversial news involving sensitive issues such as politics, terrorism, religion, and race have often become the highlight of the media as they can lure more audience and generate reactions from the society. In response to such conficts, Indonesians often express their critique, outrage, dissatisfaction, and disagreement towards

56 Nina Setyaningsih and Anisa Larassati

the government or certain groups through mass media, social media, and acts of demonstration. However, during the surfeit of outrage, people started to cope with their dissatisfaction through comedy as an alternative resort to speak up. Several stand-up comedians through their comic personas have taken up the responsibility of being critical of the government. Pandji Pragiwaksono, Abdurrahim Arsyad, Arie Kriting, and Kiky Saputri are a few examples. Even though they have diferent styles, most of them are predicated on the same premise as seen in the next subsection.

Kiky Saputri Roasting DPR RI Members during DPR RI 73rd Anniversary Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Republik Indonesia (DPR RI—The People’s Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia) is one of the government’s institutions that has received huge criticism and scepticism from the public. In 2018, during its 73rd anniversary, DPR RI launched a mobile application named DPR Now and held a stand-up comedy competition. This competition was intentionally dedicated to roasting the DPR RI members. Kiky Saputri was the only female participant in the competition. The excerpt below shows her performance during the event. All of the stand-up comedy performances were in Bahasa Indonesia: KIKY SAPUTRI: Saya Kiky, alumni Alexis,12 dulu Bapak sering banget ya tiap malem

ya Pak ya. KIKY: I am Kiky, an Alexis alumna. You went there often, didn’t you Sir? KIKY: Nggak-nggak, saya guru honorer di sebuah sekolah swasta di Jakarta KIKY: No no (I’m kidding), I’m a non-permanent teacher in a private school in

Jakarta. KIKY: cuman masalahnya jadi guru honorer itu gajinya kecil banget, sebulan saya cuman

dapet600 ribu. KIKY: But the problem is, the non-permanent teacher gets only a meagre salary. In a month, I get only 600 thousand rupiahs (around 50 USD). KIKY: Saya ke sekolah naik ojek pulang pergi udah abis 20 ribu...lha ini gaji saya cuman

buat tukang ojek. KIKY: I commute to the school every day taking a bike taxi and it costs 20 thou-

sand rupiahs. It means all my salary is spent only on the bike taxi drivers. KIKY: Kalau tau gitu tukang ojeknya aja yang suruh ngajar sekolah saya, biar saya yang

ngojek. KIKY:I should have asked the taxi driver to teach in my school, and I’ll just become the bike taxi driver instead.

Standing Up for Speaking Up 57

KIKY: Pak Taufk wakil ketua DPR bilang “Saya ironis dengan gaji guru yang di bawah

1 juta, saya akan merenung untuk mencari solusinya” Ini sejak kapan merenung dapet solusi? KIKY: Mr Taufk the vice-chair of DPR RI said “I think it is ironic that the salary of a non-permanent teacher is less than a million, I will contemplate to fnd the solution”. Since when did contemplating give any solution? KIKY: Semakin lama Pak Taufk merenung semakin banyak guru jadi tukang ojek. KIKY: The longer Mr. Taufk contemplates, the more non-permanent teachers

become bike taxi drivers. In this performance, Kiky brought up two important social issues. By bringing Alexis hotel, known for being a site for sex work, she pointed out the frequently occurring sex scandals involving parliament members and other politicians.13 In 2006 for example, a sex video involving a parliament member and a dangdut14 singer circulated widely among Indonesians. While in 2011, a parliament member was caught watching porn videos during a plenary meeting in the DPR RI’s building. In 2015 when prostitution scandals involving several Indonesian public fgures caught public attention, the pimp blew the whistle by saying that some of his clients were members of the parliament. One of the ex-members of the parliament also said that it was not shocking news for him. When he was an active member, the cleaning service told him that he found a lot of used condoms in the ofce building.15 The second issue is about the low salary of non-civil servants or nonpermanent teachers (known as ‘guru honorer’) in Indonesia. In some regions, their average income is less than a million rupiah in a month (less than 70 USD based on March 2022 exchange rate).16 Kiky said that the salary would only cover her transportation cost commuting from her home to the school. She said that she would just ask the motorbike taxi driver (an Uber-like transportation service using a motorcycle) to teach at her school to show the irony of the situation. DPR RI as the lawmaker cannot give an immediate solution for this long-term problem in educational institutions in Indonesia.

Kiky Saputri Roasting the Vice Head of DPR RI Fadli Zon Another one of Kiky’s viral performances was in 2019 when she roasted Fadli Zon, the then vice DPR RI. Fadli Zon is a famous politician who often criticises the President and actively uses his Twitter account to post his political statements. His statements on the media or his social media account often ignite controversies. Kiky used this opportunity to roast him in her performance as seen in the following excerpt: KIKY: Beliau adalah anggota parlemen, kerjaannya kunjungan ke luar negeri, mengha-

biskan biaya negara. [penonton tertawa]

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KIKY: He is a parliament member, his job is to do overseas visits, wasting the

state’s budget. [Audience laughs.] KIKY: Tapi nggak papa, karena tujuannya mendamaikan negara lain. Padahal, Indone-

sia banyak konfik, karena beliau (menunjuk Fadli Zon). [Fadli Zon dan penonton tertawa] KIKY: But it’s okay, because it aims to reconcile the nations. But in fact, Indonesia has a lot of conficts, because of him. (pointing at Fadli Zon) [Fadli Zon and the audience laughs.]

KIKY: Ih setiap kali beliau update status di Twitter, yang balas ribuan.

[Penonton tertawa] KIKY: Every time he posts an update on Twitter, he gets thousands of replies.

[Audience laughs.] KIKY: Walaupun isinya makian semua (penonton tertawa).

Tapi beliau tetap stay cool gitu kan. Nih kalau kalian perhatiin nih ya, isi Twitternya Pak Fadli Zon, ya Allah... itu setiap hari, update-nya itu tiap 2 menit sekali. Ni Bapak mohon maaf nih ya, Bapak aktif banget di sosial media Bapak? Bapak anggota dewan apa Admin Lambe Turah? [Fadli Zon dan penonton tertawa] KIKY: Even though they are all insults. (audience laughs) But he always stays cool. If you all notice Mr. Fadli Zon’s twitter feed, oh my God, he posts updates every 2 minutes. I’m sorry, Sir. Why are you so active on social media? Are you a parliament member or Lambe Turah administrator? (Lambe Turah is an Instagram Account which actively posts and covers celebrity gossip) [Fadli Zon and the audience laugh.] KIKY: Saya itu cuma mikir aja gitu pak, ni Bapak kerjaannya ngapain kalau nge-Tweet

melulu? Atau sebenarnya bapak punya asisten. Jadi Bapak nge-Tweet, asisten Bapak yang kerja hehe. [Penonton tertawa.] KIKY: I’m just wondering, what about your job then if you just tweet all the time? Or... maybe you have an assistant. So you tweet, while your assistant does your job hehe. [Audience laughs.] KIKY: Cuman begini, maksud saya adalah, coba kita menjadi Indonesia yang nonblok,

atau netral gitu ya, nggak cuma dalam urusan politik luar negeri.

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Tapi menjadi pengguna Twitter itu juga harus nonblok. Misalnya tuh, ni kan mau pilpres gitu ya, nah loh ada yang berantem-berantem tu ya. Contoh Lucinta Luna sama Young Lex. Nah ini saya berharap, Bapak Fadli Zon sebagai anggota parlemen, itu tidak memihak salah satu kubu. Karena kalau itu Bapak lakukan, bisa memperburuk citra Bapak, yang sudah buruk. [Penonton tertawa.] KIKY: But what I mean is, Indonesia should be a non-aligned or neutral nation, not only in terms of foreign country political afairs. For example, the presidential election will be held soon, usually people will argue with each other. Like Lucinta Luna and Young Lex. I hope Mr. Fadli Zon as a parliament member will not take any sides. Because if you do that, it will worsen your already existing bad image. [Audience laughs.] KIKY: Pak, mohon maaf bercanda ini mah komedi Pak. KIKY: Sir, I am sorry Sir I’m just kidding, it’s just a comedy, Sir. FADLI ZON: Nggak papa. FADLI ZON: It’s okay. KIKY: Kalau nggak lucu saya nggak dibayar pak. KIKY: If I’m not funny, I will not be paid, Sir. FADLI ZON: Ah komedo itu mah. FADLI ZON: Ah it was a comedo (word play from comedy) then. KIKY: Kecuali, kalau Bapak bayar saya, baru Bapak saya puji-puji.

[Penonton tertawa.] KIKY: But if you pay me, I’ll praise you. FADLI ZON: Ini pasti komedinya pesenan ya? FADLI ZON: This comedy must be a request (*from people who do not like him) KIKY: Nggak Pak ini mah bener dari hati nurani.

Coba Pak, Bapak senyum dulu Pak. Pak saya jangan diilangin Pak, hehe. [Penonton tertawa.] KIKY: No Sir, it is from my conscience. Sir, please smile Sir. Sir, please do not get rid of me Sir, hehe. [Audience laughs.] In this performance, Kiky began by mentioning the parliament’s routine agenda, i.e., overseas visits. She said that this agenda is wasting the state’s budget. It is

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indeed one of the agendas that are often criticised. Tempo.com, one of the most trusted news media in Indonesia, highlighted the cost which can reach up to Rp. 4.3 Billion (US$ 327.795) for one visit. In 2018, DPR RI increased the overseas visits’ budget up to 70% from the previous year i.e. from Rp. 201.7 billion in 2017 to Rp. 343.5 billion in 2018.17 Other than the budget, most of the itinerary of the visits was also problematic. Critiques came from various parties and they argued that most of the visits were unnecessary. Many of the parliament members also travel to other places for an excursion during the visits. Some of the problematic travels include going to the Old Traford stadium during the visit to England or travelling to Spain during the visit to Greece. One of the most recent controversies was when Fadli Zon and other parliament members visited New York to attend the 4th World Conference of Speakers of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 2015. There were pictures of him and the head of DPR RI attending Donald Trump’s campaign. This was not part of the itinerary of the visit.18 Kiky also said that Fadli Zon causes many conficts in Indonesia. It refers to the controversies that occur after he gives statements, especially on his Twitter account. His controversial statements often include criticising the government under President Joko Widodo or even the President himself. He often gets hate comments on Twitter but that never stops him from posting. Since he frequently posts on twitter (Kiky exaggerated it by saying that he updates every two minutes), Kiky asked him whether he is actually Lambe Turah’s administrator, a famous gossip Instagram account in Indonesia that actively posts celebrities’ gossip on Instagram. She also questioned his job as the vice DPR RI by saying that his assistant probably does the job for him while he tweets. Kiky’s performance was in 2019, shortly before Indonesia’s presidential election. During the 2019 presidential election, the Indonesian political situation was quite heated up. Indonesians seemed to be divided into two groups. Fadli Zon is known as the supporter of presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. He frequently tweeted his support for him while criticising the incumbent president Joko Widodo. Kiky considered this as unethical for him as the vice DPR RI to do so. She made an analogy where two controversial Indonesian public fgures Lucinta Luna (an Indonesian transgender celebrity) and the rapper Young Lex had a confict, Fadli Zon should not take any sides. He should just adhere to Indonesia’s foreign political ideology, Non-Aligned or Neutral. This stand-up performance went viral on YouTube with millions of views. People seemed to like her performance as they felt represented. Kiky said what they wanted to say. It can be seen in the comment sections on YouTube. Some of the examples are as follows: Comment (2a): Because of this roasting performance, Kiky’s name is skyrocketing. (She) represents public vexation. Thanks Kiky. Comment (2b): Wow Kiky is so brave, but I laugh so hard LOL

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Comment (2c): The easiest person to be made as a roasting target is indeed this person, guys LOL. He lives to be bullied LOL. Most of the comments show appreciation and support for Kiky. After this phenomenal performance, Kiky became more famous. In 2021, she had her TV show Lapor Pak where she became one of the main acts in the show. She is famous for her wit while ‘roasting’ Indonesian politicians or public fgures. Another stand-up comedy performance criticising DPR RI was delivered by Abdur as shown below. Abdur’s performance criticising the election process of The People’s Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia ABDUR: Teman-teman ada 6608 orang yang berebut kursi di DPR RI 560 kursi.

Ini berarti, satu orang itu cuma punya peluang menang 8%. 8%! Memang tidak semua tapi ada orang yang menghabiskan uang banyak untuk mendapatkan posisi ini. Pertanyaannya sekarang adalah, orang gila mana yang menghabiskan uang banyak, untuk investasi yang peluang dia kalah adalah 92%? Orang gila mana? Makanya kalau ada yang bilang “Ah anggota DPR itu sudah gila”. Hei mereka itu sudah gila dari awal. Dari awal! (Penonton tertawa) ABDUR: My friends, there are 6608 people competing for 560 positions in DPR RI (The People’s Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia). It means one can only have an 8% probability to win. Eight percent! Although it is not everyone, there are some people willing to spend a huge sum of money to get this position. The question is, which insane person spends a lot of money to invest in something with a 92% probability of losing? Which insane person? That is why if there is someone who says “Ah DPR members are crazy” Hey, they have been crazy since the beginning. The very beginning! (Audience laughs) In this performance, Abdur highlighted the election process of the DPR members where splurging money on political campaigns is very common. People who want to be the legislative member of DPR, central or regional, can spend hundreds of millions or even billions of rupiahs on their campaign. Although the Komisi Pemilihan Umum Republik Indonesia (The General Elections Commission of the Republic of Indonesia) has set the rules for campaigns, ‘money politics’ is still very prevalent in Indonesia. Serangan fajar, which literally means dawn attack, is the term for money politics in Indonesia. It is called that way because the candidates usually give money to people before the election with the expectation that they will get their votes. When people said that the DPR members are crazy (because of their controversial policy or individual action), Abdur stated that they have been crazy even before they were elected or lost the votes. This is because most of them willingly spend a huge amount of money to get the position with a high risk of losing (around 92%).

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In real life situations, some candidates who already spent a lot of money but did not get elected ended up experiencing mental health issues (pejoratively referred to as crazy or “gila” in Bahasa Indonesia). In the latest legislative elections in 2019 for example, there were a lot of unelected candidates who showed symptoms of depression and mental breakdowns such as walking naked and screaming on the street. One female candidate even died by suicide.19

Abdur’s Phenomenal “Demonstration” during the Grand Final of SUCI 4 in 2014 The following excerpt shows Abdur’s performance during the grand fnal of the 4th Stand-Up Comedy Indonesia in Kompas TV 2014. He performed before  the presidential election and he used this moment to express his concern about the country and the accomplishments of the previous presidents. He skilfully played with the words and made them all rhyme with “a” sound. ABDUR: Sebagai anak nelayan dari Lamakera, saya melihat Indonesia itu seperti kapal

tua, yang berlayar tak tahu arah. Arahnya ada, hanya nahkoda kita yang tak bisa membaca. Mungkin dia bisa membaca, tapi tertutup hasrat membabi buta. (Penonton bertepuk tangan) ABDUR: As a fsherman’s son from Lamakera, I see Indonesia as an old ship, sailing without knowing where to go. It has a destination, but the captain could not see it, blinded by his desire. (Audience applauds) ABDUR: Hasrat hidupi keluarga, saudara, kolega, dan mungkin istri muda. ABDUR: The desire to fend for his family, brothers and sisters, colleagues, and

maybe his mistress. (Audience laughs) ABDUR: Indonesia itu memang seperti kapal tua.

Dengan penumpang berbagai rupa, ada dari Sumatra, Jawa, Madura, Sumbawa hingga Papua. Bersatu dalam Nusantara. (Audience clap) ABDUR: Indonesia is indeed like an old ship. With diverse passengers, from Sumatra, Java, Madura, Sumbawa, to Papua. United in Nusantara. (Audience claps) ABDUR: Enam kali sudah kita ganti nahkoda, tapi masih jauh dari kata sejahtera.

Audience cheers, claps, and laughs) ABDUR: We have changed the captain six times, but still far from prosperity.

(Audience cheers, claps, and laughs) …

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ABDUR: Nahkoda pertama sang Proklamator bersama Hatta, membangun dengan se-

mangat Pancasila dan terkenal di kalangan Wanita. Ia pernah berkata mampu guncangkan dunia dengan 10 pemuda, tapi itu kan kurang 1 untuk tim sepak bola. (Audience laughs & claps) ABDUR: The frst captain, the proclaimer with Hatta, built the nation with Pancasila spirit and was famous among women. He once said that he can shake the world with 10 young men, but that means we need one more to make a football team. (Audience laughs & claps) ABDUR: Kalau begini kapan kita baru ikut piala dunia?

(Audience claps) ABDUR: If this is the case, then when will we join the world cup?

(Audience claps) ABDUR: Nahkoda ke dua, 32 tahun berkuasa.

Datang dengan program Bernama PELITA. Bapak pembangunan bagi mereka, bagi saya tidak ada bedanya. Tidak ada! (Audience claps) ABDUR: The second captain ruled for 32 years. Came with a programme named PELITA. The father of development for them, for me there’s no diference. Nothing! (Audience claps) ABDUR: Penumpang bersuara berakhir di penjara, atau hilang di lautan tanpa berita.

(Audience laughs and claps) ABDUR: Passengers who speak up ended up in jail, or missing in the ocean with-

out any news. ABDUR: Nahkoda ke tiga, sang wakil yang naik tahta. Mewarisi pecah belahnya masa

orba. Belum sempat menjelajah Samudra, ia terhenti di tahun pertama. Dibanggakan di Eropa dipermainkan di Indonesia. Jerman dapat ilmunya, kita dapat apa? Antrian Panjang nonton flmnya. (Audience cheers, claps and laughs) ABDUR: The third captain, the vice-captain who ascended the throne. Inherited the chaos of the new order. He hasn’t even sailed the sea, he was stopped in his frst year. Praised in Europe but being played in Indonesia. Germany got his knowledge, what do we get? The long queue to watch the movie about him. (Audience cheers, claps, and laughs) ABDUR: Nahkoda selanjutnya, sang Kyai dengan hati terbuka.

Ia terhenti dalam sidang istimewa ketika tokoh-tokoh reformasi berebut istana. “Potong bebek ajaa.” Kata Gus Dur featuring Ursula. (Audience laughs)

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ABDUR: The next captain, the Kyai (an expert in Islam, usually Javanese) with

a big heart. He was stopped in a special trial when reformation fgures fought over the National Palace. “Just cut the duck”, said Gus Dur and Ursula. (Audience laughs) ABDUR: Nahkoda ke lima, nahkoda pertama seorang Wanita.

Dari tangan ibunya, bendera pusaka tercipta. Kata bapaknya berikan aku sepuluh pemuda, tapi apa daya itu diluar kemampuan ibu beranak tiga. Kalau mau sepuluh pemuda, ambil saja dari followersnya Raditya Dika. (Audience laughs) ABDUR: The ffth captain, is the frst female captain. By her mother’s hand, the national fag was made. Her father once said “give me ten young men”, but that’s beyond the capability of a mother with three daughters. If he wants ten young men, he can just take them from Raditya Dika’s followers. (Audience laughs) ABDUR: Nahkoda ke enam bagian A, kenapa bagian A? Sengaja agar tetap pada rima A.

Dua kali mengungguli perolehan suara, dua kali disumpah atas nama Garuda. Tapi itu hanya awal cerita. Cerita panjangnya terpampang di banyak media. Lapindo, Century, Hambalang, kami menolak lupa. (Audience cheering, clapping, and some giving standing ovation) ABDUR: The sixth captain part A. Why part A? So, I can stay in the rhyme. Won the voting twice, sworn in the name of Garuda twice. But that’s just the beginning of the story. The complete story displayed in many media. Lapindo, Century, Hambalang, we refuse to forget! (Lapindo, Century, and Hambalang are three major political cases during President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Era) (Audience cheering, clapping, and some giving standing ovation) ABDUR: Setelah empat album yang entah seperti apa, mungkin dia akan membuat flm.

Malam minggu istana. (Audience laughs) ABDUR: After four albums which we don’t know where they go, maybe he wants to make a movie. National Palace Saturday Night. (Audience laughs)

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ABDUR: Teman-teman, kini 2014 telah tiba, saatnya kita kembali memilih nahkoda.

Pastikan dia yang mengerti Bhineka Tunggal Ika, bukan boneka milik Amerika. ABDUR: My friends, now 2014 has come, it’s time for us to vote for the captain

again. Make sure he is the one who understands Bhineka Tunggal Ika, not a doll owned by America. (Audience laughs and claps) Abdur became the runner up of the 4th Stand-Up Comedy Indonesia (SUCI 4) in 2014 despite the standing ovation he received from the audience during and at the end of his performance. The judges reminded him that, even though he has a mission to speak up for his community, he was competing for stand-up comedy and he should put the comedy as the main element of his performance. One of the judges, Raditya Dika, commented: Gua tau lo punya keresahan, gua tau lo butuh menyampaikan ini. Tapi ketika kita bicara dalam konteks stand-up comedy, gimana kita membungkusnya dalam sebuah komedi, sebuah hal yang bisa memacu tawa, itu memang PR yang harus kita cari sama-sama. Tapi sebagai sebuah pertunjukan, itu tadi keren banget. … Buat gue ini adalah malam yang indah buat stand-up comedy, karena tadi Adit tampil di sini, lo tampil di sini. Hanya di stand-up comedy lah orang-orang seperti kalian bisa didengarkan. I know you have anxiety; I know you have to convey this message. But when we talk about it within a stand-up comedy context, how to wrap it up in the form of comedy, something to trigger laughter, that is what we have to think about together. … For me, this is a beautiful night in stand-up comedy. Because Adit performed here, and you performed here. Only in stand-up comedy do people like both of you can be heard. This performance was uploaded on SUCI’s ofcial YouTube channel in August 2020 and got millions of views.20 People posted comments on the video in 2022 as well and most of them appreciated his performance even though he did not win the competition. For them, it is such a masterpiece and Abdur is “the winner without a crown”. Not only his poetic way of delivering the performance but also the message he was trying to convey made this performance memorable. He represents most Indonesians, especially the Easterners, and he bravely risked everything; including his opportunity to win the competition. He stood up for the people and punched up really hard.

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Some of the comments are given below: Comment (3a): Thank you Abdur. As Eastern fellows, we love you. Comment (3b): There are consequences met, sacrifcing the competition for the oration. Prioritising common interests rather than his personal interests, there must be a scarifcation in every decision. A hero without a trophy. Respect, brother! Comment (3c): Abdur failed to be the frst winner, but this set has become the most monumental performance so far in SUCI. #Elegant. Comment (3d): In 2022 I watched this again, and I am still saying “Abdur is so crazy!”. My favourite comic, and what people said is true, “The winner without a crown”. But for me, Abdur is an intelligent comic with real concern and not fake, which makes us laugh at this country’s silliness. Arie Kriting from SUCI 3 and Abdur from SUCI 4 are known for bringing political and social issues, especially related to Eastern Indonesians. The next section discusses the minority discourse brought up by the stand-up comedians in the Indonesian context.

Speaking Up or My People: Minority Discourse in Indonesian Stand-Up Comedy Bhinneka Tunggal Ika is the ofcial national motto of Indonesia. It is taken from a 14th century Old Javanese poem, Kakawin Sutasoma, written by Mpu Tantular during the Majapahit era.21 The phrase literally means “Out of many, one” and commonly translated as “Unity in Diversity”. The phrase is written in the scroll and gripped by the national symbol’s claw Garuda Pancasila. The philosophy of the national logo and motto clearly represents the Indonesian multicultural society. The archipelago which consists of 17,508 islands with 1,340 recognised ethnic groups22 is being held together, forming one nation with one ideology, Pancasila. However, maintaining Unity in Diversity is not an easy task. Indonesia lost one of its territories, East Timor (now Timor Leste) on 5 May 1999. Until now, the separatist groups still exist in several regions and persistently demand independence from Indonesia, especially the Eastern part of Indonesia, Papua. The term Eastern Indonesia is vague as it is not an ofcial division of the country. Although it is not ofcial, Indonesia is seemingly divided into two regions i.e., the West and the East. Not to be confused with the Indonesian Time Zone which includes Western Indonesia Time, Eastern Indonesia Time, and Central Indonesia Time, this division is based not only on the location but also on the sociocultural factor. The division between the West and the East part of Indonesia occurred when Wallace (1869) explored the Indonesian archipelago and divided it into two parts, the West region (Indo Malayan) and the East region

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(Austro Malayan). The West region includes Sumatera, Java, Borneo, Lombok, and Sulawesi (Celebes), while the East region includes Timor, Moluccas, and Papua. In his study, Wallace reported that the Malays in the Western part of the archipelago are more civilised than the Papuans and other Easterners (as cited in Christina 2017: 16–17). This stereotype remains until now. Examples of Eastern Indonesian stand-up comedians famous for bringing up this issue in their performance are provided in the following section.

Arie Kriting and Abdur Talk about Discrimination and Stereotypes Received as Eastern Indonesian ARIE: Saya lihat-lihat juga itu pekerjaan itu kadang-kadang suka mendiskriminasi kita

orang Timur, sering sekali. Itu kita tuh paling sering, entah kenapa kita tuh sering ditaruh dalam seksi keamanan. Kegiatan apa pun kita seksi keamanan. Mulai dari kampus, setiap ospek itu saya ditaruh di keamanan. Pernah itu kita dikumpulkan satu ruangan itu hitam, keriting, mata menyala semua. Dikumpulkan satu ruangan, ternyata untuk seleksi panitia keamanan. …

Padahal negara ini berdiri itu tidak lepas juga dari campur tangan orang Timur. Iya, jangan oey oey betul ini sungguh. Eh, coba kalian lihat Sumpah Pemuda. Sumpah Pemuda itu tonggak berdirinya bangsa kita. Di situ ada Jong Batak, ada Jong Soematranen Bond, ada Jong Sunda, ada Jong Java, ada Jong Celebes, dan ada Jong Ambon. Weeh... ada ternyata perwakilan kami ada. Cuma yang tidak dijelaskan di kongres itu, mereka ngapain di kongres itu. Jangan sampai di situ mereka panitia keamanan juga. ARIE: When I see it, jobs are sometimes discriminating against us Easterners (Eastern Indonesian), most of the time. We are often, I do not know why, often assigned to the security section. We are in the security section at every event. Since the time I was a college student, in every student orientation event, I was always stationed in the security section. There was one time, we were being gathered in a room, in that room, everyone is black, curly, all with faring eyes. Being gathered in a room, for the selection of the security section committee. … This nation was formed with the help of the Easterners. That is right, do not say oey oey. It is true, really. Check the Youth Pledge. The Youth Pledge is the starting point of our nation. There were Jong Batak, Jong Soematranen Bond, Jong Sunda, Jong Java, Jong Celebes, and Jong Ambon. Wow, we have our representatives there. But what was not mentioned in that congress, was what they did there. Perhaps they were also assigned as security section committee.

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Discrimination and stereotype were presented in Arie’s performance above. Eastern Indonesians are stereotyped as a group of people with certain physical appearance who do menial jobs, even in an educational institution which are supposed to be more aware and accommodative of diferences as compared to other institutions. Abdur’s stand-up above demonstrates the inequality faced by East Indonesians in the era of President Soeharto’s administration. This era emphasised on “pembangunan” (development); however, the development of infrastructure focused mostly on Java Island. Electricity was also quite rare during the period. Abdur often brings social issues in his performance. His persona is that of an Eastern Indonesian delivering his social criticism, concern, anxiety, and discontent towards the inequality experienced by most Eastern Indonesians. Born in Larantuka, East Nusa Tenggara, he relates most of his performance to several issues in his region, which include the inequality of economic, infrastructure, and social developments as well as the negative stereotypes about most of the Eastern Indonesians. The themes presented in Arie and Abdur’s stand-up comedy can therefore become a powerful means of criticism by pointing out the contrasts between Eastern Indonesia with other ethnic groups and areas in Indonesia, in such a way that it raises people’s awareness of inequality in opportunity and development in the country (Setyaningsih 2013). Another example of Abdur’s performance highlighting the diferences among Eastern Indonesian with other Indonesians can be seen in the following excerpt. ABDUR: saya heran pembangunan itu selalu dibeda-bedakan selalu dibeda-bedakan pa-

dahal kita ini kan satu ibu pertiwi teman-teman, satu ibu pertiwi... saya tuh terkadang berpikir itu dengan frasa ibu pertiwi, kalau memang kita itu satu ibu pertiwi... apakah memang dulu tuh ada satu orang perempuan, kemudian melahirkan pulau-pulau di Indonesia kan Penonton: tertawa ABDUR: I was amazed why Indonesian development is not equal. We have one Mother Earth. Sometimes I think about the phrase Ibu Pertiwi.23 If we indeed belong to one Mother Earth, was there really a woman who gave birth to the islands of Indonesia. [Audience laughs] ABDUR: iya jadi kamar bersalin begitu, lampu terang, foto spot dimana-mana begitu...

kemudian ibu pertiwi berbaring “iya bu per”... ini panggilan akrab ibu pertiwi yaa Penonton: tertawa ABDUR: So there was a delivery room, with bright lights, photo spots everywhere, then Ibu Pertiwi laid (on the bed). “Okay Bu Per.” This is her nickname okay. [Audience laughs]

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ABDUR: “ya ibu per tarik nafas dalam-dalam” “ibu terus ibu terus kuat terus, kepalanya

sudah keluar, oke hiyaaa”… “Sumatera” Penonton : tertawa ABDUR: “Yes Ibu Per, take a deep breath”, “Keep pushing, there you go, okay that’s the baby’s head, okay, yes” “Sumatera” [Audience laughs] ABDUR: Sumatera lahir, dan itu adalah pulau yang paling susah lahir karena gunungnya

paling banyak Penonton: tertawa ABDUR: Sumatera was born, and that was the most difcult delivery since it has a lot of mountains. [Audience laughs] ABDUR: itu ibu pertiwi sampai robek-robek itu

Penonton: tertawa ABDUR: She got torn.

[Audience laughs] ABDUR: dan mungkin setelah itu, Kalimantan lahir, Jawa lahir, Bali lahir dan pulau-

pulau di bagian Indonesia Timur itu lahirnya paling terakhir... “iya ibu per” “tarik napas dalam-dalam ibu, terus ibu, iya terus sedikit lagi” “sedikit lagi, iya kepalanya sudah keluar, oke.. hiyaaa”... listrik mati Penonton: tertawa tepuk tangan ABDUR: and maybe after that, Borneo was born, then Java, Bali, and then islands in the Eastern Indonesia were born at the last. “Okay Ibu Per, take a deep breath maam, keep pushing maam, okay we’re almost there. That’s the head...and nooo”. Electricity went out. [Audience applauds] ABDUR: begitulah cara kami lahir, makanya wajar kalau kami gelap-gelap… saya Abdur,

terimakasih, selamat malam teman-teman... terimakasih banyak, terimakasih banyak! Penonton: tepuk tangan ABDUR: That’s how we were born. That’s why we have dark skin. My name is Abdur, thank you, good night. Thank you! [Audience applauds] By using an analogy of a mother delivering her babies, Abdur showed that the Eastern parts of Indonesia are relatively diferent from other parts of Indonesia in terms of the infrastructure and the peoples’ physical appearance. When the mother delivered the last baby, Eastern part of Indonesia, the electricity went of which made the last baby born with darker skin. It raised the issue of Eastern Indonesia residents’ limited access to electricity and their diferent physical appearance (dark skin, curly hair, etc.)

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Bringing Up Religious Issues to the Stage Social conficts occurring in Indonesia mostly come from issues like Suku (ethnicity), Agama (religion), Ras (race) and Antargolongan (intergroup diferences, usually economic and political diferences), which are abbreviated into SARA.24 Although there is a common ethical belief in Indonesia to avoid those issues to minimise confict, some stand-up comedians are brave enough to bring up sensitive issues such as politics and ethnicity as seen in the previous sections. However, only a few of them are daring enough to bring religion on to the stage. Compared to politics and ethnicity, religion is undoubtedly more sensitive. Some stand-up comedians who use religion as their source of joke have received a lot of backlash from the fundamentalists. In this section, we will discuss some of the socalled problematic stand-up comedy performances which use religion as a theme.

Joshua’s Joke on Islam as the Majority Religion JOSHUA: Dan yang gua bingung adalah, Cherly ini walaupun leader dia gagal meman-

faatkan kepemimpinannya, untuk mendulang popularitas untuk dirinya sendiri. Terbukti pada jaman dahulu, semua mata laki-laki tertuju pada Annisa, Annisa, Annisa, ya kan? Semua Annisa. Padahal skill nyanyi, yah tipis-tipis ya kan? Skill ngedance? Tipis-tipis Cantik? Relatif ya kan? Kenapaa?? Gua mikir, kenapa Annisa selalu unggul dari Cherly. Ah... sekarang gua ketemu jawabannya. Makanya Ce, Islam, hahaha Karena, di Indonesia ini, tidak ada yang bisa dikalahkan dengan bakat sebesar apa pun. Mayoritas! Mayoritas! JOSHUA: What makes me confused is, even though Cherly was the leader (of the girl group), she failed to use that to gain popularity for herself. It is proven that back then, men’s eyes were all on Annisa, Annisa, Annisa, right? All on Annisa. In fact, talking about singing skill, their level is just the same, right? Dancing skill? Just the same. Beauty? It’s relative, right? So why? I was thinking, why Annisa was always more popular than Cherly, Ah... now I found the answer. You should be a muslim, Ce (Refers to Cherly), haha. Because, in Indonesia, there is something that cannot be defeated by any great talent. The majority! The majority. The Indonesian government listed only six ofcial religions on its website. Islam is at the top of the list with the total number of believers amounting to 87.2%

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of the population, followed by Protestants at 6.9%, Catholics at 2.9%, Hindus at 1.7%, Buddhism at 0.7%, and Confucianism at 0.05%.25 In Indonesia, one must include any of those six religions in their ID card, even if one is a non-believer or believer of other Aliran Kepercayaan (an ofcial cover term for local religions and beliefs other than the six ofcial religions). In 2017, the government began to recognise other religions and allowed the people to write it on their ID card. Although there are hundreds of Aliran Kepercayaan such as Kapitayan, Sunda Wiwitan, and Agama Helu, they are written as Kepercayaan terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa (Believer of One Supreme God). As the majority religious group in Indonesia, Muslims receive more privilege than other groups. In his performance, Joshua highlights that Muslim celebrities usually get more support than the others. Cheryl, a Chinese Indonesian and Christian singer as well as the leader of a girl group band called Cherybelle, is not as popular as her partner Annisa, a Muslim singer. Joshua received a lot of backlash from the public after delivering this performance.

Conclusion Stand-up comedy can be as entertaining as it is powerful. It can be used as a tool for “punching up” at the other groups, usually the more powerful or the majority groups. In the Indonesian context, stand-up comedy has been used to express political opinions. Some famous Indonesian stand-up comedians bring out issues related to discrimination, ethnic stereotypes and religion. Thus, stand-up comedy is not merely entertainment, but it can also serve as a medium for delivering one’s political mission. In some cases, stand-up comedy can be seen as critiques masked with entertainment. It is considered as entertaining for some people while ‘attacking’ for some others. Incorporating various techniques of humour to present the comedies, the comics successfully deliver their messages to the audience. In the case of humour directed against those in superior position such as members of parliament and the privileged members of society, punching up is involved. Humour has been used by the “victim” to fght back the inequality they have faced. In terms of humour and relief theory, stand-up comedy does not just release tension due to confict and inequality, it has also become a form of disguised resistance towards the more powerful members of society.

Notes 1 Ketoprak refers to Javanese traditional drama that has a plot with the background of either a Persian or a Hindu-Javanese kingdom, while ludruk has a more contemporary background (Geertz 1976: 289). A ketoprak performance is usually accompanied by gamelan, the traditional ensemble music. Ketoprak is usually divided into several sessions including jejer/pasewakan (opening), dagelan (humour), perang (fght/war), and gandrung (romance). The dagelan session is usually performed in the middle of

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2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

a ketoprak performance in which the comedian delivers a humorous monologue followed by a group dialog. Acontemporary version of ketoprak was adopted by the comedy group Srimulat with their “Ketoprak Humor” which was broadcast on national television in the 1990–2000s. A comedy performance in Javanese language unique to Yogyakarta Special Region. https://www.terakota.id/ludruk-media-perjuangan-rakyat/ accessed 1 April 2021. Literally translated as “Pagupon is the house of pigeon, joining Nippon ( Japan) makes us more miserable.” https://widya2512.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/sejarah-awal-berdirinya-standup-comedy-di-indonesia/, https://theramonpapana.wordpress.com/open-mic-diindonesia/ accessed 1 April 2021. The New Order (Orde Baru) refers to the administration of the second president of Indonesia, Suharto, from 1966 to 1998. He used the term to contrast with the Old Order (Orde Lama), which refers to the presidency of his precursor, Sukarno. The New Order has been characterised by pervasive censorship on press and limitation on freedom of expression so people could hardly control the government’s policies. ht t ps://w idya 2512 .wordpre s s.com /2 015/01/07/seja r a h- awa l-berd i r i nyastand-up-comedy-di-indonesia/ accessed 17 May 2021. https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/10/31/muslim-christian-comediansget-death threats-over-video-about-cooking-pork.html accessed 1 April 2021. https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/11/07/indonesian-comics-tread-fneline-between humor-blasphemy.html accessed 1 April 2021. These theories are also frequently drawn on, for example by Gonzales and Wiseman (2005), Ross (2005), Krikmann (2006), Scheel (2017), Mohamed and Bnini (2020). MLI (Indonesian Comedy Council) is a creative comedy-based company that initially began as an underground comedy show. Founded by former Stand Up Comedy Indonesia Kompas TV fnalists Tretan Muslim and Coki Pardede along with several other comedians, MLI develops talents, provides creative services, organises comedy events, and sells merchandise. vhttps://www.balairungpress.com/2020/11/menekan-kebebasan-tertawa-uu-itedari-lensa komedi/ accessed 11 April 2021. Alexis was a hotel and massage parlour closed by the provincial government due to permit letter abuse. Instead of operating only hotel and massage services as stated in the letter, Alexis secretly operated as sex work business. https://tirto.id/skandal-seks-politikus-indonesia-ciec accessed 14 March 2022. An Indonesian dance and folk music, also one of the most popular musical genres in Indonesia. https://megapolitan.okezone.com/read/2015/05/12/338/1148865/banyak-kondombekas-berserakan-di-kompleks-dpr accessed 15 March 2022. https://edukasi.okezone.com/read/2022/03/13/624/2561005/besaran-gaji-honorertak-masuk-akal-dan-bikin-miris accessed 20 March 2022. https://fokus.tempo.co/read/1000151/kunjungan-ke-luar-negeri-uang-sakuanggota-dpr-rp-6-juta-per-hari accessed 19 May 2021. https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20150908104558-32-77282/deretankasus-kunjungan-luar-negeri-dpr accessed 19 May 2021. https://plus.kapanlagi.com/beragam-ulah-caleg-gagal-jadi-gila-sampai-bugil-dijalan-98e22c.html Abdur’s performance YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXXvolpx-hA https://symbolhunt.com/indonesia/ accessed 26 May 2022. https://www.embassyofndonesia.org/basic-facts/ accessed 21 March 2022. Commonly translated as Mother Earth, motherland. The national anthropomorphic personifcation of Indonesia.

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24 https://www.merdeka.com/jatim/ketahui-kepanjangan-sara-dan-pengertiannyapelajari-lebih lanjut-kln.html?page=1 accessed 6 April 2021. 25 https://indonesia.go.id/profl/agama accessed 7 April 2021.

Works Cited Ali, Abdul Rozak Mahbub. Stand-up Comedy Indonesia Sebagai Medium Satire Terhadap Isu Diskriminasi Sosial (Studi Semiotik Stand-up Comedy Indonesia Periode 2011–2018 Di Kompas TV). Universitas Airlangga, 2019. Attardo, Salvatore. “A Primer for the Linguistics of Humor”. The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008, pp. 101–155. Berger, Arthur Asa. The Art of Comedy Writing. New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publisher, 2011. ———. “Why We Laugh and What Makes Us Laugh: The Enigma of Humor.” Europe’s Journal of Psychology, vol. 9, no. 2, 2013, pp. 210–213, doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i2.599. Bertrand, Jacques. Nationalism and Ethnic Confict in Indonesia. Cambridge University Press, 2004. Dynel, Marta. “Beyond a Joke: Types of Conversational Humour.” Linguistics and Language Compass, vol. 3, no. 5, 2009, pp. 1284–1299, doi:10.1111/j.1749–818X. 2009.00152.x. Geertz, Cliford. The Religion of Java. The University of Chicago Press. 1976. Gonzales, Estrella Marie, and Richard L. Wiseman. “Ethnic Identifcation and the Perceived Humor and Rudeness of Ethnic Jokes.” Intercultural Communication Studies, vol. XIV, no. 2, 2005, pp. 170–83, papers2://publication/uuid/34A3A3B4-FC8C-4BC3– 8233- DA58A0BA966C. Holmes, Caren, “Laughing Against White Supremacy: Marginalized Performance of Resistance Comedy.” Senior Independent Study Theses, Paper 7770, 2017, https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/7770 Jakoaho, Ville. “OH MY GOD, THAT NIGGER SAID GUN !”: Use of Ethnic Humor in Modern Stand-Up Comedy. February, 2012. Krefting, Rebecca. All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Krikmann, Arvo. “Contemporary Linguistic Theories of Humor.Pdf.” Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, vol. 33, 2006, pp. 27–58. Mintz, Lawrence E. “Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation Source : American Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, Special Issue : American Humor, (Spring, 1985), Pp. Published by : The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL : Http.” American Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, 1985, pp. 71–80. Mohamed, Bassou, and Chakib Bnini. “Analyzing the Incongruity Theory of Humor : George Carlin’s Stand-Up Comedy as a Case Study.” International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR), vol. 54, no. 5, pp. 22–33. Munandar, Anggita Devi et al, “Roasting in Stand-Up Comedy:Using Language as a Rhetorical Technique in Humor.” Proceedings of the 9th Graduate Students Conference, Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 10 October 2020, pp. 22–31. Nadia, Hassaine. “Code Switching in Stand-Up Verbal Humour.” IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Literature (IMPACT: IJRHAL), vol. 2, no. 8, August 2014, pp. 13–20. Nilsen, Alleen and Don Nilsen. “Literature and Humor.” The Primer of Humor Research, edited by Victor Raskin, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008, pp. 243–280.

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Ross, Alison. “The Language of Humour.” The Language of Humour, 2005, pp. 1–117, doi:10.4324/9780203984567. Scheel, Tabea. Defnitions, Theories, and Measurement of Humor, 2017, pp. 9–30, doi:10.1007/978-3-319–65691-5. Schwarz, Jeannine. “Linguistic Aspects of Verbal Humor in Stand-Up Comedy.” Universität Des Saarlandes, Universität des Saarlandes, 2010. Setyaningsih, Nina. “Ethnic Stereotypes in Stand-Up Comedy.” Proceedings of International Conference on Indonesian Studies, Universitas Indonesia. 13–14 June 2013. pp. 144–157. Wijana, I. D. P. “Political Humor in Indonesian.” KnE Social Sciences, vol. 3, no. 5, 2018, p. 312, doi:10.18502/kss.v3i5.2340.

3 THE JAMEL COMEDY CLUB (Mis)understanding Stand-Up Comedy’s Relationship with Urban Culture in France Jonathan Ervine

Comedy’s role in identity negotiation and potential to provide an insight into how a nation sees itself and those it perceives as others has been discussed by scholars for several decades.1 Rappoport states that humour’s capacity to relieve tension makes it “particularly important for minorities who have traditionally sufered from prejudice” (30), and further argues that the ways in which an ethnic or racial group utilises humour can provide an indication of their social status (65–66). The fact that such discussions have a longer history within British and American academic circles than they do in France owes much to the very diferent history of stand-up comedy in France. Although Mireille Rosello explored evocations of racial stereotypes within French comedy in her 1998 book Declining the Stereotype (61–64), it was several years after the turn of the millennium before more frequent and detailed studies of stand-up comedy in France emerged. The impact of the Jamel Comedy Club and broader discussion of the way in which stand-up comedians in France evoke socio-political issues on stage have attracted increasing attention within the last ffteen years, from academics in felds such as sociology, communication and cultural studies.2 This is in no small part due to the impact that the television programme Jamel Comedy Club has had on the visibility and status of stand-up comedy in France. On the frst episode of the Jamel Comedy Club broadcast on Canal Plus in 2006, host Jamel Debbouze declared “on est tous des Américains” (“we are all Americans”) and proceeded to explain what stand-up comedy was to the audience at the venue in Paris where the show was being flmed. For Debbouze, stand-up comedy – as he and many of the performers on his television show perceived it – was an American art form and the idols of many of the performers were humourists from the other side of the Atlantic. Jamel Debbouze is thus an example of a French-born ethnic minority comedian and actor who identifes

DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-5

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with a cultural form that he associates with black American performers. There are of course a great many American comedians who are white and not necessarily from under-privileged backgrounds, but the often-cited role models of Jamel Comedy Club performers specifcally include black American comedians such as Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Dave Chapelle. As we will see, this identifcation with a form of culture linked with the United States and in particular minority groups in the United States has parallels with the growth in popularity of hip-hop in France during the 1980s. Debbouze feeling the need to tell his audience what stand-up comedy was owes much to the art form’s very diferent history in France compared to the United States of America or the United Kingdom. Although stand-up comedy did exist in France prior to the Jamel Comedy Club, it was often more sketchbased and generally associated with middle-aged white performers. Furthermore, French academic publications have often alluded to the American roots of stand-up comedy when contextualising the Jamel Comedy Club3 and the weekly show’s major role in popularising and re-defning the genre in France. The journalist Rossana Di Vincenzo has argued that although a form of stand-up comedy existed in France prior to the Jamel Comedy Club, the programme “popularised a modern, more youthful and faster-paced version” and that “the appearance of [the] initial troop on television screens shook up the mainly male, white and middle-aged world of French humour” (Di Vincenzo, Comment le Jamel Comedy Club a impose le stand-up en France). In this chapter, we will see that the Jamel Comedy Club has a signifcance that goes beyond the ways in which it increased the visibility of stand-up comedy in France. Crucially, its origins owe much to a desire to not just present a largely new form of entertainment to French audiences but also to play a role in increasing diversity within French television and giving a greater voice to young people from ethnic minorities. Due to this socio-political context, the programme has been held up as an example of urban culture akin to hip-hop by reviewers and journalists. Whilst there are parallels that can be drawn between the way in which hip-hop culture became popular in 1980s France and the way in which the Jamel Comedy Club helped to popularise stand-up comedy two decades later, there are also signifcant nuances that need to be introduced. In particular, the relationship between the show and French urban culture has often been over-simplifed by journalists who have not adequately acknowledged the ways in which urban culture and hip-hop is referenced by the performers who have been part of the Jamel Comedy Club. In order to assess the impact of the Jamel Comedy Club, this chapter will assess how the French stand-up scene looks today compared to when the programme was frst shown on French television in 2006. It will also do so by examining the career trajectories of several of the comedians who performed in the initial series of the Jamel Comedy Club and how they have refected on their involvement. In particular, it will draw on two extended interviews with Jamel Comedy Club performers, Noom Diawara and Dédo that were conducted in 2017.

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The Origins of the Jamel Comedy Club: A Response to Tensions in Urban Areas Autumn 2005 was a time which saw signifcant tensions in many housing estates in France following an incident in Clichy-sous-Bois, which is located approximately ten miles northeast of Paris. Two young people – 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Syed Benna – were fatally injured after being electrocuted in a substation following a police chase. A third teenager – 17-year-old Muhittin Altun – was severely injured. The event raised questions about the policing of large built-up areas known as banlieues that are found on the periphery of major French cities; a particular focus fell on tensions between their young residents and the police. In addition, the fact that all three of the young people who sought refuge in the substation were from visible minorities – Traoré being of Mauritanian descent, Benna of Tunisian origins, and Altun of Kurdish Turkish extraction – led many to ask questions about the extent to which the young people’s racial background led to them being pursued by police. Although France’s model of citizenship is one in which people are theoretically not treated diferently due to factors such as race or ethnicity, it is often suggested that there is a disconnect between theory and reality. For example, Eric Macé has argued that discrimination in France is often based on racial stereotyping rather than ethnic or cultural factors and that such processes revolve around “physical and symbolic attributes attached to racialised groups” (179). Such reasons help to explain why the concept of visible minorities is important in a French context. Young people from France’s banlieues have long complained of being subjected to confrontational policing and frequent identity checks (Mucchielli 105). In addition, they have at times been scapegoated by sensationalist reporting about France’s banlieues that has been evident in the media and within political discourse (see Champagne, Hargreaves, Rigouste). This has led many of them to feel that their concerns have been ignored, and their views are not represented by politicians or within the media. Within Judith Sibony’s documentary Chocolat: une histoire de rire (Chocolate: a History of Laughter),4 several people who grew up in France’s banlieues and/or are from visible minorities mention how the 1980s was a time when they did not feel represented on French television and within entertainment. Furthermore, the 1980s was a period during which the white French comedian Michael Leeb performed sketches that portrayed members of minority groups in a highly stereotypical manner. Senegal-born former French government minister Rama Yade (34) has been particularly critical of a sketch referred to as ‘L’Africain’ (the African), making the following observations in a book about the history of black people in France: By playing with the collective subconscious of his audience, Michael Leeb  – in blackface and with red lipstick – based his entire career as a comedian on such cliches. These notably included the supposed African accent, presented as the expression of an intellectual handicap, and which for many years did not surprise anyone.

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In Judith Sibony’s aforementioned documentary about humour, Patson – a Parisborn comedian of Ivorian descent who performed in the initial series of the Jamel Comedy Club – mentions that Leeb’s ‘l’Africain’ sketch led to him being bullied in his school playground by white classmates. Noom Diawara – who performed in the initial series of the Jamel Comedy Club described how “for my whole childhood, the only comedians I saw were white” and added that the rise to prominence of Jamel Debbouze created “a sort of avalanche” (2). The unrest of autumn 2005 led to French television channels refecting on how they could increase diversity on screen and feature more members of visible minorities (see Quemener 104, Béru, Des Codes pour rire 43). This created a window of opportunity for the Jamel Comedy Club although, as we will see later, the programme’s relationship with urban culture and France has sometimes been over-simplifed. The way in which the Jamel Comedy Club created a space where performers with minority and/or banlieue roots gained prominence has parallels with the rise in profle of hip-hop in 1980s France. The emergence of hip-hop in France is particularly associated with an infuential but ultimately short-lived weekly television programme called H.I.P. H.O.P. that was broadcast on French channel TF1 from January to December 1984. It has been heralded as the frst television programme in the world to be entirely devoted to hip-hop (Di Vincenzo, “Premier sur le rap”). Twenty-fve years after its appearance on screens in France, the television channel Arte produced a documentary series entitled La vraie histoire de H.I.P. H.O.P. (The real story of H.I.P. H.O.P.) that analysed its origins, infuence, and legacy. In this series, many people who grew up in France’s banlieues and/or are of West African or North African descent talk about how an iconic but ultimately short-lived television programme about hip-hop led to them feeling represented for the frst time. Soprano, a Marseille-born rapper of Comorian descent, described H.I.P. H.O.P. presenter Sidney Duteil as “the frst black person on [French] television” (“L’émission extra-terrestre”) and credited the programme with “making young people from housing estates who are kind of excluded feel that they were French” (“Sidney made in France”). In other words, the show meant that young people from the banlieues not just saw people on television who were like them but also came to feel that their experiences and passions were part of French culture. Despite parallels that exist between Jamel Comedy Club and H.I.P. H.O.P. in terms of how they helped to empower young people who were from racial and ethnic minorities and/or from the banlieues, there are also notable diferences between the programmes. Jamel Comedy Club was launched by Canal Plus as part of French media’s reaction to a specifc series of events, namely the autumn 2005 unrest that followed the deaths of Bouna Traoré and Syed Benna in Clichy-sousBois. However, as we will see later, not all of the performers on the show were from the banlieues of major French cities or of foreign descent. Contrastingly, H.I.P. H.O.P. seems to have emerged to a much greater extent from a cultural evolution connected to socio-political issues – namely, the rise in popularity of hip-hop in France – rather than a specifc dramatic incident that provoked

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political debate about levels of inequality in French society. In 1982, under François Mitterrand’s presidency, the state’s near monopoly of radio in France ended and gave rise to many new stations (see Kuhn 15, 19–20). This created a greater diversity of programmes and led to a variety of diferent forms of music fnding an outlet on French airwaves; Bazin (21–22) notes that this included what he has termed ‘black American music’ and helped to facilitate the arrival of hiphop in France. He further argues that hip-hop culture in France formed part of a response to rising inequalities (see Bazin 26–27).

But Is the Jamel Comedy Club Really an Example of Hip-Hop Culture? It is clear that there are certain parallels between the impact of the Jamel Comedy Club on French culture – and particular young people – since 2006 and the growth of hip-hop culture in France during the 1980s. However, there are also several important diferences. On certain levels, the Jamel Comedy Club has elements in common with the 1984 television programme H.I.P. H.O.P. Both featured presenters from ethnic minorities who grew up in the outer fringes of Paris; H.I.P. H.O.P. host Sidney is from Argenteuil and of Caribbean descent whilst Jamel Debbouze is of Moroccan descent and from Trappes. Furthermore, their respective television shows involved cultural forms associated with the United States being reappropriated by young people in France. An important part of the history of hip-hop in France involves relations between the centre and periphery of major cities. Forms of hip-hop such as rap music, break dance and grafti initially became particularly popular in France’s banlieues, often – although not exclusively – among young people from ethnic minorities. A signifcant part of the growth in popularity of break dancing in 1980s France stemmed from performance spaces developing within central Paris and its banlieues; this meant that its roots in the fringes of major cities did not prevent its emergence in the centres and thus created a form of interaction between central Paris and the densely populated housing estates on its periphery (see Bazin 1995, 140). It can certainly be said that via break dance, hip-hop introduced dance to new audiences in France, and it has been suggested that the Jamel Comedy Club attracted new audiences to Parisian theatres (see Karmitz). Furthermore, both hip-hop culture and the Jamel Comedy Club have been heralded as having played a role in re-defning French identity (see McCarren 11; Cervulle et al. 8). When discussing Jamel Debbouze’s solo shows in 1999, the journalist Jérôme Jeanjean (21) characterised the performances as being both ground-breaking and opening up parallels with hip-hop culture, arguing that they tended to “mock the monotonous conventions of the comic [in a] show constructed in the manner of a rap set”. When the Jamel Comedy Club was launched in 2006, several journalists similarly sought to situate it within urban culture and/or hip-hop culture. Writing in the news weekly L’Express, Elisha Karmitz described the Jamel Comedy Club as representing “the comedy of the banlieues”. In the weekly arts magazine

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Télérama, Florence Broizat referred to what she saw as “humour fred out on a stage that considers itself as urban, a fower from the stairwells of tower blocks, a sample inspired by hip-hop”. However, as I have argued elsewhere (Ervine Humour in Contemporary France 99–101), the way in which some French journalists have sought to associate the Jamel Comedy Club with both banlieue culture and hip-hop culture is somewhat reductive. Firstly, a signifcant number of the initial generation of performers were not actually from the banlieues of major French cities and some observers appeared to overly confate racial minority status and banlieue roots. Noom Diawara has said that media coverage of the launch of the Jamel Comedy Club was characterised by an approach that seemed to treat the performers as if they were all “kids from housing estates who were ex-delinquents who stopped getting into trouble in order to get into comedy” (4). In addition, he has pointed out that the initial group of performers featured performers such as Blanche, Dédo and Alexis Macquart who were white and thus could not be categorised in the same way as comedians from visible minorities (Diwarara 4). When it comes to situating this initial generation of Jamel Comedy Club performers in relation to urban culture, it is also worth remembering that several of the comedians – both those who were from visible minorities and those who were not – grew up in provincial France in small to medium sized towns or rural areas and many are from reasonably middle-class backgrounds (see Ervine 2019, 99–101). During several episodes of the initial series of the Jamel Comedy Club, Jamel Debbouze introduced well-known fgures in the audience who would often be sitting near the bar of the comedy venue at which the programme was being flmed. On several occasions, the celebrities introduced were well-known rappers. However, the presence of such fgures in several episodes should not be taken to mean that the show as a whole consistently celebrated hip-hop culture. Indeed, several performers made jokes about the world of French hip-hop and the way in which rappers use the French language. Noom Diawara (5) has talked of making fun of rappers – and indeed naming specifc rappers when doing so – right from the start of his stand-up career, and said that the novelty of this led to a somewhat negative initial reaction from rappers. However, he has noted that the popularity of the Jamel Comedy Club ultimately led to rappers becoming more accepting of being the target of jokes (see Diawara 5). Diawara was not the only member of the initial cohort of the Jamel Comedy Club to make fun of rap music; le Comte de Bouderbala (real name Sami Ameziane) performed material during his initial appearances on the Jamel Comedy Club that focused on how rappers have used and mis-used the French language in their lyrics and has continued to do so in his subsequent solo career. The Jamel Comedy Club also difers from H.I.P. H.O.P. due to being flmed in central Paris rather than on the peripheries of major French cities. Furthermore, it arguably has less of a local community focus than Sidney’s 1980s television programme. A key element of H.I.P. H.O.P. was that it helped to publicise break dance groups and other performers showcasing their art in their own

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neighbourhood. The fact that H.I.P. H.O.P. was shown on a popular national television channel helped to boost awareness of hip-hop culture among residents of its banlieues and the country as a whole. The Jamel Comedy Club contrastingly gave a platform to performers who were slightly more established and experienced, although they and indeed their brand of stand-up comedy had not previously been aforded as prominent a platform as it received by virtue of being broadcast in a weekly early Saturday evening slot on Canal Plus. That H.I.P. H.O.P. is widely seen as having had such a cultural impact in France is even more remarkable given that it was only broadcast between January and December of 1984 before being cancelled by TF1. Indeed, in 1980s France, some observers saw hip-hop as a mere passing phase (see Bazin 10, 128). However, France today remains the second-largest market for hip-hop in the world behind only the United States (Pégram 241). The short-lived nature of H.I.P. H.O.P. contrasts with the way that nine series of the Jamel Comedy Club were broadcast on TF1 between 2006 and 2016. One of the consequences of this is that there have been several diferent cohorts of French comedians whose prominence has increased in part thanks to their appearances on the Jamel Comedy Club. Stand-up comedy in France – or at least stand-up comedy that follows the model often associated with the United States and the United Kingdom – remains in its infancy, so it can be argued that it has not had as rapid and dramatic a breakthrough in France since 2006 as hip-hop did during the 1980s. When it comes to assessing the extent to which the Jamel Comedy Club’s brand of stand-up comedy constitutes a new branch of hip-hop culture, or where it should be situated in relation to hip-hop culture, the words of one of the performers in the initial series provide a potential solution. Noom Diawara said in 2017 that “urban culture is now a big family: it includes hip-hop, grafti, humour, it’s a mixture of things”, before adding that “it’s something that is generational rather than community-specifc” (5). What Diawara is in efect doing here by placing humour within the category of urban culture is to locate stand-up comedy – or at least the type of stand-up comedy associated with Jamel Comedy Club alongside rather than within hip-hop culture. Describing stand-up comedy in relation to “generational factors” thus locates it within youth culture, categorising it on the basis of the age of the person to whom it appeals. This type of characterisation means that stand-up comedy is not hampered by its status as a diferent type of performance to rap, breakdance and grafti as much as it would be if it were to be treated as a new branch of hip-hop culture; instead, it is treated as a cultural form that is in some ways diferent but which has commonalities with hip-hop culture in terms of the demographic(s) to which it appeals.

The Jamel Comedy Club as a Symbol of Continuity as Well as Renewal Due to the way in which it brought stand-up comedy and a diverse group of predominantly young comedians to prime-time audiences on French television,

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there is much reason to see the Jamel Comedy Club as a signifcant new development within French media and culture. However, the show can also be said – in some respects – to represent a form of continuity within the context of Canal Plus’s youth-focused entertainment output. Although the channel had not previously featured a major programme in which stand-up comedians performed on stage, it has nevertheless played a role in raising the profle of several stand-up comedians via a range of irreverent programmes. Olivier Mongin (45) argues that its programme Nulle Part Ailleurs, which was broadcast from 1987 to 2001, “reinvented the role of the comedian for television”. It is within this show that Jamel Debbouze started to become known via short segments in which he reviewed the latest cinematic releases. A key driving force behind many of Canal Plus’s comedy projects in recent decades has been Kader Aoun, who helped to establish the Jamel Comedy Club and also co-wrote and directed several of Jamel Debbouze’s solo comedy DVDs. Aoun, who was born and brought up in the northern fringes of Paris, initially became a writer on satirical programmes on Canal Plus in the late-1990s before working more closely with several comedians on sketch-based programmes. One of the frst of these was the hospital-based sitcom H which was broadcast on Canal Plus from 1998 to 2002 and featured Jamel Debbouze as well as the comedy duo Éric et Ramzy. Aoun also played a major role in launching the careers of Omar Sy and Fred Testot, whose initial rise to prominence owes much to a short and somewhat satirical comedy programme entitled Service après-vente des émissions (After-sales service for television programmes) in which the pair played the role of call centre workers. Although episodes only lasted between two and three minutes, the programme gained cult status and was broadcast from 2005 to 2012. Kader Aoun has played a signifcant role not just as a writer and producer, but also in identifying up-and-coming talents. He helped to cast the comedians who performed in Jamel Comedy Club and produced the frst three series. Since then, he has worked with comedians such as Fary, Mathieu Madénian and Thomas VDB. Jamel Debbouze is not the only person associated with the Jamel Comedy Club who had previously been involved with Canal Plus’s comedy output. Noom Diawara – who has since starred in several leading flm comedies in France – became involved in stand-up comedy having previously worked behind the scenes at the channel. Having initially gained work experience on Omar Sy and Fred Testot’s Service après-vente des émissions, he became a writer and producer. Indeed this, along with writing jokes for others, was initially his main focus rather than performing (Diawara 1). In response to a question about the importance that Canal Plus has played in his journey as a comedian, he has suggested that the channel is the only one on French television which could have provided a launchpad for his career: Canal Plus was the only channel where there was diversity. There was Jamel Debbouze, there was Omar and Fred. It gave the impression of being

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innovative, it was the only one where there were opportunities and where there was young humour. If you look at TF1, it was kind of based on old humour for housewives aged ffty and above whereas Canal was the only place with a Canal spirit that combined youthfulness and humour. Consequently, of course all the best things of the time were on Canal Plus and it was Canal that was aspirational. And then there were the best television series and comment pieces, it was the number one for humour at the time. (Diawara 1) Diawara’s description of the brand of humour associated with TF1 – France’s most popular television channel – is not the only reason why it would have been an unlikely place for a programme such as the Jamel Comedy Club to be launched. The reasons for this stem to a large degree from the show having emerged within the previously mentioned context of French television channels’ attempts to provide more space for young people from visible minorities. Whilst this became a pressing issue due to the unrest in parts of urban France in autumn 2005, comments made by Jamel Debbouze in a 2011 interview with French arts weekly Télérama suggest that increasing diversity on screen has also been necessary for other reasons: French people are not familiar with their country’s immigration, they are scared of it. It’s normal because it’s TF1 that has presented it! And given that, in the run-up to every presidential election they are presented with the best argument: fear of the foreigner… I am just trying to get to know France and make sure that France gets to know us. It’s the same thing at the Jamel Comedy Club, the theatre where I put on young comedians, many of whom have immigrant roots. (Ferenczi 18) In other words, Jamel Debbouze held TF1 responsible for sensationalist news coverage that rendered greater on-screen diversity even more necessary in order to counteract negative stereotypes. Challenging perceptions of France’s banlieues has also been a preoccupation of Debbouze ever since his frst television appearance. During the French public television’s annual charity Telethon in 1993, an 18-year-old Debbouze stated that “the banlieues aren’t like people think” and added “there are also people who live there who are kind-hearted, generous and supportive” (Violet 143). Via his words in the 2011 Télérama interview and the 1993 television appearance just mentioned, Debbouze has presented himself as a performer who establishes a connection between France’s ethnic majority – people who are white and of French/European descent – and its minorities. Within his stage shows, he has presented himself as being both French and of North African descent. This helps to explain why Olivier Mongin devoted a chapter of a 2006 book about French society and its comedians to “les identités multiples de Jamel Debbouze” (“the multiple identities of Jamel Debbouze”, see Mongin 35–60; see also Desloire). The exhibition of “multiple identities” has

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also been identifed as a key element of the Jamel Comedy Club by Nelly Quemener, who argues that the material of many of the performers locates them “at the intersection of several social identities – class, race, gender, sexuality – and thus places an emphasis on the hybrid social status of those on stage” (Quemener 2014, 109). In other words, there are signifcant parallels between the explorations of identity that one fnds in both Jamel Debbouze’s solo performances prior to (and since) the creation of the Jamel Comedy Club and the discussions of identities within the Jamel Comedy Club.

Conclusion: Where Is French Stand-Up Comedy Now and What Has Happened to the Initial Performers? The success of the Jamel Comedy Club is notable for several reasons. These include both the impact it has had on the careers of several performers – especially those who were part of the initial television series – and also on the stand-up comedy scene in France as a whole. The Jamel Comedy Club has helped to popularise stand-up comedy in France at the same time as making it more diverse and youth-focused. Some of the most prominent members of the initial group of comedians that performed on the Jamel Comedy Club have subsequently become regular guests in more mainstream French television programmes such as discussion shows. Although the presence of a comedian alongside the main presenter(s) is a phenomenon that pre-dates the Jamel Comedy Club (see Mongin 14), the presence of the likes of Thomas Ngijol and Fabrice Éboué has added to the diversity among the regular presenters of such programmes. However, it has paradoxically involved comedians becoming part of more widely-watched shows yet often remain somewhat subservient to the main presenters. Furthermore, their role is at times akin to that of a jester due to the way their humorous interjections punctuate discussions of which they often remain on the periphery (see Quemener 155–156, 178–179). In addition to participating in the aforementioned television shows, members of the initial group of Jamel Comedy Club comedians have embarked on other projects within stand-up comedy – such as performing and releasing DVDs of solo shows at major Parisian venues – and beyond. They have also written and performed in flms, television series and plays. Thomas Ngijol and Fabrice Éboué stand out as the two performers who have gained the highest overall profle, due to a combination of their stand-up performances – both have performed to large audiences at major Parisian venues and released several solo stand-up DVDs – as well as their television appearances and also by virtue of having acted in and written several flms. These flms include the comedies Case départ (Tee Box, 2011) and Le Crocodile du Botswanga (The Crocodile of Botswanga, 2013), a pair of flms in which the duo occupied the lead roles; Éboué and Ngijol wrote and co-directed the former whilst Éboué co-wrote the script for the latter with fellow Jamel Comedy Club comedian Blanche Gardin. Gardin has also had several television acting roles, notably in the Canal Plus series WorkinGirls. Their fellow Jamel Comedy Club performers Amelle Chahbi and Noom Diawara co-wrote and

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acted in the romantic comedy Amour sur place ou à emporter (Takeaway Romance), which was initially a play and then in 2014 became a flm directed by Chahbi in which the pair again acted. Diawara’s flm career has also involved leading roles in the successful romantic comedies Qu’est-ce que l’on a fait au Bon Dieu? (Serial Bad Weddings, 2014) and Qu’est-ce que l’on a encore fait au Bon Dieu? (Serial Bad Weddings 2, 2018). In these last two flms, one of the other lead roles was occupied by Frédéric Chau, another former member of the Jamel Comedy Club. Chau also wrote and performed in the 2019 comedy Made in China, which focuses on the Chinese community in Paris. Several other comedians who performed in the initial series of the Jamel Comedy Club have released solo DVDs, and they include Claudia Tago, Patson, Dédo, Le Comte de Bouderbala, D’Jal, Tomer Sisley and Mustapha El Atrassi. Yacine Belhousse wrote, directed and presented a 2019 feature-length television documentary about stand-up comedy around the world entitled Voulez-vous rire avec moi ce soir? (Do you want to laugh with me this evening?). Belhousse’s documentary was initially shown on French channel Canal Plus before being made internationally available on Netfix. Of the comedians who were part of the frst series of the Jamel Comedy Club, Fabrice Éboué appears – at the time of writing – to be the only one to have released a stand-up show exclusively on a streaming service rather than on DVD, making his 2020 show Plus rien à perdre (No longer anything to lose) available on Amazon Prime Video in France. However, Fary – who appeared in the sixth and seventh television series of the Jamel Comedy Club in 2013 and 2014 has released two of his stand-up shows on Netfix (Fary is the New Black and Hexagone). Dédo, one of the comedians who featured in the initial series of the Jamel Comedy Club, has said that the show made it easier for comedians such as him to fnd venues at which to perform and also develop a career within stand-up comedy. He has argued that the programme “put a real spotlight on the artists who were part of the initial troop” as well as helping them to “get known by more people and more easily end up being able to put on a show, have a DVD recording, and then a new show” (Dédo 2). He has also talked of opportunities opening up for a whole generation of comedians due to increasing numbers of venues in Paris organising comedy events at which up-and-coming performers can try out their material (Dédo 2). These last comments illustrate how the success of the Jamel Comedy Club has helped to boost the visibility and popularity of stand-up comedy in France, and several new comedy clubs have opened and organised an increasing number of events within the last decade and a half. Indeed, this led the journalist Rossana Di Vincenzo to ask in a 2018 article if Paris had become “the new capital of stand-up comedy” (Di Vincenzo, Paris est-elle la nouvelle capitale du stand-up?). However, Di Vincenzo cited in this article a comedy promoter who said that comedy venues have closed as well as opened. This shows that not everyone who has tried to capitalise on the growing interest in stand-up comedy in France has been successful. Whilst it could be argued that there is a comedy circuit in Paris, it is harder to argue that a comedy circuit that involves comedians performing their sets at regular events in cities across France exists to the same extent as it does in countries such as the United Kingdom.

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Although Kader Aoun ceased his collaboration with Jamel Debbouze in 2008 after a reported falling out, he has continued to play a major role in French stand-up comedy. Since 2008 – a year when Jamel Debbouze opened his own comedy venue on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle in Paris – Aoun has helped to run comedy nights at the Parisian venue Paname Art Café that follow a similar format to that of the Jamel Comedy Club. Despite having also launched an annual comedy festival in Paris and a television programme about comedians who have performed at the Paname Art Café, Aoun has claimed that “there’s not yet a real stand-up audience in France” and that this venue is one where people are “working away” and “in the process of building something” (Di Vincenzo, Une soirée au Paname Art Café). This shows that whilst the Jamel Comedy Club has doubtlessly boosted the profle of stand-up comedy in France it is nevertheless still in the process of developing. Although there are notable parallels between the development of hip-hop and stand-up comedy in France, stand-up comedy in France is yet to reach the same level as hip-hop in terms of overall popularity and sales. Compared to when the Jamel Comedy Club started in 2006, Dédo (3) argues that stand-up comedy – whilst a relatively young art form in France compared to the United States and the United Kingdom – has been evolving and becoming more diverse in terms of the sorts of humour exhibited by comedians. However, as has been shown here, journalists who have written about the Jamel Comedy Club have often overly simplifed what it represents in socio-cultural terms and failed to adequately examine its diversity of forms of humour as opposed to the diversity of the performers. Around the time of the television show’s launch in 2006, journalists also failed to acknowledge the diversity of relations with, and representations of, urban culture that were exhibited on stage within the comedians’ stand-up material. This phenomenon has afected members of ethnic and racial minorities in a variety of diferent cultural felds. Indeed, the writer Azouz Begag has complained of being pigeon-holed when he has been categorised as a beur writer (beur being a term to describe someone born in France to North African immigrant parents). He has insisted “I am a writer as well, not just a beur from the banlieues!”, adding “I want to exist due to what I do, rather than what I am” and that “the value of a man lies in what he is able to do” (Harzoune 26). Some critics have similarly sought to pigeon-hole Jamel Comedy Club performers, branding their work “humour communautaire” (see Ervine 4–5, 109–112). A literal translation of this term as “communitarian humour” does not adequately convey the nuances of the French term. “Communautaire” in this context refers to something which is “community-specifc” and thus incompatible with the universalist ethos of the French Republic. A key element of the French model of citizenship is that people access rights as individual citizens rather than members of groups; consequently, the concept of multiculturalism is sometimes said to be “un-French” as it places an emphasis on groups rather than individuals ( Jennings 589). However, such criticisms of the Jamel Comedy Club merit further examination. In particular, some critics appear to focus uniquely on the comedians

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from minority backgrounds and indeed ignore both the presence of several white French comedians in the troop as well as the fact that the comedians from minority backgrounds approach many universal themes within their acts. Noom Diawara, who was born in Paris to Malian parents, has vigorously reacted against the “humour communautaire” label. He has argued that “in France, a comedian who comes along and talks about their parents and their family, if they’re French, is fne” but that he is at times treated diferently when he speaks about his dad because his father is African (Diawara 5). As Rosello (L’émergence des comédies communautaires, 21) mentions in her discussion of Beaunieux, the term “communautaire” can be applied to comedy that evokes regional specifcities within France and cites as an example a 2008 flm set in the North of France entitled Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis that plays on a variety of regional stereotypes. Bun Hay Mean – who featured in one of the later series of the Jamel Comedy Club – has argued that Dany Boon (who wrote and starred in Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis) is someone whose solo stand-up shows have constituted examples of “humour communautaire”. Mean has made this argument due to Boon’s stand-up material often drawing heavily on his experience of life in the North of France and sometimes featuring uses of Ch’ti (a dialect that is infuenced by Picard and Flemish) (“Interview BUN HAY MEAN”). In other words, it can be argued that the term “humour communautaire” is being used disproportionately – and potentially inaccurately – to classify ethnic minority comedians as others and treat their humour as un-French given that several notable white French comedians exploit regional stereotypes within their performances (see Vaillant 290–291). This contrasts with the way that Cervulle et al. argue that the Jamel Comedy Club comedians have created “laughter that reconfgure the domain of Frenchness” (8). What the accusations of “humour communautaire” demonstrate is that although the Jamel Comedy Club encourages audiences to re-consider a wide range of social, racial and ethnic stereotypes, it has perhaps not been entirely successful when it comes to changing mentalities in France. Indeed, the use of the term “humour communautaire” to describe the material performed by ethnic minority comedians contributes to a continued process of othering and arguably also points towards a refusal to necessarily consider concerns evoked by comedians from minority backgrounds as ones that are relevant to France as a whole. The French media’s frequent tendency to simplistically portray the Jamel Comedy Club as having emerged from France’s banlieues and as an example of ‘humour communautaire’, is in keeping with the stigmatisation and othering of such areas that has long been a feature of their depiction in the French media. This highlights the way in which France is struggling to fully comprehend its own stand-up comedy and indeed its relationship with urban culture.

Notes 1 See: Davies, Jokes and their Targets; Davies, The Mirth of Nations; Carr and Greaves; Cohen; McGraw and Warner; Rappoport.

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2 See: Béru, “Des Codes pour rire”, Béru, “Un humour ethnoculturel”, Cervulle et al., Quemener, Vigouroux, Broizat, Desloire, Mongin. 3 See: Béru, Des Codes pour rire 43–44; Béru, Un humour ethnoculturel 163; Desloire 206; Quemener 104–105. 4 This documentary’s title references the 2016 French flm Chocolat starring Omar Sy that is based on the life of the Cuban-born circus performer Rafael Padilla, one of the frst black performers to become known in France thanks to his role as a clown known as ‘Chocolat’.

Works Cited Amour sur place ou à emporter. Directed by Amelle Chahbi, Liberty Productions, 2014. Bazin, Hugues. La Culture Hip-Hop. Desclée de Brouwer, 1995. Beaunieux, Xavier. “La vérité! Comment réussir sa comédie communautaire.” Ça m’intéresse, 1 February 2012. https://www.caminteresse.fr/culture/comment-reussirsa-comedie-communautaire-1121599/. Accessed 22 April 2021. Béru, Laurent. “Des codes pour rire. Le cas de l’émission télévisée Jamel Comedy Club.” Communication & langages, vol. 159, no. 1, 2009: pp. 43–55. ——— “Un humour ethnoculturel et socio-générationnel: L’exemple du programme télévisuel.” Jamel Comedy Club. French Cultural Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, 2011: pp. 163–172. Broizat, Florence. “Jamel Comedy Club”. Télérama, vol. 2999, 3 July 2007. http:// television.telerama.fr/television/7356-.php. Accessed 19 July 2010. Carr, Jimmy and Lucy Greeves. The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes. Penguin, 2007. Cervulle, Maxime, Sébastien M. Barat, Julien Mustin, and Nelly Quemener. “Du rire aux armes.” Poli: politique de l’image, vol. 2, 2010, pp. 7–12. Champagne, Patrick. “La construction médiatique des malaises sociaux.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales vol. 90 (1991): pp. 64–75. Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago University Press, 1999. Davies, Christie. Jokes and Their Targets. Indiana University Press, 2011. ———. The Mirth of Nations. Routledge, 2017. Dédo. Personal interview. 24 March 2017. Desloire Constance. “L’arabité de l’humoriste Jamel Debbouze 1993–2013: le cliché réapproprié.” Africultures, vol. 97, 2014: pp. 200–210. Diawara, Noom. Personal interview. 25 March 2017. Di Vincenzo, Rossana. “Une soirée au Paname Art Café, le petit laboratoire du rire parisien.” Télérama, 15 May 2016. https://www.telerama.fr/sortir/une-soiree-au-paname-artcafe-le-petit-laboratoire-du-rire-parisien, 142357.php. Accessed 14 April 2021. ——— “Paris est-elle la nouvelle capitale du stand-up?” Télérama, 15 May 2018. https:// www.telerama.fr/sortir/paris-est-elle-la-nouvelle-capitale-du-stand-up, n5650224. php. Accessed 14 April 2021. ——— “Comment le Jamel Comedy Club a imposé le stand-up en France.” Télérama, 13 September 2018. https://www.telerama.fr/sortir/comment-le-jamel-comedy-club-aimpose-le-stand-up-en-france, n5803039.php. Accessed 14 April 2021. ——— “Premier sur le rap: Sidney raconte “La Vraie Histoire de H.I.P. H.O.P.”, l’émission culte.” Télérama, 3 April 2019. https://www.telerama.fr/sortir/premier-sur-lerap-sidney-raconte-la-vraie-histoire-dh.i.p.-h.o.p., -lemission-culte, n6195519.php. Accessed 23 April 2021. Ervine, Jonathan. Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy, Consensus and Contradictions. Liverpool University Press, 2019.

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Fary Is the New Black. Directed by Richard Valverde, performance by Fary. Netfix, 2018. Ferenczi, Aurélien. “Jamel Debbouze: l’entretien.” Télérama, 19 January 2011, p. 18. Hargreaves Alec. “A Deviant Construction: The French Media and the “banlieues””. New Community, vol. 22, no. 4, 1996: pp. 607–618. Hexagone. Directed by Ladj Ly, performance by Fary. Netfix, 2020. “Interview BUN HAY MEAN - Confdences by Siham.” YouTube, uploaded by OKLMofcial, 29 January 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAlMYgVzRb8. Accessed 23 April 2021. Jeanjean, Jérôme. “Un show rêvé.” Les Inrockuptibles, 17–23 March 1999, p. 21. Jennings, Jeremy. “Citizenship, Republicanism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary France.” British Journal of Political Science, vol. 30, no. 4, 2000: pp. 575–598. Karmitz, Elisha. “La Comédie des banlieues.” L’Express, 21 July 2006. https://www. lexpress.fr/culture/scene/la-comedie-des-banlieues_459349.html. Accessed 7 April 2021. Kuhn, Raymond. The Media in Contemporary France. Open University Press, 2011. “L’émission extra-terrestre.” La vraie histoire de H.I.P. H.O.P., episode 1, Arte, 2019. https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/082079-001-A/la-vraie-histoire-de-h-i-p-ho-p-1-10/. Accessed 5 April 2021. Le Crocodile du Botswanga. Directed by Lionel Steketee and Fabrice Éboué, Légende Films, 2014. Lockyer, Sharon and Michael Pickering (eds). Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Macé, Éric. “« Ne pas quantifer, ne pas nommer » L’impossible lutte contre les discriminations dans les programmes de la télévision française.” La République mise à nu par son immigration. Ed. Nacira Guénif-Souilamas. La Fabrique Éditions, 2006. 178–195. Made in China. Directed by Julien Abrham, Montauk Films and Ripley Films, 2019. McCarren, Felicia. French Moves: The Cultural Politics of Hip Hip. Oxford University Press, 2013. McGraw, Peter and Joel Warner. The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. Simon and Schuster, 2014. Mongin, Olivier. De quoi rions-nous? Notre société et ses comiques. Pluriel, 2006. Mucchielli, Laurent. Violences et insécurité: fantasmes et réalités dans le débat français. La Découverte, 2002. Pégram, Scooter. “Not Condemned to Fail: Examples of ‘Rapped’ Resistance and Cultural Uplift in French Hip-Hop.” Journal of Poetry Therapy, vol. 24, no. 4, 2011: pp. 239–253. Plus rien à perdre. Directed by Marc-Antoine Hélard, performance by Fabrice Éboué. Amazon Originals, 2020. Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu? Directed by Philippe de Chauveron, Les Films du 24 / UGC Films, 2014. Qu’est-ce qu’on a encore fait au Bon Dieu? Directed by Philippe de Chauveron, Les Films du 24 / Les Films du Premier, 2019. Quemener, Nelly. Le Pouvoir de l’humour : politiques des représentations dans les médias en France. Armand Colin, 2014. Rappoport, Michel. Punchlines: The Case for Racial, Gender and Ethnic Humor. Praeger, 2005. Rigouste, Mathieu. “Le langage des médias sur ‘les cités’: représenter l’espace, légitimer le contrôle.” Hommes et migrations, vol. 1252 (2004): pp. 74–81. Rosello, Mireille. Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures. University Press of New England, 1998.

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———. “L’émergence des comédies communautaires ans le cinéma français: ambiguités et paradoxes.” Studies in French Cinema, vol. 18, no. 1, 2018: pp. 18–34. Sibony, Judith, director. Chocolat, une histoire du rire. Balina Films, 2015. “Sidney made in France.” La vraie histoire de H.I.P. H.O.P., episode 2, Arte, 2019. https:// www.arte.tv/fr/videos/082079-002-A/la-vraie-histoire-de-h-i-p-h-o-p-2-10/. Accessed 5 April 2021. Vaillant, Alain. La Civilisation du rire. CNRS Éditions, 2016. Vigouroux, Cécile. “Genre, Heteroglossic Performances and New Identity: Stand-Up Comedy in Modern French Society.” Language in Society, vol. 44, no. 2, 2015: pp. 243–272. Violet, Bernard. Jamel Debbouze: l’as de cœur. Fayard, 2008. Voulez-vous rire avec moi ce soir? Directed by Yacine Belhousse, Empreinte Digitale, 2019. Yade, Rama. Noirs de France. Éditions Calman-Lévy, 2007.

4 STAND-UP COMEDY AS ESCAPE Caste and Media Infrastructure in Mumbai Aju James

Introduction Stand-up comedy in India is often positioned as a “liberal” art form, both by many of its producers and consumers and by their opponents in right-wing cultural and political groups (Mirza 2013; Singh 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Suhasini 2017). Despite connotations of progressive politics suggested by this label, stand-up performances largely remain silent on the topic of caste in India. While many comedians in India, and particularly in Mumbai, perform political material and address a variety of social issues through a progressive lens, comedy on caste-based inequality is often conspicuous by its absence. On the other hand, caste-based humour rears its ugly head in the form of slurs and insults, as well as through targeting particular professions—domestic help being a prominent example—to be the butt of the joke (Ghosh 2017; Alagarsamy 2019; Rajrah 2019). The lopsided treatment of caste is attributable to the demographics of stand-up comedians, producers, and writers, who tend to be overwhelmingly upper-caste (Lakshmi 2014). This is true even in Mumbai, which hosts India’s biggest stand-up comedy scene. Despite the paucity of discussions on caste in the Mumbai stand-up comedy, I argue, caste structures the scene in fundamental ways. This becomes apparent when we examine aspects of the larger worldviews held by performers, producers, and production workers in the scene. Primary data supporting my argument was gathered by ethnographic feldwork and interviews conducted in the Mumbai scene from May to August 2018. I interviewed twenty-one individuals who work in the scene in the capacities of venue owner, producer, performer, writer, and production worker. Relying on this data, this chapter argues that the theme of “escape” infects many of the social analyses and visions of the future put forward by performers, producers, and production workers in the scene. They see DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-6

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stand-up comedy as a route of escape from mass society and mainstream media, which they portray as conservative and chauvinistic. At the same time, however, the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene relies on a host of mainstream media infrastructure, such as ticketing platforms, streaming and content distribution platforms, physical venues, advertisements and corporate sponsorships, and access to transnational stand-up comedy content, among others. People in the Mumbai scene gain entry to this infrastructure through the social position aforded by their caste and class locations. The emergence of stand-up comedy in Mumbai, and India at large, is therefore facilitated by caste networks that grant exclusive access to media and capital. This chapter untangles this contradiction—the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene attempts to escape the very same social relations and structures that make stand-up comedy in its current form possible in the city. In doing so, I throw light on some aspects of larger caste structures in Mumbai that sustain the stand-up comedy industry. In this endeavour, I am following Madhavi Shivaprasad’s call (2020, 29) to “turn the gaze inward—to understand the various ways in which humour perpetuates existing social inequalities by studying upper-caste comedy narratives”. In service of this task, this chapter explores in detail the diferent ways in which stand-up comedy relies on dominant social structures it seeks to escape. It further shows that this contradiction is an example of how caste structures the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene. On a broader scale, stand-up comedians aim to escape these social structures by evolving new notions of what it means to be Indian in our current era of globalisation. This new identity, which I have termed “global Indian-ness” ( James 2020), allows India’s “new middle class” (Fernandes 2006; Oza 2006; Brosius 2010) to articulate an identity that positions them favourably in transnational networks of media and capital. The development of a new national identity is almost an industry imperative. As an emergent industry, stand-up comedy fnds a niche for itself by ofering an escape from mainstream media commodities. In this process, stand-up comedy performers and producers are active players in broader contestations over national and global identities. Escape from certain social structures, and the media commodities that arise out of them, is a prominent way in which stand-up comedy articulates a new idea of what it means to be Indian and thus contribute to the construction of “global Indian-ness”.

Moving Away from “Mass” Society: Stand-Up Comedy as “Escape” As a niche industry, the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene deliberately sets itself apart from the mainstream media industry. In this process, the status of the dominant industries, such as flm and television, as “mass” media that cater to a common denominator of the consuming public is posited against the more exclusive approach of producers and performers in the Mumbai scene. In creating this distinction, people in the scene view mass media industries in the

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larger context of Indian mass society. Thus, people in Mumbai’s stand-up scene do not seek to move away merely from a corpus of media texts, but also from a larger society that they see as reproducing the values of those dominant media. The new middle class’ immersion in global media fows—as part of creating a new individual and new society in the post-liberalisation era—positions stand-up comedy as divergent, “modern”, or even rebellious. This social positioning of stand-up comedy directly infuences the way comedians, both established and aspiring, see their craft. In my interviews, it became clear that many of them saw stand-up comedy as an “escape” (this particular word having been used by multiple interviewees) from the daily drudgery of corporate jobs. As Sumedh, a video-producer and stand-up comedian, put it: A lot of these guys are guys who have been forced to do engineering out of a sense of monetary compensation that their parents think will guarantee them a good life. They can’t see it in that perspective and their frst opportunity for rebellion is to talk about it.1 Prerna, an artist manager at OML,2 concurs with this opinion, saying: “I think a lot of people are frustrated in their daily life that they want to do this”. In addition to comedy being an escape, Bhoomika, a digital marketer and one-time assistant director on an All India Bakchod (AIB) sketch comedy project, said that it has also become something that is “cool” in many social circles. Drawing on her own personal experience, she notes: As consumers [sic], I will never want to avoid comedy. So you need to be a little smart, a little witty, a little fun loving, to accept comedy and enjoy comedy. And it’s easy to be, or it’s easy to pretend. It’s easy to pretend that you are witty and that you get the joke. This aspect found mention among others too. Comedian Deep said, “For me, honestly, I started doing comedy because I was in college. It was the coolest thing to do. So being a comic was what made you a cool person”. Kashyap, another producer and comedian, jokingly said that when he started doing comedy, he was hoping to impress a woman who might think he was cool because he was a stand-up comedian. In addition to having ofered, if not an escape, then at least a temporary break from corporate employment, many interviewees also noted that becoming a full-time stand-up comedian had become an aspirational goal for many young people in Mumbai. Prerna opted to see this phenomenon in terms of fame and glamour while Abhishek, a stand-up comedian and production worker, sees it as a shift in perspective among the new middle class. Thus, having been facilitated by global media fows accessed by young members of the new middle class on college campuses, stand-up comedy has also emerged as a way to navigate daily life which is increasingly being controlled by the demands of working directly for global fnance and technology.

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Stand-up comedy as escape is also related to social norms related to employment and work held by the new middle class. Stand-up comedy, like most other “creative industries” in Mumbai, is characterised by precarity and fexible, ondemand work patterns. Despite burgeoning capital investment in the art form, it is still considered suspect as a viable career path by many in the scene, not to mention those outside it. As a result, there exists a confict between stand-up comedy as a way of leveraging consumption power and a global identity and its prospects of guaranteeing a steady income. In almost every stand-up comedy show that I observed, and particularly at open-mics, comedians regularly touched upon this tension by joking about what their parents and relatives thought about their choice to pursue stand-up. Especially in the case of young, up and coming comedians, there were many jokes about a combination of disdain and anxiety expressed by their parents upon learning that their children had given up more conventional, salaried jobs (such as in Information Technology (IT) or the fnancial sector) to make it in the fedgling and unpredictable stand-up circuit. In some cases, such as the comedian Prasad Bhat, the performance explicitly points to the comedian’s caste location as an explanation for familial and social expectations (Shivaprasad 2020). Invoking Brahmin identity works in these performances because the upper-caste, new middle class audience is intimately familiar with the same expectations and tensions that arise when someone strays away from the beaten path. In their performance of these jokes, stand-up comedians set up a binary—the world of conventional social expectations (including the ‘right’ kind of employment, marriage to the ‘right’ kind of person and family, and other appropriate performances of middle class identity) on one side and a cosmopolitan world, attuned to global media and seeking to break away from what it sees as the restraints of social conservatism, on the other. Although it appears never the twain shall meet, the caste location of these performers and producer serves as an invisible bridge. Further, these two sides often intersect in the lives of people in the Mumbai scene. They entered (or some might say, were pushed into) institutions of higher education and later employment in IT, advertising, and fnance, in order to accomplish the conservative goals of well-paying steady employment that is then expected to lead to the formation of a nuclear family. These methods of recreating wealth and social infuence are couched as middle class values, which the youth are expected to emulate. However, given the organisation of contemporary Indian society, these goals can be achieved only through immersion and familiarity with environments such as the university campus or the IT company, where individuals inevitably come into contact with social practices and cultural commodities that are not sanctioned by upper-caste mores or a certain defnition of middle class values. These include the myriad media commodities that become accessible in colleges and universities, the diversity of work practices and social mores encountered in cosmopolitan workplaces, diversity in cultural backgrounds of colleagues, and opportunities to travel abroad in such workplaces,

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among others. In order to navigate these environments, the new middle class employee (or entrepreneur) is required to construct a globally oriented, cosmopolitan worldview that might depart from conventional middle class values and the performance of certain upper-caste traditions related to marriage, employment, and leisure. The creation of a global Indian-ness is therefore a practice whereby the new middle class creates a local identity that enables them to achieve conservative goals of accumulating wealth and social infuence by being compatible with their cosmopolitan environments. Stand-up comedy articulates this tension—and perhaps even ofers relief through catharsis—that has come to defne the lives of the new middle class. The growth of stand-up comedy not only indicates the rise of media production itself as a site of value-production in post-1991 India but it is also a site where the new middle class mediates India’s neoliberal transition. Stand-up comedy ofers a path to escape the old value-order and achieve a global Indian-ness. The much-pursued global identity is often described in the larger Mumbai (and Indian) society with the label, “liberal”. This description is partly a self-ascribed one (see Singh 2015a, 2015b, 2015c) and partly comes from a long and complex history of social reform in which certain “traditional” values in Indian societies were considered incompatible with a modern society and nation (see Copley 1988). In my conversations with people who worked in stand-up comedy in Mumbai, the related themes of modernity, advancement of culture/ civilisation, and cosmopolitanism were at the forefront of how many people thought about the social uses of the art form in India, and why they described its performance as a “liberal” act. In the larger political discourse in India, we can locate articulations of caste struggle in these terms, where people foreground caste “to claim citizenship of modern nation-state and the globalising world, which promise equality and dignity to all individuals irrespective of their caste and creed” (Gorringe, Jodhka, and Takhar 2017, 233). However, this use of the modernity discourse is largely absent in the Mumbai stand-up scene. In contrast to the position highlighted by Gorringe, Jodhka, and Takhar—which posits the modern ideal as one to be strived for—the dominant position within the stand-up scene is that caste inequality and violence are vestiges of the past which have no place in an advanced society. Inasmuch as performers are concerned with caste, they react by portraying such violence as anachronistic. This distinction, though it may appear slight, is important because the latter position aids in invisibilising the relevance of caste in society at large and the stand-up scene in particular. Instead of understanding caste violence as continuing to be foundational to social structures, the worldview dominant in the Mumbai scene understands it as marginal. Instead, the dominant struggle expressed in stand-up performances is a cultural one about national identity in an era of globalisation. Specifcally, stand-up comedians prioritise participation in the discourse of Americanisation or Westernisation. The business model of the Mumbai stand-up scene, driven by

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production for digital platforms, encourages comparisons and even aspirations to certain Western stand-up comedians and artists in other art forms. At the same time, the discourse of Americanisation is not simply a ploy to ignore relations of caste but also a genuine attempt to reimagine what it means to be Indian. It should also not be seen simply as signs of imitation of the West, a charge their detractors often level. Instead, as Sanjay Srivastava points out in his study of urban development in Delhi, it is just as important to remember that ‘modernity’ as a tool of imagination has also had a very long career in the non-Western world, and this career has not been hampered (or exclusively framed) by the meanings of this term in the West. (2014, xviii) That is to say, when these producers, comedians, production workers, and venue owners refer to ideas such as ‘modern’ or ‘global’ when talking about stand-up comedy, they are actively constructing new meanings for these words that are frmly rooted in the social and cultural history of Mumbai and India at large. Moreover, they are not overly burdened by the charges of imitation but instead see Western cultural infuences as only one thread of many with which they are trying to knit. In Mumbai, which has become a global city and where the production of urban space to make it world-class is an ongoing process, ideas such as ‘modern’ already carry great import and are crucial in understanding its urban space. However, not only do these debates confate the ‘national’ with particular caste-class interests, the more ‘globally’ oriented members of the new middle class who constitute the Mumbai stand-up scene cannot fully inhabit a new Indian-ness because they are unable to interrogate the ties of caste that bind them to the old. In order to analyse how caste structures stand-up comedy in Mumbai and how the production and consumption of the art form becomes a way of constructing a global Indian-ness, the next section will examine how people in the Mumbai scene were introduced to the art form. It shows how comedians and producers emerged from particular professional backgrounds, which further illustrates how caste structures prevalent in Indian societies shape the emergence of stand-up comedy in Mumbai. These backgrounds give them access to transnational media artefacts as well as the ability to shape media fows in India. Stand-up comedy is one such media artefact, whose popularity among the new middle class is closely connected with their professional backgrounds enabled in large part by the post-liberalisation Indian economy.

The New Middle Class Discovers Stand-Up Comedy Controversies that have sprung up around stand-up comedy in the past decade often revolve around one theme—its place in the Indian cultural and media landscape. While its detractors accuse Mumbai’s stand-up comedy scene of being

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an imitation of the West, people in the scene do not see any disjuncture between their local identities and the globally popular art form. A question that becomes important here is, how did one section of the new middle class achieve close familiarity with stand-up comedy that they see it as part of their Indian identity while another section of the new middle class (and probably most of the country) remain unfamiliar with it? These consumption patterns have to be located in certain social and economic networks of which the producers and consumers of stand-up comedy are often part. Specifcally, an examination of the personal, educational, and professional backgrounds of individuals who work in the stand-up comedy industry in Mumbai helps to locate the art form within larger social and cultural formations centred around the new middle class. Many of my interviewees said that they began watching American and British stand-up comedy, typically in their teenage and college days. Many of these respondents also cited popular stand-up comedians such as Norm MacDonald and Sarah Silverman as inspirations. There is a considerable variety in how the respondents accessed comedy when they were getting acquainted with it. Aakash, a producer and stand-up comedian, said that his brother studied in Austin, Texas, and he would bring back recordings of Comedy Central Presents. He says, I watched the hell out of the frst twelve seasons or so of Comedy Central Presents. As a kid! Way before I should have been watching them. Maybe this was when I was in 4th, 5th, 6th grade, and I didn’t understand half the jokes. But I always admired the idea; these guys were so funny. It’s just their voice, nothing but their voice. While none of the other respondents had such an early introduction, many of them were well acquainted with the art form by their late teenage or early adult years. Another respondent, Kaavya, discovered stand-up comedy through the art form of improv while she was working for a multinational fnancial services corporation in Houston, Texas. Hoshang, a 19-year-old aspiring comedian and production worker, said that even before he had any intention of working in the scene he was always a fan of Western stand-up comedy and used to watch clips on YouTube. Discovering stand-up on the Internet emerged as a common theme, though it did not always directly inspire them to make it their career. Another pattern emerges when the respondents are categorised according to age. While older comedians, usually mid to late 20s and older, readily cite American comedians as immediate inspirations, many of the younger comedians, who are in their late teenage years or early 20s, often cite comedians from Mumbai as their introduction and inspiration. This does not mean that younger comedians are not watching or are unfamiliar with American stand-up comedy, but that the Mumbai scene is growing in popularity among a certain section of people and Mumbai comedians are beginning to be considered in the same light (at least with respect to immediate inspiration) as their American counterparts by Mumbai’s youth.

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How comedians are introduced to stand-up comedy therefore brings two wide generalisations—access to media of American or Western origin through various platforms and access to platforms and spaces in Mumbai where stand-up comedy is available. Given the small market share of stand-up comedy, it is relevant to ask what enabled this section of the population to gain access to these spaces. Here, the personal, social, and educational backgrounds of the respondents become signifcant. My interviewees refected the larger stand-up scene in Mumbai in that almost everyone received a professional education in felds such as engineering, management, and mass communication. Five respondents already possessed some experience working in mass media, in areas such as journalism and flm and video production. Another one of my respondents is also an activist who works with non-governmental organisations that focus on gender and disability, while others have worked in digital marketing. While only two of my interviewees, one man and one woman, had degrees in engineering, observation at comedy shows as well as the words of other interviewees suggest that practising and former engineers constitute the biggest segment among the performers in the scene and a majority among the male performers. Two interviewees obtained degrees and worked in fnancial management before moving to comedy, others were educated in retail and event management, while two others worked in businesses owned by their families. Also interviewed were a copywriter at an advertising frm, an aspiring writer, and a working graphic designer. Almost all participants began their personal story of encountering stand-up comedy around the time of their college days. The wider demographics of higher education in professional felds seem to have intersected with access to media and spaces of stand-up comedy in Mumbai. College and university campuses in cities such as Mumbai often introduce its occupants to cultural commodities from the West, particularly from the United States. While these commodities are often very much a part of the mainstream in their societies of origin, they exhibit marked diferences from the mainstream of India’s culture industry. Thus, on the one hand, close contact among English educated aspiring professionals enables the access to these commodities and on the other, these commodities go on to make a mark in the local entertainment industry by virtue of being consumed and exchanged by an afuent and dominant social group. There are two strands to this phenomenon that are worthy of further examination. The frst is the question of access to these commodities in the space of institutions of higher education. These institutions, as has been well documented, continue to be dominated by the upper castes of Indian society (Benjamin 2008; Bagchi 2010). A sample survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation in 1999–2000 showed that while Hindu upper castes formed around 37% of India’s urban population, they represented 67% of all engineering and technology graduates, 65% of all medical graduates, and 66% of other non-technical graduates (quoted in Deshpande 2006, 2439). These patterns are also manifested in terms of gender relations in the scene. Men have

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historically dominated professional education in India, particularly the feld of engineering and technology that is over-represented in the scene. Karuna Chanana (2007) notes that Indian women have historically been enrolled in non-technical and non-market courses that were considered feminine. Though more women have enrolled in professional courses in the last three decades, women still account for only 22% of engineering students and 37% of commerce students in the nation. Access to English education and relative comfort in consuming cultural commodities in that language, as well as access to these commodities through various channels, are therefore restricted to particular social groups, often marked by caste. These patterns of exclusion in India’s institutions of higher education also means that access gained to cultural commodities produced in the West is often prevalent only among a small group— the predominantly upper-caste new middle class. These institutions of higher education are, therefore, also a part of India’s media infrastructure because they create media consumption patterns. This is a feature of the stand-up comedy scene in Mumbai. While none of the participants mentioned their caste when asked to introduce themselves, I have assumed from their full names that all of them except one belong to various upper castes of India.3 Further, a wider examination of advertisements and set listings for stand-up shows around the city reveal an almost complete dominance by Hindu upper caste performers. The circulation of stand-up comedy content in institutions of higher education provided a familiarity with the form to members of the new middle class, who then used their positions in Indian social hierarchies to promote it in the Indian mediascape. As existing literature such as Matzner (2014) has shown, this intersection of social positions such as caste and class and higher education is already shaping India’s entertainment landscape and its mediation of social relations. The new middle class’ exposure to foreign cultural commodities in institutions of higher education contributes to the fractures in how media producers imagine their audience. In place of a “national” audience of the post-colonial imagination, the post-1991 Indian new middle class media producers construct a “mass” audience, who is prone to consume melodrama or other content defned in reference to a lowest common denominator. In contrast to this audience constituted by the masses, that has historically been imagined as “backward” (see Dickey 1993; Ganti 2012), the elite, upper-caste, English speaking new middle class imagines itself as a cosmopolitan and sophisticated audience which requires, or even demands, content of a ‘higher’ quality than the general entertainment programming. A comparable process is underway in stand-up comedy. Despite rich and complex traditions of humour in India, the new middle class producers of stand-up comedy tend to characterise humour in mainstream Indian media productions, such as flm and television, as “backward” and made for the “masses”, and often equate such productions with conservative social values. The consumption of Western stand-up comedy allows this social group to position themselves as tastemakers who seek to better or reform Indian comedy as a whole.

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Not only do they seek to make ‘cosmopolitan’ content for their consumption, but they also seek to position such content as the representative of Indian-ness in global fows of media. Whether such attempts have been a direct incursion of Western media, as their detractors accuse, or the elevation of a genre that has been denigrated by having to appeal to the lowest common denomination is the crux of the struggles surrounding stand-up comedy. The educational and professional backgrounds of stand-up comedy’s producers and consumers are points of origin of these struggles. Stand-up comedy, and its perceived relationship with other media productions in Mumbai, thus inculcate a tendency in its producers and consumers in Mumbai to move beyond the existing parameters of the Indian mediascape. In other words, the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene seeks to manage India’s neoliberal transition by remaking Indian-ness, to which end it posits itself as a self-refexive and critical institution. As I will show in the next section, performers and producers in the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene do this by ofering a media alternative in which caste is invisible in the (screen) image of India. Caste as hierarchy and violence is not an “appropriate” (Radhakrishnan 2011) image of Indian-ness. Hence, it is “culturalised” (Natrajan 2012) as diference and sublated in the larger contestation over national identity.

Challenging and Constructing Indian-ness through Transnational Media Flows People working in stand-up comedy in Mumbai think of the art form as distinct from the other components of India’s culture industry that is centred on Mumbai, particularly those of flm and television. Most notably, they see stand-up comedy as an alternative to the dominant practices of flm production and consumption, in both the messaging of its content and the very act of choosing stand-up over flm or television. In light of this general sentiment and in the context of stand-up comedy as a site of struggle over globalisation and national identity, it is relevant to ask whether this art form is truly what Williams (1997, 123) calls “emergent”—ofering meanings, values, practices, and relationships that are substantially oppositional and an alternative to the dominant culture—or a particular development of the dominant culture itself. In this regard, it has to be noted frst that flm and television, and particularly the Bollywood industry (see Majid 2008), is a dominant force in articulating and creating images of global Indian-ness. Given that people working in stand-up comedy claim a diference from these other industries, it is necessary to recognise stand-up comedy as a movement or tendency that works simultaneously within and beyond the dominance of Bollywood and Mumbai’s television industry. They are able to claim diference while using the same infrastructure by eliding the fact that they gain access to these infrastructure by virtue of their caste locations. Here, producers and performers invisibilise their caste location or render it insignifcant, as is the dominant contemporary practice (see Bairy 2012).

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Producers, comedians, and others also put forward their notions of Indian-ness in relation to media artefacts that originate outside India as well, especially the United States. These industries—regional, national, and global—exert their infuence on stand-up comedy, which also means that stand-up comedians and producers are well aware of these connections. The art form is, therefore, constantly caught in debates of imitation—whether it is the charge of Americanisation or in eforts to move away from what is produced in Bollywood. However, imitation and infuence are complex, interrelated processes. As A.K. Ramanujan (1989, 207) put it, “mimesis is never only mimesis, for it evokes the earlier image in order to play with it and make it mean other things”. This section analyses what meanings of Indian-ness and new middle class-ness are put forward by those who work in stand-up comedy, given the art form’s position within the confuence of several media industries in Mumbai.

Stand-Up Comedy in Comparison to Film and Television in Mumbai The crux of the diferentiation that people in the scene identify is that stand-up continues to exist quite apart from flm and television, not having been formally incorporated into the larger industries, unlike other industries such as the once bustling indie music scene that emerged in similar places and networks in Mumbai. Further, stand-up makes a qualitative diferentiation, positioning itself as diferent from the comedy in flm and television texts, and therefore oppositional to a dominant tradition and body of comic performance. As Masoom put it, stand-up “is still an odd form of entertainment” in Mumbai and India at large. This oddness is attributed to diference, to a still slow process of acculturation and acceptance. The diference of stand-up comedy to the wider entertainment industry is revealed by comparison with other forms of comedy. Kajol said that comedy on stage is still predominantly perceived in India as mimicry, indicating that stand-up has to re-write cultural expectations of humorous stage performance. Paula expressed the same concern of confusion with and expectation of mimicry on the part of the audience, going so far as to state that during the initial shows of Marathi stand-up comedy she produced, which were also the frst exposure to stand-up as an art form for most of her Marathi audience, she was particularly concerned that the art form “would go into the wrong space” by being too similar to mimicry or popular Marathi television sketch shows. Similarly, Nidhi expressed frustrations over getting stand-up comedy accepted as a legitimate art form. A notable way in which the distinction of stand-up was emphasised is ironically in comparison to the work and persona of Kapil Sharma—a man who, among other things, is a stand-up comedian. A winner of the comedy reality show, The Great Indian Laughter Challenge in 2007, Sharma is best known for The Kapil Sharma Show, which fuses stand-up comedy, talk show, and sketch comedy, all in Hindi. Rohit expressed a popular opinion in situating Sharma’s

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oeuvre within established traditions of comedy in India, including slapstick. Kapil Sharma’s work, as Abhishek observed, often features several formal and stylistic elements Indian television audiences are used to in comedy, including laugh tracks and musical cues that indicate humour. Such devices, or continuations of tradition, are absent in the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene. As Abhishek notes, if a stand-up comedian performing at Canvas Laugh Club takes a pause between lines to insert space for laughter, some of the audience members are instead waiting for cues for laughter (such as music or laugh tracks) with which they are familiar. At the same time, critical work on Kapil Sharma has pointed to his use of his Brahmin caste location (Gandhi 2018), which confrms with Bairy’s thesis (2012) that contemporary upper-caste articulations tend to be made, at least in part, through the invisibilisation of caste hierarchies and sublating caste location through other categories such as merit. It is the question of merit and quality of comedy on which Kapil Sharma is evaluated in the Mumbai stand-up scene, with little or no critique of how his caste location informs his comedy. Some in the scene take the comparison further to say that Kapil Sharma’s work, and the tradition it is situated in, dumb down comedy to appeal to a broad viewer base, whereas stand-up comedy in comedy clubs and now on Netfix and Amazon provides an intelligent alternative. It is not just Kapil Sharma whose work is characterised in this way. Kaavya said that she never liked Indian comedy as a whole because she often found it misogynistic and homophobic. This has been emphasised in critical studies of contemporary Indian humour as well (see Waghmore 2016; Gandhi 2018). In contrast, Kaavya cited AIB, for whom she worked as a writer, as ofering a progressive alternative through their content. Stand-up comedy brands itself as progressive in order to gain traction in global media fows. This branding is done by marking itself as diferent from what it sees as the dominant Indian entertainment industry. However, this binary distinction has to be interrogated in order to understand how stand-up comedy negotiates between globalisation and national identity. Clearly, stand-up comedy creates a tradition of Indian entertainment whose body of work caters to the least common denominator, sometimes through misogynistic and homophobic tropes. By positioning Indian entertainment as represented by this invented tradition, stand-up comedy also constructs a rationale for its position in global fows of media. In the history of Indian flm production, including the Hindi flm industry in Mumbai, there are several notable examples of nuanced explorations of gender, sexuality, national identity, and other social identities. Many such flms were considered “art” or “parallel” cinema, situated in opposition to commercial or mainstream cinema and therefore not having access to the wide-reaching marketing machinery of the latter, but nevertheless engaged in debates on social issues (see Majumdar 2012). Thus, it is clear that any historical analysis of this important component of the Indian entertainment landscape reveals a far more complex picture than what the words of many stand-up comedians paint.

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This picture, however, is far closer to reality when we examine the production, marketing, and consumption of the Bollywood flm industry that emerged in the last decade of the 20th century and has been a prominent site on which the new middle class has constructed its identity and its claim over “Indian culture”. In Bollywood (distinct from the Hindi movie industry before it), we get the upper-caste protagonists whose markers of caste and religion are assumed not to draw attention because they were sufciently modern and urban, consumers of a new fashionable and fun lifestyle, as epitomised by Yash Raj flms (Dwyer 2002a), which simultaneously demonstrated Indian values (Dwyer 2002b) and has in the process re-defned Indian masculinity and femininity. Dwyer (2010) argues that Bollywood helps us to discern “the social imaginaries of India”, a conception of the moral order of Indian society, and through which we may understand how India sees itself in the present, future, and past. Bollywood thus ofers a particular flm experience that is aimed towards the new middle class in Mumbai, and India at large, an experience that is epitomised in the consumption space of the “multiplex” that ofers clean and safe flm viewing (Viswanath 2007). The multiplex audience is new in the Indian flm and entertainment industry, markedly distinct from the lower caste and class, sometimes rural “crowd” that throngs single screen theatres (see Dass 2009). Despite its modernist pretensions, it is precisely the new middle class multiplex audience that has produced and eagerly welcomed the construction of identities such as gender and sexuality in the ways that many stand-up comedians deplore. Thus, in marking this distinction from the discourse surrounding Hindu family values in flm and television (see Rajagopal 2001), stand-up comedy intervenes in current debates over national identity within the new middle class. However, it should be noted that this engagement is made possible only in the context of, and by building upon, the articulation of Indian-ness put forward through Bollywood and other industries that positions India favourably in global fows of media. Therefore, the re-articulation of Indian-ness attempted by a section of Mumbai’s stand-up scene is a recent iteration of a larger movement within the new middle class. As the debate over Kapil Sharma in the Mumbai stand-up scene demonstrates, the argument comes down to how performers can use the media infrastructure they access through their caste locations to project a desirable image of Indian-ness. This is evident in the fact that the ‘global’ turn is not universal in Mumbai’s stand-up scene, but is still a powerful force in that it is identifable to varying degrees among the biggest names as well as among several production companies. Despite the stated desire on the part of producers and comedians to appear diferent, Sumedh points out, mainstream stand-up comedy in Mumbai continues to rely on theatrical and flmic norms of comedy. He contrasts this direction in the Mumbai scene with the anti-establishment nature of the comedy of American artists such as Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce. In this context, he argues, even the amateurish production of comedy in various forms that aims to challenge some aspects of Indian society and culture appear progressive. However, the

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reliance upon the dominant articulation of Indian-ness is more apparent in the daily production of stand-up comedy as an art form, to the extent that it almost entirely relies upon various kinds of systems that arose in the context of dominant industries such as Bollywood. Stand-up comedy, and other forms such as online sketch comedies put out by stand-up comedians, “initially latched on to Bollywood”, says Aakash, especially when it came to content and comic references. AIB Knockout, the roast of Bollywood actors Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh, remains a landmark in Mumbai’s stand-up comedy scene. Other productions have gained great success by harping on Bollywood, such as “The Bollywood Diva Song”. This AIB video, which garnered 8 million views on YouTube and featured Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut, used the genre of the Bollywood flm song to satirise the position of the female lead in the industry. Bhoomika, who worked on this video, confrmed that its release was intended to be in sync with the promotions for Ranaut’s new flm, Simran, and had also come out just a few days after a controversial appearance made by Ranaut on the popular television show, Aap Ki Adalat, that had gone viral on the Internet. Further, Bhoomika suggested that Ranaut herself had a role to play in writing the video. According to Bhoomika, AIB’s video continued the message the actor had made in her television appearance. “The Bollywood Diva Song” is one among many examples of stand-up comedy’s engagement with Bollywood. In this case, it became a promotional tactic for producers of the flm, but at the same time, AIB gained a great amount of publicity and exposure from the association. Specifcally, the video was targeted at and marketed to the large audience base of a Bollywood production who might watch a flm such as Simran, thus gaining viewers and followers already marshalled by Bollywood. Stand-up comedy in Mumbai profts from its proximity with industries such as Bollywood and television. The infrastructure, both physical and virtual, that stand-up comedy uses in its daily running are also contingent upon these larger industries. As Masoom pointed out, for example, the platforms that stand-up comedy uses for ticket sales (such as BookMyShow) and video streaming and distribution (such as YouTube, Netfix, and Amazon Prime Video) exist because those platforms are still overwhelmingly used by people to purchase movie tickets or access flm content. The presence of these huge industries afects stand-up comedy in other ways too. Kajol noted that there are many actors in Mumbai who did not make it into flm or television who have now taken up stand-up comedy at least as a temporary profession. On the fipside, Mukesh points out that for many comedians, including some of the biggest names such as Vir Das, success in comedy was supposed to be a ticket to the big time of flm. The changing infrastructure patterns of stand-up comedy has now shifted that ambition to web series on OTT platforms such as Netfix and Amazon Prime, but Bollywood remains a big draw. On the Internet, where stand-up comedy in a combination of Hindi and English is becoming ubiquitous, it is still dwarfed by the viewer engagement and advertising revenue generated by flm and television industries. As Aakash observed, at

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any point in time, it is unlikely to fnd a stand-up performance or a sketch comedy piece in the top ten or twenty most viewed videos of the week on YouTube India. Of course, some videos have made it to the top, and they remain landmarks in Mumbai’s stand-up scene, but there is a widespread acknowledgement that it is very much the junior fgure in the larger entertainment scene. Indicative of this, Rohit commented that even though the ticket prices for a stand-up show, whether it be an open mic or an hour-long special, remain roughly equal to that of a weekday movie ticket, most people in Mumbai still consider stand-up as an unconventional option. Given this situation, stand-up comedy is forced to present itself to a niche audience and market itself through any distinction it can claim from flm and television. Kajol argues that such an approach, of being an alternative option rather than mainstream, might not be sustainable in the long run. Others, such as Sumedh, claim that by being an alternate option, it ofers an opportunity for the frst time for many people to hear anti-establishment voices in their own language. One niche market continues to be the college circuit which, according to artist manager Prerna, is slowly becoming a sought-after entertainment option. Prerna notes that while college cultural festivals used to invite indie bands to perform as recently as the early 2010s, comedians are increasingly replacing them as the big arena entertainment option. Prerna sees this shift as indicative of the growing popularity of stand-up comedy among college going young adults who increasingly consume stand-up comedy on transnational media platforms and also of the fact that hiring one stand-up comedian is much cheaper than hiring a band. The niche marketing of stand-up comedy and celebrity-fcation of stand-up comedians in a local sense is aided by the worldwide presence of the art form and its easy availability through channels that cross national boundaries. These factors combine with the economic necessities in a local entertainment landscape where stand-up comedy has a comparatively small presence and therefore economically viable for niche audiences. In regional languages, companies such as Bha. Di. Pa. face a similar situation of negotiating local identity and constructing diference. According to Paula, the most frequent criticism generated by the shows they produce is that they are not meeting the standard for humour set through Marathi literature, theatre, and flm, especially by literary and theatrical luminaries like Pu. La. Deshpande. A cultural attitude trying to preserve a “pure” Marathi culture, represented at its zenith by artists such as Deshpande, has to be negotiated by working within these received traditions while also trying to break the mould through a new art form. Bha. Di. Pa. attempts such forays by working within existing structures such as working with Marathi television programs, by presenting stand-up comedy as a family entertainment option, by performing in venues where established theatre groups and other production houses usually work, by being attached to events where television and flm celebrities attract large numbers of people, and by working with other new forms such as Marathi hip hop and indie rock bands. Thus, stand-up comedy approaches the mainstream by distinguishing itself as

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novel within existing television, theatre, and flm infrastructures. A notable example among such eforts was a show titled Namune of which Bha. Di. Pa. was a part. Produced by the television channel Sony SAB, the stand-up comedy production company wrote sets based on the work of Pu. La. Deshpande as a way to promote the television show, thus gaining coverage and publicity for the comedians. This show was indicative of the larger approach Bha. Di. Pa. has taken in their shows—producing original stand-up content that positions itself within an existing tradition by remixing and reimagining canonical works in Marathi humour.

Conclusion As should be obvious from these examples, the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene cannot really exist entirely separate from other, more dominant media industries in the city. At the same time, this dependence enables the Mumbai comedy scene to construct diference and position itself as a niche entertainment industry that ofers a diferent form of social belonging to its producers and consumers. The new identity that emerges from the Mumbai scene aims to position the new middle class as sufciently global, and hence capable of taking up favourable positions in transnational fows of media and capital. In the day-to-day production of stand-up comedy, the cultivation of this diference is manifested as a desire to escape from the social mores, members in the scene consider regressive or inappropriate to the image of “global Indian-ness”. Consequently, the desire to escape also implicates the social structures that mandate those undesirable mores. This contradiction appears less so when we ask why caste structures are not explicitly posited as a social institution to be escaped from in the construction of global Indian-ness. Inside the discourse, the contradiction rages as people in the Mumbai scene attempt to work through institutions they want to transform. Outside of the discourse, however, it appears as yet another step in the selffashioning endeavours of the upper-caste Indian middle class, hemmed in by the guardrails of caste hierarchy. Even though we recognise the invisibilisation of caste in the construction of global Indian-ness in the Mumbai stand-up scene, it is important to interrogate this process to illuminate that caste enables contemporary developments in new and digital media industries. Comedy that critiques social practices and structures is often labelled “woke”— often by detractors, but sometimes by those who support such performances as well. One of the criticisms of woke comedy is that the comedians and producers are not really interested in social change, but instead have identifed the production of woke content as a lucrative brand. Disregarding the often bad faith origins of such critiques for the moment, it is easy to see why such accusations can seem legitimate. It is precisely because woke comedians (are forced to) depend on the same mainstream media infrastructure that also produce the conventional media texts that reinforce the social structures which come under critique in stand-up performances. The desire to escape is never fulflled—it is constantly deferred,

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in this case by the nature of Mumbai’s media infrastructure. This contradiction, however, is never resolved. It resists resolution because the upper-caste location of stand-up comedy performers and producers maintains the situation. I will conclude with a broader comment on the emergence of stand-up comedy in Mumbai. The places that this emerging media industry occupies in the city of Mumbai is primarily concentrated in the central part of the city, specifcally the area that was once known as Girangaon, or the centre of the city’s once booming textile industry. While vestiges of textile manufacturing remain in this area (and in Mumbai as a whole), the contemporary spatial organisation of Central Mumbai is characterised by contractual and informal work, combined with the dispersing of a multi-lingual working class from diferent caste backgrounds. This history of urban reorganisation facilitated the rise of stand-up comedy in Mumbai. For example, Canvas Laugh Club, the most prominent of stand-up comedy locations in the city, is housed in the High Street Phoenix Mall, which rose from the ashes of the Phoenix textile mill. The reorganisation of such places is aimed at creating an image of global Mumbai, which in turn is predicated on centring desirable groups of people and rendering invisible the undesirable. This broader history sets the stage for how performers and producers in the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene engage with caste. Specifcally, global Mumbai provides the media infrastructure stand-up comedy needs, thus sharpening the contradiction of seeking escape.

Notes 1 All quotes from individuals working in the Mumbai stand-up comedy scene are from feldwork conducted by the author between May and August 2018, unless otherwise noted. 2 OML refers to Only Much Louder which is a new age media and entertainment frm with headquarters in Mumbai, India 3 As in most other parts of the world, names in India come with “demographic baggage” (Alter 2013) that can be used not only to categorise people according to caste, religion, and region of origin but are also often conscious displays of such characteristics (see Copeman 2015).

Works Cited Alagarsamy, Hamsadhwani. “Gully Bai: The Asli Labour Class and Casteism.” Feminism in India, 4 February, 2019. Retrieved from: https://feminisminindia.com/2019/02/04/ gully-bai-girliyapa classism-casteism/, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Alter, Adam. Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave, London, 2013. Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. “Towards Democratization of Education in India.” Social Scientist, vol. 38, no. 9, 2010, pp. 5–16. Bairy, Ramesh. “Beyond Governmentality: Caste-ing the Brahmin.” Seminar, 633, 2012. https://www.india-seminar.com/2012/633/633_ramesh_bairy_t_s.htm, Last accessed on February 11, 2020.

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Benjamin, Joseph. “Dalit and Higher Education in India”. Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 69, no, 3, 2008, pp. 627–642. Brosius, Christiane. India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity. New Delhi, 2010. Chanana, Karuna. “Globalisation, Higher Education and Gender: Changing Subject Choices of Indian Women Students.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 42, no. 7, 2007, pp. 590–598. Copley, Antony. “Congress and the Risorgimento: A Comparative Perspective.” The Indian National Congress: Centenary Hindsights, edited by D.A. Low, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 1–21. Dass, Manisha. “The Crowd Outside the Lettered City: Imagining the Mass Audience in 1920s India.” Cinema Journal, vol. 48, no. 4, 2009, pp. 77–98. Deshpande, Satish. “Exclusive Inequalities: Merit, Caste and Discrimination in Indian Higher Education Today.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no. 24, 2006, pp. 2438–2444. Dickey, Sara. Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India. Cambridge University Press, 1993. Dwyer, Rachel. Yash Chopra. British Film Institute, 2002a. ———. “Real and Imagined Audiences: Lagaan and the Hindi Film after the 1990s.” Etnofoor, vol. 15, no. 1/2, 2002b, pp. 177–193. ———. “Bollywood’s India: Hindi Cinema as Guide to Modern India.” Asian Afairs, vol. 41, no. 3, 2010, pp. 381–398. Fernandes, Leela. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Gandhi, Rajashree. “The Laughter Challenge Is on Us: How the Dominance of Upper-Caste Men Afects Our Consumption of Comedy.” Firstpost, 10 April, 2018, Retrieved from: https://www.frstpost.com/living/the-laughter-challenge-is-on-ushow-dominance-of-upper-caste men-afects-our-consumption-of-comedy-4420795. html, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Ganti, Tejaswini. “‘No One Thinks in Hindi Here’: Language Hierarchies in Bollywood.” Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, edited by Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson. University of California Press, 2016, pp. 118–131. Ghosh, Devarsi. “‘Pushpavalli’ Creator Sumukhi Suresh: ‘I Am Way Funnier Than My Character’.” Scroll, 20 December, 2017, Retrieved from: https://scroll.in/reel/861609/ pushpavalli-creator-sumukhi-suresh-i-am-way-funnier-than-my character, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Gorringe, Hugo, Jodhka, Surinder S., and Takhar, Opinderjit Kaur. “Caste: Experiences in South Asia and Beyond.” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 25, no. 3, 2017, pp. 230–237. DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2017.1360246. James, Aju. “What Does ‘Global; in ‘Global Indian’ Mean?: Cultural Production and New Urban Subjectivities in World-Class Mumbai.” Urban Geography, vol. 41, no. 5, 2020, pp. 791–800. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2020.1740433 Lakshmi, Rama. “India’s Booming Stand-Up Comedy Scene Tests Boundaries with Cutting Edge Jokes.” The Washington Post, 21 August, 2014, Retrieved from: www. washingtonpost.com, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Majid, Sabita. Manufacturing Global Indian-ness. Bollywood Images, 1995–2005. [Master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University], 2008, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Majumdar, Rochona. “Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society Movement in India.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 46, no. 3, 2012, pp. 731–767. Matzner, Deborah. “‘My Maid Watches It’: Key Symbols and Ambivalent Sentiments in the Production of Television Programming in India.” Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1229–1256.

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Mirza, Shazia. “No Ofence.” Financial Times, 14 June, 2013, Retrieved from www. ft.com. Natrajan, Balmurli. The Culturalization of Caste in India. Routledge, 2012. Oza, Rupal. The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization. Routledge, 2006. Radhakrishnan, Smitha. Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class. Duke University Press, 2011. Rajagopal, Arvind. Politics After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Rajrah, Simple. “Gully Bai’s Casual Casteism: A Comedy Video Laughed at the Marginalised — And Reafrmed Prejudice.” Firstpost, 4 February, 2019, Retrieved from: https://www.frstpost.com/living/gully-bais-casual-casteism-a-comedyvideo-laughed-at-the marginalised-and-reafrmed-prejudice-5999941.html, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Ramanujan, A.K. “Where Mirrors Are Windows: Toward an Anthology of Refections.” History of Religions, vol. 28, no. 3, 1989, pp. 187–216. Shivaprasad, Madhavi. “Humour and the Margins: Stand-Up Comedy and Caste in India.” IAFOR: Journal of Media, Communication, & Film, vol. 7, no. 1, 2020, pp. 23–42. Singh, Mahima. “Niti Palta Rates Herself on Our Liberal-Conservative Scale.” Newslaundry, 12 August, 2015a, Retrieved from: www.newslaundry.com, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. ———. “Sanjay Rajoura Is as Liberal as It Gets: -5 on Our Liberal-Conservative Scale.” Newslaundry, 18 August, 2015b, Retrieved from: www.newslaundry.com, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. ———. “Garv Malik on the Importance of Political Comedy in Today’s Scenario.” Newslaundry, 10 September, 2015c, Retrieved from: www.newslaundry.com, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Srivastava, Sanjay. Entangled Urbanism. Oxford University Press, 2014. Suhasini, Lalitha. “No Laughing Matter.” Pune Mirror, 11 June, 2017, Retrieved from: https://punemirror.indiatimes.com/others/sunday-read/no-laughingmatter/articleshow/59087087.cms, Last accessed on February 11, 2020. Viswanath, Gita. “The Multiplex: Crowd, Audience and the Genre Film.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 42, no. 32, 2007, pp. 3289–3294. Waghmore, Suryakant. “Challenging Normalised Exclusion: Humour and Hopeful Rationality In Dalit Politics.” From Margins to Mainstream: Institutionalising Minorities in South Asia, edited by Hugo Gorringe, Roger Jefrey, and Suryakant Waghmore. Sage, 2016, pp. 153–177. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press, 1977.

5 VOICES FROM THE COMEDY CONTACT ZONE Regarding Performative Strategies Toward Race and the Transnational Body Rachel E. Blackburn

I always am on the outside looking in, and at the same time, I’m on the inside looking out… – Stand-Up Comic Tehran Von Ghasri1

Performative strategies, defned here as the ways in which stand-up comic artists structure the environment, tone, delivery, and content of their sets, can be seen as the intentional fngerprint markings of their expression, provocation, and thematic social critique. A comic performer’s strategies are singularly unique to that artist, and those techniques frequently convey large swaths of information beyond textual content. For decades within sites of stand-up comedy performance, comics have confronted the absurdities and social ills of their culture, utilising their unique perspectives to create a meaningful exchange with their audiences, and provoke their laughter. What happens, however, when that comic performs outside of their own culture, transcending national borders? How must they adjust their material and methods of communication? To add to the complexity of this occurrence, for performers who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color) and racially marginalised, their race may well be read diferently by various audiences; for example: when Trevor Noah, a biracial son of a white Swiss father and Xhosa mother (Bantu ethnic group) few to the United States from his home in South Africa, he was perceived as Puerto Rican by several Americans after landing in the airport (Lichtenstein 2012). In addition to perceptions of race, more intersections of identity – such as gender, sexuality, immigrant status, nationality, (dis)ability, class or caste, neurodivergence, etc. – blend to create the frame by which someone constructs another’s identity, by way of intersectionality (Crenshaw 55).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-7

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The comics discussed herein, all of color, must navigate the ways their race (intrinsically linked within a wholeness of intersectional identities) is read by audiences; and ever more so when traversing national and cultural borders. Here, I would like to center racial construction as dependent on cultural and national spaces, and refective of the ways in which additional aspects of identity intersect. I refer to these liminal spaces as comedy contact zones, to borrow from Mary Louis Pratt and her concept of a contact zone (Pratt 1991). In Pratt’s terms, the contact zone is a transnational space of colonisers and colonised, where a “conquered subject [uses] the conqueror’s language to construct a parodic, oppositional representation of the conqueror’s own speech” (Pratt 35). Adapting this idea into a location whereby a performer of color joins audiences in a contact zone, I view the comedy contact zone as a sphere in which the meaning, histories, and structures of race are contested through the involuntary, bodily recognition of truth spoken to power – the laugh. What are the performative strategies then for these comics of color, who are cognizant of their audience viewing their bodies according to the cultural hegemony of the country in which they perform? How do those performative strategies assist these comics in translating their artistry for a variety of comedy contact zones, with the inevitably fuctuating demarcations and delineations of racial construction? I am applying Rossing’s concept of critical race humor (2014), because the comedians in this chapter: Tehran Von Ghasri, Trevor Noah, Gina Yashere, and Aamer Rahman are all comics whose work constitutes critical race humor as a “form of public pedagogy…[providing] people with the skills and habits of thought necessary to think critically about and transform racial knowledge and reality” (Rossing 16). Critical race humor, or the defance of “dominant practices and ideologies that promote the erasure of material realities of race,” coupled with a transnational awareness, is the through-line underneath all of the work discussed here in this chapter (Rossing 17). What becomes clear from my analysis of the following comics is that they all use their voice – literally and fguratively – to frequently construct satire and/or parodies of common racial construction for their many audiences. Doubtlessly, colorism is not limited to the designers and benefciaries of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, but exists in colonised lands, and globally, afecting comic construction the world over (Norwood 2015). All the comics discussed herein perform in a host of countries, including Kuwait, Israel, the United Kingdom, Dubai, Palestine, Germany, Australia, Mexico, the United States, etc. Inseparably, there is a global awareness in their work of the ways in which color, ethnicity, class, and nationality intersect to create diferent legibility of their bodies, dependent upon where and to whom they are performing – and they adjust their performative strategies accordingly. To begin, I look at the comedy of Tehran Von Ghasri.

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Tehran Von Ghasri Tehran Von Ghasri is a biracial, Black and Persian American, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied comic who forefronts his intersectionality in his comedy, and builds his sets around his unique international perspective. Though based in Los Angeles, CA (USA), he performs around the world, frequently in English or Farsi, bringing his point of view to audiences the world over. He opened a 2013 set at the Laugh Factory comedy club in Los Angeles with the following: I see you looking. It’s Persian night – it’s a mix. But the reason I’m up is because I’m half Persian. Oh yeah – you’re shocked – ‘[Gasp] He’s one of them!’ I can see what he’s thinking [pointing out an audience member, imitating him] ‘Oh my god. That’s the most dangerous combination in America, bro.’ That’s right, I’m America’s worst nightmare. Half Persian, half Black? Half n***a, half terrorist? Shahs of Sunset/Atlanta Housewives put together? Car jack, hijack, I’m capable of anything! (Black and Persian 2013) Von Ghasri not only forefronts his racial intersection of Persian and Blackness in interesting ways, highlighting the stereotypes of both groups in the racial imaginations of white Americans; but his own academic work has explored global economy and law practice. He holds degrees in international politics and communications, a master’s degree in economics, and a law degree from Georgetown University. Rather than pursuing the law in the United States however, Von Ghasri chose to pursue comedy instead, “because comedy is the feld in which I, as an individual, can speak to the most amount of people…I’m not preaching, I’m reaching out to people” (Von Ghasri Interview 2016). One of the ways in which Von Ghasri’s international knowledge of racial construction plays into his performative strategy is that he actively dismantles the all-too-common, all-white-male-aesthetic of the line-up (a list of comics to perform) in shows that he curates himself. Indeed, he does so all around the world; he is a transnational comic who has performed alongside other comics in such places as Kuwait, Dubai, Israel, Palestine, Australia, and Mexico. In doing so, he has made a consistent practice of assembling inclusive and diverse arrangements of performer line-ups (Von Ghasri Interview 2016). Von Ghasri concerns himself not only with more inclusive line-ups onstage but also takes a vested interest in advancing the careers of these performers, as well. He noted the crucial element of “mic time” to a performer’s development; not just the amount of time one spends performing behind the microphone, but how mic time integrates with the speed of progression in a comic’s career. Von Ghasri discussed that when a Black or Brown woman is not the only woman of color positioned in a line-up, her voice shifts from tokenised as an “othered” worldview, into merely another perspective grounded in an increasingly familiar set of voices, experiences, and collective narrative. Von Ghasri spoke on his curation of

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line-ups, and that when disrupting the frequent and common sight of one Black male, one white female, and eight or nine white males, it achieves the following: Well, I personally pick my line ups with the understanding that I will have people of color, women, and especially women of color on my show… Comedy, as in society, stereotypes and boxes people in. Black comedians do “Black Night.” Women comedians do “Women shows.” That limiting of stage time also limits what we can do, and how we can grow… The more stage time you get, more mics you hit, the better you will get. Period. Limit those things and you cap how good one can get. Let the audience determine who is funny; not [who is funny as] a pre-judgement of the audience. All my shows are like this… just look at basic line-ups. I think there are even twitter accounts dedicated to it. You see so many all-male, all-white line-ups, it’s crazy.2 (Von Ghasri Interview 2016) Von Ghasri frequently plays with notions of identity and perception as a performative strategy in his comedy. In a bit titled “Racist Baggage,” he describes an occurrence when he was at the airport. He was standing in line for the gate check-in, when a white woman behind him was bumped accidentally by a man who just happened to be Black, causing her to utter: “Fucking Black guys. They’re all disrespectful. Look at them, they’re all the same” (Von Ghasri Baggage 2018). Von Ghasri’s punchline is: “I was hurt, because this bitch didn’t think I was Black,” pointing to the ways in which Von Ghasri’s intersection as a Black and Persian man disrupts a Black/white racial binary, making it abstract for anyone to construct him racially on sight, according to the hegemonies guiding the viewer (Von Ghasri Baggage 2018). While Von Ghasri’s biracial identity informs his comedy, it simultaneously layers the way he is seen by others, speaking to their own understanding of race. In my 2016 interview, Von Ghasri stated: I cannot separate my cultural identity, my race, my heritage, my mix – from the words that come out of my mouth and that form my comedy. While I can understand the world from many diferent perspectives, I give the world my perspective. Which, because of my mix, because of my race, because of my cultural identity, my heritage, my religious belief system – is an extremely easy place to come from. So I always am on the outside looking in, and at the same time, I’m on the inside looking out…. (Von Ghasri Interview 2016) Here, Von Ghasri self-defnes as an intersectional subject; one whose appearance problematises the usual justifcations for racial oppression, ofering us a glimpse into a process within U.S. culture where “…racist…ideologies permeate the social structure to such a degree that they become hegemonic, namely, seen as natural, normal, and inevitable” (Crenshaw 7).

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Another side of Von Ghasri’s perspective is his knowledge of the ways in which bodies from outside the United States are raced upon entering the United States, a subject that appears frequently in his performances. He is capable of improvising around transnational views of race, something that occurred when a woman in Von Ghasri’s audience interjected during a set of his at the Laugh Factory in 2018. The following is their exchange: Von Ghasri: So, here’s what I think is interesting about Black Panther, and I propose this to you sir in the interracial couple – Woman: We’re not interracial, I’m Australian. Von Ghasri: Oh – you do know you’re white though? I’m going to explain to you: if we were in a car, and a cop pulled us over, and said, ‘Get on the foor n***er,’ you’d look at me like, ‘you better get on the foor n***er!’ (Von Ghasri Panther 2018) Von Ghasri understood the audience member had confated race with nationality; as an Australian, she did not consider herself to be white. Von Ghasri uses critical race humor as strategy when citing an example situation (a U.S.-based context of police brutality and racial profling), in which there would only be one assessment of her by all involved; that she is white.3 Not only is she white, but she could use her white privilege as a survival mechanism, and distinguish herself from Von Ghasri racially to do so. Von Ghasri’s performance becomes pedagogical and contextualises race with regard to U.S. nationality: American whiteness means not only evading the violence and oppression that accompany Blackness, but frequently, it means complicity in the perpetuation of systemic racism, too. I asked Von Ghasri about transposing his comedy from one country to another, and what performative strategies he uses to address the complexities of moving his body across national borders. His response touches on a theme that reveals itself in diferent ways throughout this chapter, which is that of the voice, both physically and fguratively: Well one thing you learn quickly when you’re mixed [biracial], is how to have diferent selves for your voice. It’s a diferent sound that comes out of your mouth, and it’s a diferent voice that you have internally. My comedy works well because I’m able to relate to people in diferent places easily and authentically. So, when I’m in Kuwait, even though for the most part I’m pretty much saying a lot of the same stuf, I do so in a way that relates to Kuwaitis. And I’m not saying I have an accent, no. I’m saying I understand the verbiage and the way to contextualize that exact same content. (Von Ghasri Interview 2016) Vocal coding emerges as a major performative strategy for comics who transpose their comedy across nation-states. The voice is something stand-up comic Trevor Noah commands masterfully, and it guides his navigation of racial construction across borders as well.

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Trevor Noah Trevor Noah, born to white and Black-South African parents, able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual performer, had made a name for himself as a stand-up comic in his home of South Africa, long before he was tapped to host The Daily Show. Noah was born to a white Swiss father and a Xhosa mother (Bantu ethnic group of South Africa), and a lot of his material stemmed from the way his body was considered illegal as the child of an illegal, interracial relationship which violated miscegenation laws in Apartheid South Africa (Lichtenstein 2012; Parks 1985). An oft-cited joke of his depicts how his mother and father would have to physically distance themselves from Noah if they encountered the police when out in public. Noah states his skin was too “light” to be seen with his mother, and she would drop his hand from hers as though he were “a bag of weed;” and his skin was too “dark” to be seen with his father, who would have to cross to the other side of the street and slyly wave to him “like a creepy pedophile” (Noah Apollo 2013). One of Noah’s early performance strategies was to deliver observations about U.S. racial discourse, couched in the feigned ignorance of an assimilating outsider. Noah himself demonstrates great edifcation and polish when transitioning between the voices of a vast array of characters from many diferent cultural backgrounds, and he uses this vocal agility to gain credibility with his audience and reframe his outsider status. In short, his worldliness – revealed through his transnational vocal dexterity – lends him a layer of authority and qualifes him with the audience to make these assertions about their culture from the outside looking in. Below, a joke which exemplifes the strategy of Noah’s feigned ignorance, coupled with an informed deconstruction of U.S. racial discourse (2013): When I was in Tennessee, I stumbled across an organization called the Klu Klux Klan. Have you heard of them? Worst magic show ever. Guy gave me a pamphlet, ‘Come and see the Grand Wizard!’ The guy didn’t do one trick!… I mean, I guess they made a few Black people disappear, but that’s not magic. That’s just Reaganomics, I wasn’t impressed by that….in fact, the whole name is wrong. They got that, as you know, from Ancient Greece, it was Klu Klux Adelphon, meaning a ‘circle of brothers.’ Which is wrong for two reasons: one, if your sole purpose as an organization is to hate Black people, don’t you fnd it strange that you’ve now named yourself the circle of brothers? And secondly, did they realize that in Ancient Greece, circles of brothers were doing very diferent things? (Noah African 2013) Noah’s performative strategy, equal parts innocent and studied, enables him to make layered critiques; and seen here, highlighting the etymology of the U.S.born KKK as contrary to the organisation’s core racist, white supremacist agenda. In the opening sequence of Noah’s comedy special African American (2013), we see documentary-style footage of a generic African tribal village and its villagers,

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speaking to the stereotypical imagery conjured by the African continent. Emerging out of this imagery strolling across stage is Noah: African stand-up comic. He wears a simple blue t-shirt, Black leather jacket, jeans, sneakers, and gives the all-American gesture that all is well: the thumbs-up. By stepping onto the stage, Noah has already begun to break down African stereotypes for a U.S. audience. Stereotype dismantlement fgures heavily into Noah’s comedy, and he begins by describing how hot it has been for him in Atlanta, GA. He is reticent to go jogging, for the fear of fainting in the street, and subsequent media coverage in a pristine American accent: “[I]t’s so hot out here, even the Africans are fainting” (Noah African 2013). Noah also reverses this performative strategy by exploring stereotypes that South Africans hold for the United States, when performing in the United States. For example (within this same special), he describes seeing a UNICEF ad asking donations for an undisclosed African location. His reaction to seeing the images of Blackness and poverty is to wonder aloud, “Where is that? Cleveland [Ohio, U.S.]?” (Noah African 2013). Noah expanded on this strategy while acting as a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (before becoming the show’s host), wherein he played a game with viewers titled, “Spot the Africa” (2014). Audience members were shown photographs of areas in abject poverty, which were revealed to be U.S. locations. He additionally showed photographs depicting state-of-the-art classrooms and economic prosperity, which were revealed as located in Kenya and other African countries. The dismantling of stereotypes in Noah’s comedy is a layered trajectory, however: it is not simply that Noah confronts the stereotypes Americans may have about Africa, but through Noah’s better acquaintance with the United States, the stereotypes he previously held are confronted also, including those of American Blackness. Noah mines a lot of material from the ways in which he has trouble ftting neatly into U.S. racial categorisation. In his dream to become “American Black – the coolest Black in the world,” he relates the earlier mentioned story of fying from South Africa to New York City, where he is immediately approached by a Latino man speaking in Spanish to him. Noah’s punchline is, “Eighteen hours of fying and I still wasn’t Black. I was Puerto Rican” (Noah African 2013). In these jokes, Noah parses out the ways in which race is constructed not of color alone, but comprises an intersectional social construction imbued with ethnicity, class, and nationhood. The ultimate technique Noah uses to demonstrate such rich cultural fuency is in embodying other characters, using other languages and character vocalisations. Noah speaks at least six languages, and as a professional goal builds his comic routine into other languages, in order to perform in other countries using their native tongue (Itzkof 2015; Williams 2012). In understanding Noah’s voice as a complex performative strategy, Faedra Chatard Carpenter’s 2014 terminology of aural racial signifers, such as “aural whiteness” and “aural Blackness” are pertinent to this goal. These terms signpost as:

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…technical elements in speech that may indicate racial associations…these diferences are based on learned behavior. Factors such as word choice and dialect are often the clues that guide a listener to draw conclusions about the speaker’s race, but rather than being racially determined, these choices and patterns are evidence of one’s acculturation, experience, and environment. (Carpenter 198) In other words, there is no biological factor that infuences the way a person speaks with regard to their race. “Aural whiteness” or “aural Blackness” are not a set of choices made by the speaker, but are instead indicative of the conclusions drawn by someone else listening to the speaker. Certain speech patterns may project images of environmentally conditioned associations with particular vocal patterns, but those patterns are culturally determined, not biologically so. Therefore, Noah’s fuency between Standard American English (SAE), African American Vernacular English (AAVE), his vocal stasis of self, etc., all demonstrate the ways in which race is culturally constructed on the part of the listener without regard to ethnicity or biology in speech. In Noah’s Afraid of the Dark (2017) special, he notes the way a voice afects perceptions: “I like accents because I’m always impressed by how much power they have over us, over our minds. When someone speaks a certain way, it changes how we feel about that person. For good and for bad” (Meyer 2017).4 When Noah decides to project whiteness through aural signifcation, he uses “linguistic whiteface,” an intentional choice by the speaker (Carpenter 24). “Linguistic whiteface” is a performative strategy that is “intentionally deployed…for the sake of deliberately portraying a persona of whiteness. It is the self-conscious and often exaggerated manipulation of one’s vocal qualities (includes variables such as word choice, grammar, and timbre) to suggest the speaker is white or “white-identifed”” (Carpenter 198). Key to Noah’s comedy is that he employs linguistic whiteface often for characters who are not specifed by name, but rather by their role or occupation in U.S. culture. Pointedly, these characters are typically in positions of power, and are intentionally portrayed as white-identifed in Noah’s use of linguistic whiteface. These characters are media reporters, political pundits, supervisors in places of employment, etc. Therefore, Noah’s performative strategy not only calls attention to SAE and how it is raced, but critically comments on how U.S. culture frequently and hegemonically places white individuals in positions of power. In Noah’s jokes, there is often no reason to give these peripheral characters linguistic whiteface; they only serve a perfunctory function within the joke. In doing so however, he calls out his audience for automatically inscribing whiteness onto any generic character in power. For example, when Noah delivers the aforementioned joke about fainting due to the heat in Atlanta, he portrays the unnamed reporter with linguistic whiteface. Using critical race humor, Noah keeps our ears trained on what he is doing at all times: dissecting nationalised views of power and privilege through jokes, assembling his audience in a comedy contact zone

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wherein the audience must confront their own language spoken in the voice of the oppressed. What happens when you are a Black woman who performs all around the world, and you must negotiate this intersectionality as it is read on your body by a variety of national audiences? I look in to the stand-up comic work of Gina Yashere to examine her performative strategies in navigating translations of herself on stage, and how this process is complicated by various national understandings of Blackness and gender.

Gina Yashere Gina Yashere, a frst-generation Black, queer, able-bodied comic born to her single Nigerian mom in London, UK, was very vocal about wanting to live and perform in the United States in the early part of her career and did ultimately move to the United States (Czyzselska 2014). Her career in comedy, like that of Noah’s, includes a lot of sharp observations of various national cultures, spoken from the view of a woman who must renegotiate her own Blackness, gender, sexuality, and diasporic view of Blackness when viewed by others, in any country to which she travels. Yashere even went so far as to front this concept thematically for her special, Ticking Boxes (2017). The marketing artwork for this special features a photograph of Yashere next to a series of boxes, all check-marked: they read Female, Black, British/Nigerian, U.S. Legal Alien, Ex-Vegan, and Gay/Queer (Firla 2017). Yashere shares a couple of performative strategies with Noah, not surprising when she is equally capable of using her transnationally removed “otherness” to satirise U.S. politics, converting her stage into a space of the comedy contact zone. In her material, she often calls our attention to the Black diasporic community that lives inside the United States and utilises feigned ignorance to disrupt the ways we perceive and stereotype aural Blackness (Carpenter 24). As we see in Laughing to America (2014), she notes that while on the subway in New York City, she encountered a group of men who physically conveyed Blackness, from the Dominican Republic. She then relays her confusion when they speak Spanish: “What? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Black people have their own language here!” (Green Laughing 2014). When Paul Gilroy discusses an Afrocentric diasporic community (1995), he notes that “[t]he distinctive historical experiences of this diaspora’s populations have created a unique body of refections on modernity and its discontents which is an enduring presence in the cultural and political struggles of their descendants today” (Gilroy 45). In efect, Gilroy’s description of the Black Atlantic is intrinsic to Yashere’s comedy. She is a part of the Black Atlantic herself, with roots in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, sitting on a New York City subway and observing American Blackness. The critical race humor in her joke points to the fact that not all Blackness is homogenous or necessarily even tied to the same nation-state. The racial categorisation of anyone is subject to the cultural awareness and assumptions of the observer attempting to do the categorising, an amalgamation of

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nationhood, ethnicity, sonic signifcations, class, sexuality, gender, (dis)ability, and more. These intersections create diferent sets of rules for what constitutes racialised “Blackness;” and assumptions depend upon the geographic location of the embodied Black subject as well. Yashere deepens her audience’s understanding of her racialised body through multiple transnational lenses, an extension of a performative strategy that communicates how the legibility of Blackness is dependent on nationality, among other lenses. In her special Ticking Boxes (2017), she describes four separate experiences entering a country while Black: in Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, and in China. Each experience is radically diferent and dependent on the ways in which she is classed, gendered, sexualised, and nationalised by her observer. In Indonesia, she realises she is the only Black person in the airport. She is detained and harassed by a customs worker, until the worker’s boss intervenes upon hearing Yashere’s British accent. The boss tells the customs worker to let Yashere go because she is British. Yashere jokes, “I’ve never in my life been so happy to be British…my African pride went out the window” (Green Ticking 2017). The implication is that British-Blackness is classed above African-Blackness, and likely other Blacknesses due to class/wealth and nation-state-GDP diferences. Yashere interjects her gender and sexuality into this same frame, examining how in certain cities across Asia, she is often the frst woman to perform there, confusing promoters on how to entertain her in her of-hours (when they typically take male performers to brothels, she notes). She quotes a promoter: “We’ll take you to four foors of whores…oh wait, sorry Gina!” Yashere responds, “‘No, that’s okay…let’s see the four foors of whores…’…you see, I’m not a fan of the penis” (Green Ticking 2017). Her amusing response challenges assumptions on the part of the promoter (and audience) around Yashere’s sexuality and attitude towards sex for pay, itself often gendered. Kimberly N. Brown in Writing the Black Revolutionary Diva (2010) deliberates, “…the multiple consciousnesses of [Black] women, the psychological battle to come to terms with the interrelated pressures of sexism, racism, and oftentimes classism,” and here, Yashere has challenged her audience to witness her Blackness afect others’ perceptions of her gender, class, and sexuality (Brown 69). When analysing the comic work of Yashere, it is equally critical to discuss the ways in which Yashere is racialised and gendered ofstage by critics in the United Kingdom, and how those criticisms refect nation-state-based assumptions for her career. A couple of Yashere’s reviewers in the United Kingdom have their own performative strategy on the page; in this instance, used to denigrate Yashere’s identity as a queer Black woman. In performance, Yashere is often noted for her “brash charm,” something which Yashere has established as a part of her comic persona (Casey 2017). Once again, I wish to draw specifc attention to the voice and how it can be used by both performer and critic, each communicating as colonised and coloniser, respectively, within a comedy contact zone. Yashere employs vocal techniques with regard to emphasis in her word choices, emphasis on syllables, repetition of words and phrases, and a rhythm of phrasing for prime

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comic efect. She is not altogether vocally dissimilar from that of stand-up comic Lewis Black for example; an American, white, cisgender, able-bodied man who has built his career on the construction of his angry persona; a man who is perpetually frustrated with the politics of U.S. culture. It would be reductive to brand Yashere as an angry comic, however; at most, these vocal patterns can refect a comic indignation toward her subject material at times, but they are an efect all her own, wherein she controls her vocal quality and timing to enhance and punctuate jokes. Simply put, she is no louder in vocal volume than the majority of white, cisgender male comics. However, Yashere – unlike Lewis Black – is given a two-fold negative critique. She is critiqued for an “in your face style,” which is stated as “more appropriate for American audiences;” and, notably the common critique of her as masculinised, both of which have been used to reduce her work in review (Hardy 2015). When describing her 2012 London, UK show at the Underbelly Festival in The Times, one reviewer wrote: “Noisy, laddish, and the comic equivalent of six pints of lager and lime, she obsessively pursued the lowest common denominator” (Davis 2012). The terms “laddish” and “ladette,” both of which have been used by reviewers to describe Yashere, are located in contemporary British slang (Davis 2012; Hardy 2015). According to the Oxford Dictionary, ladette refers to “a young woman who behaves in a boisterously assertive or crude manner and engages in heavy drinking” (Proftt 2020). An expansion on this defnition adds that the ladette typically “enjoys sport or other activities that are traditionally enjoyed by men” (Ecort 2018). “Ladette” and “laddish” derive from “lad culture,” a subculture featuring men who were generally “middle class fgures espousing attitudes conventionally attributed to the working classes” (Ecort 2018). In calling Yashere “ladette,” the term denotes raced, gendered, and classed histories written onto Yashere’s body, wherein Black women have long been masculinised, and ever more so for queer Black women (Collins 18; Grover 2020). This characterisation of Yashere is unique; other white women comics in the United Kingdom such as Bridget Christie, Josie Long, and Francesca Martinez, use similar vocal patterns and gendered presentation without facing this same criticism. Within queer and Black women’s histories, these fgures are derogatorily painted as masculine to the beneft of white supremacist patriarchal hegemony, in order to characterise and punish women for not performing femininity “correctly” (Butler 1990; Covington 2011). In a review for The Times, writer Alex Hardy took it a step further, suggesting that Yashere’s style might be appropriate for the United States, but “I’m not sure that it excels here [England],” denoting a transnational layer of further denigration (Hardy 2015).5 This sentence reveals a premise of nation-state superiority of the United Kingdom over the United States, which directly plays into Hardy’s constructing Yashere’s voice as not only raced, but gendered, sexualised, and now tied to nationality as well, something that we have seen from earlier examples that Yashere combats directly within her performances. In grappling with Yashere and her criticism, it is crucial to consider the ways in which bodies of performers are read according

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to a nationality-tied, hegemonic ideology to which Yashere intentionally draws our attention, exerting ownership of the transnational narrative of her Blackness, and how it will be voiced. Lastly, in looking at stand-up comic Aamer Rahman, here is a transnational fgure of color whose performative strategies include his voice; but rather than calling attention to aural whiteness, Rahman plays with code switching for his audiences in ways most unexpected.6

Aamer Rahman Aamer Rahman is a stand-up comic who is overtly political onstage and of, and especially vocal about race as a richly complex narrative read onto one’s body. Rahman, an able-bodied, Brown, cisgender, heterosexual, Muslim comic was born to Bangladeshi parents and raised in Australia; like Yashere, he has the perspective of a second-generation immigrant whose skin color marks him as “other” within the national culture. Rahman is direct about his intentions in comedy to validate those who are oppressed by racism, and his tactics as a performer are sharp and unapologetic. Rahman is a comic whose performative strategy is to explore race as a social construction built upon geographic history, nationhood, ethnicity, color, and class. Rahman met his longtime comedy partner Nazeem Hussain at an Islamic awards event in Australia, where they both reside and hold law degrees (much like Von Ghasri), and had been engaging in social justice work on behalf of refugee and Aborigine populations (Lakshmi 2015). Together they formed Fear of a Brown Planet, the heading for shows under which they both performed individually (Logan 2014).7 Rahman performed throughout Australia and the United Kingdom, but eventually decided to discontinue performing, feeling his shows were too “niche,” and Fear of Brown Planet disbanded (Lakshmi 2015). Then in 2013, Rahman released a clip online depicting his joke on “reverse racism,” and his stand-up career was rejuvenated (Nawaz 2014; Rahman 2013). The momentum granted Rahman his frst of several tours of the United States and Canada, in a 2015 show titled, The Truth Hurts (Kettle 2015). Rahman’s “Reverse Racism” bit captures a lot of what is at play in Rahman’s performative strategies, which methodically at their core employ critical race humor: it is “racial truth-telling and criticism artistically angled through humor… defy[ing] dominant practices and ideologies that promote the erasure of material realities of race” (Rossing 17). The frst of these is that Rahman originates the roots of modern-day racism in the colonisation and imperialist histories of the United States and the United Kingdom and traces a clear line forward to today’s global and white supremacist hegemonic structures. At several junctures in his set, he uses a time machine to do so. In Rahman’s “Reverse Racism” bit, he explores use of the time machine as the only authentic way to create true reversed racism, in which a white population is systematically oppressed in a reverse mirror image of our world today. This structure directs attention to “the

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construction of race and the material consequences of those constructions;” here, Rahman goes to a time before Europe’s colonisation of Africa, Asia, etc., and convinces the leaders in these continents to colonise Europe (Rahman 2013; Rossing 17). He moves through the new history of the material consequences, where white people are forced into a Trans-Asian slave trade and exported to work on rice plantations, etc. And in that time, I’d make sure to set up systems that privilege Black and brown people at every conceivable social, political, and economic opportunity…and just for kicks, subject white people to [Afro-centric] people’s standards of beauty so they end up hating the color of their own skin, eyes, and hair…and if – after hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years of that – I got up on a stage and said, ‘What’s the deal with white people? Why can’t they dance?’ That would be reverse racism. (Rahman 2013) In his Fear of a Brown Planet special, one of many examples of this kind of performative strategy – tracing a line from long ago in history, forward in time – uses the time machine mechanism as well. Here, Rahman rifs on the premise of a hip-hop song by artist Pataphysics, where he constructed a scenario in which he goes back in time and gives to “indigenous peoples, machine guns and AK-47s” (Karalus 2011). In Rahman’s version however, he travels to the future frst to acquire a more advanced weapon; he then travels back in time to give it to the U.S.-based Native American populations for when Christopher Columbus arrives. This is representative of Rahman’s work, in that it toys with the horrifc knowledge of the systematic oppression of bodies of color that is to come as a consequence of colonialism and imperialist pursuit. Ofstage, Rahman’s public statements undergird the comedy he performs onstage: The biggest mistake people make when they talk about racism is to talk about it without talking about class. So racism always has some sort of economic imperative…it is about poor working people, it is about asylum seekers, it is about foreign policy, which are all economically driven. (Myriam 2015) In Rahman’s performances, his comedy frequently includes statements that, if taken out of context, might appear threatening; sentences such as, “Sometimes, terrorism can be a force for good” (Karalus 2011). Rahman’s delivery however is relaxed and non-confrontational, comically undercutting his content and syntax. That said, it would misalign Rahman’s skills as a comedian to reduce his efforts onstage to mere political propaganda or ideological preaching, as Rahman’s comedy is not written for white audiences. In reference to his “Reverse Racism” bit, Rahman stated, “A lot of people assume that bit is designed to speak to racists, to educate them – but it’s not, it’s meant to entertain people who already

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understand” (Rickett). Also: “It is designed to validate victims of racism and what they think” (Myriam 2015). This particular element of Rahman’s performative strategy: pairing subversive, highly political content with a contrasting light-hearted delivery, grows throughout Rahman’s sets in interesting ways. In performance, he frequently trades on the idea that his audience is in for something dangerous, building his audience’s tension; he then releases that tension through laughter when he concedes there is no danger present after all. To illustrate, Rahman has a bit in Fear of a Brown Planet in which he builds the idea he will violently begin a race riot, but the audience is released at the last possible moment when he qualifes that he will do so by email, from a remote Australian city. In another, more expansive section, he compares himself to character Jason Bourne, from the Bourne Identity flms. Bourne is a man unwittingly chosen by the CIA, trained to become an assassin; eventually, Bourne learns the truth and kills many others in retaliation. Rahman describes himself similarly, stating that private schooling tried to make him “white” but that he “came back and slew everyone in retaliation” – but once again, by email (Karalus 2011). Rahman’s performative strategy also consists of constructing race for his audiences by coloring whiteness in ways that echo how Blackness is colored onto bodies, highlighting the absurdity of a view of race as essentialist. In efect, he invites audiences to hear the familiar catchphrases of presumed aural whiteness (“speech that is assumed to emanate from white bodies”) in defense of his own racist clichés, such as: “I can’t be racist…some of my best friends are white. Sometimes I take them to parties to show them of to my other friends,” and “White people are awesome. I’m going to adopt one of their babies to feel better about myself ” (Carpenter 24; Karalus 2011). In another iteration of this performative strategy, Rahman uses his voice to create linguistic whiteface – and again, fips this device on its head to startling comic efect. Linguistic whiteface is using the voice to “indicate a speaker is white-identifed – can include word choice, grammar, vocal timbre” and can be thought of as code switching to aural whiteness (Carpenter 24). Performers such as Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Trevor Noah, and Gina Yashere have all utilised linguistic whiteface when adopting white-identifed characters in their sets; but to listen to Rahman’s voice carefully throughout Fear of a Brown Planet, he does not appear to make any vocal adjustments to timbre, pitch, or other markers, even when playing white-identifed characters. As entire portions of his set pass and we hear a variety of characters, it initially appears as though Rahman has not adopted linguistic whiteface as a performative technique at all for white characters. However, well into Brown Planet, Rahman begins to address linguistic whiteface and code switching as a practice in daily life: White women are conditioned to be so terrifed of young Black and brown men, that did you know we have to completely change our behavior? Like if I’m in a job interview, or any kind of professional setting, the bank – I’m dealing with a white woman…I have to appear less threatening…I have

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to make my voice higher. This is not even my real voice; this is my white voice. (Karalus 2011) Throughout this section of his set, Rahman never alters his voice whatsoever; including the words, “this is my white voice.” The great comic reveal, just shy of twenty minutes into his set, is that he has been using linguistic whiteface for the full duration of his set up to this moment. In order for his audience to feel more at ease, Rahman reveals he has been performing linguistic whiteface from the frst moment he stepped onstage. Here, Rahman held an expressionless face and chooses not to release the tension he has now built with a punchline, intentionally working against a performative strategy his audience has learned to expect (a strategy within itself!). To briefy distinguish between what Noah does when he becomes a white character vocally onstage, and what Rahman is doing here: Rahman intentionally does not make his linguistic whiteface – i.e., portraying a white character – obvious for the audience, in the way that Noah does. Instead, Rahman has shocked his audience into the realisation that what they believed to be his neutral persona and not a character, was performatively linguistic whiteface after all: following this, it would mean they have not yet heard Rahman’s authentic voice the entire time he has been onstage. Here, in the comedy contact zone of the colonised voice speaking among the colonisers and the colonised, Rahman plays with what may be an authentic voice, and what may well be a code-switched voice: the truth of which we, his audience, may never know. It is a poignant reminder, after all, that when race is constructed and projected onto a body of color anywhere in the world, we will likely lose that person’s authentic voice, as they must then navigate a performance of their own in response.

Conclusion To conclude: these comics have a transnational voice. They use adaptive behavior and vocal shifts which allow them to perform around the world while inviting their audiences to read their otherness as not just outside of white, Euro-centric culture, but outside of the nation-state in ways that further complicate their already-othered body. These performers know that racial construction moves beyond the borders of a nation-state, and they embody this critical, cultural consciousness as they perform. Speaking truth to power and racial truth-telling is a powerful act wherever it may occur, but these comics’ use of critical race humor in comedy contact zones enable us to contemplate and dare us to laugh about the complexities of race, wherever we are in the world. Each performer has their own performative strategies that punch upward: Tehran Von Ghasri disrupts the white male-focused line-ups of shows, deconstructing race across national borders and using his voice in diferent ways. Trevor Noah uses his voice as well, making use of linguistic whiteface while dismantling stereotypes. Gina Yashere uses feigned ignorance to disrupt the

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ways we perceive and stereotype aural Blackness (and in this manner, utilises her own voice as well, complete with British accent), and she toys with theoretical concepts of whiteness’ visibility and invisibility, challenging the white members of her audiences to recognise whiteness as raced. Aamer Rahman’s strategies include tracing lines through history backwards and forwards in time, building an audience’s tension and then releasing that tension in the last moments, and ultimately, lets an audience in on his own use of linguistic whiteface as a neutral persona. Ultimately, all of these performers utilise critical race humor, providing audiences “with the skills and habits of thought necessary to think critically about and transform racial knowledge and reality” (Rossing 30). Finally, their voices ultimately ask of us to witness them in the fullness of their identities, through our own laughter. Through their work, they expand our world and ways of seeing one another.

Notes 1 This quote is taken from my interview (2016) with Tehran Von Ghasri, and this chapter is an adaptation and revision of a chapter from The Performance of Intersectionality on the 21st Century Stand Up Comedy Stage, my previously published doctoral dissertation. 2 A readily quantifable assessment I conducted from years of research, is that comedy clubs – even the most famous of them in the U.S., in Los Angeles and New York City – typically have a line-up on any given night that tokenises persons of color. My only instance in seeing a woman performer of color over the course of sixteen club visits (NYC, LA (U.S.), and London, UK from 2016 –2018) was a Korean comic, Kat On, who opened at The Laugh Factory in LA. Far more common, there is one Black male performer, one white woman performer, and no women of color among twelve or more white male comics. This was true of my time in The Comedy Store (one white woman and two Black men), The Laugh Factory (only Kat On), and The Comedy Union (an all-Black comedy club which had no women perform that night), all in LA. This was true again in New York City throughout my many visits in 2017, including The Stand (one Black male and one white woman), Eastville Comedy Club (one Black male and one white woman), Comedy Cellar (one white woman and no persons of color), Gotham Comedy Club (no persons of color), Caroline’s (no persons of color), and Dangerfeld’s (one Black male). An exception is Kerry Coddett’s monthly Brooklyn, Stand Up!! Show. It is worth noting that this was not the case in London, U.K., among Monkey Business Comedy Club, Top Secret Comedy Club, Leicester Square Theatre, and the Palace Theatre. 3 Though, sadly, this issue of police brutality and racial profling is not limited to merely the U.S. 4 Noah performs incredible vocal gymnastics in this special, including an elevenminute segment where he creates a conversation between Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, where Mandela teaches Obama how to speak more like he does. 5 To unpack this statement further would certainly lend itself to a book-length work of study comparing the U.S. and U.K.’s perceptions of each other’s humor, and epistemological investigations into what constitutes “lowbrow” vs. “highbrow” humor. It would require one to posit, “Who gets to decide what is lowbrow versus what is highbrow comic content?” Stereotypes still abound today correlating one’s education level with personal taste in comedy, television, music, and other forms of entertainment. As recently as 2010 for example, an article was published

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in Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies that did just that. See Claessens and Dhoest. 6 Code switching refers to the way persons of color will adjust their speech, in order to appear less threatening for white people who are within proximity, or for other reasons related to pleasing a white audience (Blair). 7 Fear of a Brown Planet is a direct rif on Fear of a Black Planet, the third studio album of hip hop/rap group Public Enemy. This album, and certainly Public Enemy themselves, became known for their politically charged lyrics, which frequently tackled racism and adjacent subjects such as police brutality and capitalism (Perry).

Works Cited Blair, Elizabeth. “Comedian Hari Kondabolu on Diversity, Race and Burger King.” Code Switch: Race and Identity, Remixed, Article/Radio program National Public Radio, July 18, 2013. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/18/203034882/ comedian-hari- kondabolu-on-diversity-race-and-burger-king. Brown, Kimberly Nichele. Writing the Black Revolutionary Diva: Women’s Subjectivity and the Decolonizing Text. Indiana University Press. 2010. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990. Carpenter, Faedra Chatard. Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance. The University of Michigan Press, 2014. Casey, Vickey D. “Gina Yashere: A Queer Queen of Comedy Brightening the World.” Tagg Magazine, 2017. https://taggmagazine.com/gina-yashere/. Claessens, Nathalie, and Alexander Dhoest. “Comedy Taste: Highbrow/Lowbrow Comedy and Cultural Capital.” Perceptions: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2010, pp. 49–72. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. Routledge, 2000. Covington, Jeannette. Crime and Racial Constructions: Cultural Misinformation About African Americans in Media and Academia. Lexington Books, 2011. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. “From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally About Women, Race, and Social Control.” UCLA Law Review, vol. 59, 2012. pp.7–55. Czyzselska, Jane. “She’s Hustling: Out Lesbian Comic Gina Yashere on How New York Celebrates Ambition and Why She Loves UK Audiences.” Diva, 2014. Davis, Clive. “Gina Yashere; Comedy.” The Times, News International Trading Limited, May 3, 2012. Academic OneFile. Ecort, P.D. “Ladette.” San Luis Obispo: Urban Dictionary, 2018. http://www.urbandictionary.com/defne.php?term=ladette. Firla, K. Gina Yashere: Ticking Boxes [cover artwork]. Seeso, 2017. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Harvard University Press, 1995. Green, Paul M. Laughing to America. Directed by Paul M. Green, Performed by Gina Yashere, Stand-Up Comedy Special Comedy Dynamics, 2014, 1:07:00. Produced by Jodi Liberman, Gina Yashere. Green, Paul M. Gina Yashere: Ticking Boxes. Directed by Paul M. Green, Performed by Gina Yashere, Stand-Up Comedy Special. Seeso Network, 2017. Grover, Astha Madan. “Straddling the Line Between Gender and Sex: How Racism, Misogyny, and Transphobia Intertwine to Defne Notions of Womanhood in the World of Elite Sports.” The London School of Economics and Political Science. Engenderings,

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Dec. 7, 2020. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2020/12/07/straddling-the-line-betweengender-and- sex-how-racism-misogyny-and-transphobia-intertwine-to-defne-notions-of-womanhood- in-the-world-of-elite-sports/. Retrieved May 18, 2021. Hardy, Alex. “Review: Gina Yashere.” The Times, Review, News International Trading, Limited, Mar. 10, 2015. Itzkof, Dave. “A Newcomer’s Global View: Trevor Noah.” The New York Times, Late Edition, New York Times Company, Mar. 31, 2015. ProQuest. Karalus, Danielle. Fear of a Brown Planet. Performed by Aamer Rahman, and Nazeem Hussain, Filmed Stand Up Comedy Madman Entertainment Party Limited, 2011, 75 min. Produced by Danielle Karalus. Kettle, James. “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, Aamer Rahman: The Truth Hurts.” The Guardian, Guardian Newspapers Limited, June 14, 2014. Lakshmi, Sarah. “Aamer Rahman and the ‘Reverse Racism’ Joke Heard ‘Round the World’.” The New Parish, 2015. Lichtenstein, Jesse. “Soweto’s Stand-up Son: Can Trevor Noah’s Comedy Cross the Atlantic?” Newsweek, vol. 159, no. 26, 2012. ProQuest Research Library, http:// search.proquest.com/docview/1021042545?accountid=14556 Logan, Brian. “When Comic Aamer Rahman Was Accused of ‘Reverse Racism,’ He Made a Joke of It - and the Routine Went Viral.” The Guardian, Guardian Newspapers Limited, June 4, 2014. Meyer, David Paul. Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark. Performed by Trevor Noah, Netfix, Feb. 21, 2017. 67:00. Myriam, Francois-Cerrah. “Comic Aamer Rahman on ‘Islamophobia as a Flavour of Racism’.” The Middle East Eye, 2015. http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/ features/comic- aamer-rahman-islamophobia-favour-racism-224372775. Nawaz, Amna. “Comedian Aamer Rahman Finds a Fan Base in America.” NBC News, 2014. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/comedian-aamer-rahmanfnds-fan-base- america-n219591. Noah, Trevor. Trevor Noah: African American. Performed by Trevor Noah, Stand-Up Comedy Special, Showtime; L.E.G. Productions, Limited, 2013. 69:00. Produced by Netfix. ———. “Trevor Noah: Live at the Apollo.” Live at the Apollo, Directed by Paul Wheeler, Performed by Trevor Noah, BBC News Corporation, Nov. 22, 2013. Produced by Anthony Caveney. Norwood, Kimberly Jade. “Color Matters: Skin Tone and the Myth of a Post-Racial America.” St. Louis Public Radio. “Discrimination Based on Skin Tone Is Global Problem; Conference Here Looks at Colorism.” Apr. 2, 2015. https://news. stlpublicradio.org/arts- culture/2015-04-02/discrimination-based-on-skin-tone-isglobal-problem-conference- here-looks-at-colorism. Parks, Michael. “Love in S. Africa: ‘Heartbreak Law’ Repeal Not the End.” Los Angeles Times. Patrick Soon-Chiong. May 9, 1985. https://www.latimes.com/archives/ la-xpm-1985-05- 09-mn-6708-story.html. Retrieved May 16, 2021. Perry, Kevin. “Public Enemy: 25 Years on, Why ‘Fear of a Black Planet’ Is More Relevant Than Ever.” NME Magazine, 2015. http://www.nme.com/features/public-enemy25-years-on- why-fear-of-a-black-planet-is-more-relevant-than-ever-756642. Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession, 1991. pp. 33–40. Proftt, Michael. “Ladette.” Oxford Dictionaries. 2020. http://www.oxforddictionaries. com/us/defnition/american_english/ladette. Rahman, Aamer. “Aamer Rahman: Reverse Racism.” Performed by Aamer Rahman, Stand Up Comedy, YouTube, 2013. 2:48. https://youtu.be/dw_mRaIHb-M.

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Rickett, Oscar. “Australian Comedian Aamer Rahman Thinks Stand-Up Can and Should Tackle Racism.” Vice.com, 2015. p. 6, http://www.vice.com/read/ aamer-rahman-race-australia. Rossing, Jonathan P. “Critical Race Humor in a Post-racial Moment: Richard Pryor’s Contemporary Parrhesia.” Howard Journal of Communications, vol. 25, no. 1, 2014. pp. 16–33, doi:10.1080/10646175.2013.857369. Stewart, Jon. “Spot the Africa.” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Directed by Jon Stewart, Performed by Trevor and Jon Stewart Noah, Comedy Central, 2014. https://youtu.be/ AHO1a1kvZGo. Von Ghasri, Tehran. “Blackburn Interview, Tehran Von Ghasri.” Interview by Rachel Blackburn, Dec. 15, 2016. Los Angeles, CA. ———. “Tehran Von Ghasri, Black and Persian.” Stand-Up Comedy at The Laugh Factory, Performed by Tehran Von Ghasri. The Laugh Factory/YouTube, Oct. 23, 2013. 1:56. https://youtu.be/x-6Ro-63nzY. ———. “Tehran Von Ghasri, Black Panther.” Performed by Tehran Von Ghasri, Live Stand-Up Comedy, Laugh Factory/YouTube, Apr. 14, 2018, 3:39. https://youtu. be/r-icggH_SSA. ———. “Tehran Von Ghasri, Racist Baggage.” Laugh Factory, Performed by Tehran Von Ghasri, Live performance. Laugh Factory/YouTube, Mar. 16, 2018. 3:58. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YEp62vipII&t=81s. Williams, Ben. “Trevor Noah - Lost in Translation.” Time Out, London, 2012.

PART II

Gendered Experiences and Stand-Up Comedy

6 HUMOUR AS ANTIHISTAMINE IN THE DISCOURSE OF PERSIAN STAND-UP COMEDY Female Stand-Up Comedians in Iran Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

Setting the Scene: (Stand-Up) Comedy in Iran Stand-up comedy in the modern sense is a burgeoning fedgling of comic arts in Iran. Comedy as a theatrical form, nevertheless, is deeply rooted in Iranian art and culture. ‘Ruhozi’ (literally on the pool/pascina), for instance, represents a range of traditional comic acts with salient dramatic characteristics similar to modern stand-up comedy (Beeman, 2011; Gafary, 1985). In ruhozi characterisation, the plot is usually centred around ‘siah’ (blackman) who stood on a raised wooden stage on the pool, humorously targeting the public’s social concerns and responsible dignitaries. Thus, under the façade of bufoonery and parody, the acting humourist artfully voiced bitter truth, palatable to the taste of both the oppressed and the oppressor. This is also what commonly runs in the body and soul of stand-up comedy today. From a historical standpoint, comic dramatic arts such as ruhozi and taghlid1 composed the lion’s share of secular Iranian theatre. Along with religious theatrical forms (e.g., ta’ziya, rowzeh-khani), they entertained and represented a nation for centuries. The Iranian traditional comedy, however, could not endure to enter modern Iran with its original profle. The comic forms either gradually disappeared or metamorphosed into Western-like cinematic bodies. Religious theatrical forms, however, were perhaps more strongly rooted in Iranians’ cultural mindset. They were also echoed and reinforced in the Islamic Iran. Thus, the religious counterpart of Iranian theatre could more or less withstand the test of time (Mahdavi, 2007). This salvation of religious performances is, however, not hard to understand as they were (or altered to be) recitations (e.g., rowzeh-khani) and passion plays (e.g., ta’ziya) pivoting on Islamic themes. Ta’ziya, for example, dramatises the martyrdom of the Shiite Saint (or Imam) Husesin and his followers in confronting the oppressing sovereignty (Talajooy, 2011). Such religious DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-9

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aura was, indeed, valued in post-revolutionary Iran when Islamic doctrine was deemed to be a stepping stone in almost all legally-accepted ideologies in the country (Heidari-Shahreza, 2017; Pak-Shiraz, 2013). Although the ebb and fow of Iranian history inficted the growth of comedy in diferent ways, comedy marked the beginning of Iranian cinema in 1930. Within the span of the current century, the ofsprings of Iranian traditional comedy have won the favour of the public better than other dramatic genres (Pak-Shiraz, 2013). The national popularity and box-ofce success of Iranian comedies sprout from diferent sources of which the social functions of humour, I believe, is a major one. In fact, the treatment of stand-up comedy in this chapter may also serve as a case in point for how humour (in its various manifestations) lives and gives life to notions embedded in a given society (see also HeidariShahreza, 2021). As already mentioned, stand-up comedy is the tyro of modern comic forms in Iran. Historically, the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) cast a heavy shadow on Iranian comedy. They distracted the attention of Iranians to art genres with overt or covert religious and war overtones. Iranian comedy, however, gradually rose from its ashes and overtook the bulletin boards in Iranian cinemas (again) in the recent decade. Stand-up comedy seems to have joined this bandwagon in the past several years (Heidari-Shahreza, 2017). Notwithstanding, it seems to have a long way to go both as a genre of comedy and a topic of scientifc inquiry. It would inevitably evolve within the socio-cultural geography of present Iran. This, in practice, connotes at least two notable challenges. Firstly, stand-up comedians should be heedful of the legal (governmental) redlines of appropriate humour.2 Secondly, Iranian society is composed of a tapestry of cultures, ideologies, ethnicities and customs. Therefore, the safe delivery of comic acts before Iranian audience can inherently be demanding as many topics may evoke unpredictable reactions. In other words, concepts such as ‘social appropriacy’ and ‘politeness’ within Iranian-Islamic culture can be drastically diferent from its Western counterpart. Within the confnes of the country, there is signifcant variation in what Iranians fnd socially acceptable or not. Thus, a stand-up comedian particularly in case of nationally televised performances should be cautious not to cross the red lines (see also Pak-Shiraz, 2013). Alternatively, we may say topical issues should be touched upon by the humorist in a way that it would bring a smile to the lips, not a frown. In fact, the female stand-up performers who will be discussed in this chapter go through this less-trodden path of making the Iranian audience laugh. The stand-up contest I will elaborate on in the next section, triggered and (or at least) fuelled the surge in popularity of such stand-up comedy among comedians and the public.

First Stand-Up Comedy Contest in Iran In the past six or seven years, one can witness a paramount boost in the number and types of stand-up performances in the Iranian context. Nevertheless, before

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2016, few male stand-up comedians performed sporadically on stage or appeared on TV. As mentioned earlier, stand-up comedy then was severely underdeveloped in Iran. However, the inauguration of a new Iranian channel, called Nasim, in 2013 opened up new opportunities for stand-up comedy to bloom. This national TV network carried the slogan of fun and entertainment. Thus, TV programmes with an overriding theme of humour were warmly welcomed. Khandevaneh (a pun on Persian words for laughter and watermelon) was the epitome of such programs. It began to be broadcast on Nasim in 2015 and was ranked frst among the most popular Iranian TV programs. Rambod Javan, an Iranian comedy actor and flmmaker, hosted Khandevaneh where the idea of a stand-up contest was born. In 2016, this contest under the name Khandanandeh Bartar (roughly the superior comedian) was announced on the program. Sixteen comedians were invited to join this contest which included fourteen male and two female comedy actors. Generally, they already had an established background as comedians on Iranian TV and/or in the cinema. None of them, however, professionally worked as a stand-up performer. Although little information is available to validate this claim, to the best of my knowledge, it was the frst stand-up comedy contest in Iran particularly on Iranian TV. Yet, with more confdence, it marked the frst appearance of female stand-up performers.

Structure of the Contest In total, sixteen comedians, in eight pairs, took part in this contest. The contest ran four rounds to reach its fnale. In each round, the (remaining) comedians were paired up to compete. Each episode of Khandevaneh featured one group of contestants. The two stand-up comedians performed under the same conditions. That is, they were invited on the stage, were given the same amount of time and performed in front of the same number of studio audience. The contestants had ffteen minutes to complete their acts in the frst round. The ones reaching the second round also had a three-minute extra time for their stand-ups (in sum, eighteen minutes). The semi-fnal time limit could extend to twenty minutes if a comedian ran short of time. The TV viewers were then encouraged by the presenter, Rambod Javan, to vote for their favourite performer via cell phone text messaging. The performer who comparatively received more votes was promoted to the next round. The performances were recorded regularly and broadcast on Nasim TV channel, weekdays at 11 pm (still available on the Iranian video-sharing service, Aparat). All performances were allegedly brought to TV viewers’ homes without applying any special efects (i.e., added laugh tracks) or censorship in post-production. The two female participants of this contest performed in the frst and second phases of the contest. They, however, could not proceed to the semi-fnal. This stand-up contest was singularly successful in entertaining and attracting millions of Iranian TV viewers. It also paved the way for the emergence of a new generation of stand-up comedians, trainers and trainees. Having taken the

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initiative to widely introduce stand-up comedy, the contest organisers contributed signifcantly to the development and popularity of this genre of comedy. This, subsequently, opened the doors for the emergence of the frst generation of female stand-up comedians in Iran.

Profles of Female Comedians The stand-up contest featured two female stand-up performers for the frst time. As mentioned earlier, none of the participants worked professionally as stand-up comedians. They were chiefy comedy actors (and screenwriters) who were probably deemed capable of taking part in this contest both in terms of their professional backgrounds and public acceptability. Shaghayegh Dehghan is now a 43-year-old Iranian actress based in Tehran, Iran. She began her career as a puppeteer and writer of children’s TV shows. She, then, appeared in a number of Iranian TV series and movies. Shaghayegh is most remembered for her role as Ms. Shirzad, a silly secretary in the Iranian TV comedy series, Doctors’ Building (2011). She also starred in several comedy series directed by nationally famous comedy actor and director, Mehran Modiri. Particularly, in Barare’s Nights (2006), she acted as a village woman with rebellious, anti-traditional preferences and lifestyle. Elika Abdolrazzaghi is a 42-year-old cinema, stage and TV actress, living in Tehran, Iran. She has appeared in quite a few Iranian TV series, in addition to several movies and theatre performances. Elika is probably most known for her acting in Mehran Modiri’s comedy series. She was also applauded as the best comedian actress in a national Iranian flm and television festival for her role in the Modiri’s series Bitter Cofee (2012).

Framework of Communication in Stand-Up Comedy This chapter primarily intends to shed light on how female stand-up participants communicated a wide range of topical issues to their audience. Therefore, it seems benefcial to initially elaborate on the framework of communication in their stand-up performances. As shown in Figure 6.1, given the televised setting of the stand-up contest, two levels of communication can be perceived (see also Dynel, 2016; HeidariShahreza, 2017). The frst communicative level pertains to the actual/real performance setting. This, in turn, involved at least three groups of audience and/ or interactants. The most salient one was the studio audience with whom the performers were in direct contact (i.e., technically, the immediate audience). The second group was the huge number of TV viewers (and to a lesser extent, social media users) who saw their performances (i.e., the mediated audience). A third group is also theoretically perceivable particularly considering the friendly, informal atmosphere of the program. The performers also interacted

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with the stand-up crew or the host, cameramen, sound engineers and backstage staf. The second communicative level is fctitious and multi-layered in nature. Shaghayegh and more notably Elika in their comic acts usually created a fctitious context in which they moulded their humour. The audience were, thus, taken to a fabricated world and introduced to characters or personas (sometimes including the comedians themselves) that collectively formed the setting and the characterisation of the performers’ funny stories or comic renderings of diferent topics. This inter-character level of communication could theoretically signify several layers of reference and allude to wider contexts of communication and interaction. In other words, this non-bona-fde communication was employed to safely express ideas, address individuals and possibly redress the (gender-biased) mindset of the Iranian society. The four performances by Shaghayegh and Elika more or less followed the ordinary routine of a stand-up comedy. Initially, the comedian who was about to perform was introduced by the compère. The audience was encouraged to applaud and say out loud the performer’s name. Afterward, the mobile stage of the contest turned to the waiting audience with the comedian at the centre. Shaghayegh and Elika usually thanked their audience and fans. They sometimes commented on reactions on social media. The comedians, then, began to perform their comic acts. The lion’s share of this phase was allegedly their past (childhood) memories and humorous treatment of some common (gendered) topics. Shaghayegh and Elika concluded their performances with thanks to the audience and sometimes a serious, brief epilogue unfolding the topics they had already targeted humorously. In sum, their performances (as generally in other contestants’) were cast through four phases of introduction, the comedian’s entrance, the body of the performance and the closure. Rutter (2000) also found the same routine in 1990s British stand-up performances.

FIGURE 6.1

Communication framework in stand-up comedy (based on HeidariShahreza, 2017)

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Unit of Performance Analysis To analyse the comedians’ stand-up performances and discern the incidences of gender mainstreaming (or raising awareness of gender equality) in the discourse of humour, ‘scene by topic’ was deemed as the appropriate unit of analysis. It referred to a small fraction of a routine (or a scene) within which the comedians talked about a specifc topic. In practice, the video clips of their performances were carefully dissected into time spans based on the topics addressed by the performers in each round of the contest. Each time interval marked the moment the comedian began addressing a specifc topic in her comedy until she switched to another topic (or in some cases, another aspect of the general, overriding theme of humour). Each scene by topic on average lasted about a minute. As I have reasoned elsewhere in detail, such a unit of performance analysis had the notable advantage of tracing the themes and motives of humorous discourse feasibly as well as accurately (see Heidari-Shahreza, 2017; also Juckel et al., 2016). The scenes by topic were examined at micro and macro level to spot and interpret feminine humour latent in the stand-up performances. A female assistant, also an Iranian informant (i.e., a person cognizant of the Iranian society), independently analysed the same video clips and cases of disagreement were resolved to improve the reliability of the analysis and avoid falling into idiosyncratic, gender-biased interpretations.

Feminine Humour as Antihistamine Women in Iran A glimpse of ancient Persia through the remaining artefacts implies that Iranians were among pioneering countries in moving towards an egalitarian society (see Brosius, 1996). In the Achaemenid (550-330 BC) and Sassanid (224–651 AD) empires, for instance, there were women in high levels of the ruling system. Iranians celebrated women’s day; women allegedly inherited and got paid equally; they could decide whom to marry, participate in sports and receive the same education as males did. The history of Iran, however, has witnessed peaks and troughs in this regard. Gender identity and roles have been altered several times to keep in tune with the ruling entities, political transformations and socio-cultural changes thereof (see Hoodfar and Sadr, 2010). Thus, metaphorically, the gender pendulum has moved forward and retreated to a hegemonic male-dominated society in the course of Iranian modernisation. Against a backdrop of a patriarchal, androcentric society, Iran was taking big steps toward European and North American gender policies (e.g., in dress code). Islamic Revolution (1979) in Iran, however, drifted these gradual gender developments into Islamic Code of gender identity. As a result, gender roles were (re)defned in postrevolutionary Iran within the boundaries of Islamic, traditional culture (HeidariShahreza, 2019). New rules of appropriate behaviour for men and women were

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put in force to allegedly preserve the esteemed position of women in family and society, to bar cultural invasion from the West (as assumed by Iranian governments) and set right what were supposedly against the dignity of a (Muslim) woman. Present Iran, I think, can best be described as a country in transition. Gender studies in Iran indicate gradual shifts in ideology and social construction of gender in ways more akin to Western stereotypes. In recent decades, it seems a more gender-conscious approach has been taken in some social institutions, particularly Iranian families (see Friedl, 2009). Thus, Iranian society seems to bridge, albeit slowly, the gender cleavage, giving more value, credit and opportunities to Iranian women in education, economy, workforce, etc.

Humour and Gender Interplay: Feminine Humour Humour and gender inform and infuence each other in diferent ways. They also complete and complicate one another. Gender can be considered as a category and topic in humour. The relevant literature suggests that a notable portion of humour and joking in various social contexts such as friendly hangouts, workplaces, etc. spins around gender (or more precisely sex) (Holmes, 2006). Traditionally, women, for instance, have been the object of ridicule in the (predominantly male-dominated) discourse of humour. Humour is still gender-biased particularly in contexts where women are commonly placed lower in the familial or societal hierarchies (Heidari-Shahreza, 2019). From the opposite vantage point, humour also functions as an important index of gender diferences (Kotthof, 2006). I would like to envisage humour vis-à-vis gender using three metaphors: Firstly, humour is a truthful mirror, refecting the status quo of gender and its developments within a society. Secondly, it is a crystal ball in which future directions and patterns in gender order and identity can be glimpsed. Besides this prophecy power, humour is also a lever that people (especially humourists) can use to lift frmly fxed gender beliefs and move a society toward a more egalitarian state. Metaphorically, Dr. Humour recognises the social defcits and prescribes non-invasive remedies. Gendered discourse of humour and humorous discourse of gender can both be of great signifcance. Gender-biased jokes are an example of the former; talking about gender inequality under the pretext of humour is an instance of the latter (as in the stand-up performances of the female participants). These two together form a Klein bottle, engendering and enriching each other. Feminine humour, in the context of this chapter, is primarily intended to mean the same. In what follows, I strive to shed light on how humorous discourse of stand-up comedy can safely communicate gender concerns of Iranian women. Humour creates a safe house and provides a society (and comedians in particular) with a safety valve to express (suppressed) feelings, orientations and attitudes. In social pragmatics, it is a face-saving strategy to face and speak truth to power (Heidari-Shahreza, 2019, 2021; Zajdman, 1995). The metaphor ‘humour as antihistamine’, in fact, rests upon this potential of humour in general

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and stand-up comedy in particular. ‘His’ (pronounced /hɪs/) is a Persian word meaning hush. It is rather onomatopoeic and is widely used by (Iranian) Persian speakers to make someone silent. Thus, ‘antihistamine’ in this chapter is a phonological pun connoting the anti-hush potential of feminine humour. For this coinage, I was inspired, to some extent, by a 2013 Iranian drama movie, called ‘His! Dokhtarha Faryad Nemizanand’ (Hush! Girls do not scream) directed by Pouran Derakhshandeh. The plot, in retrospect, unfolds the tragic story of a young girl, Shirin, who has been sexually abused by a male servant in her childhood. Shirin has failed several times to maintain relationships with her fancés because of her past sufering. She kills a janitor in her youth to stop him from abusing a next-door little girl and fnally faces capital punishment for the murder crime. Feminine humour, as I argue, can give voice to the devoiced, helping women talk about their feelings, wants and needs. The word ‘antihistamine’ also makes sense in its English meaning. The lighthearted atmosphere of humour (here, stand-up comedy) can numb the nerves, making possible the expression of serious issues. Put diferently, in any society, there are societal allergens that are watered by factors in politics, religion, economy, culture, etc. Talking about such controversial issues is not always possible. This is particularly the case for women who have historically been deprived of their rights (see also Hoodfar and Sadr, 2010). Feminine humour is a humanitarian, intelligent and peaceful way of redressing this inequality. A comedian encourages their audience to take a spoonful of bitter truth with laughter. In the following section, I provide several examples of feminine humour as antihistamine, relying on the stand-up performances of the two participants of the contest.

Instance One: Gendered Concept of Occupation In her frst performance, Shaghayegh, at the outset, instigates a play frame by apparently stepping aside from the contest (see Appendix A for transcription conventions): … [00:20] Thanks for inviting me to join this contest but (1) I apologize and I’d like to leave the contest before it’s too late! (the host and the audience are surprised) Honestly, I’m not a competitive person and (1) I think because women should mind some limits; they are behind men in this respect. I’d rather say goodbye [00:50]… She, then, adopts a new identity by putting on a pair of glasses and mocking the gestures and facial expressions of a sitcom character, known to the audience as Ms. Shirzad. This character was originally acted out by Shaghayegh herself in a sitcom, Doctors’ Building (2011), directed by Soroush Sehat. Ms. Shirzad is a young, ‘silly secretary’ working at the joint ofce of a psychologist and a plastic surgeon. She is rather forgetful, mistakes Persian words with similar pronunciations or

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meanings. At the same time, Ms. Shirzad, is occasionally rebellious and addresses serious issues amid her foolishness and frivolity. Shaghyegh, thus, continued her stand-up masquerading as Ms. Shirzad. She mainly builds her comedy upon a series of semantic and phonological puns and the confusion such words are prone to create in diferent social interactions3 (e.g., the Persian word, ‘shir’, meaning a lion, milk and a faucet all at the same time). Shaghayegh (as Ms. Shirzad) describes herself as “a girl whose dreams are ruined because of the inappropriate behaviour of others”. Also, touching playfully upon concepts such as right to privacy, and equality of human beings, she introduces herself further as “a lonely, helpless secretary who devotes her free time to helping others in a society full of wolves”. Shaghayegh, in Ms. Shirzad’s words, then, switches into the gendered concept of occupation, highlighting a secretary’s job:4 [7: 23] because we (women) are secretaries, our jobs are not important?! (1) I would like to take the opportunity to defend the signifcant and infuential job of a secretary. (2) (With the serious tone of a detective solving a murder mystery) the game is over, Mr Javan! (3) (Talking to the contest host, followed by the audience’s loud laughter). On what grounds, in your flms, do you depict (female) secretaries as cheeky, stubborn, clumsy, pampered and STUPID persons? (2) (The audience begins to laugh) (with mild anger) why isn’t there a special day for secretaries on calendar? [7:57] //…. [10:51] have you ever thought of the hands secretly involved in downplaying secretaries? (1) These are those who have invented ANSWERING MACHINES! (The audience begins to laugh) [11:06] //… [11:46] I feel (2) our jobs as secretaries are much more important than doctors’ [11:53]… Shaghayegh, in her stand-up comedy, smartly takes shelter in the character, Ms. Shirzad, to safely bring the audience’s attention to issues such as the relatively lower position of women in the Iranian society, the insecure atmosphere in which women live (or at least they feel so), and the gender injustice in job opportunities. The intertextuality she creates (i.e., alluding to Ms. Shirzad in a popular sitcom) makes it possible to speak truth to power. Shaghayegh is the puppeteer who gives life to Ms. Shirzad and communicates tolerably some socio-cultural allergens through her puppet. She employs a double-voiced, humorous discourse in her stand-up comedy to stand up against the dominant gender identity and roles in general and job stereotypes in particular. Shaghayegh and Ms. Shirzad at the same time, albeit at two diferent levels of communication (see Figure 6.1), encourage the audience to heed at least subconsciously questions like why women do not have equal chances in the workplace/workforce. Such questions may not be tolerated otherwise within a traditionally male-dominated society and given the (strict) guidelines of appropriate content on a national TV. Feminine humour, however, makes it possible, punching the gender-biased policies and beliefs with an iron fst in a velvet glove.

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Instance Two: Women in Family Structure Elika, in the frst round of the contest, begins with why she has joined the contest. She is in the contest to represent other female comedians in stand-up comedy (“because we are very very few in this genre”). Elika embarks on her performance, revealing that she has always felt unwanted and sufered from lack of selfconfdence. She, then, traces humorously this inferiority complex, so to speak, to the past particularly her childhood. Elika playfully addresses how downgrading and othering of women begin from the very moment they are wrapped in a pink blanket (i.e., since the birth through choosing the gendered colours of pink and blue for girls and boys respectively). While her whole family was full of joy and pride when her brother was born, they react to Elika’s birth with despair: [1:28] When my aunt (my mother’s sister) saw the newborn (Elika) was a girl (2), she turned to my mom with a face like this (mocking the aunt’s facial expressions and showing her sadness; mild laughter from the audience), she was trying to disclose the bad news slowly to my mom (that you gave birth to a girl) [1:42]… Elika successfully brings laughter to the lips by resorting to her acting background, mocking her native dialect and most notably establishing intertextuality. She calls herself “an innocent ugly duckling” and makes comparison with the character Beans in the animation Rango (2011) and Olive in the classic Popeye the Sailor (1960). She uses them metaphorically to express how she was (or she felt to be) in the eye of their family members.5 Asking her mom for a memory or funny story about her (to be used in the stand-up contest), Elika fnds that she has no place in family memories. She humorously puts it as follows: [5:25] (Elika’s mom talking to her) (imitating her mom’s loud voice and gestures) uh-ha! I remembered. Tell this! Your brother, Maneli, had a car accident. Then, your cousin told us he was DEAD. (The audience begins to laugh mildly) But, we later came to realize that he was not dead; he had only broken a leg! (3). Right, mom! But, where in this story am I? I said. (Elika’s mom thinking and talking softly) The car he had the accident with was a blue Nissan pickup, my mom said (the audience begins to laugh loudly). (Excited) She remembered the car many years later but she could not remember me! (In this or any other family stories) (1). So, do you now expect me to have self-confdence!? (Turning and talking to the audience) [5:52]… Elika strategically repeats the question at the end of this excerpt several times in her performance. The question is intended to fnd its answer with an eye to the (traditional) status of women in Iranian families and society. She takes care to depict her family as a typical Iranian family (of that time), not an exception, and raises the question of self-confdence on behalf of Iranian women. The audience is

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challenged on their gender schemata and is invited to feel responsible for women feeling less competent or achieving less than their male counterparts. Feminine humour is once again employed to speak for women. Within a traditional Iranian family, female members have a peculiar, complicated position. On the one hand, men are traditionally held responsible for women in the family (e.g., their well-being, safety, honour, etc.). On the other hand, historically, such an attitude has drastically infuenced women’s ‘doing gender’ and impeded their full-fedged presence in the Iranian society6 (see Hoodfar and Sadr, 2010). In recent decades, this oxymoron seems to have faded away in some Iranian families (Friedl, 2009; Heidari-Shahreza, 2019). The pro-women gradual shifts, however, have a long way to go nationwide. Inherently addressing the familial position of Iranian women can be a potentially strong socio-cultural allergen. Nonetheless, humour resembles very thin acupuncture needles; almost painlessly, they reach the intended points and have potential to heal. Feminine humour may evoke pervasive gender codes without provoking (male) encoders.

Instance Three: Women and Urbanisation (Tehran Native or Naïve) In the second and actually her last performance in the contest, Elika continues her self-deprecating style of humour. This time, however, she largely targets the dichotomy of being a person from Tehran, capital of Iran (i.e., a Tehran native) or being someone who comes from other Iranian cities, towns and villages (i.e., Tehran naïve,7 so to speak): [3:16] you all know that (1) we Iranians have been divided into two parts; (1) two kinds of people; Tehran kid and town (or village) kid (the audience begins to laugh) [3:21]… Within the play frame of her frst performance, Elika regards this latent dichotomy as a major reason for her lack of self-confdence. Stylising urban and rural dialects, she introduces two fctitious characters, Girdgic and Birdgic into her comedy to represent a Tehran native and a Tehran naïve respectively. Not unlike angels sitting on the right and left shoulders, Girdgic and Birdgic whisper in Elika’s ear about what is socially appropriate and what is not. Elika also introduces Clara as a stylish girl from Tehran with whom she has tried to make friends in school years. Elika sets examples of being “chic” with references to how Clara talks and behaves, humorously recounting her failed attempts to look like Clara. She, then, extends her humour to a comparison of Tehran lifestyle with other cities. The Tehran-town (or generally urban-rural) dichotomy involves many factors, concepts and issues. Accordingly, gender order and roles within Iranian society are also dichotomised and urbanised. Being a woman in general and, as Elika puts, being “chic” in particular unfavourably places women in rural areas

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in a lower, harsher position. Towards the end of her stand-up performance, Elika admits: [13:03] During all these years, no matter how hard I have tried, I could not (2) become, join or be privileged to be one of the chic people. Of course, joking aside, I have to say (1) all (1) dialects, accents, languages, local cuisines and all traditions and customs we have together form our identity. And I sincerely appreciate those who protect our language, culture and customs and transfer them to the next generation. [13:40] (the audience applauses; the end of performance) Once again, feminine humour provides a secure context to speak for ‘nationwide’ femininity in the shadow of ‘elite’ femininity. Distinguishing the two can be vital and insightful for more often than not (gender) norms, roles and gaps are realised diferently within the urban-rural poles of the gender continuum. To bring gender justice, attention should also be paid to intra-gender subjugation. As Elika humorously points out at the outset of her routine, women’s lack of self-confdence can be a by-product of their being town girls not a Tehran one like the fctitious Clara. The urban-rural dichotomy as a potentially strong allergen is peacefully brought to the fore in Elika’s performance. It is climaxed with her tribute to all who respect and protect rural heritage including rural women.

Instance Four: Reverse Discourse of Feminism Reverse discourse was originally employed by Michel Foucault to refer to a discourse of resistance within a dominant, opposite discourse (see e.g., Foucault, 1980). In simple terms, reverse discourse makes use of the terminology and jargon of another discourse (usually a major, common and dominant one) but reverses the direction of its intentions (Heidari-Shahreza, 2017; Weaver, 2010). Thus, despite the similar appearance, it communicates semantically and pragmatically opposite interpretations. Foucault put forth this concept in relation to the dynamic, resisting discourse of homosexuality within the socially acceptable boundaries of discourse of heteronormativity. The humorous discourse of stand-up comedy makes it apt for the emergence and/or employment of reverse discourse. Humour inherently shares the key features of such discourse for in humour the comedian often seriously targets the same social defcits while resorting to laughter to lubricate the speaking of truth. As further explanation, two levels of aggression can be identifed in humour (Heidari-Shahreza, 2017; Scarpetta and Spagnolli, 2009). On the direct or immediate level, the stand-up comedian targets the individual(s) or topic(s) that form the butt of humour. On the second level, however, the laughing audience is actually challenged on their background knowledge and socio-culturally shared schemata. Peculiar it may look; the audience apparently laughs while reversely, they are being laughed at. This peaceful (or socio-politically acceptable/tolerated) criticism and correction by a comedian

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adds greatly to the value of humour in general and stand-up comedy in particular. The deniability (e.g., I was just joking) and playfulness inherent in humour enables a comedian to touch upon the same topical issues, use the same words but lead their audience to a totally opposite direction. I looked for the footprints of reverse discourse in the stand-up performances of Shaghayegh and Elika. The ‘antihistamine’ nature of their comedies, as discussed above, hinted that such discourse can actually be found. In what follows, I briefy elaborate on a possible instance of such discourse in Shaghayegh’s fnal performance. In her second stand-up act, Shaghayegh employs reverse discourse on two parallel levels of aggression (and resistance). On the one hand, she aims at the deep-rooted discourse8 of male dominance and male normativity; maledominated themes such as males are more intelligent; more skilful, more knowledgeable, etc. (see Furnham, 2001). On the other hand, she plays with the alleged discourse of gender equality; the claim (by the government or society) that men and women are equal (or treated equally). The humorous discourse of Shaghayegh’s performance centres on “there is no diference whatsoever between men and women”. While this, on the surface, speaks of gender equality, she sets examples to illustrate the contrary. She pretends to posit verbally and nonverbally (i.e., facial expressions, gestures) that men and women are equal in the Iranian society (and in the world). Her comedy, nevertheless, brings forth that men are practically considered, in George Orwell’s words, more equal than women. Shaghayegh’s examples of gender diferences also establish a discourse of resistance and aggression by depicting women as more capable than men in areas such as understanding sarcasm, attention to details, multitasking, etc. In the excerpt below, men’s so-called inability to diferentiate shades of colours are ridiculed: [4:55] Aside from men’s incapability to attend to the details, men and women are indeed the same; there is no diference between them. (1) Oh! I forgot there’s only one thing! Men essentially cannot diferentiate colors (2) (The audience begins to laugh mildly, Shaghayegh makes eye contact with them; laughter gets louder) I mean they can tell apart only three colors (red, green, and blue). But, when they want to buy a TV, they read (technical) specifcations and say: this TV can show 12 millions colors and that 16 millions. I’ll buy the 16-million-color TV. 16 MILLIONS COLORS?! Dear men! You cannot tell the diference between yellow and green! Why (1) (almost laughing) 16 million colors?![5:39]//… [8:43] aside from this, men and women are indeed the same; there is no diference between them. (1) Oh! I forgot there’s only one thing! [8:50] … Shaghayegh, then, draws out two pieces of clothes with similar colours and proves that the female audience can correctly label the colours of the items while men, including the host, cannot. She repeats the same play frame on multitasking starting with the same statement regarding men and women’s equality. Shaghayegh

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also talks about “an unwritten (but respected) pact of brotherhood” among men when it comes to downgrading women and sympathising with a man who tolerates a woman especially his wife (from a male-dominated perspective). At the end of her performance, she condemns gendered normalcy, defnes womanhood with words such as delicacy, civilised-ness, and politeness. Shaghayegh fnally wishes that one day “men want to be like women”. The reverse discourse on gender equality that she instigates in her comedy gradually ends in discourse of feminism. Feminine humour, thus, takes women under its wing, protecting and promoting women’s rights (see also Heidari-Shahreza, 2019; Kotthof, 2006).

Conclusion Aristotelian Mode of Persuasion and Speaking Truth to Power This chapter essentially intended to illuminate how stand-up comedy served to speak truth safely and convincingly to its audience, particularly those holding power and are perhaps reluctant to change. Hence, a note on Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle and his ‘mode of persuasion’ can be insightful (see also Weaver, 2015). There are three major concepts in Aristotelian rhetoric (see Figure 6.2): ‘Ethos’ which, in the context of stand-up comedy, refers to the character and real self of the comedian, their public image and the personas they adopt in their comedy; ‘pathos’ or the range of emotions, feelings, and impressions the comedian induces in their audience or broadly the society and ‘logos’ that points to the logic behind the comedian’s humorous discourse and its possible efects. Within the purview of the stand-up contest, this tripartite rhetoric can be considered (see HeidariShahreza, 2017). The well-established popularity of the two female participants

FIGURE 6.2

Aristotelian rhetoric in stand-up comedy (based on Heidari-Shahreza, 2017)

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as comedy actors (and celebrities) could successfully make the ethos vertex of the triangle. They also addressed several gendered topics or subjects familiar and of concern to most Iranians particularly women. Thus, pathos was inevitably evoked on a personal and societal level. Humour styles (e.g., self-deprecating), forms (e.g., jokes, funny stories), types (verbal, visual, etc.) and above all, humour techniques or rhetorical devices such as false analogy, and exaggeration all contributed to the logical mechanism or logos of the performers’ convincing communication. Therefore, this stand-up contest could potentially serve as the right context (and pretext) for the female comedians to communicate some important issues; several socio-cultural allergens were expressed convincingly under the façade of humour and within the perceived red lines. They employed the power of humorous rhetoric to speak truth to power (see also Heidari-Shahreza, 2021).

Healing and Harming Effects of Stand-Up Comedy Unfortunately, research on Persian stand-up comedy (in the Iranian context) is notably limited (see Heidari-Shahreza, 2017 for more information). This dearth of scientifc inquiry makes it very hard to speak of the (actual) ripple efect of this contest: to talk with confdence about the social impact and the appeal of the performances outside its ad-hoc milieu. Nevertheless, I noticed several clues to make a hunch in this regard: most importantly, after the success of the stand-up contest, Khandevaneh, the TV programme in which the frst stand-up contest appeared, ran a second stand-up contest, called Khandanandeh Sho! (Become a comedian!). This time, however, all male and female Iranian adults interested in stand-up comedy could initially upload a three-minute stand-up video to the program’s website. Out of hundreds of videos, hundred were frst selected by a reviewing committee. Sixteen fnal participants were, then, chosen to enter the contest by four examiners who were Iranian comedy actors. Interestingly, these referees also served as the contestants’ mentors. Thus, this second contest was also a training course for prospective stand-up comedians. Khandanandeh Sho was warmly received by many TV viewers and continued for a second season. Season three was also held in 2022 after being paused due to Covid-19 restrictions. For the frst time, in this season, a young female contestant could reach the semifnal, widely winning the favour of the audiences and the judging panel. In all, this stand-up competition introduced (or rather trained) several successful male and female stand-up performers. In addition, other TV programmes also included stand-up performances in their broadcasting agenda. They still appear on Iranian TV. Such hints cannot speak of the long-term, large-scale efects of the original stand-up contest or the feminine humour. Notwithstanding, it implies one cannot perhaps totally disregard its possible efects. A stand-up comedian as a ‘cultural anthropologist’ in Koziski’s words (1984), and a social reformist can have a ‘butterfy efect’; small changes a comedian makes to the mindset of their audience may ultimately render notable changes in the society (see also

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Heidari-Shahreza, 2021 for further elaboration on the threshold efects of humour within the same societal context). From the vantage point of psychology, humour also aids in releasing the built-up psychic energy of individuals (e.g., their negative emotions, suppressed feelings). According to the ‘release/relief ’ theory of humour, this cathartic function may notably contribute to the mental (and social) health of a society (see Martin and Ford, 2018). These healing (i.e., redressing, prosocial) efects of humour, or stand-up comedy here, can simultaneously be construed as harming on, at least, two levels, too: Firstly, to heal, humour harms the reel of concepts which is unwound to sew the social identity of individuals. That is, it attacks, for instance, the gender beliefs and policies that have traditionally been used to evaluate and (unfairly) regulate women in society (see also Scarpetta and Spagnolli, 2009). On a second level, comedian’s attempts to create convincing communication may end in the ‘boomerang efect’, arousing counter-reactions on the part of the audience. In the context of the stand-up contest, this efect can further be pursued from two perspectives: On the one hand, the (mediated) audience regularly reacted to Shaghayegh’s and Elika’s performances on social media, particularly Instagram. They received some negative comments (besides so many positive ones) on the ideas they communicated through their comedy. On the other hand, Nasim TV channel on which the stand-up contest was broadcast had allegedly the mission of putting Iran in the best light and cheering up the Iranian society. While this was arguably accomplished to some extent, the comedians’ social criticism levelled against the Iranian society (and directly or indirectly against the government), rendered it quite paradoxical (see Heidari-Shahreza, 2017 for more information). Such harming efects (together with the healing ones) are emblematic of the double-edged nature of humour. It is also worth mentioning that originally Iranian female comedians such as Tissa Hami, Shappi Khorsandi and Enissa Amani have performed professionally for years. Persian (Iranian) stand-up comedy apparently fourished more in exile, in countries such as the United States and Britain, than Iran. This stands in stark contrast with the status quo of Persian stand-up comedy inside Iran where, to my knowledge, there is no record of such activity for female comedians. It particularly holds true before the stand-up contest in 2016. Thus, it seems insightful to investigate the burgeoning genre of Persian stand-up comedy in relation to its ‘Cinderella sister’, that is, diasporic Persian stand-up comedy (see also Heidari-Shahreza, 2017). In this regard, future research may compare and contrast the humour styles of female stand-up comedians in Iran with those of their counterparts in exile. This, in turn, may pave the way to address questions such as whether or not the self-deprecating style of the female participants of the contest had a bearing on their (perceived) social status as women in Iran. In the end, it is hoped that this chapter could shed light on the latent potential in stand-up comedy to address and possibly redress the social construction of gender, elucidating how a comedian may potentially, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, shake the world in a gentle way through their humour.

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Notes 1 Taghlid (literally imitation/mockery) is an umbrella term for comic performances within Iranian traditional theatre. It antedates the Islamic turn of Iranian history and ruhozi comedy. Taghlid resembled Commedia dell’arte, humorously touching upon Iranian folklore and society (Talajooy, 2011). 2 These redlines chiefy pertain to religious, political and national security issues. Setting foot outside these confnes may end in comedian’s getting banned from appearing on stage or TV. 3 As this chapter chiefy elaborates on humour as a potent agent to address and possibly redress societal issues. The humour techniques, styles and forms that the comedians employed are only briefy discussed to save the room for the main focus of the chapter. 4 This occupation is predominantly a female job in almost all contexts in the world. In the United States, for instance, women fll (or are employed) in about 96% of ‘secretary’ job vacancies (see Lindsey, 2015). 5 While these characters (i.e., the ugly duckling, Beans and Olive) can be interpreted diferently across cultures. Elika uses them with negative connotations, exemplifying an unwanted, ugly, lonely and/or old-fashioned girl. 6 This is beyond the traditional (and universal) dichotomy of breadwinner and housekeeper or the gendered division of labour being hard to grasp for a socio-cultural outsider. It waters and dries feminism simultaneously. 7 Tehran naïve here is used to mean someone from other Iranian cities especially rural areas who are not familiar with the dialect, lifestyle, social etiquette, etc. of those living in Tehran, being considered less stylish (even less civilised). 8 Discourse with capital D refers to major, wide-spread themes, values, policies and shades of shared cultural knowledge in a society, creating a package or network within which instances of language-in-use (i.e., discourses with small d) can be interpreted (see also Gee, 2015).

Works Cited Beeman, O. William. 2011. Iranian performance traditions. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda. Brosius, Maria. 1996. Women in ancient Persian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dynel, Marta. 2016. With or without intentions: Accountability and (un)intentional humour in flm talk. Journal of Pragmatics, 95, 67–78. Foucault, Michel. 1980. The history of sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Vintage. Friedl, Erika. 2009. New friends: Gender relations within the family. Iranian Studies, 42(1), 27–43. Furnham, Adrian. 2001. Self-estimates of intelligence: Culture and gender diference in self and other estimates of both general (g) and multiple intelligences. Personality and Individual Diferences, 31, 1381–1405. Gafary, Farrokh. 1984. Evolution of rituals and theater in Iran. Iranian Studies, 17(4), 361–389. Gee, James Paul. 2015. Discourse, small d, big D. The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. New York: John Wiley. DOI: 10.1002/9781118611463. wbielsi016. Heidari-Shahreza, Mohammad Ali. 2017. A rhetorical analysis of humor styles and techniques used in Persian stand-up comedy. HUMOR, 30(4), 359–381. Heidari-Shahreza, Mohammad Ali. 2019. A sociolinguistic analysis of gender in Persian verbal humor: The case of online jokes. Gender Issues, 36(1), 46–66. Heidari-Shahreza, Mohammad Ali. 2021. When a nation breathes through humor: A sociolinguistic perspective on Iranian jokes about America. Society, 58(4), 301–307.

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Holmes, Janet. 2006. Sharing a laugh: Pragmatic aspects of humor and gender in the workplace. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1), 26–50. Hoodfar Homa & Shadi Sadr. 2010. Islamic politics and women’s quest for gender equality in Iran. Third World Quarterly, 31(6), 885–903, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2010.502717. Juckel, Jenifer, Bellman Steven & Varan. Duane. 2016. A humor typology to identify humor styles used in sitcoms. HUMOR, 29(4), 583–603. Kotthof, Helga. 2006. Gender and humor: The state of the art. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 4–25. Koziski, Stephanie. 1984. The standup comedian as anthropologist: Intentional culture critic. Journal of Popular Culture, 18(2), 57–76. Lindsey, L. Lindsey. 2015. Gender roles: A sociological perspective. London: Routledge. Mahdavi, Shirin. 2007. Amusements in Qajar Iran. Iranian Studies, 40(4), 483–499. DOI: 10.1080/00210860701476494. Martin, Rod A., & Thomas E. Ford. 2018. The psychology of humor: An integrative approach (2nd Edition). Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press. Pak-Shiraz, Nacim. 2013. Imagining the diaspora in the new millennium comedies of Iranian cinema. Iranian Studies, 46(2), 165–184. DOI:10.1080/00210862.2012.758477. Rutter, Jason. 2000. The stand-up introduction sequence: Comparing comedy compères. Journal of Pragmatics, 32. 463–483. Scarpetta, Fabiola & Spagnolli Anna. 2009. The interactional context of humor in stand-up comedy. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 42(3), 210–230. DOI:10.1080/08351810903089159. Talajooy, Saeed. 2011. Indigenous performing traditions in post-revolutionary Iranian theater. Iranian Studies, 44(4), 497–519. DOI:10.1080/00210862.2011.569328. Weaver, Simon. 2010. The reverse discourse and resistance of Asian comedians in the West. Comedy Studies, 1(2), 149–157. Weaver, Simon. 2015. The rhetoric of disparagement humor: An analysis of anti-semitic joking online. HUMOR, 28(2), 327–347. Zajdman, Anat. 1995. Humorous face-threatening acts: Humor as strategy. Journal of Pragmatics, 23(3), 325–339.

Appendix 6A Transcription Conventions italics semantic emphasis CAPS (much) louder (text) description of voice quality, non-verbal action, background info (1) pause of 1 second or less (5) pause of this many seconds //… jump to a new unit, part of video clip/performance … unfnished, it continues but not mentioned here [time] time point in the performance

7 ASSERTING CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP THROUGH SITUATED COMEDY Female Comedians in India Madhavi Shivaprasad

It is impossible to defne a feminine practice of writing, and this is an impossibility that will remain, for this practice can never be theorized, enclosed, coded-which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. But it will always surpass the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system. – Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, 1976

In 2019, flm critic Anupama Chopra interviewed “India’s leading political comics” including Sanjay Rajoura, Varun Grover, Kunal Kamra and Rajiv Nigam (one of the frst stand-up comedians to gain popularity through The Great Indian Laughter Challenge) along with Hindi poet-comedian Sampat Saral. Two minutes into the interview, Grover calls attention to the fact that the interview is in fact a ‘manel’ (comprising only men). Anupama Chopra (AC): It is indeed, and I was going to get to it but [pause] yes, absolutely. GROVER: Yeah, but, should start with that. There is no female comic here. Which

is a kind of function of our privilege being men that we can aford to do political comedy because it involves lot of risks, lot of abuse, lot of hate, online. Which I think only men can aford. That too, Hindu men can aford. That’s also one thing…Which is why it is unfortunate there are only men on this panel. AC: Absolutely, no, we looked, we looked, but honestly there’s, could not fnd somebody who’s doing it at the level at which you guys are…you have a kind of cushioning as a Hindu male that perhaps somebody like Swara Bhaskar—who is not of course a comic but very outspoken person—does not have. And maybe that is why more women are not, I mean, and god knows we already have enough to deal with (Emphasis added, Film Companion: 3:49). DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-10

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In this chapter, I unpack what it means for Indian female stand-up comedians to “do [political comedy] at the level at which [Indian male comics] are”. Chopra’s response indicates that there is an unsaid, accepted ‘level’ at which women are acknowledged as performing legitimate political comedy. This also indicates that much of the discourse around comedy performance and evolution is dependent on media representation and visibility. That is, only women who are prominently present online, or appear with other popular comedians through collaborations in comedy content produced, would frst be identifed as signifcant enough for their opinions to be taken into account, as remarkable. In addition, Grover’s observation that being Hindu men in the country is a privilege reveals a hyper awareness of the growing trend of ultranationalism in India. I unpack each of these aspects to understand the range of narrative subjects and styles Indian female comedians perform. The presence and articulation of diferent ways of belonging to the nation are prominently present in the narratives of these comedians.

Stand-Up Comedy in India The signifcance of questioning the political commitment of the stand-up comedians over other forms of entertainment lies in the political, social and cultural locations within which stand-up fnds itself today. The general Indian public are believed to have been frst introduced to stand-up comedy through the Hindi stand-up comedy contest aired on the former television channel Star One in 2005. This is interesting because stand-up comedy in the West frst became popular mainly as a live form, in pubs and clubs. Its popularity (this time as English-language stand-up comedy) resurged post 2008 with the establishment of the comedy club Comedy Store in 2008 in Mumbai. It was through this space that some of the earliest known English-language comedians today frst emerged and gained popularity. As an emerging form of entertainment, being now just about a decade old since its boom in the late 2000s, stand-up is in an interesting position grappling with the questions of identity politics, freedom of expression, and relatedly, belongingness to communities and the nation too (Miller 2020; Paul 2017). Almost every year, since 2015, some of the more popular names in the Indian industry have been involved in major controversies particularly in relation to the ideological stances of the Indian administration, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For instance, the All India Bakchod (AIB)1 Roast in 2015 uploaded on YouTube was forced to be taken down for its allegedly ofensive content, featuring some of Hindi cinema’s top stars including Arjun Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Karan Johar and Deepika Padukone. Comedian Tanmay Bhat (one of the founders of AIB) was accused of insulting singer Lata Mangeshkar and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar by imitating them in a Snapchat video in 2016. Another AIB meme featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi with dog flters on the Snapchat app again brought them under fre by Hindu

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vigilantes (in 2017). The second wave of #MeToo in India in 2018 majorly affected the comedy industry, bringing up for debate the nature of progressiveness that the industry really exhibits. Indian comedians also participated in the 2019 protests against CAA-NRC legislations, questioning the blatant communal politics the government was playing through such legislations. In 2020, Kunal Kamra confronted popular news anchor and editor in chief of the channel Republic TV, Arnab Goswami. The video footage uploaded by Kamra himself led him to be banned by several major airlines in 2020. In the same year, comedian Agrima Joshua was forced to take down the only stand-up comedy clip uploaded to YouTube a year ago when a complaint was fled against her for allegedly insulting the 17th century Maratha king Chhatrapati Shivaji. In 2021, comedian Munawar Faruqui was sent to jail, over allegedly insulting a Hindu god in one of his old YouTube stand-up comedy clips. Clearly, over the years, particularly since the election of the current government in 2014, members of the industry have been at the centre of, or at least signifcantly involved in and infuencing, conversations around what constitutes being political, locating it within the interstices of religion, gender and sexuality and government policies. Due to its dual nature of inhabiting both the live performance and the digital media spaces, stand-up could be said to hold potential to reconstitute these discourses feeding into the national narrative in a signifcant manner. The fact that the media are deeply political tools that shape societal attitudes to create either a more cohesive society or an exclusive one has been noted by scholars previously (Konig 253). Feminist scholars have noted how the popular narratives around what constitutes being progressive today needs to be placed within the intersections of digital platforms, neoliberal capitalism and popular culture (Baer; Chatterjee). However, the emphasis more often remains on (male) comedians’ wokeness or their appearance of being socially progressive, as we saw from the above excerpt. So, how does one consider stand-up comedy as a space of creating and enacting social awareness simultaneously, particularly in the context of gender and sexuality? I argue that female comedians assert a form of cultural citizenship through their performance of stand-up comedy, which is closely associated with specifc ways in which experiences relating to gender and sexuality are negotiated by them.

Situated Comedy: Asserting Cultural Citizenship through Stand-Up Comedy One of the earliest theories linking politics and humour was Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque. It “celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions” and all those who were considered as being “divided by caste, property, profession and age” were “all considered equal during carnival” (Bakhtin 10). The carnival, for Bakhtin, was a form of folk humour that “opposed the ofcial and serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical

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and feudal culture” (4). Stand-up comedy too could be seen as a “living form of culture” much like folktales and fables that serve both as a “medium for imagining a diferent social order” and a “crucial mechanism for the articulation of non-elite collective identity and opposition to those above them” (Forsdyke 178). More recently, Rebecca Krefting argues for the concept of charged humour to talk about critical stand-up comedy and cultural citizenship. According to her, charged humour “locates the humorist in the national imagination and shows us where there is trouble. It is intended to be self-situating and a call for viewers to refgure dominant beliefs and stereotypes about minorities and their respective communities” (26). There is an important distinction between nationalism and citizenship. Nationalism, when understood as something located in the periphery, is associated with “extreme right-wing politics” or people who “struggle to create new nation states” (Billig 5). On the other hand, the focus here lies on cultural citizenship, which is more a self-defned construction and articulation of one’s relationship with the nation, often in opposition to nationalism, with conscious awareness of the oppressive forces within it. It is the articulation of one’s ways of belonging to the nation, making space for oneself and one’s community in the face of extremism. As Konig argues, in postcolonial contexts, “people expressed their identity in terms of diferent—often competing—ethnic religious and linguistic afliations” which existed “prior to their legal membership” (Konig 24). Further, citizens occupy a “liminal space” between the “cultural and legal sphere” and therefore it is impossible for us to conceptualise a citizenship that does not consider the cultural underpinnings of one’s relationship to the nation as well as the State (Konig 15). The current Indian political atmosphere has altered the expression of one’s political leanings in such a way that one’s relationship with the nation only exists either as “hypernationalism” or “anti-nationalism” (Shepherd). As a result of this, the draconian Indian sedition laws are being repeatedly invoked along with a severe curb on the media and freedom of expression (Chakravartty & Roy; Varshney). Feminist humour theorists foreground the importance of the woman’s perspective and what it contributes to the understanding of identity and citizenship. Willet, Willet and Sherman note, “The challenge is to free the mind and the community of toxic images and defnitions imposed by dominant groups and reafrm a perspective that acknowledges its own partiality but also its own value from a specifc location and standpoint” (234). As Sevda Caliskan says, “the comic imagination is subversive by defnition but the diference between men and women is that men write from a position of power while women’s discourse is unauthorized discourse” (54). Caliskan compellingly argues that most humour we perceive is masculinist in nature. She brings to attention that the three widely accepted theories of humour: superiority, incongruity and relief theories2 were all formulated (by men) at a time when women were never thought to have the capability of attaining a superior position (Caliskan 50). Even humour that uses “negative stereotypes and thus seems to perpetuate patriarchal assumptions is

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essentially subversive, subtly undermining the social system that makes such stereotypes possible” (Caliskan 54). The concept of situated comedy that I propose borrows signifcantly from feminist standpoint epistemology. As Sandra Harding notes, subjects of feminist standpoint knowledge “are multiple, heterogeneous, and contradictory or incoherent, not unitary, homogeneous, and coherent”, and there is no single, essentialist feminist location (134). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway also argues for the need of “partial perspectives” which allow the possibility of sustained, rational and “objective inquiry” (584). She calls the claim of the “universal” as an illusion or a “god trick”, a seeing from everywhere that is ultimately leading to seeing from nowhere. According to her, feminist objectivity is about “limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object” (583). Thus, I argue that these comedians articulate a personal claim of cultural citizenship over the nation which has otherwise been denied to them through legal and formal means through the performance of their jokes. For doing so, however, they are labelled “too angry” or “bitchy”, where men expressing anger about gender discrimination are hailed as being “incisive” and “insightful” (“When they talk about your breasts”). Moreover, the comedy performed by Indian women is diferent from Bakhtin’s carnivalesque folkloric humour as well as Krefting’s charged comedy because they are frmly located within the urban, elite spaces. The recognition of their comedy as situated accommodates personal, mediated and negotiated narratives, irrespective of an overt political or ideological position being articulated. This choice is infuenced by several factors, one being their locations of social privilege (most belong to middle-upper classes and upper castes) which they rarely question in their narratives. Moreover, attempts at moving out of this comfort zone to perform charged comedy in India have come at a great personal and professional cost for the Indian comedians. It can be argued, for instance, that Agrima Joshua had to efectively erase herself from the online public as a stand-up comedian by unlisting her only stand-up comedy video from her offcial YouTube channel because she faced rape threats as well as heavy backlash from Maharashtra government authorities, asking for her arrest. She continues to perform live in comedy clubs, but her videos can only be watched by someone with the link to the video. Her public presence (in the digital media spaces) is limited to the context of the controversy. While the men in the industry who have been known to perform political comedy such as Varun Grover and Kunal Kamra, have also faced severe police action, they are still publicly performing and their comedy continues to be popular online and ofine. Thus, women who already deal with patriarchal biases within and outside the industry are further endangered because of the conspicuous threat of sexual violence against them in addition to their professional careers. The term ‘situated’ accounts for these gaps and silences as well which are consciously absent in the narratives that are publicised but are still a negotiated, if not always conscious, assertion of their own professional and cultural identities.

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The Comic Voice: How Situated Comedy Is Performed Most comedians talk about “fnding their voice” as stand-up comedians, what Andrea Greenbaum identifes as developing a “comic authority”, “a persona, which invites the audience to respond to the conversation by laughing (35)”. Being an “inherently rhetorical” discourse, the purpose of stand-up “is not just to entertain but also to persuade” (Greenbaum 33). That is, to convince the audiences to listen to them and take their opinions seriously for the duration of their performance. It is harder for women to establish this voice and takes longer because they are fghting both their own and audiences’ internalised gender biases. Therefore, what gets presented on stage comprises these complex negotiations with themselves, their individual experiences as well as the audiences. To illustrate this, I choose comedy texts of three female comedians: Aditi Mittal, Agrima Joshua and Sumaira Sheikh. Mittal is one of the earliest female stand-up comedians performing in English, beginning as early as 2009. She has two stand-up specials on Netfix so far. Agrima Joshua and Sumaira Sheikh are relatively new considering that the frst stand-up video posted on their respective ofcial YouTube channels was as recent as 2019. As mentioned earlier, Joshua’s only video on YouTube is unlisted, therefore, it does not appear in general searches but can be accessed through the ofcial YouTube link to the video. The videos publicly available are in relation to her case of being threatened by state government authorities for her video.3 Sumaira Sheikh is more popular now having established her online presence through a series of well-received stand-up videos on her ofcial YouTube channel, as well as co-writing several comedy sketches associated with comedy groups such as AIB. All three comedians are based in Mumbai and perform in both Hindi and English. Mittal performs predominantly in English while Joshua and Sheikh predominantly use Hindi as their preferred language of performance.

Experiences as a Female Comedian Women talk about systemic structures while foregrounding their own professional lives. In her clip from the Netfix special, Girl Meets Mic, Aditi Mittal mainly talks about her experiences as a professional comedian in a largely male dominated space even after having been in the industry for as long as the earliest male comics have been. She speaks of the frequent, cliched questions that journalists ask female comics that require them to justify how and why they are funny. The trajectory that the entire clip follows is interesting because Mittal begins by talking about the “strange times” in Indian democracy where “you don’t have to impose an emergency when you can just buy one” (Aditi Mittal 0:06). She substantiates her observation further by alluding to the censorship within the media industry, because of extreme state control because “our poor journalists” cannot talk about “Adani, Ambani, Aadhaar and Amit Shah” (Aditi Mittal 0:22).4

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In just one alliterative phrase, Mittal makes a powerful comment on human rights violations caused by state regulations, the state of the Indian economy as well as heavy media censorship that prevents journalists from doing their jobs. The anti-establishmentarian bent is thus established upfront in the video, setting the tone for the rest of the performance as well. Mittal’s sharp observation clearly indicates that women are aware of how the state holds control over its citizens. Rather than a direct critique, however, she chooses comedy as a mode to express her frustration in relation to the working of the authoritarian government led by Narendra Modi. However, she is careful to include these details as subtext, rather than spelling it out explicitly. The joke works because her assumption of the audience’s awareness of the subtext is accurate. It is interesting to note the contrast in the way in which Mittal’s clip has been received, despite being an overt critique of the government as opposed to Agrima Joshua, who I focus on later in the paper. One of the primary reasons for this is because Mittal has performed largely in English, unlike Joshua who predominantly uses Hindi, along with some English in her content, as we shall see. Specifcally, the references to politics, and names of political fgures are in English in Mittal’s case. As Subin Paul has noted in his paper, English-language comedy is still relatively free in India (130), at the same time, noting that audiences laughed and commented (on YouTube videos) at the specifc points where there is a switch between English and Hindi, implying that regional language content is still paid more attention than English. Without dwelling too much on that joke, however, Mittal moves on to how that afects her own career as a comedian. The exaggerated attention paid to the comedians is chalked up to the lack of publishable material in other aspects of public life for the journalists. Explaining how she “owes” a lot of her career publicity to the journalists’ studious focus on “anything else” apart from the subjects mentioned above, she talks about stereotypical representations of comedians in India. She describes one common situation during any interview with a journalist featuring stand-up comedy as a “lifestyle” trend. She narrates how she would always be featured as the only “diversity quota candidate” among the other (male) comedians featured in the article where most journalists would essentially be saying: “Hey vagina, say something”, as she phrases it (Aditi Mittal 1:00). Invariably, she is asked to comment on the perception that “women are not funny”. Comedian Neeti Palta makes a similar joke about journalists asking her, “‘tell us, what is it like being a female comedian?’ Bhai mujhe kya pata? [Brother, how should I know?] I’ve not been any other kind!” (Amazon Prime Video India 4:00). On the other hand, men are asked about who their inspiration is, rather than explaining why people should watch them perform. Mittal illustrates this by enacting the journalist who interviews the chef: “(imitating star-struck journalist) ‘So, hairy-armed chef, you feed everyone, but what’s your favourite cuisine?’ And then hairy-armed chef will say something campy as fuck, like, ‘Ma ke haath ka khaana! [my mother’s cooking]’” [laughter]. (Aditi Mittal 4:50).

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The jokes refect their frustration at having to constantly prove their worth unlike the male counterparts. Referring to Christopher Hitchens’ infamous article in Vanity Fair (2007), where he explains why women do not have a sense of humour, Mittal says: …the logic given in the essay was that women are not funny because, you know, a sense of humour is required to show of and attract babes from [in an exaggerated tone] an evolutionarily biological standpoint…and women never needed to learn how to attract babes, so they just didn’t develop a sense of humour—from an [in the same exaggerated tone] evolutionarily biological standpoint. (Aditi Mittal 3:12) Debunking Hitchens’ argument, she argues, [B]y that very same ghisa-pita [tired] logic, men never needed to learn how to cook [same exaggerated tone] from an evolutionarily biological standpoint. Because they were so busy [imitating male baritone voice] hunting and dragging shit into the cave, skinning it with their bare hands…so they never needed to learn the ‘delicate art of sustenance and cooking.’ Then why is it that every Indian food channel you see has show after show after show of hairy-armed uncles dancing on top of the stove? [imitating the male chef at said show] [laughter] …and whenever you see a male chef taste his own food, whenever you see a male chef, [imitating the actions of said male chef on the show] ‘mundane shit, mundane shit, mundane shit [imitating tasting of food]. Orgasm.’ Straight [laughter]. I was like, [mock shocked expression] uncle5, aapne Viagra ki biryani toh nahi bana di, by mistake? [I hope you didn’t make a biryani out of Viagra by mistake!]. [Laughter] (4:13) Perceptions around sexuality of the women also signifcantly afect whether they are perceived as humorous. Frances Gray notes that sexuality and humour share a common trait in that humour in the form of laughter is bound to power (Gray 6). “Getting a joke”, and by implication writing one, implies intelligence (Barreca 3), which is placed as exclusive to conventional notions of beauty and sexual appeal (Boyle 84). Humour is about bawdiness as much as it is about controlling the audiences and commanding their attention. This is threatening to men as they see the women defning the boundaries of their own sexualities, fearing not just promiscuity, the slipping masculine control over their bodies but also undermining their own masculine authority (Auslander 317; Radulescu 2; Apte 75). The challenges faced by female comedians expressing themselves arise from having to “submit to the established script” of “laughing with the laugh track” while ignoring their own instincts as to what is or is not humorous. Instead, they worry about whether they would be perceived as “feminine enough” by the men if they “laugh too loudly” or simply smile with a “glassy

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eye” (Barreca 2–6). Women thus negotiate the kinds of femininity they exhibit on stage as women, by being careful in not letting their “sexuality interfere with their authority claim” therefore they inevitably trade their “perceived asexuality for power” (Mackie 20). The “Good Girl” (comedian or not) is torn between “being cheap and being prudish” (Barreca 7). Mittal’s observation is that professional talent is perceived as adding to masculinity and “machoness” in men, to the extent that it feeds into their narcissism. On the contrary, the same is seen as taking away from a woman’s conventional femininity, in turn, also vilifying her sexuality. In other words, “Men may do it [stand-up comedy] to show of and attract babes, and get into the newspapers, but women have to do it for survival” (Aditi Mittal 5:14). Humour that enacts cultural citizenship also “combats misrepresentation” (Krefting 25) which is seen clearly in these narratives. Mittal efectively holds up a mirror, reiterating the patriarchal narrative on which Indian society sustains itself, and in the process, succeeds in making the audiences realise the problems with it. Rather than ofer “solutions for redressing the balance by conveying strategies to challenge inequality”, Indian women’s stand-up comedy is at the stage of frst pointing out the irregularities in the system (Krefting 25).

Performing “Real” Political Comedy While Mittal sees direct links between an authoritarian government and her own professional success, other female comedians draw links between the cultural and political climate and their own religious identities. Comedian Agrima Joshua speaks of being a Christian “from Gomatinagar, Lucknow” in her stand-up set online called UP is the Texas of India. This is the only video she has uploaded so far which has become quite popular gaining around 1.9 million views as of February 2020, almost a year since she uploaded it.6 Choosing to unlist rather than delete her video was a strategic choice and clever move by Joshua, posing a challenge to those who threatened her. After having unlisted the video, as of 2022, it has gained double the number of views, standing at 2.4 million. The same video, presumed to be deleted, has been uploaded by another YouTuber in 2020, once again indicating how laws of censorship online can be circumvented (Bhavani Prasad Panda). This is an important choice because success in stand-up comedy as an industry today is largely governed by the public presence of comedians. Most aspiring comedians are advised to have a primary day job to address their fnancial needs including those that the comedy career demands, because the frst few years where their primary aim is to have stage time, potentially do not provide monetary returns (Manaktala). The more their public presence (ofine and eventually online) increases over the years, the more lucrative opportunities they are ofered, including commercial brand endorsements, stand-up specials on online streaming platforms, performing or writing web series. In fact, as people in the industry have noted, much of the revenue generated comes not from public live

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shows but from commercial endorsements and corporate shows (shows for corporate companies) (Sarkar; Manaktala; Arasu). Presence on all major social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, apart from YouTube) is essential to build and maintain one’s brand as a comedian as well, where most are asked to work in brand endorsements within their stand-up comedy routines. In such a case, then, removing oneself from these platforms is detrimental to one’s professional career, when particularly as women, battling patriarchal biases, as we saw earlier, is already a given. Therefore, in unlisting her video, Joshua negotiated the barrier of censorship she previously faced while retaining the video, along with the record of the number of views and comments, as well as subscribers that it has gathered. It is clever in that she takes advantage of the loopholes of dealing with regulation of digital content in general. To the untrained eye, it appears as if the video has been taken down, giving the impression that the threats of severe action worked. Although Joshua circumvented the overt threats, continuing to host the video online, that she has to do it in secret, cannot be read as being an entirely successful subversion or challenge. Instead, it needs to be read as accommodations she was forced to make, while negotiating with the politics of censorship as well as maintaining her professional integrity. Coming back to the video, Agrima Joshua talks about growing up Christian in Uttar Pradesh. I reproduce sections of her set where she specifcally talks about the culture of Christianity in UP. So, my full name is Agrima Joshua. Yes, you guessed it right, I am Christian, but I am not from Kerala or Goa [laughter]. Because Jesus is not like pheni (liquor made of cashewnuts) only to be found in coastal areas. Sometimes he’s from dry states like Bihar!…I am not from Bihar! [laughter] I’m from UP…So, UP mein isai log hain [there are Christians in UP] because we are a product of the world’s greatest marketing campaign [pause] – missionary work [weak laughter]. I could be Goan-Catholic but no, I am Isaai from Gomtinagar, Lucknow…You know what the best thing about Gomtinagar Lucknow is? There is a Harley Davidson showroom over there. Yeah, they are excited about that!…On Sundays when Goan-Catholics are going to church on their Kawasaki Ninjas…my people are going up a hilltop to girjaghar [church in Hindi] in a cycle rickshaw and even then, my aunt is like, ‘Bhaiya, thoda dheere chalaiye, peeche se bitiya gir rahi hai [please ride slowly, my daughter is slipping here at the back]!.’ [laughter] (Agrima Joshua 1:52; Bhavani Prasad Panda 1:52) When any religion other than Hinduism is foregrounded, comedians spend much time providing context to the cultural experiences, as seen in both these cases. This seems to be inevitable irrespective of the gender of the comic. It is also symptomatic of all non-Hindus having internalised the need to explain their context more elaborately, since their cultural experiences are not as publicised in

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the form of cultural markers in public life as anything Hindu-related has been. Therefore, comedians must necessarily explain personal religious experiences by associating it with Hinduism or certain behaviours associated with it. The comedian almost always assumes that the audience is mostly Hindu. Here, Joshua talks about how everything in her town has been “rebranded” about Christians: Church nahi girjaghar. Wahaan pe accordion nahi bajta hai, wahan pe bajta hai harmonium. Dholak aur table ke saath [weak laughter]. Aur humaare jo priest hote hain na hum unhein ‘father’ nai bolte hain, unko bolte hain ‘padriji’. Aur humaare padri ka naam ‘D’Mello’, ‘D’Cruz’s nahi, humaare padri ka naam tha Afzal Charan [laughter]. Ek baar Afzal Charan ne girjaghar mein bhajan gava diye, kisi ko koi farak nahi pada [laughter]… Matlab Yogi Adityanath ki sena wahaan pe aati ghar wapsi karane, woh bolte, arey ye toh apne hi log hain yaar, wapas chalo [it’s not ‘church’ but girjaghar; harmoniums are played instead of accordions— accompanied by a dholak and tabla; and we call our priests “padriji” and our priest’s names weren’t D’Mello or D’Cruz, but Afzal Charan. One time, Afzal Charan made everyone sing bhajans and no one cared!…if Yogi Adityanath’s ‘army’ were to come to the church at the time for a ‘ghar wapsi’, they would say, ‘Oh, but these are our people [Hindus]! Let’s go back.’] (Agrima Joshua 2:55; Bhavani Prasad Panda 2:55) It is in this second section referencing UP and the political climate in the state that she switches mostly to Hindi where earlier she started with English. Regional contexts (“from Gomtinagar, Lucknow”) of Christianity are foregrounded in Joshua’s routine, highlighting the heterogeneity of Indian public culture, countering the dominant presence of Hindu images and practices thus far. Joshua’s narrative builds on the general stereotypes people have of Indian Christians (in this case mainly Goan-Catholics) and gives us the favour of a more local culture of Christian worship where it is perfectly routine to visit the church on a cycle rickshaw instead of a “Kawasaki Ninja” braving the precarity of the rickety paths of the hilltop. The priest’s non-Christian sounding name is not odd nor is his declaration that Christian hymns will be sung in the tune of Hindi bhajans. Joshua’s reference to Yogi Adityanath’s “army” refers to right-wing vigilante groups that had been tasked with implementing “ghar wapsi” or “coming home” by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).7 Journalists note that a large part of this exercise was also carried out in cities like Ayodhya in UP (Khan). Joshua’s comment, though comic, refects the perpetual anxiety religious minority groups in India live with. The precarity of their lives in a BJPruled state is a signifcant underlying theme of Joshua’s narrative and the reason she chooses to difuse it through comedy. Agrima Joshua is the only woman so far who has been associated with doing political comedy in India whereas the others, even if they do refer to Modi or Amit Shah (as illustrated in the cases of Aditi Mittal and Neeti Palta above) and

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other politicians in their sets, do not get identifed as such by the media because gender is the main thrust of their routines, in addition to where the content is being hosted and in which language it is being communicated: Mittal’s video is part of a longer Netfix special whereas Joshua’s video is exclusively present on YouTube ( Jindal). In the same video, Joshua answers the question I probe in this chapter: what gets defned as political comedy when women do it? After commenting on the failures of the BJP government in the state (ghar wapsi, roads, temple-building, erection of statues),8 she ends with: I hate doing political comedy. I should tell you that. I should be upfront about it… So I will tell a joke about my life and [senior comics] will be like [imitating a male baritone voice] ‘hey when are these girls going to start doing important comedy, ha?’ So I write a joke about my life…‘Fuckboys9 [pause for efect, audience laughter] must be aerodynamic because they are always fying away.’ [Imitating male comics again] ‘No, this is not important comedy Agrima. When are you going to start talking about important things? When will you speak truth to power?’ So I go, baat toh sahi keh raha hai, baat toh sahi keh raha hai. Toh main ghar jaake second draft likhti hoon joke ka. Aur agle din properly karti hoon [‘he’s right, he’s right…so I go home and write a second draft of the joke. And I do it properly the next day] with speaking truth to power. So I go like, ‘fuckboys must be aerodynamic because they are always fying away just like Modiji (imitating male comics). [laughter] ‘Ohohoho, Agrima’s comedy is so important for the world right now!’. (Agrima Joshua 07:34) From the excerpt, it is evident that particularly speaking of women’s relationships is ‘not important enough’ for fellow male comedians, even as several of them are known to have created a brand for themselves joking about their own failed relationships.10 That is, men speaking of their relationships while completely eschewing politics is excused because some of them are exclusively performing comedy that is considered political. However, since women speak of mundane routines and relationships in their lives, and no woman has yet been identifed as performing political comedy exclusively, and explicitly, the assumption that women do not (rather cannot) practice the art of political comedy is reinforced. In an interview, Agrima Joshua gives context to her comment about the expectations of senior comics: In order to put my point across, I have to make somebody the enemy. And I can’t make the audience the enemy. So, you make an internal enemy. When you’re performing to a crowd, you have to make them feel that you’re on their side. So you and the audience together have a common enemy and that was this “senior comic”. There was no one I had in mind. But [Kunal] Kamra was hosting. As a goodwill gesture I told him that I’ll be doing your voice, and he said

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[imitates Kamra], “Ya, ya! Do it, do it.” He’s not actually the one to say that girls are not doing important comedy. ( Jindal) The statement Joshua attributes to Kamra needs to be looked at not literally but as indicative of the general comedy culture. “Serious comedy” is about electoral politics and not people’s personal lives, largely associated with men. In efect, signifcant voices are inadvertently excluded from the stand-up comedy canon right from its early stages. Grover’s analysis for the lack of women on the panel is accurate as he lists out the risks involved: violence, threats to self and family, which are further aggravated in the case of women, especially ones that are not Hindu and privileged in terms of caste, class, and other social markers. Comedians such as Agrima Joshua (as Christian), Sumaira Sheikh (as Muslim) or even Aditi Mittal (as upper-caste Hindu) do not get classifed as political comedians because they don’t talk about politicians or electoral politics the way the men do.

The ‘Everyday’ Stand-Up Comedy Some female comedians make fresh, humorous observations about mundane details of their lives rather than as gendered experiences. For instance, comedian Sumaira Sheikh speaks of being educated in a state-board school in Mumbai (Mein SSC School Ki Hoon), or in-fight announcements (Flights, Cabin Crew & Pilots), or placing bets with family members (Gambling With Daadi). Sheikh, a Muslim female comedian, has not alluded to her religion on stage, unlike comedians like Saadiya Ali, Kaneez Surka and Urooj Ashfaq who express some form of critique of being Muslim in India. This may also be a conscious political choice to steer clear of it as a form of insulation from hate and censorship that comedians like Agrima Joshua have faced. Moreover, performing in Hindi as she mostly does, she is reaching a wider audience and the risk of censorship and online hate are greater in this case. Thus, the choice to reveal or conceal any part of one’s identity is a complex set of negotiations, of understanding the intersections of various aspects of one’s identity. This is tied to competing for space and recognition within neoliberal markets that now capitalise on the “diversity quota’ as Aditi Mittal pointed out in her set. Moreover, as Bridget Boyle notes, the expectation and pressure on women to perform critical comedy highlighting their marginalised positions is also problematic, indicating that the comedian is “never enough as herself ” (86). This kind of comedy has been identifed as androgynous in that it resembles “contemporary male humour” on topics that afect both men and women equally (Walker 13–14).11 Walker notes that this has become possible through serious political change brought by the feminist movement itself which is in the backdrop while these comedians perform: The women’s movement has not efected the radical changes that it seeks in political, economic, and social freedoms for women, but the entrance of large numbers of women into the labor force, the declining birth rate, and

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changes in family structures have brought both men and women into each other’s worlds sufciently that it is possible for women to write humor that lacks a specifc gender-consciousness. (Walker 14) Even with such a demonstrated diversity of topics and the level of political commitment exhibited through their humour, comedy performed by women is still referred to as “chick comedy”, but men talking about their relationships and sex lives often, does not get labelled as “dick comedy”, as Neeti Palta observes (TEDx Talks). As Aditi Mittal asks—“how is ‘female’ a genre by itself?…The men are doing political and satirical and observational, and my humour? Female” (The MJ Show 13:45). Apart from these diverse range of subjects that the Indian female comedians cover, there are also signifcant silences present in them, particularly that of acknowledging caste privilege. As I note elsewhere, the Indian stand-up industry is still largely populated by comedians belonging to privileged class and caste locations so much so that the main references made to caste names in their stand-up performances are that of the Brahmin, Jaat, or other regional identity markers that are also socially privileged. Many female comedians fail to recognise the intersectionality of gender and caste oppression (Shivaprasad 33). Even as they speak of gender inequality in the industry and society, they increasingly fail to address and acknowledge the lack of representation of voices from marginalised castes in the feld. Rather, comedians like Sumukhi Suresh have built a brand by playing the character of the lazy maid without addressing the precarity of the positions domestic workers hold in the Indian society. The rise of stand-up comedy as an art form in the country coincides with the rise of the right-wing, with the BJP coming back into power in the Indian government under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi in 2014, even as the ground for the same was being prepared much earlier ( Jafrelot “The Modi-centric BJP”). Modi’s administration itself saw several crucial developments on the digital front as well, such as the introduction of 4G speed at highly reduced rates through the introduction of the Reliance JIO network into the telecommunication market even as smartphones became afordable (Akolawala; Statista Research Department). This meant greater digital accessibility than ever before and hence opening up of more possibilities for digital participation of the hitherto digitally unaware public. The current, mainstream “scene” of English stand-up comedy in India is placed in an environment where social issues and causes are now “selling points” for them, often just serving the purpose of tokenism. Feminist scholars have called this as the “feminism lite” phenomenon (Kapur; Adichie). For Adichie, feminism lite is “conditional equality” premised on the ethos of “allowing” where one is permitted to exercise free will (an oxymoron in just the defnition) as long as they abide by certain conditions (Adichie). Kapur’s understanding of feminism lite is that it “does not advocate a distinct theoretical position” and “does not claim a great transformation” through these eforts (Kapur). However, “[t]hey are situated as techniques of critique, not only of dominant attitudes towards women’s sexuality, but also of some segments of the feminist movement’s complicity in

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reinforcing a sexually-sanitised understanding of female subjectivity” (Kapur 12). Andi Zeisler, author and co-founder of the non-proft multimedia organisation Bitch Media, believes “marketplace feminism involves picking and choosing and taking on the parts of the ideology or practice that appeal to you and then ignoring those that don’t” (quoted in Vagianos). Similar ideas were proposed by Angela McRobbie while theorising the postfeminist turn in the feminist movement. According to her, words such as “empowerment” and “choice” are taken out of context and deployed in more individualistic discourse as a kind of “substitute” for feminism (McRobbie 1). What is sold instead is a “notional form of equality” characterised by the assurance of employment, education and hence “participation in consumer culture” (2). While keeping these formulations in mind, I would like to add a third dimension to the idea of feminism that is circulating especially through popular cultural forms in India today. Locating contemporary feminism and the contemporary feminist thus requires grappling with certain fundamental dilemmas. That is, while most feminist theorists reject neoliberalism and critique its consequences, there are others who “make neoliberalism work for them” which is something that also needs to be acknowledged and accepted for what it is (Reeves 144). As Ipsita Chatterjee notes, it is impossible to be “completely seduced” by the glamour of neoliberal opportunities. In claiming so, we deny these women agency, negating the possibility of all resistance (791). That is, the lack of recognition or acknowledgement by some of these female comics as they fail to address issues of caste and class comes more from a “misidentifcation” of structures of exploitation rather than a “co-optation” of them (Chatterjee 791). Their choice to publicise or keep private any aspects of their ideological stances or private lives is more of a negotiation built through an understanding of how they will be perceived by audiences, fellow comedians, their own social locations as well as levels of precarity involved in making their narratives available for public consumption.

Conclusion In this chapter, I examined the ways in which female comics exert cultural citizenship through the content they perform. I demonstrated that the defnition of political humour has largely been limited to speaking of electoral politics largely performed by men. I attempted to locate the context within which Indian women’s comedy is thriving. I therefore proposed the use of the term “situated comedy” as a possible descriptor for Indian women’s comedy. This term accounts for both the critical and seemingly non-critical narratives by them. While on the one hand some of them may be questioning oppressive patriarchal forces, they also beneft from the other dominant aspects of their lives which they often fail to address due to lack of awareness of the oppressive nature of social inequalities in general. The way they are perceived, and the level of censure they receive is also dependent on the language in which they choose to communicate. While the social locations of the women are largely uniform, the level of scrutiny that Hindi-language

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comedy receives, and hence its censorship, is higher. Comedians like Sumaira Sheikh may be presenting themselves a certain way simply because that is their stage persona that they are most comfortable with. This could be either because they may not have the inclination or the language to be politically critical, or as self-preservation, of not wanting to be identifed as a Muslim comedian. Being only around a decade old, English stand-up comedy as we know it today is, is still evolving, and people are trying to fnd their voice on stage. Thus far, the major infuences on the kind of topics they bring up as comedians or as women, include market viability, their own personal comfort levels, whether they can sell tickets to the shows, and their other professional commitments (since most of them who are new still have other full-time jobs, in addition to the strong threat of backlash from state authorities). Negotiating the terrain of fnancially surviving in a space that is frst male dominated, and, second, demands that one be on their toes all the while, writing new jokes and staying contemporary, regularly performing in front of an audience, and deal with sexism, sexual harassment in addition to questions about one’s religious and caste identities are all equally valid factors that determine how their voices shape up as they continue to perform. Thus, oppression and domination exist within a kyriarchic structure where they do not occur in opposition to one another ideologically or temporally. They may not be mutually as exclusive as we think of them to be, nor are they sequentially arranged such that one can say one happens after the other. Instead, these forces are all working together, within the same space, and often within the same ideologies at the same time. Therefore, Donna Haraway’s idea of situated knowledges needs to be expanded to mean any kind of force that propels to, hinders from or retains within, a space a person currently inhabits. Recalling Sandra Harding’s standpoint postulation again, I would reiterate that there is no universal, essential way in which a woman’s experience can be categorised. Many of these positions—of being feminine, female or feminist—can be articulated simultaneously and can also often be contradictory to each other, but emerging from the standpoint of someone surviving within the Indian cultural context, in their professions as female stand-up comedians. Whether it be conversations about being the only female comedian being interviewed among a sea of men, being Christian in UP, or gambling with grandmothers, all of these are assertions of cultural citizenship because they are all equally laying claim for a space within the national narrative. At the same time, there are also glaring absences in even these seemingly diverse narratives as this national narrative also gets exposed as something that mimics the larger Hindu upper-caste dominance that is being forwarded within the Indian political sphere as well.

Notes 1 AIB is a former majorly successful comedy collective turned organisation that dissolved in 2018 after MeToo allegations against some of its former employees. 2 Briefy, superiority theory posits that laughter or humour arises as a result of a feeling of superiority over another group. Incongruity theory posits that something becomes

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3 4

5 6

7

8

9 10

humorous on the recognition of incongruity between two or more elements in the joke. Relief theory argues that humour helps in releasing pent up emotions. Another YouTube channel has uploaded a copy of Agrima Joshua’s entire video “UP is the Texas of India” which does appear in public Google searches (Bhavani Prasad Panda). Adani and Ambani refer to Indian businessmen, owning some of the most prominent multinational companies based in India) and have been known to hold the favour of the current government. According to Jafrelot, the business favourable model of governance was popularised by PM Narendra Modi when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat. In fact, in 2013, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India accused “the Gujarat government of causing an important loss to the exchequer by bestowing ‘undue’ favours to large companies, including Reliance Industries, Essar, the Adani Group, Larsen and Toubro, and Ford” in a detailed report ( Jafrelot, Kohli and Murali 216). Aadhaar refers to the controversial Unique Identifcation number obtained voluntarily by Indian citizens which records their biometric data. Although Aadhaar has been ruled as voluntary, several government services have mandatorily insisted on linking their Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts, phone numbers and other services, raising questions about the privacy of the citizens and data security, particularly of marginalised sections (Singh). Amit Shah is the current Indian Home Minister, also considered a close confdant of PM Modi. A word usually used as an honorifc to address older men in India. In July 2020, a one-minute clip of her seven-minute video clip originally posted by her on YouTube was shared on social media claiming she insulted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in her comedy. Joshua was heavily trolled online, including graphic rape threats being made. So much so that the Home Minister of Maharashtra himself tweeted for legal action to be taken against her for her “contemptuous comments” against the Maratha king who ruled during the 18th century (Scroll Staf ). Here, I reproduce sections of this video that I had previously downloaded myself. The section on Shivaji is not specifcally included. While the Hindutva project has been in the making in the background since the founding of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), these eforts have grown exponentially since 2014 when the NDA frst came into power, becoming more aggressive and violent in their means to impose a homogeneous Hindu identity in the nation—what Jafrelot calls “new techniques and old tactics” ( Jafrelot Reconversion Paradoxes; Jafrelot “Modi’s India”; Rajeshwar and Amore). One of the beliefs of the Hindutva proponents is that all the non-Hindus residing in India were all originally Hindu and therefore “misled” by missionary work and Islamic invaders who converted a lot of “innocent” Hindus into followers of either Christianity or Islam (Basu, Datta and Sarkar 1–11), hence the term ‘ghar wapsi’ because they believe that by doing the reconversion, they are, in fact, showing the people the path to ‘return home.’ The term ‘army’ is used to refer to vigilante groups that impose public morality considered as appropriate to the Hindutva narrative. These actions were part of the BJP’s plan to accelerate the imposition of Hindutva in the country. The plan of building the temple in Ayodhya was explicitly mentioned as an objective in the Lok Sabha election manifesto of the BJP in 2014 itself. Many of their other actions were in pursuance of this larger goal. The BJP’s undertaking of erection of two statues, one of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat in 2018 (the Statue of Unity) which is the tallest in the world and the Shivaji statue in Maharashtra to be completed in near future have been heavily criticised for the excessive expenditure undertaken in pursuit of forwarding the Hindutva narrative, in addition to violating the rights of indigenous groups, depriving them of their livelihood. Urban vulgar slang used to refer to men who have casual sexual partners. Most of Zakir Khan’s stand-up comedy is based on his life and various failed relationships he has had because of rejections by a girl he had a crush on. In fact, his frst stand-up special itself is called “Haq se Single’ (Rightfully Single) as he talks about

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how the women in his life were not mature enough to handle him. One review notes, “Zakir has mixed announcements and suggestions for his bros in the show. He builds up stereotypes and gender specifc roles at one end while tries to explain and understand the face of the targeted side (mansplaining, specifcally) on the other” (Malik). 11 Notice that Walker identifes the “humour that afects both men and women” as “male humour” in one case, but “androgynous” in another. That is, male humour is still in some sense seen as universal, even in this feminist reading of women’s contribution to American history of comedy.

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Forsdyke, Sara. Slaves Tell Tales and Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012. Ganti, Tejaswini. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. New York, Duke University Press, 2012. Gray, Frances. Women and Laughter. New York, Palgrave, 1994. Greenbaum, Andrea. “Stand-Up Comedy as Rhetorical Argument: An Investigation of Comic Culture.” Humor, vol. 12, no. 1, 1999, pp. 33–46. Harding, Sandra. 1992. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity?’” The Centennial Review, vol. 36, no. 3, 1992, pp. 437–470. http://www.jstor. org/stable/23739232. Holquist, Michael. Prologue. Rabelais and His World, by Mikhail Bakhtin, Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. xiii–xxiii. Hoy, Mikita. “Bakhtin and Popular Culture.” New Literary History, vol. 23, no. 3, 1992, pp. 765–782. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/469229. Jafrelot, Christophe. “Reconversion Paradoxes.” The Indian Express. 7 January 2015, 7 April 2021. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/reconversionparadoxes/99/. ———. “The Modi-centric BJP 2014 Election Campaign: New Techniques and Old Tactics.” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 23, no. 2, 2015, pp. 151–166, https://doi.org/ 10.1080/09584935.2015.1027662. Jafrelot, Christophe, Atul Kohli, and Kanta Murali. Business and Politics in India. New York, Oxford University Press, 2019. Jindal, Mihika. “Next Big Thing: Agrima Joshua on Doing Political Comedy, Having to Stand on Chairs for Attention, & Bonding with Sad Girls on Twitter.” 27 May 2019. Deadant.co. https://deadant.co/next-big-thing-agrima-joshua-on-doing-politicalcomedy-having-to-stand-on-chairs-for-attention-bonding-with-sad-girls-on-twitter/. Kapur, Ratna. “Pink Chaddis and SlutWalk Couture: The Postcolonial Politics of Feminism Lite.” Feminist Legal Studies, vol. 1, 2012, pp. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10691-012-9193-x. Khan, Arshad Afzal. “VHP to hold ‘ghar wapsi’ for 4,000 Muslims in Ayodhya in Jan.” 24 December 2014. The Times of India. https://timesofndia.indiatimes.com/ india/VHP-to-hold-ghar-wapsi-for-4000-Muslims-in-Ayodhya-in-Januar y/ articleshow/45624372.cms. Accessed 21 March 2021. Konig, Lion. “Cultural Citizenship and the Politics of Censorship in Post-Colonial India: Media, Power, and the Making of the Citizen.” Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Heidelberg University Library, 2013. Malik, Harshika. “Zakir Khan’s Haq Se Single and the Underlying Glamourisation of Bro Culture in Comedy.” 6 December 2018. Feminism in India. https://feminisminindia. com/2018/12/06/zakir-khan-haq-se-single/. Manaktala, Sanjay. “How Much Do Indian Stand Up Comedians Make?” 4 August 2019. Sanjay Manaktala: Home for Comedy and Comedians in India. https://www.sanjaycomedy. com/how-much-do-indian-stand-up-comedians-earn/. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender Culture and Social Change. London and New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2009. Miller, Zubin. “Stand-up Comedy and Young India: The Expression and Construction of Identity.” Changing English, vol. 27, no. 4, 2020, pp. 446–459, https://doi.org/10. 1080/1358684X.2020.1764839. Mittal, Aditi. “Why Women Have a Sense of Humor| Stand Up Comedy| Girl Meets Mic|.” 27 March 2019. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXSA0ZQr_ c4. Accessed 1 April 2021.

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Paul, Subin. “A New Public Sphere? English-Language Stand-Up Comedy in India.” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 25, no. 2, 2017, pp. 121–135, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09584935.2017.1321618. Radulescu, Dominica. Women’s Comedic Art as Social Revolution: Five Performers and the Lessons of Their Subversive Humor. Jeferson, North Carolina & London, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012. Rajeshwar, Yashasvini and Roy C. Amore. “Coming Home (Ghar Wapsi) and Going Away: Politics and the Mass Conversion Controversy in India.” Religions, vol. 10, no. 5, 2019, pp. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10050313. Reeves, Madeleine. “Afterword: Neoliberal Opportunism.” Anthropology Matters, vol. 15, no.1, 2014, pp. 141–150. https://anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/ article/view/416/542. Sarkar, John. “Comedy is Serious Biz for Many Indians.” 7 July 2017. Times of India. https://timesofndia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/comedy-is-serious-bizfor-many-indians/articleshow/59482534.cms. Scroll Staf. “Comedian Agrima Joshua Apologises for Joke about Shivaji Statue after Row Erupts.” 12 July 2020. Scroll.in. https://scroll.in/latest/967237/comedian-agrimajoshua-apologises-for-joke-on-chhatrapati-shivaji-after-row-erupts. Accessed 12 March 2021. Shepherd, Kanch Ilaiah. “Are We Turning into a Nation of Hyper-Nationalists?” 2 June 2017. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/are-we-turning-intoa-nation-of-hyper-nationalists/article18701484.ece. Accessed 6 June 2021. Shivaprasad, Madhavi. “Humour and the Margins: Stand-Up Comedy and Caste in India.” IAFOR Journal of Media Communication and Film, vol. 7, no. 1, 2020, pp. 23–42. Singh, Pawan. “Aadhaar and Data Privacy: Biometric Identifcation and Anxieties of Recognition in India.” Information, Communication & Society, vol. 24, no. 7, 2019, pp. 978–993. Statista Research Department. “Digital Population in India as of January 2018 (in millions).” 8 May 2019. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/309866/indiadigital-population/. Sumaira Sheikh. “Flights, Cabin Crew & Pilots - Sumaira Shaikh | Stand Up Comedy.” 13 March 2019. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uSH-476C20&t=6s. Accessed 19 February 2020. ———. “Gambling with Daadi - Sumaira Shaikh | Stand Up Comedy.” 20 March 2019. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKoosNVIG00. 20. Accessed 20 February 2020. ———. “Mein SSC School Ki Hoon - Sumaira Shaikh | Stand Up Comedy.” 3 April 2019. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_u0s0GFLqA. Accessed 20 February 2020. TEDx Talks. “Journey as a Female Stand-up Comedian | Neeti Palta | TEDxYouth@ DPSRKPuram.” 30 August 2016. YouTube. Accessed 20 February 2020. The MJ Show. “Aditi Mittal || Full Interview || The MJ Show Season 2.” 13 May 2015. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ9tePdtbAc. Accessed 20 February 2020. Vagianos, Alanna. “How Feminism Became ‘Trendy’ (And Why We Should Care).” Hufngton Post. 3 May 2016. https://www.hufpost.com/entry/how-feminismbecame-trendy-and-why-we-should-care_n_5727b5fde4b0b49df6ac0ce4. Accessed 7 April 2021.

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Varshney, Ashutosh. “Modi Consolidates Power: Electoral Vibrancy, Mounting Liberal Defcits.” Journal of Democracy, vol. 30, no. 4, 2019, pp. 63–77. Project MUSE, https:// doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0069. Walker, Nancy. A Very Serious Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988. “When They Talk about Your Breasts to Introduce You: Aditi Mittal and Others on Sexism in Comedy.” 6 July 2017. The News Minute. https://www.thenewsminute. com/article/when-they-talk-about-your-breasts-introduce-you-aditi-mittal-andothers-sexism-comedy-64780. Accessed 4 June 2021. Willett, Cynthia, Julie Willett, and Yael D. Sherman. “The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter.” Social Research: An International Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 1, 2012, pp. 217–246.

8 NOTES ON HANNAH GADSBY’S NANETTE, ADORNO’S KULTURINDUSTRIE AND FEMINISM Christian Berger

Introduction Through an analysis of Hannah Gadsby’s Netfix stand-up comedy performance Nanette, this chapter examines the central mechanisms of the contemporary culture industry, which is determined by economic interests as well as patriarchal conventions. The chosen perspective of analysis is located in the European system of thought Kritische Theorie [‘Critical theory’], gender anthropology and feminist dominance theory coined by Catharine A. MacKinnon, which also stands in the materialist-feminist tradition. This analytical scheme operates with an understanding of art and culture as commodities and assumes a presence of patriarchy in basic social structures of the present, which are relevant not only in the unequal distribution of property, capital, power and positions in companies and organisations but also in hierarchised everyday actions, communication and ways of consuming, etc. Patriarchy, which ultimately determines that women are derided as stupid and as sexually available, has not a biological but a political essence. Not men as a social or genus group form the patriarchy, but “that group of men and women who […] cling unbroken to the male gender preference and know how to prevent the equal participation of women on all levels of social life with strategies of repression and prevention” (Hofmeister 1994, 31, own translation from German). This group dominates the economy, the organisation of work, family life, biological reproduction and sexuality, state institutions, and regulations of gender relations through distribution of resources, culture and also comedy.

Kulturindustrie, Comedy and Gender The concept of Kulturindustrie1 to which stand-up comedy also belongs is an integral part of cultural mass production (of radio, media, flms, fction, music, shows, DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-11

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etc.) oriented towards entertainment and market utilisation. It is characterised by Horkheimer and Adorno in their seminal Dialektik der Aufklärung as the “Reproduktion des Immergleichen” [“reproduction of the same old”] (Horkheimer/ Adorno 2002, 142) of standardisation and diferentiation. This rather dogmatic perspective is expanded here by the concept of mimesis, which makes qualitative change or even resistance in the cultural feld, e.g. in specifc performances like Nanette comprehensible through re-appropriation and re-assembly. The so-called gentleman’s joke and traditional jokes about women are structured in such a way that they afrm existing relations of power and domination. This tradition of jokes is based on the exaggeration of a male ‘we’, on standardisation, the setting of diference, demarcation of gender (joke) lines, devaluation of the feminine, female body and sexuality, which, together with ideas of women’s mental and physical limitations and disgust towards any deviations from heterosexuality, functions as the object of the comic par excellence (cf. Michalitsch 2019). This devaluation is also mirrored in the historical separation of spheres into production/reproduction. Since the Industrial Revolution, economic production and social reproduction have not only been spatially separated but also polarised in their social meaning and gender specifcity. The former is done to secure material existence and, on the basis of contractual (work) obligations, is fnancially remunerated and associated with men and masculinity; the latter, based on care for others and family duties, is rewarded with love and gratitude and is associated with women and femininity (Michalitsch 2000). No social, political or economic signifcance is attached to the domestic sphere, the area of social reproduction, although it creates the conditions for visible, valued and remunerated work and public order (Berger 2021). This separation of spheres institutionalises and modernises subordination and superordination based on gender. Manufactured in, by and via the culture industries, this system demarcates reproduction and production, femininity and masculinity, and hierarchises them in a constitutive way through representations and narratives of heterosexual, active and strong masculinity, on the one hand, and sexualised, passive and weak femininity, on the other. The culture industry operates with a setting of diference and schemes of similarity as well as reducing individual experience to consumption experience. In the segment of comedy, ‘the other’ is not seen in a diferentiated way, but is homogenised and becomes an object that is laughed at together. Subjectifcation and objectifcation, inclusion and exclusion are therefore essential mechanisms of making fun of something (not someone). Comedy manifests the interweaving of politics, economy and culture, material and discursive forms of reality. Women’s lack of control over capital and assets, unequal access to income, positions and ofces manifests itself in comic discourse in what is considered comic, who is comic and who is subaltern (Michalitsch 2019, 272–273). Violence is an inherent element in the comic construction of the other, which is laughed at as something. Moreover, commodifcation plays a role in the production, circulation and consumption of all industrialised entertainment texts of mass culture (including the most broadly efective and most

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efcient method of streaming nowadays). Within the gendered dispositif of Kulturindustrie, comedy links the materially and discursively entangled levels of gender, sexuality and political economy and allows the non-existent, concealed or repressed, even if only in blurry forms, to appear in reality (Foucault 2004, 39). Stereotypical concepts of women, laughed at as stupid or beautiful and incompetent at the same time, unruly, mentally and physically limited, etc., reproduce the traditional image of women as objects to be disposed of, especially in sexual terms. Not only is the heterogeneity of women ignored, but heteronormative notions of disposal and desire are also fxated. Laughing at women as women and also groups that deviate from the heteronormative norm as deviant is an articulation of social power. However, these dominant gender relations are also inscribed in the subjects who laugh, laugh along, or are laughed at. Comedy – itself a market – thus contributes to the binary-hierarchical (re-)production of gender in a capitalist market society: “Fun ist ein Stahlbad” [“Fun is a steel bath”] (Adorno/Horkheimer 2003, 149). The female object of mainstream comedy is either an unskilled worker whose natural domains are family and household, or a career woman who acts either as a token woman or “unfeminine”, wanting to exert power and control over men because she is unattractive and fails in her naturally assigned domains. Or the joke is directed against women who are expected to use their attractiveness to exert power and control over men. These are all hostile forms of sexism (Glick/ Fiske 1996). All this refects the current status of women in the labour market and the market society, which is gendered due to the interaction of patriarchy and capitalism, guaranteeing a reservoir of unpaid female reproductive labour. The increasing integration of women into local and global labour markets, which takes place either through atypical, often low-paid employment or supplementary income arrangements, confrms and modernises the fundamental gendered division of labour, but also subjects women – formally equal – to principles of competition and self-optimisation that have become universal. The efect is to intensify capitalism’s inherent contradiction between economic production and social reproduction. Whereas the previous regime empowered states to subordinate the short-term interests of private frms to the long-term objective of sustained accumulation, in part by stabilizing reproduction through public provision, this one authorizes fnance capital to discipline states and publics in the immediate interests of private investors, not least by demanding public disinvestment from social reproduction. And whereas the previous regime allied marketization with social protection against emancipation, this one generates an even more perverse confguration, in which emancipation joins with marketization to undermine social protection. (Fraser 2016 n.p.) The comic discourse is also determined by economic resources and the outlined processes of gender division and cannibalisation of labour and capital accumulation

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in the longue durée. Women are politically and economically marginalised, and the culture industry, in comic ways, dehumanises them as well as sexual minorities, migrants and the poor – ways of existence that all deviate from the ideal of sovereign masculinity and thereby shapes and re-inscribes gender and power relations. However, comedy is not only afrmation but also subversion. It has the potential to not only mirror society, its norms and forms but also shift them.

Nanette: Time Is Up for Irony In Nanette, Hannah Gadsby recalls how she was confronted with homophobic and sexist violence at a bar at the age of 17: A drunk man had assumed that she was a man – albeit a “faggot” – and threatened to beat her up when he saw she (or assumed to see) was hitting on his girlfriend; he apologised when he realised she was a woman. She mentions this at frst just for the punchline: the man apologises to her when he realises that she is a woman – he does not hit women. The audience laughs. She delivers several other punchlines that have to do with her past: with her coming out; with the omnipresent and until 1997, legally backed homophobia she faced growing up in her small hometown in Tasmania; with her deep-seated dissatisfaction, her depression, her isolation and her shame. It appears to be a self-deprecating comic coming to terms with the past. But Gadsby has had enough of not telling her story and her memories to the end. She has had enough of jokes about women and lesbians, even if they are ironic. In the middle of her show, she radically questions all of this and her profession itself: “I have built a career out of self-deprecating humour and I don’t want to do that anymore. Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility, it’s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore, not to myself or anybody who identifes with me. If that means that my comedy career is over, then, so be it”. In this twisted, non-comic stand-up depiction, class shame and sexual shame are mixed in a violent way. This connection between class society and gender has been repeatedly emphasised by feminist theorists. Catharine MacKinnon argues that gender can be understood as a class relation, that not only the social organisation of labour divides society into classes but also the organisation of sexuality divides society into two genders. In this, the organised dispossession for the beneft of men would shape the sexuality of women. The class of men would have sexual access to women qua gender preference. For the class of women, this would mean sexual availability to men qua sex discrimination. “Sexuality” meant for feminism what “labour” meant for Marxism: “that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away” (MacKinnon 1989, 3). For MacKinnon, gender diference is produced above all through eroticisation of submission and dominance; for her, “gender” is therefore always also “sexual” (1989, 126) and itself a hegemonically constructed social reality: “The process that gives sexuality its male supremacist meaning is therefore the process through which gender inequality becomes

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socially real” (MacKinnon 1987, 173). Feminist dominance theory understands gender relations as social hierarchical relations: thus, gender is a social status based on who does what to whom, who is allowed to do what to whom, and only in a second sense a diference. Femininity, for MacKinnon, is a mere survival strategy in the face of dominant masculinity, male power and sexualised violence and characterised primarily by availability as a victim (MacKinnon 1987, 7). In Nanette, knowingly and nonchalantly, Gadsby turns to conventions of art history and some Old Masters. She problematises the aestheticisation and eroticisation of conventions from the High Renaissance to Picasso that perpetuate the normality and ordinariness of misogyny, gendered roles and perceptions, abuse and sexual violence, and reifcation of the feminine. But, following a Kulturindustrie approach, aesthetics is itself reduced to its economic function in stand-up comedy in the form of punchlines. Gadsby has enough of self-deprecation, misogynistic cynicism and humiliating, retraumatising punchlines. She thus tells one memory vividly to the end. This ofers an answer to the question central to the volume: “Does the subaltern laugh and make others laugh through stand-up comedy?” Because the man she met at the bar returned, Gadsby clarifes: “he beat the shit out of me and nobody stopped him”, precisely because she is a lesbian and does not adhere to dominant gender norms. And because of these dominant gender norms, she did not turn to law enforcement authorities: “I thought that was all I was worth. And I didn’t take myself to hospital. And I should have. But I didn’t, because that’s all I thought I was worth. I am ‘incorrect’ and that is a punishable ofense”. In this way, Gadsby subtly traces the causality of gender-specifc (self ) devaluation and gender-specifc violence. Implicitly addressed here is Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu 1997), which describes latent social power and gendered relations of violence inscribed in thinking, acting, perceiving, feeling and afects. Gender (performance) itself is based on violent constructions.

Mimesis, De- and Re-constructing Gender To what extent is gender actually constructed? In 1987, Jane Collier and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, in their essay “Toward a Unifed Analysis of Gender and Kinship”, cast doubt on whether the biological, reproductive functions of humans can indeed be said to have universal validity in terms of distinguishing the cultural categories of “male” and “female”. They argue that the anthropological notion that gender everywhere was a universal, cultural translation of the same biological diference between women and men is traceable to a preoccupation with analytic dichotomies. These dichotomies were established in comparative research on gender in anthropology in the 1970s, including domestic/public (Rosaldo 1974), nature/culture (Ortner 1974), production/reproduction (Harris/Young 1981). The point, then, is neither to naturalise sexuality nor to neglect it as a meaning-bearing and meaning-making category. ‘Pre-social’ facts, in the form of biological certainties or symbolic dichotomies, however, can be discarded as analytical tools. Rather, it is now a matter of consistently denaturalising and

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realising, without lapsing into hard cultural relativism, that “sexuality […] cannot escape its cultural connection” (Caplan 1987, 25). Biology is thus to be seen as a Western construct; the distinction between biological sex and gender are themselves part of a specifc ‘folk model’ of gender (Yanagisako/Collier 1987, 15, 48; Yanagisako/Delaney 1996). In the context of mimesis, gender is thus understood as a refexive process that is articulated according to specifc social and cultural interactions. Several interaction partners and cultural codes are always involved in this constructive performance. The resulting habitus, which makes gender omnipresent, has various facets: clothing, hairstyle, gestures, glancing, movement, language, etc. If you will, ‘body techniques’ in the sense of Marcel Mauss (1947/2010). The observance of these clearly gendered cultural techniques, rituals, symbols, orders, which I call ‘gender regimes’ at this point, is subject to social control at various levels. In the case of Nannette, (streamed) stand-up comedy functions – as a form of performative resistance2 – to contribute to irritating the mainstream of stand-up comedy performance and reception conventions but also the gender regime itself and disrupts social dramaturgy (Gofman 1959). Social and gender relations of violence are no longer afrmed through shared laughter. Violence against women and sexual minorities is furthermore de-normalised as an aspect of masculinity. Performative acts and representations like stand-up comedy, however, can be distinguished according to whether they are more or less mimetic. Mimesis involves imitating someone or even social conditions with aesthetic intent and taking them apart and putting them back together again in such a way that individual parts no longer stand in a hierarchical relationship to a whole (Adorno 1970/1996). This mimesis can be political. Whether it “is” depends on its relation to the world: If something is mimicked in order to thereby take up (pre)given social conditions and at the same time represent something that is not given in reality or not given in shape or form, political potential arises. The given thus mimetically appropriated then acquires at least a new quality, a quality of the possible. In mimesis, something new is produced by recourse to the old. The political aspect of this action thus lies precisely in the human ability to “make a new beginning” (Arendt 1981/2013, 18). Mimesis thus has two gender-political dimensions that are signifcant in relation to cultural forms such as comedy but also drag (Berger 2018) and popular representations of e.g. body positivity (Lechner 2019): The potential of de-hierarchisation and a blank slate through de- and reconstructive creation/reception.

Conclusion Gadsby acts like an intellectual-activist, her performance is mimetic. In her case, this applies to narrative and comedic modes but also gender norms that are de- and reconstructed. They are placed in new relations to stand-up comedy as a genre and to misogyny and the masculine as an idealised norm that is constantly reinforced by the culture industry. In comedy, life stories and societal

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shortcomings are commodities; what counts are the punchlines that pay of, the ones with a high short-term rate of return. Gadsby shows that this might not be the end of the story of stand-up comedy. The genre can reveal the content and reproduction of currently prototypical gender order as well as cultural, economic, physical, and everyday violence based on gender. In its dominant form, as Gadsby’s performance also makes abundantly clear as an exception to the genre rule, stand-up comedy can prove to be an instrument for denying responsibility, for ridiculing socially marginalised groups, for constantly undermining democratic ideas par excellence. More bold exceptions like Nannette are, therefore, needed to transform the genre towards political and social equality. But would this still be comedy?

Notes 1 Nota bene: Although the direct translation of the German “Kulturindustrie“ into English might suggest equivalence beyond a common lineage, Adorno and Horkheimer’s approach is not to be confused with how Anglophone cultural studies in the tradition of Stuart Hall and others approach the culture industries – i.e. often in direct opposition to the positions of the Frankfurt School. 2 The feminist scholar Angela McRobbie, for example, expands the concept of Kulturindustrie around the possibility of not only passively consuming culture in an already deformed form, of understanding creation/reception as practices of possible resistance, albeit precarious ones: […] to signal a lineage from the Frankfurt School and Adorno in particular through to the Birmingham CCCS […]. The allegiance to the former is oblique in that, for Adorno, while the dream factory of the culture industries was indeed a place of production, employing legions of writers and artists, it was paced according to a relentless assembly line of economies of scale such that cultural artefacts took on the semblance of sameness, uniformity and mind-numbing banality. The Birmingham CCCS under the infuence of Gramsci disputed this analysis of inevitable banalisation, making a strong case for critical participation at both producer and consumer ends in the context of the social history of popular culture as a site of class struggle. Birmingham scholars extended this to include struggles of ethnicity […] and the importance of gender struggles […]. (Robbie 2015, 10)

Works Cited Adorno, Theodor W. Ästhetische Theorie. Frankfurt on Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970/1996. Adorno, Theodor W./Horkheimer Max. Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. Frankfurt on Main: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 2002. Arendt, Hannah. Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben. Munich: Piper Verlag, 1981/2013. Berger, Christian. Gender Is Rigged, in Drag Dossier. Gunda Werner Institut/HeinrichBöll-Stiftung, 2018. Online: www.gwi-boell.de/de/2018/06/07/gender-rigged (last access: 2021-04-11). Berger, Christian. Soziale Reproduktion in der Krise: Feministisch-politökonomische Perspektiven auf Versorgungsökonomie und Strukturwandel, in Filipič, Ursula/ Schönauer (eds.). Sozialpolitik in Diskussion 23 (pp. 69–76). Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien: Vienna, 2021.

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Bourdieu, Pierre. Die männliche Herrschaft, in Dölling, Irene/Kraus, Beate (eds.). Ein alltägliches Spiel. Geschlechtskonstruktion in der sozialen Praxis (pp. 153–217). Frankfurt on Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997. Caplan, Pat. The Cultural Construction of Sexuality. London: Tavistock Publications, 1987. Foucault, Michel. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität II. Die Geburt der Biopolitik. Frankfurt on Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004. Fraser, Nancy. 2016. Contradictions of Capital and Care, New Left Review 100: 99–117. Online: www.newleftreview.org/issues/ii100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-ofcapital-and-care. Glick, Peter/Fiske, Susan T. The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Diferentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexism, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (1996): 491–512. Gofman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books: A Division of Random House, 1959. Harris, Olivia/Young, Kate. Engendered Structures. Some Problems in the Analysis of Reproduction, in Kahn, Joel S./Llobera, Joseph R. (Hg.). The Anthropology of PreCapitalist Societies (pp. 109–147). London: Palgrave, 1981. Hofmeister, Lilian. Analyse und Perspektiven, in Bundesministerium für Frauenangelegenheiten (ed.). Frauen und Recht: Eine Dokumentation der Enquete der Bundesministerin für Frauenangelegenheiten und des Bundesministers für Justiz vom 18. und 19. Oktober (pp. 31–43). Wien: Bundeskanzleramt, 1994. Lechner, Elisabeth. The Popfeminist Politics of Body Positivity – Creating Spaces for ‘Disgusting’ Female Bodies in US Popular Culture, The French Review of American Studies 158.1 (2019): 71–94. MacKinnon, Catharina A. Feminism Unmodifed Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge Massachusetts/London, England: Harvard University Press, 1987. MacKinnon, Catharine A. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989. Mauss Marcel. Die Techniken des Körpers, in Mauss, Marcel. Soziologie und Anthropologie, Bd. 2, Gabentausch – Todesvorstellungen – Körpertechniken (pp. 198–222). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften/Springer Fachmedienverlag, 1947/2010. McRobbie, Angela. Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015. Michalitsch, Gabriele. Der Frauen Liebesdienst? Geschlechtergrenzen der ökonomischen Disziplin, in Michalitsch, Gabriele/ Nairz-Wirth, Erna (eds.). FrauenArbeitsLos (pp. 11–37). Frankfurt on Main/New York/Bern: Peter Lang Verlag, 2000. Michalitsch, Gabriele. Lachen im Patriarchat: Prinzessin, hysterische Hyänen und andere Fake News. Komik, Afrmation und Subversion von Herrschaft, in Janke, Pia/Schenkermayr, Christian (eds.). Komik und Subversion. Ideologiekritische Strategien (pp. 271–287). Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2019. Ortner, Sherry B. Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?, in Lamphere, Louise/ Roslado, Michelle Zimbalist (eds.). Women, Culture, and Society (pp. 67–87). California: Stanford University Press, 1974. Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist. Woman, Culture, and Society. A Theoretical Overview, in Lamphere, Louise/Roslado, Michelle Zimbalist (eds.). Women, Culture, and Society (pp. 17–42). California: Stanford University Press, 1974. Yanagisako, Silvia J./Collier, Jane F. Toward a Unifed Analysis of Gender and Kinship, in Yanagisako, Silvia J./Collier, Jane F. (eds.). Gender and Kinship. Essays toward a Unifed Analysis (pp. 14–53). California: Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1987. Yanagisako, Silvia J./Delaney, Carol (eds.). Naturalizing Power. Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. New York/London: Routledge, 1996.

PART III

Comics and the Audience Connections, Ethics and Effcacy?

9 AWKWARD CONNECTIONS Stand-Up Comedy as Affective Arrangement Antti Lindfors

Only a scene that ofers you enjoyment or engages your interest can make you blush. (Sedgwick & Frank 2003)

Coerced in the summer 2020 by pandemic lockdowns to look for alternative ways to make a living, stand-up comedian Teemu Vesterinen might have just accidentally made the world record in stand-up comedy purism, with an ecological back-to-nature twist related to Finnish forests no less. Reducing this art form to its seemingly bare essence, Vesterinen took his crowd of around ten people – that was the ofcially sanctioned limit in Finland for each show at that time – to the local woods in Kuopio, Eastern Finland, for an event of stand-up comedy unplugged. Known as a comedian with a knack for experimentation, his idea was to do stand-up without any of the usual props, i.e., without music, lighting, warming up, without the iconic microphone, in broad daylight, with just the (corona proof ) basics of interpersonal dynamics. Needless to mention, such an occasion calls for exceptional meticulousness in design so as not to turn exceptionally awkward for everyone involved. Illustrative of the delicate nature of preparing and cultivating audience relations in stand-up, Vesterinen’s plan was to start with “low energy”. Aiming at obscuring the contours of the show and the boundary between performance and not-performance as much as possible, he started out by handing out supplies for each audience member – a carton of juice and a pasty – casually getting a feel of his audience after which segueing on to his material: less formality and “showmanship,” more connection and living in the moment. This chapter looks at stand-up comedians as specialists of the space and afect of social interaction, who willfully expose themselves to the looming awkwardness DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-13

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that lies beneath every social encounter in their quest to win over groups of strangers and make them laugh. Stand-up can be characterized as an economy of relatability (see Lindfors 2019a) and an afective arrangement (Slaby 2019a) where the primary job of the performer consists in forging and manipulating afective connections with her audience, to the point of frequently thematizing and aestheticizing this connection and (hoped-for) communion as its privileged targets. While sometimes straightforwardly accused for its individualist ethos, stand-up is a “duet” with the audience – or rather audiences, given that a comedian can “play” several audience segments at once, especially in bigger halls, as a conductor of afective bursts – and a group efort to the extent that any defnitions of the genre appear inadequate without taking audience uptake into account. I begin by elaborating on the notion of phaticity by drawing on linguistic and semiotic anthropology, where phaticity has a bifurcated history with two distinguishable but often overlapping aspects of communion and contact (Kockelman 2010; Nozawa 2015; Zuckerman 2016; Lemon 2018; cf. Miller 2015). The frst aspect of phaticity, communion, takes us back to the Trobriands of the 1920s with Bronislaw Malinowski, who infuentially outlined the functions of gossip and small talk in creating social bonds and rapport (“phatic communion”) rather than necessarily conveying information in the referential-denotational fashion. Second, it was formalist linguist Roman Jakobson – steeped in the early cybernetics, information and communication theory of the 1940s and 1950s when he came up with these ideas (Van de Walle 2008; Geoghegan 2011) – who was responsible for formulating a more technical conception of specifcally contact phaticity. Modeling phaticity as a distinct “function” of communication that refers specifcally to the mediating channel and infrastructure through and within which communication takes place (cf. Peters 2015), Jakobson downplayed social relations in favor of technical aspects for achieving and experimenting with contact, broadening the locus of phaticity to include “messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works […] to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confrm his continued attention” ( Jakobson 1960, 355). The rest is disciplinary history as scholars from various felds of anthropology, ethnography, media and communication, and sociolinguistics have adopted both of these two denotations of phaticity for their own inquiries, sometimes confating the two and thus naturalizing the assumption that contact always builds rapport (see Zuckerman 2021; also Goebel 2021). In what follows, I am more interested in phaticity and phatic signs (such as laughter) in the sense that they point to social communion – as a notable intensity that demarcates stand-up gigs as afective arrangements – and to a lesser degree in physical, technical, and communicative channels that in stand-up are (usually) in shape: these performers are up on stage with the sonic channel of their voice amplifed by a microphone, sometimes being recorded on video for further dissemination. While keeping an eye on any confations of contact and communion phaticities into one, however, I will mostly speak of phaticity simply as connection,

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following the general preference of comedians themselves when referring to the interactional dynamic between themselves and their audiences. While the frst section of the paper lays the foundation for my discussion of phatic connection in stand-up comedy by rethinking it in terms of a social and afective dynamic of relatability, the second attends to the naturalized “contact tropes” (Zuckerman 2021) and refexive ideologies through which this social and afective dynamic is discursively formulated amongst practitioners. Indeed, phaticity is increasingly understood in research not only as a “pervasive concern and a contingent accomplishment” for interactional participants (Sidnell 2009, 132) but as an index for further ideological – and aesthetic – elaboration with more far-reaching implications – think of how capacities for contact are celebrated, fetishized, and mourned within contemporary sociotechnical infrastructure (see e.g., Turkle 2011). Such contact tropes and ideologies can manifest as explicit verbalizations, norms, maxims even, e.g., as a rule of thumb circulating amongst comedians that the frst proper laughs must be attained within the frst minute of the gig. More often than not, discursive formulations of interpersonal phaticity are elaborated through metaphor and felt tacitly – such largely afective matters are “difcult to verbalize while being most central” to the genre, as Vesterinen confrms (interview in possession of the author). In this regard, I am curious about the thermodynamic vocabulary of energies and heat metaphors that both practitioners and pundits frequently adopt for describing the afective and phatic dynamic of stand-up as a self-regulating organism that serially “heats up” in explosive laughter. I suggest that theorizing this afect-driven but often curiously behaviorist imaginary of stand-up comedy also provides a novel perspective on various social and moral expectations and norms concerning the genre, including its famous logic of “punching up” or “down” the social strata, a deceptively simple but apparently pragmatic way of imagining enactments of power in an intersectional manner (see e.g., Quirk 2018). In this regard, beginning with the afective and bodily dynamic at the heart of stand-up should also enable us to revisit some of the premises of humor theory itself (cf. Shouse 2007).1 Ideally, it forces us to rethink the simplifed relief theory of humor that informs our unquestioned habit of correlating setups with tension and punchlines with relief or imagining humor and laughter in particular as a “release” of pent-up mental energy, emotional tension, and aggression (classically, Freud 1960, 120; 1961; see also Schaefer 1981; Stott 2005, 131; Mears et al. 2019). Combined with so-called superiority theories that frame humor in terms of a people’s resonant attachment to – and dissonant distancing from – group norms, this is the taken-for-granted imaginary that allows us to view stand-ups as “Geiger counters” and “social dowsing rods” for the existence and efcacy of various social and moral norms at a given time in a given community (see e.g., Noland & Hoppman 2019, 135). Rather than taking these metaphors at face value, I suggest this simplifed imaginary and such seemingly self-evident binaries through which we have been accustomed to think about stand-up – intimacy and distance, tension and release,

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and fnally, organic and inorganic that takes us through Henri Bergson (1935) to the third major strand of humor theory, incongruity theory – could be usefully complemented by social and political insights drawn from recent (feminist) afect theory. Pointing to a feld of afective intensity and atmosphere that tends to get discursively modeled through binary logics, afect can be described as simultaneously more foundational than any binary signifcations (such as the ones mentioned above) and only crudely appropriated and represented through them. Attending to its functions in the specifc context of stand-up can thus work, I propose, as an important corrective against the well-entrenched pejorative association of comedy with “low” bodily afairs by pointing to the fundamental social signifcance of somatic intercorporeality (also Protevi 2009). To argue this more thoroughly, I turn to awkwardness as something curiously endemic to stand-up and its social and afective dynamic (which is a different but arguably related concern compared with awkwardness as a popular theme in stand-up and comedy more generally). First, in part due to its nature as goal-driven “phatic labor” (Elyachar 2010) in an artifcial setting, stand-up seems to court awkwardness and failure as if by defnition, for when this goal is not attained and the connection is not there, stand-up quickly turns awkward for everyone involved. Second, stand-up usefully reveals awkwardness as also a social and political issue – an important insight recently made famous by Hannah Gadsby in her 2019 stand-up special Nanette (see also Sundén & Paasonen 2019). In the manner that Gadsby describes her own person(a) as a butch lesbian as having induced tension in audiences that she then felt she was obliged to release – through self-deprecative humor – awkwardness in stand-up brings into sharp relief how the viscerally felt relation (whether comfortable or tense) between a person and their comic stage persona analogically corresponds with the visceral comfort or tension one feels in presenting oneself in public more generally. Broadly, then, this essay pursues a political reconsideration of phaticity and phatic phenomena as indispensable for any analysis of power relations in stand-up comedy. Overall, this chapter is empirically based on my earlier research on stand-up in the Finnish scene (see Lindfors 2019a; 2019b) that has been supplemented with additional data specifcally gathered for this article, such as Finnish podcasts on (stand-up) comedy and complementary interviews with Finnish stand-up comedians. I will not be focusing on any singular stand-up routines or performances in detail, as my interest is rather on the foundational phatic, social, and afective dynamic that this genre rests on.

Relatability as Affective Dynamic While techniques for the constitution and dissolution of audiences have been the hallmark of rhetoric for millennia, they are more central for some oratorical genres than others. Stand-up is one of these genres, as recognized since Lawrence Mintz (1985, 78) who said that the “comedian must establish for the audience that

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the group is homogenous, a community, if the laughter is to come easily.” Not only must a comedian calibrate their self-presentational act with an eye on its phatic capacities for forging social bonds with their audience, they must preferably learn to cultivate positive rapport between audience members and segments. Indeed, Teemu Vesterinen opines that audience members are as concerned about other people’s moods as they are of their own, and generally quite socially conscious in (dis)allowing themselves to indulge in certain forms of emotional and bodily expression in the presence of others. Oscillating between forces of stabilizing in-group allegiance and a seemingly divergent process of individuation, stand-up rests on the social dynamic between the degree to which the comedian presents themselves as a representative of their vernacular peer groups (see Noyes 2016), the degree to which the aforementioned groups coincide with the social imaginaries that their audience members identify or resonate with, and the degree to which stand-ups may self-present as idiosyncratic individuals who may even intentionally misalign and distance themselves from their audiences (“digging a hole for oneself ” as metapragmatically referred to in the community). This is part of the dynamic trajectory of self-typifcation or “becoming-character” (Lindfors 2019a; 2019b; cf. Nozawa 2013) frequently discussed in stand-up under the notion of stage persona. The relationship between a stand-up and their comic stage persona is safe to say personal and demands regular assessment and refexive monitoring. To be sure, it is also imbued with its own awkwardness and potentially visceral discomfort, as occasionally highlighted by comedians when expounding on becoming strangers to their earlier stage personae. For instance, Finnish-Swedish stand-up André Wickström describes out-growing his earlier stage persona, which represented the single-living André of his 20s, into his later persona of a steadily-middleclass-father-of-two – a process that efectively rendered his earlier material lacking in credibility and afective force (see Huumorihommia 2020).2 While the above case might come of as a relatively harmless example of the relationship of a stand-up to their stage persona, this relation is a key component of the overall dynamic of stand-up insofar as it – whether manifested in self-assurance of being comfortably “at ease with oneself ” or by contrast as selfpresentational malaise – has an important efect on the relationship of stand-up to their audience. It is common knowledge amongst stand-ups that the appearance of spontaneity – often indexed or perceived through relaxed yet controlled bodily comportment – bears the capacity to save a lot from an otherwise mediocre gig, because spontaneity makes the performer more relatable and the audience more relaxed. In the sense that an ill-ftting or otherwise awkward stage persona can be analogically paralleled with the relation that a person has with their public persona more generally, stand-up thus brings into sharp relief the question of who can present themselves acceptably and comfortably as themselves in various social situations. Moreover, it reveals the comfort/tension one feels in (presenting) one’s self in social situations – that potentially has an efect on one’s success in stand-up – as unevenly distributed. What Carolyn Pedwell (2014, xi) says

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about empathy can be extended to relatability more generally in the sense that both are social and political relations that involve the imbrication of cognitive, perceptual, bodily, and afective processes – a fact sometimes obscured or ignored in accounts of stand-up that often operate in terms of “identifcation”, “worldview”, or other designators of largely referential indexicality and similarity. In other words, relatability is an afective and bodily afair as much it is a cognitive or representational one of “sharing the same experience”. The reason we might “like” a stand-up comedian might come down to their thoughts being recognizable (or just insightful, bold, outrageous, interesting, etc.) for us. Or, it might come down to the degree their bodies are “recognizable” and familiar for us, to how pleasant it is to engage with them intercorporeally and socially, and so on.3 Moreover, the connectivity between stand-up and audience can equally turn on marked diference that is exaggerated rather than efaced, complicating the intimacy/distance binary dear to much stand-up analysis. For analogous reasons, I believe, Susanna Paasonen (2019) prefers the notion of resonance over identifcation (in her study of animated pornography, no less), pointing out that in order to resonate with one another, interactional agents need not be in any way similar (nor even human, for that matter) but merely to relate and connect in bodily terms: “This relating can involve fascination, absorption, or recognition, or it may be registered as more ephemeral pull or interest.” Part of being a specialist of phatic relatability such as a stand-up comedian, in turn, is about learning to perceive, make sense of, and manipulate in real-time the fner points of this co-constitutive positioning and social connectivity.

Optimizing the Stand-Up Organism I will next investigate how the social and afective dynamic of phatic connection is refexively formulated and aestheticized amongst practitioners through tropic discourse that I suggest operates as an organizing imaginary through which stand-up is frequently conceptualized. This imaginary is implicitly referenced when standups are colloquially described as either high or low energy, in how the atmosphere of the venue can be cold, how the MC has to warm up the audience by generating and mobilizing energy and afect. Once the crowd is warm and the performance has gained momentum and properly got going, the stand-up gig is perceived as pulsating and surging with energy as an essentially self-regulating (homeostatic) feedback system, where the thermodynamic cycle of accumulation and expenditure can be felt as more and less intensifed afective atmosphere and measured as bursts of laughter. An elemental aspect of the craft of stand-up thus involves skillfully tapping into this afective dynamic and energetic atmosphere while simultaneously being afected and enabled by it, riding the waves of laughter in an ecology of agency that is only partially reducible to willful, subjective intention. With an eye on its reputation as a generalized vision of feedback systems (e.g., Galloway 2014), one could refer to this refexive formulation of the phatic dynamic of stand-up as a thermodynamic or “cybernetic” imaginary (cf. Dorst

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2016). Although historically characterized as a transdisciplinary study of selfregulating systems from the perspective of their mechanisms of randomizing variation and stabilizing constraint that has since split into a variety of sciences (see Heylighen & Joslyn 2001), I am here pointing to cybernetics as a popular imaginary, the appeal of which lies in the fexibility of its dynamic principles that enables to question the line between organic and inorganic systems by imagining a variety of systems and arrangements as seemingly organic adaptive processes (for important treatments of such an imaginary in diferent contexts, see Turner 2006; Pickering 2010; Modern 2021). Such systems can be equally technical such as homeostatic thermostats, biological such as human nervous systems, or social and cultural such as stand-up gigs (also Dorst 2016, 129). Casting a critical eye on this seemingly disinterested imaginary and vocabulary, I argue, then entails looking at the taken-for-granted ideologies and assumptions that frame how we understand and talk about the stand-up “organism” and its afective body politics – that also happens to be an understanding of the body inherited from late 19th century industrial capitalism (see Smith 1999; Clough 2008; Pruchnic 2008). Rather than as clear-cut causalities, I suggest this imaginary manifests in stand-up as tacit tropisms or afective binaries – intimacy/distance, tension/release, organic/ inorganic being some obvious favorite ones, as mentioned above – through which this art form is construed in processual terms as an afective dynamic of accumulation and expenditure that simultaneously gauges social distance and aesthetic-ethic sensibility (cf. Dorst 2016, 128). At its heart, one can fnd a dominant communicative ideology of stand-up comedy – a conception and valuation of language use in terms of its means and ends – as an inherently goal-seeking teleological activity of making people laugh, the success of which can be quite straightforwardly deduced from the number of bursts of low- to high-intensity laughter that an individual bit is able to evoke (cf. Van De Walle 2008, 100–101). Certainly, it is possible and (to a degree) feasible to envision stand-up as a systemic process with an apparent self-repairing mechanism of negative feedback – that is, marked absence of laughter or “unlaughter” (Billig 2005) as an indication of disconnection – which comes into play as soon as comedians stray too far from group norms, or simply bomb. As such, it is also possible to rationalize and optimize this process for “extracting value from afect” (Clough 2008, 16). Illustrative of such afective optimization of the “black box” of performance interaction in terms of its inputs and outputs – to borrow again from cybernetic logic and parlance – individual stand-up routines are generally developed, assessed, and refned in terms of their “behavior” in changing live situations.4 That is, bits and routines can be rationally calculated as an array of combinations and permutations – of specifc words, of diferent word/text orders, down to variations in prosody, gesture, and body movement – where subtle nuances of communicative form are tried out for their afective (laughter-inducing) efcacy. The basic unit of a single stand-up routine is thus calibrated in practice in relation to its “environment” and the randomizing element constituted by the “match” between the stand-up, the permutations of bits and routines performed on just this

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occasion, for just these people in the audience. The whole process can be assisted by “objectively” assessing one’s success rate with the help of recordings, some comedians counting laughs-per-minute to measure their skill, others merely studying their unwitting maneuvers and aspects of bodily expression through video recordings. In other words, afective dynamic is a central afordance for stand-up economics and vice versa. This also means that if your preferred comic style is telling short puns and one-liners – one after another in the classical vein of Mitch Hedberg or Steven Wright – the challenge of maintaining an appealing afective dynamic is probably diferent compared with more narrative-oriented raconteurs, punsters working with an entirely diferent set of textual tools.5 Needless to mention, the afective dynamic of stand-up can easily infect toward repetition or even boredom, because the audience can be certain that the comic will aim at outdoing her previous bit by provoking even louder laughter (cf. Kavka 2008, 94). Coincidentally, the utilitarian and behaviorist streak, manifested as a calculative orientation toward maximally efective punchlines, is frequently challenged by other stand-ups by an “experimental” mode of performance and an alternative ethos that is presented as more relaxed in terms of form and function (see e.g., Quirk 2018). A more serious problem with one-handed emphasis on calculative afective and textual optimization of singular stand-up bits is that such systematized orientation risks obscuring important social and political aspects of the environment in which these afective and textual black boxes are exchanged. Here, cybernetic thinking on stand-up could fruitfully connect with contemporary feminist and afect theory that has brought into relief how diferentially positioned bodies and their expressions are surfaces for afect to varying degrees – some bodies invoking authority or positive interest, others provoking hostile aggression more often than others (e.g., Ahmed 2004; Berlant 2011; Wetherell 2012). Afect tends to circulate via established networks of social and cultural investment – within existing “force felds” of race, class, gender, and ability (Helmreich 2013, S141) – typically stabilizing rather than disrupting social demarcations by keeping subjects attached to their (oppressive) conditions through governing afective atmospheres and pulls (Berlant 2011; cf. Riedel 2019). Such atmospheres can in turn infect acts of performing and narrating an identity by rendering some (but not all) expressions of afect appropriate and desirable for certain individuals – e.g., allowing self-deprecation but precluding confrontation as also brought out by Hannah Gadsby – and increasing or decreasing the capacities of bodies in the process (see Krefting 2014; Thomas 2015; cf. Sundén & Paasonen 2019, 8). Finnish stand-up comedian Kaisa Pylkkänen describes an afective atmosphere of this kind from the perspective of a female comedian as follows: “For the most part it has taken time for me to learn an amicable positioning so that the audience would still like me. I’m a strong personality and also formidable ofstage. Amplifed by a microphone and physical positioning above the audience… it is difcult (especially as a woman) to win over an audience.”

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While potentially giving some leeway by its excessive nature for diferentially positioned bodies in terms of their range and intensity of afective and bodily expression, afordances for relatability in stand-up are distributed in an uneven manner, resulting in diverse tactics for coping with such imbalances. Coincidentally, any analysis of stand-up as phatic labor or as an exchange of energy must ultimately attend to – or rather begin with – the social and political environment that mediates any attempt at connection, relatability, and exchange. This becomes all the clearer when the connection at the heart of stand-up is ruptured, breaks, or is absent from the outset.

Awkwardness as Phatic Rupture Awkwardness is something integral if not endemic to stand-up comedy, given its nature as goal-driven phatic labor in an artifcial setup where repetition rules supreme.6 To a degree, stand-up comedians must initially transcend the awkwardness linked to the promise of making people laugh, for inasmuch as forceful rhetorical persuasion is a potential afront to our integrity, it can be felt as intrusive, especially in cultures that value individuality. While most blatantly revealed by such performance-related instances of the gig going sour or just not working in the frst place, the comedian fumbling and failing, transgressing moral boundaries, or worse, simply forgetting their bits, awkwardness is also invoked by instances that in one way or another afict and test the connection between stand-up and audience, sometimes by only drawing attention to it (cf. Jakobson 1960). Indeed, the source of awkwardness seems to necessarily articulate with social norms and expectations that are tried and tested by awkward situations: awkwardness is an intersubjective event that feeds on the attention of others on us.7 Even if we would admit along with Adam Kotsko (2010) that certain people seem to draw in awkwardness as if like magnets, their awkward character also derives from their coupling with social environments and other people, as he also points out. It is as if awkward actions would somehow rupture the social and phatic fabric associated with “things going smoothly”. As a seemingly open arena that famously invites unauthorized participants, such ruptures are frequently dealt in stand-up by hecklers, whose phatic attacks – shouts, groans, drunken hollers, whistles – do not necessarily aim at dialogue but at making a scene or disrupting the event (cf. Zuckerman 2016). In this regard, it can be wise (if not unavoidable) for a stand-up comedian to acquaint oneself with the afective favor and pull of awkwardness that it certainly possesses even if it might not be generally incorporated into the categorical emotion-types of the philosophical canon (shame, anger, joy, fear). According to Teemu Vesterinen, skillful cultivation and release of tension and awkwardness (e.g., by appropriate insolence) is an essential feature of the comedian’s toolkit in the sense that it assists in generating and mobilizing afective energy. He describes the desired outcome of such manipulation of the (collective) nervous system in therapeutic terms as “fushing one’s head”, after which the audience is ideally more relaxed,

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receptive, and less caught up in knee-jerk reactivity. Indeed, it is easy to fnd comedians – also in the Finnish scene – who seem to tactically draw and even revel in awkwardness, navigating the awkwardly artifcial setup of stand-up with seeming ease. Even “irritating, awkward encounters might grip and enthrall us and even bind us together in certain ways”, as Jan Slaby (2019b, 64) says, putting us under a diferent kind of spell that can be partially draining but equally exciting and energizing. In stand-up, the manifestations and functions of awkwardness range from a dysphoric feeling of suspended agency – think of a comedian freezing on stage – to an aesthetic afect one can cultivate and play with (cf. Ngai 2005). These functions emerge in relation to what Sianne Ngai (2005, 22–24) has described as “the boundary confusions built into the structure” of such “ugly feelings” as irritation, anxiety, paranoia – as well as, I suggest, awkwardness. According to Ngai, such confusions follow from the fact that these feelings seem to lack a distinct object – a feature shared by awkwardness – and from how they mediate or “refexively ‘theorize’” through their social structure the subjective vs. objective status of feeling and afect more generally. This is the difuse, intransitive, and curiously impersonal quality of awkwardness that is evoked in Adam Kotsko’s (2010, 5) description of his local joint where a woman patron launched into a drawn-out of-key a capella performance without warning: “We might just as easily say that I feel awkward, that the singing is awkward, or that the situation as a whole is awkward. It is as though the awkwardness is continually on the move, ever present yet impossible to nail down.” Insofar as it bestrides the subjective/ objective division in being socially mediated yet physiologically experienced, I suggest the contagious extension of awkwardness from a private feeling of the comedian into a shared afective relationality of the whole social arrangement is also one of the reasons why stand-up is thought of as exceptionally harsh emotionally and how notoriously shameful failures on the stand-up stage can be according to comedians (see also Probyn 2005). Symptomatically, Finnish stand-up Heikki Vilja has depicted phatic breakdowns and failed attempts at connection as forcing himself to simultaneously adopt a “playback mode” and to perform “like a robot that is executing an assigned mission.” The signifcance of phatic connection for stand-ups thus comes down in part to legitimizing their own agency as authentic selves rather than “robots,” “automatons,” or any other mechanical entities that comics invoke when referring to themselves as inauthentic performers. Somatic self-awareness and social comportment, not to mention bodily appearance, can thus in and of themselves become expressions of dissent against politics of oppression and inequality, for as Finnish-Canadian transgender stand-up James Lórien MacDonald (2018, 68) puts it, “When the non-normative body is presented onstage and speaks with its own agency, it calls into question the relationship of that body and society at large.” And so, we are back, although from another angle, at the reciprocal correspondence between the relation of a comedian to their public comic persona and

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the afective/phatic relation of a stand-up comedian to their audience – both of these relations embedded within more overarching social norms that have the capacity to infuence the matter by making bodies tense, awkwardly mechanic, vulnerable, or light, spontaneous, and relatable in the frst place (cf. Sundén & Paasonen 2019, 5). If stand-up could be said to have a philosophy and aesthetics of its own, as some analysts have pondered (cf. Lintott 2017; Brodie 2020), this tripartite mediation and mutual implication between self hood, public personhood, and sociality maintained by phatic connection and viscerally disrupted by awkwardness would be a promising place to locate aspects of it. What is more, it would be an endemic philosophy and aesthetics of stand-up comedy, staged and creatively articulated by the form itself, grounded in corporeal co-existence.

Conclusive Remarks In this chapter, I have presented stand-up as goal-driven phatic labor that rests on forging and manipulating provisional afective relations – connection for short – between performer and audience. With an eye on how our mutual phatic connection is generally felt as something to be protected or covered up by replacing silent moments with small talk and banter – in the hope of banishing potential awkwardness – calibrating this connection is a delicate matter demanding active semiotic labor that can itself be turned into an art. In contrast with more representationalist accounts of stand-up that often operate on the logic of identifcation (and proceed through content analysis of singular stand-up bits and routines), I have found it useful to begin from its bodily dynamic as an afective arrangement that arguably underlies any attempt at successful identifcation and ideally “takes over” subjects and channels their afective expressions into unifed patterns of behavior. Owing similarly to its character as teleological phatic labor in an artifcial interactional setup, stand-up is endemically or even formally constituted by awkwardness as a communicative and connective gap (cf. Lemon 2013). Not only is the prospect of awkwardness ever-present in stand-up, but to some degree necessary for comedians to acknowledge, prepare for, and acquaint with themselves. As a contagious and relational afect, awkwardness illuminates stand-up gigs as afective arrangements and brings into relief the interdependence and mutually constitutive relation between comedian and audience. In this regard, I suggest that further analyses of awkwardness in stand-up (or comedy more generally) should look into the intersections of gender, sex, class, ability, and race on which the social and political dynamic of this afect – and stand-up as an aesthetic form determined by it – is fundamentally implicated. I have also attended to how the afective dynamic at the heart of stand-up is discursively formulated by practitioners and naturalized into an array of tropes and metaphors that construe a stand-up gig as a self-regulating organism and atmospheric feld of energies, pressures, and intensities. Described here as a cybernetic imaginary that organizes talk about the interactional dynamics of stand-up,

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this imaginary is suggested as making itself felt through self-evident tropisms and binaries through which the genre is discursively construed. Envisioning the stand-up performance as a machinic organism also afords for an oratorical calculus of afective optimization, reminiscent of a behaviorist and utilitarian ethos where “meaning is secondary to information; information is primarily a matter of contact and connectibility, a modulation of afectivity and attention” (Clough 2008, 13). I would venture that articulating stand-up even more explicitly with cybernetic principles could potentially unlock some further interesting associations, bearing in mind that stand-up emerged in the Cold War heyday of early cybernetics of the 1950s. For example, one could productively (and critically) revisit the genealogical roots of stand-up in mid-20th century modernist aesthetics (for some relevant works, see Belgrad 1998; Dinerstein 2017; Grobe 2017), perhaps with particular attention to one of its socially and racially charged thermodynamic attributes of the ‘cool.’

Notes 1 Along with Eric Shouse (2007; see also Berlant & Ngai 2017), I encourage broadening the locus of explanation from individual minds – that Shouse sees the three conventional humor theories starting from – to relational scenes of afective interaction in order to bring into relief the social and embodied nature of comic performance and humor more broadly. 2 Wickström’s example also makes it clear that as narrators, stand-ups often animate the two realities of the narrated world (where André was still single) and the narrating occasion (where André is now a father), and the incongruity (or parallelism more generally) between these realities can be a source of much creativity but also of anxiety if not under control of the performer (cf. Shuman & Young 2018). 3 Phenomenologically, our perceiving the comedian as a unique subjectivity is by necessity mediated by our perception of their body – perhaps only a voice if we prefer to consume stand-up audios but nevertheless a material body (see Dolar 2006). What lies beside intersubjectivity is thus intercorporeality, where movement is perceived through the body that “has a seemingly innate ability to appreciate certain equivalences between perceived external movements and felt inner bodily movements.” (Dolezal 2015.) 4 In classical cybernetics, a black box designates the basic principle and worldview comprising of systems that people are trying to get grips with by only limited knowledge. A black box is any entity the structural-functional behavior of which one does not know in advance but which one has to inventively manipulate by trying out diferent alternatives. As early cyberneticist Ross Ashby mundanely illustrated the matter: “The child who tries to open a door has to manipulate the handle (the input) so as to produce the desired movement at the latch (the output); and he has to learn how to control the one by the other without being able to see the internal mechanism that links them.” (Cited in Pickering 2010, 20; Dorst 2016.) 5 It needs to be mentioned that paradoxically, while stand-ups recount short anecdotes and other narratives, it would be difcult to present narrative storyline or character development as being globally relevant for the genre. Stand-up performances tend to sequence mostly unrelated bits that might construct a seemingly consistent persona but that do not usually build into a coherent grand narrative, life story, or Bildung. While many comedians might aim at something like a narrative arc in their performances, one could argue that such arcs are generally derived as much

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from an appealing afective dynamic as on thematic content like plot or character development. 6 At the same time, the predictability of enough repetition also enables the comedian to live in the moment. As Elizabeth Grosz (2013, 219) has said about the related notion of habit, repetition should not be thought of as something mechanically dehumanizing as if by defnition, but as a creative capacity that creates possibilities for stability in a world where change is fundamental. 7 One’s perception of and adherence to social norms and expectations is naturally conditioned by various subjective, cultural, and social factors, and can be (temporarily) altered by such agents as illness, various substances, etc. For instance, a Finnish stand-up Joel Herman, who has frequently addressed his autism spectrum disorder onstage, has brought out that he does not feel social pressure in the same way as others seem to do, which he counts as one of his assets as a comedian: “I have a diferent flter for what I care to say or about which I dare to be open in public.” (Maksimainen 2000.)

Works Cited Ahmed, Sara 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. London: Routledge. Belgrad, Daniel 1998. The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bergson, Henri 1935. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. London: Macmillan. Berlant, Lauren 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press. Berlant, Lauren, and Sianne Ngai 2017. Comedy Has Issues. Critical Inquiry 43, 233–249. Billig, Michael 2005. Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage. Brodie, Ian 2020. Is Stand-Up Comedy Art? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78(4), 401–418. Clough, Patricia T. 2008. The Afective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia and Bodies. Theory, Culture & Society 25(1), 1–22. Dinerstein, Joel 2017. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Dolar, Mladen 2006. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Dolezal, Luna 2015. The Phenomenology of Self-Presentation: Describing the Structures of Intercorporeality with Erving Gofman. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16(2), 237–254. Dorst, John D. 2016. Folklore’s Cybernetic Imaginary, Or, Unpacking the Obvious. Journal of American Folklore 129(512), 127–145. Elyachar, Julia 2010. Phatic Labor, Infrastructure, and the Question of Empowerment in Cairo. American Ethnologist 37(3), 452–464. Freud, Sigmund 1960. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious ( J. Strachey, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1905). Freud, Sigmund 1961. Humor. In James Ed Strachey (ed. & trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 21). London: Hogarth Press, 161–166. (Original work published 1927). Galloway, Alexander R. 2014. The Cybernetic Hypothesis. Diferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 25(1), 107–131. Goebel, Zane (ed.) 2021. Reimagining Rapport. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius 2011. From Information Theory to French Theory: Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, and the Cybernetic Apparatus. Critical Inquiry 38, 96–126.

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Grobe, Christopher 2017. The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV. New York: New York University Press. Grosz, Elizabeth 2013. Habit Today: Ravaisson, Bergson, Deleuze and Us. Body & Society 19(2&3), 217–239. Helmreich, Stefan 2013. Potential Energy and the Body Electric: Cardiac Waves, Brain Waves, and the Making of Quantities into Qualities. Current Anthropology 54(S7), S139–S148. Heylighen, F. & Joslyn, C. 2001. Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics. In Robert A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology (3rd ed.). New York: Academic Press, 155–169. Huumorihommia 2020. “Jakso 8: André Wickström loi stand up -lavalle fktiivisen hahmon, mutta vaihtoi sen myöhemmin oman elämänsä tarinoihin”. Huumorihommia. Yle Areena Audio. Available online: https://areena.yle.f/audio/1-50552119. (Accessed 2nd March 2021). Jakobson, Roman 1960. Linguistics and poetics. In Thomas Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 350–377. Kavka, Misha 2008. Reality Television, Afect and Intimacy: Reality Matters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kockelman, Paul 2010. Enemies, Parasites, and Noise: How to Take Up Residence in a System without Becoming a Term in It. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20(2), 406–421. Kotsko, Adam 2010. Awkwardness. An Essay. Winchester: Zone Books. Krefting, Rebecca 2014. All Joking Aside. American Humor and Its Discontents. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lemon, Alaina 2013. Touching the Gap: Social Qualia and Cold War Contact. Anthropological Theory 13(1–2), 67–88. Lemon, Alaina 2018. Technologies for Intuition: Cold War Circles and Telepathic Rays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lindfors, Antti 2019a. Intimately Allegorical: The Poetics of Self-Mediation in Stand-Up Comedy. Doctoral dissertation. Turku: University of Turku. Available online: https:// www.utupub.f/handle/10024/147073. (Accessed 2nd March 2021). Lindfors, Antti 2019b. Cultivating Participation and the Varieties of Refexivity in Stand-Up Comedy. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 29(3), 276–293. Lintott, Sheila 2017. Why (Not) Philosophy of Stand-Up Comedy?. In David Goldblatt, Lee Blankenship-Brown and Stephanie Brown (eds.), Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts. 4th edition. London: Routledge, 362–366. MacDonald, James Lórien 2018. Comic Trans: Presenting and Representing the Other in Stand-Up Comedy. Master’s thesis. Live Arts and Performance Studies (LAPS). Theatre Academy/Uniarts Helsinki. Maksimainen, Heini 2020. Rehellisesti hauska. Helsingin Sanomat 26.2.2020. Available online: https://www.hs.f/elama/art-2000006418915.html. (Accessed 2nd March 2021). Mears, Kathryn, Shouse, Eric & Oppliger, Patrice A. 2019. An Incongruous Blend of Tragedy and Comedy: How Maria Bamford Lightens the Dark Side of Mental Illness. In Patrice A. Oppliger & Eric Shouse (eds.), The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 173–193. Miller, Vincent 2015. Phatic Culture and the Status Quo: Reconsidering the Purpose of Social Media Activism. Convergence 23(3), 251–269. Mintz, Lawrence E. 1985. Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation. American Quarterly 37(1), 71–80. Modern, John Lardas 2021. Neuromatic, Or a Particular History of Religion and the Brain. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Ngai, Sianne 2005. Ugly feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Noland, Carey Marie & Hoppman, Michael 2019. Stop! You’re Killing Me: Food Addiction and Comedy. In Patrice A. Oppliger & Eric Shouse (eds.), The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 129–149. Noyes, Dorothy 2016. Group. In Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 17–56. Nozawa, Shunsuke 2013. Characterization. Semiotic Review 3. https://www.semioticreview. com/ojs/index.php/sr/article/view/16. [Accessed 20th February 2018.] Nozawa, Shunsuke 2015. Phatic Traces: Sociality in Contemporary Japan. Anthropological Quarterly 88(2), 373–400. Paasonen, Susanna 2019. Monstrous Resonance: Afect and Animated Pornography. In Ernst van Alphen & Tomáš Jirsa (eds.), How to Do Things with Afects: Afective Triggers in Aesthetic Forms and Cultural Practices. Amsterdam: Brill, 143–162. Pedwell, Carolyn 2014. Afective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Peters, John Durham 2015. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Pickering, Andrew 2010. The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of another Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Probyn, Elspeth 2005. Blush: Faces of Shame. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Protevi, John 2009. Political Afect: Connecting the Somatic and the Social. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pruchnic, Jef 2008. Neurorhetorics: Cybernetics, Psychotropics, and the Materiality of Persuasion. Confgurations 16(2), 167–197. Quirk, Sophie 2018. The Politics of British Stand-up Comedy. The New Alternative. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Riedel, Friedlind 2019. Atmosphere. In Jan Slaby & Christian von Scheve (toim.), Afective Societies: Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 85–95. Schaefer, Neil 1981. The art of laughter. New York: Columbia University Press. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, with Adam Frank 2003. Shame in the Cybernetic Fold: Reading Silvan Tompkins. In Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (ed.), Touching Feeling: Afect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press. Shouse, Eric 2007. The Role of Afect in the Performance of Stand-up Comedy: Theorizing the Mind-Body Connection in Humor Studies. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association 36, 34–49. Shuman, Amy & Young, Katharine 2018. The Body as Medium: A Phenomenological Approach to the Production of Afect in Narrative. In Dinnen, Zara & Warhol, Robyn (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Narrative Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 399–416. Sidnell, Jack 2009. Participation. In Sigurd D’hondt, Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren (eds.), The Pragmatics of Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 125–156. Slaby, Jan 2019a. Afective Arrangement. In Jan Slaby & Christian von Scheve (eds.), Afective Societies: Key Concepts. London & New York: Routledge, 109–118. Slaby, Jan 2019b. Relational Afect: Perspective from Philosophy and Cultural Studies. In Ernst van Alphen and Tomáš Jirsa (eds.), How to Do Things with Afects: Afective Triggers in Aesthetic Forms and Cultural Practices. Amsterdam: Brill, 59–81. Smith, Crosbie M. 1999. The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stott, Andrew 2005. Comedy. The New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge.

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Sundén, Jenny & Paasonen, Susanna 2019. Inappropriate Laughter: Afective Homophily and the Unlikely Comedy of #MeToo. Social Media + Society (October–December 2019), 1–10. Thomas, James M. 2015. Working to Laugh. Assembling Diference in American Stand-Up Comedy Venues. Lanham: Lexington Books. Turkle, Sherry 2011. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Turner, Fred 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Steward Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopia. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Van de Walle, Jürgen 2008. Roman Jakobson, Cybernetics and Information Theory: A Critical Assessment. Folia Linguistica Historica 29: 87–123. Wetherell, Margaret 2012. Afect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. London: Sage Publications. Zuckerman, Charles H.P. 2016. Phatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 26(3), 294–314. Zuckerman, Charles H.P. 2021. Phatic, the: Communication and Communion. In James M. Stanlaw (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. New Jersey: Wiley–Blackwell.

10 THE REVOLUTION WILL BE A JOKE Semiotic Ideologies of Ethics and Effcacy in Stand-Up Comedy Marianna Keisalo

Introduction In this chapter, I will discuss analytical views on the efcacy and ethics of humour and give an ethnographic glimpse into how the relation between comedy and political issues is engaged with in various ways by stand-up comedians in Finland. Since the 1990s, when stand-up comedy came to Finland, engagement with political issues has grown signifcantly. However, there are diferent views among the Finnish comedians on how comedy should tackle political issues. There are comedians who explicitly take a political stance in their work, and those who vehemently oppose the idea that comedy is, or should be, political. In addition to participation-observation in comedy clubs, my material includes interviews, public commentary on comedy, posts on social and other media by stand-up comedians, and in-group discussion among comedians on humour and its limits. I will relate this to the diferent ways in which comedy and politics intersect globally; while the foremost context of stand-up comedy in Finland is the local scene, the internet allows comedians and audiences to closely follow English-language comedy, which provides an important point of reference and comparison for Finnish comedy. Stand-up comedy, politics, and rights of expression were overtly entwined when U.S. stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity in 1961 and went on to discuss the ensuing trials on stage. In the history of stand-up, Bruce is one of the comedians placed at the juncture where comedy became more political, more personal, and more critical of society and culture. Through satirical news shows, often written and presented by stand-up comedians, comedy has gained even more visibility in discussing politics. U.S. shows like The Daily Show and Colbert Report comment on similar events as ‘serious’ news shows. Clips are circulated globally through social media platforms. In addition to satirical DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-14

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news shows and stand-up comedy, humour is used in political commentary on social and public media by private citizens and politicians as well as comedians. At the same time, the limits and rights of expression are hotly debated topics, including issues such as free speech, political correctness, and factuality including “fake news”. In these debates, the framing of a statement as a joke is a common strategy, but one that is used for contradictory ends: joking can be used as a rhetorical device to make a message stronger, but also to avoid responsibility for the message. I suggest that the ethics and efcacy of humour can be further understood through the concept of semiotic ideology – referring to the often tacit ideas held by the sign users of the appropriate means and ends of their sign systems (see e.g. Keane 2007, 2018; Stasch 2011). Humour can be a particularly illuminating example of semiotic ideology, given the licence that often accompanies institutionalised comic expressions such as ritual clowning, the joking of court jesters, or stand-up comedy, but also the - sometimes heated - discussions of where, whose, and what kind of humour is appropriate. In the specifc case of humour, there are multiple, often contradictory views of its potential. I suggest that a detailed consideration of the relationship between the incongruity and ambiguity of comedy and semiotic ideologies of communication can provide new understandings of both humour and semiotic ideology. The defnition of political comedy itself is not straightforward. The coming together of stand-up comedy and politics is usually pinpointed at the transition from telling jokes drawn from a common pool of circulating authorless jokes to original material. In this sense, political topics have been a part of stand-up since the 60s in the US, where Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce started taking stand-up into more political and personal issues. In the following years, comedians such as George Carlin came to be seen as cultural critics rather than joke-tellers aiming only to entertain. (Nesterof 2015; Zoglin 2009). More personal topics also meant that the social identities of comedians fgured more distinctly into what they discussed and how. A notable example is how black comedians in the US, such as Richard Pryor, brought racial issues into the spotlight (see Zoglin 2009). In the UK, a similar development happened in the late 1970s, with the explicit intent of ofering new kinds of comedy that would move away from the sexism and racism associated with mainstream stand-up towards more socially engaged comedy (Double 2020). Since then, the trajectory of comedy as social and cultural commentary has continued, and as stand-up comedy has become a global genre. With local comedy scenes in many countries1 and stand-up internationally available on streaming platforms, stand-up comedy is being used to discuss an unlimited list of issues. The emphasis on original material ties the routines to the comedian’s persona, but how this relation is construed is also infuenced by the historically contingent semiotic ideologies of who is expected to be funny and how comedy and humour fgure as kinds of social action. The topic of women in comedy offers a perspective into the unspoken limits on who is expected or allowed to use

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signs in certain ways. Despite some strongly gendered views on humour in the cultural contexts where stand-up comedy began, female comedians have gained acceptance and moved away from a controversial position seen as incompatible with comedy. However, this history shows that the choice of whether or not to be political in the frst place is not available to all comedians in the same way. For people whose identities are contested political issues, such as transgender comedians, or members of ethnic minorities, the very act of being on stage can be political. (Keisalo 2018; Krefting 2014). The US obscenity laws that caused trouble for Lenny Bruce have changed, but discussions of the ethical dimensions of comedy continue around the world. However, it seems there are varying, even contradictory arguments at play. The issues at hand – comedy as a political force and the limits of speech – relate to the potential efcacy of comedy as a mode of communication. Historically, comedy has often been aforded a special licence, allowing fgures such as the court jesters to say and do things not permitted to others, but is this in contradiction to or a reason for its efcacy? Is the point to protect the right to criticism via comedy, or to recognise that comedy is a special class of non-serious expression, and audiences who get ofended need to learn how to “take a joke”? If there are diferent views regarding the efcacy of joking, how does this afect the ethical evaluation of humour? Should comedic expression entail either special responsibilities or special licence? If comedy is a special case, does this cover all acts of joking? One aspect that informs semiotic ideologies of humour is the prevalent bias against humour in Western social thought; humour has been dismissed as trivial and condemned as aggression or violence (Morreall 2020). This chapter will build on previous research on humour, linguistics, and semiotics, bringing together different views on the efcacy and ethics of comedy and other modes of expression.

Comedy in Finland I began spending time with comedians in my hometown Helsinki, Finland in January 2015 to develop an anthropological research project on stand-up comedy. Subsequently, I ended up becoming an amateur comedian myself. I performed my frst fve-minute set in December 2015. In the six years since, I have performed more than 260 times at over 60 diferent venues in Finland, Denmark, and Estonia. This has given me invaluable frst-hand experience of writing and performing material, access to the backstage areas of comedy shows, and a deeper understanding of the comedians I work with. My main research site has been the so-called open-mic scene. These are clubs where beginners learn the craft and established professionals work on new material, usually in 5–15 minute sets. In Finland, as well as many other European countries, open-mic clubs have “real audiences”. This contrasts with the global centres of stand-up such as NYC, where an open mic might mean that comedians pay a few dollars for the chance to perform, and the audience consists of other comedians waiting for their turn. The Finnish clubs usually take place in bars or clubs, ftting audiences of 20–200.

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Some ofer free entrance, while others charge up to 15 euros. Many are produced and run by comedians and feature paid MCs and headliners to ensure the quality of a given night. The open-mic scene ofers the widest range of performers, styles, and topics. Stand-up comedy is still a fairly new genre in Finland, frst introduced in the early 1990s. At frst there were complaints that this ‘foreign import’ would never work in Finland (see e.g. Wickström 2005). Finland has a rich history of theatrical comedy, but the format of a lone person standing on stage talking about whatever he (or, more rarely, she) chose to, with only the aim of making people laugh, seemed too foreign at frst. When I asked Finnish comedians to speculate on the reasoning, someone pointed out that rap had been subject to similar doubts. Although rap is a diferent use of language, it can be compared with stand-up in that it is an urban genre that can be seen as requiring “the gift of gab” and a readiness to step up and speak, as well as respond verbally to challenges, something which is considered rather rare in Finland. In this sense, both rap and stand-up are incompatible with certain aspects of Finnish linguistic ideology. The stereotype of the taciturn Finn (“how do you recognise an extroverted Finn? He stares at your shoes when he speaks”)2 is exaggerated, but it is not completely unfounded. In Finland silence is an accepted part of social interaction. Turns tend to be respected in conversation, and in many cases, the social situation determines speaking roles rather than talk being a way to create the social situation. Boastfulness or calling attention to yourself is considered to be in bad taste. Speaking comes with responsibility, and a situation where one person takes the microphone to talk about whatever they want to and the audience is expected to listen creates a lot of pressure, but also adds to the excitement of stand-up comedy. In this sense perhaps the same elements that made stand-up seem too foreign at frst have contributed to making it interesting. Slowly but surely stand-up secured its place in the cultural landscape and has continued to grow steadily since its introduction. Television programs, including a reality-TV type competition, have contributed to making the genre more well known. There are comedy clubs in all the major cities, several annual festivals, and the capital, Helsinki, ofers comedy several nights a week ranging from free entry open-mic clubs to professional shows. Comedians are a popular choice of entertainment for company parties – in addition to tours and producing clubs, these “company gigs” are the main source of income for many comedians. The frst stand-up comedians in Finland were actors, courses were ofered as a part of theatrical training, and performances often took place in theatres. Currently most performers come directly to stand-up and a fourishing comedy scene has found its home in bars and restaurants. The growing popularity can be in part attributed to a changing mediascape, including internet and streaming platforms making English-language comedy more accessible, and even reality Television as part of a growing trend of seeing ‘normal people’ putting themselves on the line, as opposed to scripted stories enacted by professional performers.

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Broadly speaking, stand-up comedy in Finland is Anglo American in style. Finnish comedians commonly perform in diferent countries, and comedians from other countries perform in Finland, with English as the common language. Kaisa Pylkkänen, professional comedian and script writer, discusses diferences and similarities between performing in Finland and the US in an online article (Pylkkänen 2019). Although she sees diferences in how clubs are produced and what kinds of topics comedians talk about, the shared basics of performance make getting on stage to do comedy similar. As the numbers and diversity of performers in Finland grows, there are more styles and voices, including female, queer, and immigrant performers. The popularity of the range of clubs seems to indicate there is a large audience, and thus also room for diferent varieties within Finnish stand-up. The variety doesn’t refect rifts among comedians. The Finnish community of comedians is tightknit and forms a nation-wide network. Many comedians travel around the country to perform, and clubs are social occasions as well as performances. Social media, especially Facebook, is an important part of forming and sustaining the community. There are several closed groups, where members post to advertise performance spots, share news, and discuss comedy. There are specifc groups for discussing comedy videos, and developing bits, as jokes are often called. Although there are loose groupings based on region, friendship, and comedic styles, there is a sense of community and network; most comedians perform at most clubs. In the early 2000s Finnish stand-up had been accepted but was still being compared unfavourably to English-language comedy from the US and the UK. Comments began surfacing both in the media and among comedians that stand-up comedy in Finland was too mild. Subsequently there were calls for subject matter that would either be more explicitly political, commenting on social and cultural issues, or engage more deeply with personal matters, in contrast to casual observations, or subject matter considered “low hanging fruit” such as sexual material3. Since then, more comedians have started discussing “deeper” issues, delving into both personal and political matters and the relations between these. There are a few clubs profled in specifc ways, such as “Paukutusjengi4”, expressly created for comedy that takes a stand and comments on issues, and “Feminist Comedy Night” created by Jamie MacDonald, a Finnish-Canadian transgender-comedian, who has openly discussed his transition onstage (MacDonald 2018). Another example of comedians taking public stances is comedian Iikka Kivi, who is known for commenting on current issues and politics on his public Facebook page. Kivi has close to 50,000 followers, which is a lot in a country of 5.5 million people. When comedians have been asked why there isn’t more political comedy in Finland, the answers tend to be that political material ages quickly and requires a defnitive standpoint and a thorough knowledge of politics, making the topic difcult for both the comedian and audiences (Leikola & Leikola 2021; Pylkkänen 2019; Wickström 2005). In this sense, comedians relate the political to current events or party politics that crystallise discrete standpoints. Politics, then,

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constitute a specifc social sphere, rather than being present in mundane aspects of everyday life. This view is especially clear when comedians explicitly claim a politically neutral stance, like Ismo Leikola does in a recent book describing his move to Los Angeles to start an international career (2021). However, this view can be contrasted with those comedians whose defnition of political is diferent. As one comedian in Finland said: My political views are super visible in all parts of my life. As a person of multiple marginalizations, it does not feel like I have much of a choice if I don’t want to live a life of hiding in fear of others. (Rufo V, e-mail communication) This view refects the motto “the personal is political”, which originated in the feminist movement of the late 1960s to emphasise how everyday choices are linked to cultural values and ethical views. However, even when comedy is not considered explicitly political, it is still subject to ethical evaluation. Webb Keane (2015) has suggested that ethics is a matter of constant everyday evaluation as well as shared norms and principles. This everyday evaluation proceeds through self-distanced refection, where our own actions and those of others are considered through various perspectives, including one’s own frst-person perspective, as well as what particular third-person perspectives reveal about the ethical and moral position of the actions. Comedians tend to be very refective about styles of comedy and where they stand in comparison. As long-time comedian Robert Pettersson wrote: In my opinion political comedy frstly approaches politics and/or societal issues, and secondly attempts (to at least some extent) to get the audience to see things like the performer. In other words the performer usually represents a political party, movement, or view… In my own comedy I’ve mostly tried to attack hypocrisy in general. (e-mail communication, my translation) Most comedians I’ve talked to have a sense of morality regarding their comedy, often articulated as things they do not want to say or topics they do not want to talk about, even if their comedic material is not frst and foremost political. One established professional comedian said, “I think everything can be joked about, but whether everything needs to be joked about is another thing”. The idea that anything can be joked about if done well often implies the view that comedy should punch up rather than down, meaning that comedians should direct their humour at those in power, rather than those in weaker positions. While people may express opinions about other comedians’ bits in diferent contexts, the general tendency is that these opinions are not directly stated unless asked: each comedian is independently responsible for their own comedy. This is related to the idea of the audience being the authority on whether the joke is funny; if they

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laugh, the joke works. This doesn’t stop comedians from evaluating audiences, but in the end, the main way to evaluate stand-up comedy is based on whether it provokes an audible and visible reaction of laughter. However, although comedy involves an immediate reaction, that reaction is not necessarily transparent; a joke can provoke laughter for diferent reasons if the joke is ambiguous in a way that allows diferent interpretations. Comedians also think beyond the laugh reaction. Jukka Lindström, one of the Finnish comedians known for political comedy and the original host of Finland’s satirical news show Noin viikon uutiset (the approximately weekly news) began to voice worries that political comedy is problematic if it makes people complacent, that laughing can lull people into a sense of having done something (personal communication). Another issue is that even if comedy is considered a good way to infuence people, are the people coming to see the shows the ones the comedian needs or wants to infuence? In other words, is the comedian preaching to people already converted? Clapter, which is a portmanteau of laughter and clapping, refers to a reaction where the audience claps because they want to show they agree, but most comedians would prefer laughter. A journalist quotes UK comedian Stewart Lee’s reaction: “Hear that applause? That’s what I like. I’m not interested in laughs. I prefer applause. […] What I’m aiming for is a temporary mass liberal consensus” (Pandya 2018). MacDonald has spoken about wanting to be challenged by writing comedy that isn’t critical only of the views he disagrees with, but of those closer to home. Finland tends to rank high in international comparisons of freedom of expression. In general comedians have a lot of leeway and a deep silence is likely to be the biggest sanction. There are very few cases of comedians being publicly criticised for specifc routines, and public discussion about the rights and limitations of speech centres around hate speech, the internet, and worries and claims of not being able to freely state controversial opinions. Humour as an excuse used by non-comedians has even been satirised: there is a Facebook page called “drunk and joking” (kännissä ja läpällä) which refers to politicians’ claims that their controversial statements (often on social media) were made either while drunk or as a joke. I will next discuss the wider assumptions that inform views on how and why humour can be used to infuence or as an excuse.

Semiotic Ideology: Ethics and Effcacy Linguistic ideology refers to cultural ideas of the appropriate and possible uses and aims of language (see e.g. Kroskrity 2004). Webb Keane (2007) has expanded the notion to semiotic ideology to cover non-linguistic signs as well as language. Semiotic ideologies can be defned as “sign users’ refexive sensibilities about the defnition, value, and efects of diferent semiotic systems they use” (Stasch 2011: 168; see also Keane 2018). It is a useful concept for analysing stand-up comedy as a multi-modal form where factors such as the comedian’s persona or the venue are a part of how jokes are interpreted, and part of the performance is framing

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potential signs as intentional ones (see Keisalo 2018). Semiosis is not only about making and interpreting the expressions themselves; the ethics and efcacy of semiosis is connected to conceptions of personhood and, conversely, how subjectivity, perspectives, and intentions are understood. Joel Robbins (2001, 2012) has discussed how protestant Christianity puts a focus on the individual as a sincere subject. Ritual, which in many cases is held as the prototypical efcacious act, comes to be seen as dubious, since it is possible to go through the motions without the corresponding inner state5. Without the appropriate inner state, ritual risks becoming an empty form. To reach the proper relation between the inner subjective state and the semiotic form, protestant Christianity saw a shift from the repetition of shared sacred texts to praying in one’s own words. Similar semiotic shifts that emphasise the individual’s internal state over correct behaviour can be seen in other contexts, such as moving from memorising by rote as a way of learning to generating answers in diferent forms. In the case of stand-up comedy, while performing a joke written by someone else well is a skill, moving to original material refects forging a similar link between the comedian’s individual self and the performed jokes. A shift towards more pronounced individualism is evidenced in stand-up comedy routines themselves. This is made explicit by George Carlin who claims that words are not bad, only intentions, and that it is context rather than individual words that matter. Also Lenny Bruce and Louis CK have bits that argue that the intention to harm should be separated from the word, claiming that the word can have diferent meanings, and that the force of a word (such as a slur) is about how the word is intended and interpreted, rather than attached to the word itself6 (see Zoglin 2009). However, efcacy is not only about what words mean, but how they mean, and what they do. Speech act theory designates a class of expressions that, rather than describing the world, are in themselves forms of action (Austin 1962). Classic examples are promising, betting, sentencing, or pronouncing two people married. Contextual felicity conditions further determine the legitimacy of a speech act. If I go up to a couple on the street to shout, “I now pronounce you married!”, this leaves several felicity conditions unfulflled, and the statement does not have the same social efects as when uttered in the proper circumstances by someone authorised to do so. In the case of some performatives, such as “I promise” the utterance itself constitutes the act. A promise made in bad faith is still a promise. Jefrey Nealon (2017) argues that although Austin himself excluded joking from the list, it is a good example of a speech act in that a joke is always intended to be funny, to elicit a reaction. However, the case is more complex, since a joke may be intended as funny only to some listeners, or ironically unfunny. Recognising this intent may be an integral part of the felicity conditions in that jokes are evaluated partly on the relation of the means and ends: in terms of the expression, successful framing of the expression as humour, and in terms of whether there is a laugh reaction. Given the way the same joke may work in one performance and not another, these aspects are not completely straightforward even in stand-up comedy, which explicitly frames the performances as humour

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(see Keisalo 2022). Mary Douglas (1968) argued that social context afects the perception and permission of joking, noting that an incongruity can be considered as an abomination or obscenity as well as humour. Anthropology can, with its emphasis on the culturally constructed nature of social and semiotic context, illuminate further what goes into felicity conditions, including how intentions are construed culturally (Duranti 2015). While these views refect ideas about the relative signifcance of form and content and may value one over the other, making a distinction between form and content is in itself an example of semiotic ideology. John Haviland (2009) points out that there is no such thing as a neutral language that would not recall social contexts beyond the present interaction. In this sense, speech always references categories and contexts beyond the here-and-now of the interaction. Haviland shows how semiotic force can be borrowed by reference to other genres by carrying forms over from one social context to another. Focusing on form allows treating humour as a general category and focusing on the individual-generated content means that comedy refects intentions and morality of the comedian. Ethics are tied to efcacy in that ethics are linked to agency; “blame is a moral category” as Keane (2015) says, but if joking is categorically seen as lacking efcacy, it is removed from the sphere of ethics.

Analytical Views of Humour: Triviality and Violation Humour as a topic of research has been shadowed by the prevalent bias against humour in Western culture. Humour has been ignored and even deprecated due to the greater value placed on seriousness, rationality, and control over laughter, play, and ambiguity (see e.g. Morreall 2020). Humour is also notoriously difcult to analyse. Views on what humour or joking can or cannot accomplish often fall into one of two opposing camps: either humour is seen as trivial and inconsequential, or as an especially potent form of semiosis, for better or for worse. My title, “the revolution will be a joke7”, is an example of this: the sentence could be read in two diferent ways. This duality is conspicuous in analyses of some of the most prominent comedic material approached by anthropologists: ritual clowns and mythical trickster fgures. Some scholars have focused on fnding a serious message or value statement hidden within the humour, such as indirect criticism (e.g. Basso 1979; Course 2013; Mitchell 1992). Many analyses of ritual clowns have attempted to explain their presence through the serious efects of ritual clown performance (see, for example, Crumrine 1969; Hieb 1977). Arden R. King (1977) separates the ritual clown’s role as alternating between humorous and non-humorous. King sees the non-humorous side of performance as efcacious, and the humour as ofering protection for the clown from the consequences of his non-humorous actions. Joel Sherzer (2002) suggests in his analysis of verbal play that what he calls “transactional speech” – it is what accomplishes things in society, while playful speech including humour is only a way to “grease the wheels” of transactional speech. Other scholars have taken the ambiguity as

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a starting point, claiming that humour ofers possibilities of creative play. This gives humour regenerative power and the ability to pose hypotheticals. In this view, tricksters and clowns are seen to reveal the arbitrary nature of the world and possibilities of transformation. (Babcock 1984, 1975; Bakhtin 1984; Hyde 1998; Hynes 1993). In focusing on the seriousness of humour, the former sorts of perspectives often leave humorous performance as an expressive form unexamined. After all, the serious message or function could be achieved without humour. The latter, in contrast, tend to downplay the more systematic or formal aspects or efects of comedic performances. (Keisalo-Galvan 2011; see also Sinclair 2010). Through emphasising its ambiguity and creativity, the comedic fgure becomes a kind of detached free-foating promise of meaning, which is – paradoxically – not very meaningful. The diferent analyses focus on specifc aspects of comedy and bracket out others, either overdetermining or underdetermining its signifcance. Another example of overdetermining is evident in the claims that humour is always linked to violation, whether as violence or in the sense of transgressing category boundaries. Certainly there are many examples of violent humour, from cartoon slapstick to horror comedy, and horror and humour are created by similar means (Carroll 1999). Tricksters and ritual as well as circus clowns are often violent (see Ylönen & Keisalo 2020). However, violation is too reductive to satisfactorily describe all humour. I will give two examples from US comedians. Demitri Martin: “I was on the street. This guy waved to me, and he came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’ And I said, ‘I am.’” Mitch Hedberg: “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too”. While these can certainly be defned as violations of social norms of communication, foregrounding this aspect seems to miss the point of what makes these jokes interesting. Transgression is often seen as an inherent aspect of comedy; that to be interesting, humour needs to somehow push the boundaries. Many comedians worry that comedy will be rendered toothless if constrained. This is related to the idea of “speaking truth to power”, using humour to make boundaries and power structures visible and to question them. However, the “power” in question could mean very diferent things, from an oppressive government to rules of grammar, and although both exert control over people, they do so diferently. Roy Wagner (1981) presents a model of culture as a dynamic combination of convention, the established and known cultural elements, and invention: the different, innovative, possibly unique extensions of these elements into new forms. The approaches I have critiqued above could be said to focus only on the convention or invention of humour; I suggest considering both. Comedic performances put the two semiotic modes of convention and invention, as frames of both expression and interpretation, into a dialectical relation with one another. In this process, contextually relevant conventions and inventions are mutually defned and mediated. Convention sets up the ground, and invention highlights aspects of it. The shifts between invention and convention make visible and create relations, which may question, strengthen, or weaken existing conventions,

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and establish new ones as grounds for further inventions. Considering this allows a more nuanced analysis of the boundary-crossing, intentions, and perspectives evoked in a joke.

A Neo-Nazi Boy Band and Choosing between Dogs and Babies If soldiers of Odin were a boy band is a bit by the Canadian-Finnish comedian Jamie MacDonald. A few years ago, an anti-immigration group calling itself the “Soldiers of Odin” (SoD) was formed in Finland. Among the group’s claimed purposes was to patrol the streets of various cities to “keep Finns safe” from the newly arrived refugees and other foreigners. Members of these groups had connections to far-right and nationalistic groups and openly supported a racist ideology. It also turned out that some prominent members of the group had been convicted of crimes, including domestic assault. If soldiers of Odin were a boy band, culminates in a song that the Soldiers of Odin might sing, if they formed a boy band. MacDonald sets this up by claiming that the SODs have a branding problem, that they’re not “hip with the kids” and this could be solved by becoming a boy band. … they can do their boy band poses. You know, like. [turns sideways, arms folded] and then they’d be like. [crouches down, holding chin] and one of them could be like. [nazi salute] and they’d be fne. They can call the band “Take that, immigrant”. MacDonald then notes that he has written a song and ofers to sing it. Music is cued. Alright, here we go. Ooh yeah [dances] Now you might say I’m a racist [poses] but I’m just misunderstood ’cos it’s the way that you move baby girl that makes me wanna wanna patrol my neighborhood [walks along the stage, makes a circling gesture with hand and fnger] I can be your mister right I wanna be your right-wing wingman don’t wanna leave you aloooone-ah ’cos if anyone ever hurts you babe

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it’s gotta be in the privacy of our own home [speaks] That’s the way I feel about it, I feel about you, it’s domestic. [emphasis] My feelings about you are domestic. [slightly lesser emphasis] [goes back to own voice] Anyway [audience cheers and claps] The basis for invention is the juxtaposition of two conventions known to the audience, Soldiers of Odin vs. Boy Bands. Further punchlines take the premise further or ofer yet another view on it. Examples are the name of the band, ‘Take that immigrant’, which is an extension of Take That, an actual boy band, or the word play of right-wing wingman. The bit comes across as a denunciation of the SoD, but it also points to the darker aspects of the gender norms of pop culture and how being controlling or possessive is presented as a sign of afection. The line, ‘the way you move makes me want to patrol the neighborhood’ makes the SoDs sound ridiculous. The line, “if anyone ever hurts you, babe, it’s gotta be in the privacy of our own home” is more chilling. The song ends with the word domestic and explores its potential meanings by relating it to domestic violence on the one hand and nationalism on the other. Through being evoked together, semiotic elements, such as the term domestic, gain and give associations, and exchange attributes. This is an example of a bit that is not wholly ambiguous; MacDonald takes a clearly critical stance on a current political issue. The incongruity of the SoD and boy bands is based on cultural conventions of masculinity, gender relations, and violence, but fnding this incongruity funny may require a critical view of at least the SoD. In the sense that similar gender ideology may be found in pop-culture as well as among nationalists makes the incongruity itself ambiguous; SoD and boy bands don’t go together at frst glance, but there are similarities under the surface. Of course, evaluating the bit in terms of ethics and amusement depends on perspective, the spectator’s relation to the conventions and evaluation of how the invention depicts these conventions. From a perspective that does see protecting home and country as a man’s duty, the bit might not be funny at all, or it might be funny as a spoof of racists and boy bands, but not as a parody of gender roles involving men controlling women. This is where the ambiguity of the bit lies; it enables a range of attitudes towards pop-culture and gender relations, if not racism. I have seen MacDonald perform this bit live several times. It has been consistently efcacious in the sense of the audience reaction. This is enhanced by the song; rather than just a verbal depiction, we get to see a glimpse of the rightwing boy band. Further efcacies of the bit include the way it supports MacDonald’s stance as person and comedian, and for spectators whose stance aligns with the bit, it can alleviate the fears created by racism, violence, and the rise of rightwing politics in society. Laughing together creates solidarity. What efects the bit may have beyond that, if this critique can create change in the social contexts

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beyond the performance, would depend on the interface between the event and its wider context, who happens to hear it and how the bit afects them (Handelman 1990). As discourse, the bit is part of forming the social context, including the political tone of a historical moment. Finnish comedian Anna Rimpelä’s routine that parodies expectations of having children is an example of comedy where the personal is political. She starts of by telling the audience that one of her friends never wants to have her own dog and goes on to describe her shock and surprise, how Rimpelä asked the friend if she understands that a baby will only be a poor replacement for a dog, and how having a dog is an important part of being a woman for Rimpelä herself. The conventional things that especially women are told about having babies are rendered strange by inserting a dog in place of a child. While the discussion is imaginary, it is linked to real-life pressures. A stand-up comedian’s material is expected to refect a coherent and consistent voice and perspective, to “put a person on display” (Double 2005, 19). This recalls the idea of the sincere subject communicating his or her inner reality. Even if the story or the comedian’s stage-persona is explicitly framed as imaginary, the intentions of both the stage persona and the comedian’s ofstage persona, and the relation between the two are evaluated. There is a connection between the relation of the stage persona and the comedian’s ‘real self ’, and the relation of the stage material and ‘the real world’. For example, if the stage persona is very exaggerated, chances are that the comedian will be able to get away with exaggerated material. A more naturalistic stage persona, such as Rimpelä’s, with less discernible distance from the comedian’s ‘real self ’ may create a frame of interpretation where the material is also seen as closer to reality. Audiences may wonder what the comedian “really thinks” and evaluate the performer’s relation to the topic, and the comedian may aim to relate this to the audience. Rebecca Krefting (2020) discusses strategies used by comedians to frame sensitive material, such as the comedian’s own position within a marginalised group. While Rimpelä’s routine fts individualist norms in that it attests to the moral view that people should be allowed to choose for themselves, wanting or not wanting children is a touchy subject, and juxtaposing pets and babies could be seen as an aggressive way to make the statement. The routine has a second part: “One of my comedian friends told me I should smile a lot after the dog stuf, so people won’t think I’m some crazy lady. So, I’ve been trying that”. She then looks around at the audience, nodding slowly and grinning. This brings the issue from an abstract imagined conversation between Rimpelä and her friend to one between Rimpelä and the audience. This shift in perspective allows Rimpelä to both stand her ground and acknowledge that she is dealing with a touchy subject. She retains the ambiguity of her stance towards possible dissent in the audience by ironically narrating and exaggerating the supposedly appeasing gesture. As an invention, the performance subverts the convention of (women) smiling to mitigate others’ reactions.

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Conclusion When analysed through the lens of semiotic ideology, an analysis of the ethics and efcacy of comedy lead to complicated questions of how we understand the fundamental elements of communication, including ideas of personhood and agency. I have traced how humour has been classifed as trivial and insignifcant, as violent, or as a fount of creativity. I have aimed to show that while paradigmatic examples of humour can be found for each claim, such categorical claims are too reductive. Claiming a single function or signifcance for humour is like claiming a single function or signifcance for speech. While indirectness, reversals, exaggeration, ambiguity, and non-seriousness characterise humour, this can mean a range of diferent things. The social uses of humour vary, and the relation between serious and non-serious is not predetermined. Anthropology shows how the ideas of personhood, agency, and semiotic ideologies are linked, and how they are culturally variable and liable to change over time. If analysed carefully, humour provides a wonderful lens into the human condition in both a general sense and in particular cases. Looking at comedy as shifting between invention and convention is a way to capture its potential meanings and efects in detail. On the broader level, semiotic ideology is a convention that guides expression and interpretation but is perpetuated through the inventions of actual expressions. Just like linguistic or ritual ideologies are subject to change (Robbins 2001; Stasch 2011), so are humour ideologies. Clearly humour is not as disdained today as in previous times. As a mode of play, humour creates an imaginative space and is used as such in stand-up comedy. What it does is further defned by the social and cultural contexts – in this sense my conclusion is an anthropological truism. What I hope to have done is contribute an analytical view on how the ethics and efcacy of humour can be interpreted. If the views that emphasise humour as a semiotic form deny its political force and highlight the way the ambiguity of joking gives the teller licence to transgress boundaries, those claiming that jokes can be statements and have clear interpretations seem to prioritise the comedian’s intent that animates that form. Of course, all semiosis requires both material forms and intelligible meanings. This is perhaps even more pronounced in comedy, since the “same story” is only funny when told in certain ways. In its shifts between convention and invention, comedy resists being interpreted in terms of only content or form. The question then becomes how all the various elements come together in a performance. The analysis of stand-up comedy requires a consideration of much more than the joke-as-a-text. Humour is a paradoxical, slippery, and fexible modality, and the ways it creates relations and enables perspectives can be put to many uses, which may be more or less ambiguous in particular cases. The way a performance relates invention and convention can be a tool for creating continuity or change. Humour is not only a refection of semiotic ideologies but a mode of semiotic action; what comedians do with comedy infuences comedy as a performance genre and its place in society.

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Notes 1 The range of countries with stand-up comedy can be glimpsed in the entries to the Funniest Person in the World competition, organised by US comedy club The Laugh Factory: 89 comedians from 56 countries. 2 This joke circulates in discourse about Finnish stereotypes, the original author is unknown. 3 Sex isn’t a particularly taboo subject in Finland, but sexual or scatological material is still likely to get a laugh. 4 A direct translation would be “the banging gang”, in the sense of banging on about an issue, or expressing something forcefully. 5 In many anthropological approaches, ritual is taken as the prototypical efcacious act with the power to establish, adjust, and uphold social structures. The works of Victor Turner and Roy Rappaport are exemplary proponents of this view, but see Robbins 2001 and Stasch 2011 for discussions of how the concept of semiotic ideology adds nuance to this. 6 It seems to me these jokes would be much more polarising today, and the argument of words such as slurs being “only words” would not be readily accepted by comedy audiences even if they would generally share the political views of comedians such as Carlin. While a full discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter, I am wondering if there is a move away from an emphasis on intention towards the semiotic form as a shared object, whether due to an awareness of specifc perspectives linked to social identities, or intentions being seen as impossible to determine, especially in online communication. 7 This is a play on the George Orwell quote “every joke is a tiny revolution”.

Works Cited Austin, John. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Clarendon Press. Babcock, Barbara. 1984. “Arrange Me into Disorder: Fragments and Refections on Ritual Clowning.” In John J. MacAloon (ed.), Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals: Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance (pp. 102–128). Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Babcock, Barbara. 1975 March. “‘A Tolerated Margin of Mess: ‘The Trickster and His Tales Reconsidered.” Journal of the Folklore Institute, 11(3), 147–186. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press. Basso, Keith. 1979. Portraits of “the Whiteman” Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache. Cambridge University press. Course, Magnus. 2013. “The Clown Within: Becoming White and Mapuche Ritual Clowns.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 55(4), 771–799. Carroll, Noël. 1999. “Horror and Humor.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Aesthetics and Popular Culture, 57(2), 145–160. Crumrine, Ross. 1969. “Capakoba, the Mayo Easter Ceremonial Impersonator: Explanations of Ritual Clowning.” Journal for the Scientifc Study of Religion, 8, 1–22. Double. Oliver. 2020. Alternative Comedy: 1979 and the Reinvention of British Stand-Up. Bloomsbury. Double, Oliver. 2005. Getting the Joke: The Art of Stand-Up Comedy. Methuen Publishing Ltd. Douglas, Mary. 1968. “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception.” Man, New Series, 3(3), 361–376. Duranti, Alessandro. 2015. Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of Others. Cambridge University Press.

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Handelman, Don. 1990. Models and Mirrors toward an Anthropology of Public Events. Cambridge University Press. Haviland, John. 2009. “Little Rituals.” In G. Senft & E.B. Basso (eds.). Ritual Communication (pp. 21–50). Bloomsbury Academic. Hieb, Louis. 1977. “The Ritual Clown: Humor and Ethics.” In Edward Norbeck & Claire R. Farrer (eds.), Forms of Play of Native North Americans 1977 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. (pp. 171–188). St. Paul: West Publishing. Hyde, Lewis. 1998. Trickster Makes This World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hynes, William. 1993. Inconclusive Conclusions: Tricksters – Metaplayers and Revealers. In William Hynes and William Doty (eds.), Mythical Trickster Figures: Countours, Contexts, and Criticisms (pp. 202–217). The University of Alabama Press. Keane, Webb. 2018. “On Semiotic Ideology.” Signs and Society, 6(1): 64-87. Keane, Webb. 2015. Ethical Life: Its Social and Natural Histories. Princeton University Press. Keane, Webb. 2007. Christian Moderns. University of California Press. Keisalo, Marianna. 2022. “Alternative Comedy in Finland: Juhani Nevalainen, Musician Not Comedian.” In Oliver Double and Sharon Lockyer (eds.), Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives. Palgrave MacMillan. Keisalo, Marianna. 2018. “Perspectives of (and on) a Comedic Self: A Semiotics of Subjectivity in Stand-Up Comedy.” Social Analysis, 62(1), 116–135. Keisalo-Galvan, Marianna. 2011. Cosmic Clowns: Invention, Convention, and Inversion in the Yaqui Easter Ritual. University of Helsinki, Research Series in Anthropology. King, Arden. 1977. “North American Indian Clowns and Creativity.” In Edward Norbeck & Claire R. Farrer (eds.), Forms of Play of Native North Americans. 1977 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (pp. 143–152). West Publishing. Krefting, Rebecca. 2020. “Minority Report: Joking About the Other.” In Steven A. Benko (ed.), Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line. (pp. 87–98). McFarland & Co. Krefting, Rebecca. 2014. All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents. Johns Hopkins University Press. Kroskrity, Paul. 2004. “Language ideology.” In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. (pp. 496–517). Blackwell. Leikola, Ismo & Leikola, Angelika. 2021. Suo, kuokka ja Hollywood. Siltala. MacDonald, James Lórien. 2018. Comic Trans: Presenting and Representing the Other in Stand-up Comedy. MA thesis. Uniarts Theater Academy. Mitchell, William E. (ed.) 1992. Clowning as Critical Practice: Performance Humor in the South Pacifc. ASAO Monograph Series 13. University of Pittsburgh Press. Morreall, John, “Philosophy of Humor”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Nealon, Jefrey T. 2017. “Jokes and the Performative in Austin and Derrida; or, the Truth Is a Joke?” Cultural Critique, 95, 1–24. doi:10.5749/culturalcritique.95.2017.0001. Nesterof, Kliph. 2015. The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy. Grove Press. Pandya, Hershal. 2018. “The Rise of Clapter Comedy”. The Vulture. https://www. vulture.com/2018/01/the-rise-of-clapter-comedy.html. Pylkkänen, Kaisa. 2019. “Suomi vs USA – Viisi havaintoa stand up -keikoilta koomikon näkökulmasta.” YLE. https://yle.f/aihe/artikkeli/2019/07/01/ suomi-vs-usa-viisi-havaintoa-stand-up-keikoilta-koomikon-nakokulmasta. Robbins, Joel. 2012. “Transcendence and the Anthropology of Christianity: Language, Change, and Individualism”. Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 37(2), 5–23.

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Robbins, Joel. 2001. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology: A Reading and Partial Reformulation of Rappaports Theory of Ritual.” Current Anthropology, 42(5), 591–614. doi:10.1086/322557. Sherzer, Joel. 2002. Speech Play and Verbal Art. University of Texas Press. Sinclair, Niigonwedom Jamers. 2010. Trickster Refections I. In: Deanna Reder and Linda Morra (eds.) Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (pp. 21–58). Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Stasch, Rupert. 2011. “Ritual and Oratory Revisited: The Semiotics of Efective Action”. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40: 159–174. Ylönen, Susanne & Marianna Keisalo. 2020. “Sublime and Grotesque: Exploring the Liminal Positioning of Clowns between Oppositional Aesthetic Categories.” Comedy Studies, 11(1), 12–24, doi:10.1080/2040610X.2019.1692543. Wagner, Roy. 1981. The Invention of Culture. University of Chicago Press. Wickström, Andre. 2005. Das humoristische manifest – kirja stand-up komiikasta. WSOY. Zoglin, Richard. 2009. Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America. Bloomsbury.

11 STANDING UP FOR A CAUSE The Cathartic and Persuasive Power of Stand-Up Comedy Margherita Dore

Introduction The enduring and probably increasing fascination with stand-up comedy likely stems from the fact that it is an extremely versatile way of performing humour. Generally speaking, stand-up comedy requires negotiation between two parties, the audience and the performers themselves. For their part, the audience determines the success of the show, although the comedian can gear their cognitive and practical (dis)engagement (Howitt & Owusu-Bempah 2005: 58–59). Comedians develop their so-called comic persona (Mintz 1985) to get the audience to receive and react to their material throughout the performance (Seewoester Cain 2018: 129). Besides dealing with light-hearted topics, stand-up comedy may also serve other purposes, including social criticism and cultural awareness (Seirlis 2011; Dore 2018). Yet, some comedians are sceptical about the power of stand-up comedy to infuence people’s political orientation or thought (Double 2020: 168–170). According to Quirk (2015: 153–154), it is somehow difcult to clearly establish what political comedy is and is not. However, she profers an explanation by saying that there are comedians who cannot be defned as “political” because they propose largely observational material which aims to critique and mock common behaviours (e.g. Michael McIntyre; or Stewart Huf, Seizer 2017: 212). Conversely, “political” comedians such as Mark Thomas, Mark Steel and Franca Rame question the status quo by ofering more practical yet destructive challenges and consciously choosing to discuss social, political and cultural issues (ibid. 155–172). In Quirk’s (2015: 207) opinion, stand-up comedy becomes important because it has the power to stir debate, broaden points of view and possibly ignite change. To buttress this further, Double (2020: 163–188) comments that, while on stage, comedians may not only debate important yet controversial DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-15

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issues such as sexism, rape, paedophilia or war, they may also want to raise money for or awareness of important causes (e.g. striking miners, nuclear disarmament, etc.). It could therefore be argued that these comics’ willingness to raise awareness is per se a form of political intervention. They make use of humour to challenge and subvert something they think needs to change or improve by calling for their audience’s help. Hence, it is interesting to explore how they manage to trigger engagement and activism in the conviction that, even when the audience laughs, they cannot help but refect on what they are laughing at. Change and participation via humour activism may be short-term, but at times can also become long-term (Quirk 2015: 208), thus making the phenomenon fascinating. One other important aspect of stand-up comedy is that, to appeal to their audience and win their afliation, stand-up comedians may exploit personal testimonials or biographical events (Brodie 2008). Some may draw on personal traumatic experiences, such as physical injury or family matters (cf. Double 2017; Fiadotava 2020). With these premises in mind, this chapter explores the persuasive power of stand-up comedy by examining Marsha Josephine De Salvatore’s (2013) stand-up routine titled DM55, a one-woman show about her life as a person sufering from a chronic illness, i.e. Beta-Thalassemia Major. This is an inherited blood disorder caused by the reduced production of beta-globin chains and HbA (Taher et al. 2021: 727). Patients who sufer from Beta-Thalassemia Major generally have severe anaemia and symptoms early in life (ibid. 728), including poor growth and skeletal abnormalities. They require lifelong regular blood transfusions to survive (ibid. 730). Hence, De Salvatore created a show to raise awareness about the importance of blood donation via humour. Therefore, this chapter concentrates on the humorous mechanisms (coupled with audio and visual prompts) used to overcome personal fears, challenge prejudice and persuade. The linguistic analysis will be backed up by the answers provided by De Salvatore during a semi-structured interview about the reasons driving her activism, creative process and the audience response.

Humour, Stand-Up Comedy and Social Engagement Sørensen (2016) discusses humour as a means of political activism. He reports on the way many movements across the world and their protests (e.g. mocking Australia’s conservative prime minister; arms export and child labour as ethical investments in Belgium; opposition to Burma’s military junta, just to name a few) to show how activists’ humour can come in many shapes and sizes. Certainly, establishing whether or not humour is truly efective in mobilising change is difcult, but they do testify to the fact that the creativity of nonviolent resistance hardly goes unnoticed. Activists’ humour and creativity help to reach out to other people’s hearts and minds. However, it is important to bear in mind that the audience may vary, and diferent approaches may be needed (Sørensen 2016: 85–88). Even when humour does not ignite change, humorous political stunts can contribute to raising awareness, critique and personal liberation (ibid. 104).

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In a similar vein, existing literature dealing specifcally with stand-up comedy suggests it can have a social and cultural function, serving as a sort of outlet for the audience’s sense of superiority towards the weaker members of society who may be ridiculed (e.g. bufoons, cowards and the comedians themselves; Mintz 1985; cf. also Morreall, 1983: 4–37 and Raskin, 1985: 30–41 for a detailed overview of superiority theory). For instance, Seirlis (2011) has shown how South African comics developed their routines to raise their audience’s awareness about the inequities and disservices in that society. Lockyer (2011) has analysed Joan Rivers’ stand-up routines, which gave voice to the feminist movement by addressing gender issues and stereotyped ideas and expectations about women. More recently, Quirk (2015) devoted her entire monograph to exploring whether, and if so, how comedians can manipulate and infuence their audience. She contends that, besides light-hearted topics, stand-up can contribute to cultural awareness and social criticism. Subsequently, Quirk (2018: 59) has further explored the ability of stand-up to “punch up”, i.e. speak truth to power to readdress inequity that may go unnoticed, as in the case of gender politics, for instance. This is possible because: “[t]he ‘rarefed’ end of the comedy profession has genuine concerns around elitism and exclusion” (Quirk 2018: 94; cf. also Double 2020 on similar considerations). To buttress this further, Double (2020) has provided examples of comedians who have helped to raise awareness or money for important causes (e.g. to help striking miners, promote nuclear disarmament, lift the taboo on menstruation). That said, a major problem humour activists and stand-up comedians must face is that talking about painstaking themes in a humorous way requires careful handling (Sørensen 2016: 141). For instance, Double (2017) has explained the creative process that led him to create a one-man show based on a traumatic personal experience (i.e. he broke a femur while jogging, was hospitalised for some time and had to undergo surgery and a long period of rehabilitation). Drawing on Carroll (2014: 28, 37), Double describes humour based on personal experiences that strike the comedian as incongruous, and therefore humorous, as “found” humour (Double 2017: 145; cf. also Raskin, 1985 and Attardo, 1994 on incongruity as the basis of humour). Furthermore, Double shrewdly remarks on three aspects relating to the creation of stand-up material that are extremely relevant to the issue at hand. Firstly, we cannot expect comedians to tell the full truth about their experience because the act of recalling is subjective, and they need to skilfully manipulate their material to make the audience laugh (Double 2017: 150). Secondly, Double espouses Steve Allen’s oft-quoted idea that: “Comedy equals tragedy plus time”, meaning that “terrible experiences can become funny when time has lent them enough distance to be seen with detachment” (Double 2017: 146). This is also the approach used by De Salvatore, as we will see shortly. Thirdly, recounting a painful experience in humorous terms may bring up the dilemma of how to depict the other parties involved (e.g. doctors, medical staf, other patients). One viable solution is to rename these incidental characters using names with the same tone and number of syllables, which can conjure up

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similar cultural associations (ibid.). For her show, De Salvatore chose to change the doctor’s name but retained the names of her family members and friends (cf. Section 4; personal communication). The ethical dilemma of creating humorous material out of personal experiences becomes even more evident when family members are involved. As Fiadotava (2020: 7) explains, comedians or family members may feel uneasy about exploiting private family humour for public performance. However, if a stand-up routine has been conceived with the objective of raising awareness about an issue, an illness etc., most of the ethical problems are left aside as all involved parties are aware that the jokes the comedian develops and cracks serve not only an entertaining but also a noble purpose. Double (2017: 145), for instance, mentions a show he created about bringing up two children with type 1 diabetes, which he performed for various diabetes organisations in the United Kingdom and the United States (cf. also Fiadotava 2020). To conclude this section, when considering humour and stand-up comedy as a means of encouraging social engagement, it is important to bear in mind the following. Humorous activism may receive a great deal of media coverage while other types of performances may remain peripheral or local (Sørensen 2016). Similarly, stand-up comedians aiming (or not aiming) at infuencing and persuading their audience can gather few people at small venues or crowds at big events (Quirk 2015; Double 2020). Hence, it seems worth exploring a case study like Marsha De Salvatore’s (2013) routine on blood donation for two reasons. On the one hand, this show is “local” because it is confned to the cities or venues where De Salvatore performs. On the other hand, each person she convinces to donate blood becomes part of a bigger picture, which cumulatively can make a diference for people in need of blood.1 In addition, it is important to underscore that De Salvatore’s act is essentially based on the way this illness has shaped her life and the life of her family members (particularly her mother) as well as her relationship with doctors, friends, etc. De Salvatore has taken a risk in exposing her illness in a humorous way. However, this risk is mitigated by the fact that she is the one who is sufering. She is not delegating others to talk about it and cannot be considered either silly or superfcial in deciding to explain it in humorous terms. Drawing on Takemoto (1997) and Seizer (2017: 212), I argue that, by doing so, De Salvatore has gone through a cathartic transformation that has allowed her to purge the (tragic) tensions deriving from her illness, and therefore come to terms with it. Besides, it has also motivated her to create a comic show that seeks to infuence De Salvatore’s audience’s way of thinking and behaviour. On the one hand, her show challenges prejudice against disabled people (Nario-Redmond 2019: 2–3; for the matter, people who live with a chronic health condition), a.k.a. ableism.2 On the other hand, and most importantly, she has used stand-up comedy as a tool to encourage and persuade comedy-goers to donate blood. Hence, the following sections explain De Salvatore’s driving reasons, her creative process and the way her performance is constructed. Moreover, they demonstrate how De Salvatore skilfully mixes comic and non-comic

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elements to elicit laughter (Double 2017: 149) and, at the same time, avoid being pitied and persuade others to become actively involved in blood donation.

Methodology and Data Collection Marsha Josephine De Salvatore is a professional Italian-American stand-up comedian permanently living in Italy. Together with Stephanie Tyrrell, she founded Rome’s Comedy Club (RCC), which hosts the performances of a group of regular and guest comedians. This group of performers includes native professional and amateur English-speaking expatriates living in Italy and, at times, native Italian speakers performing in English. Although most performers are male, the two female founders have tried hard to encourage female comics to perform in order to balance the often-uneven proportion of male and female stand-up comedians (Quirk 2015: 6; Fiadotava 2020: 4; cf. also Double 2020: 10–11, 70, and passim). The RCC audience includes both native English speakers and Italians with a good command of English that allows them to grasp most of the comics’ jokes (Dore 2018). Besides compèring and performing at RCC, in 2013 De Salvatore created a one-woman show titled DM55 about her illness, Beta-Thalassemia Major. As mentioned earlier, this inherited blood disorder makes patients dependent on blood transfusions for life. DM55 is titled after the ID code Roman hospitals assigned De Salvatore to receive information about blood type availability. To some extent, this show fts Sandahl’s (2003: 28) description of “solo autobiographical performance”, which can also include poetry reading, drama and stand-up comedy. Performers on stage tell their stories with episodes that are thematically or chronologically connected or juxtaposed randomly, acting as themselves, adopting other personas and interacting with the audience. Sandahl looks specifcally at examples of members of the queer or disabled community and explains: “Both queer and crip solo performances (…) are self-conscious attempts to promote cultural identities as well as political agendas” (ibid. 30). Like these performers, De Salvatore’s agenda is to demystify and challenge preconceived views about people with disabilities and attitudes towards them (i.e. ableism). However, she also calls for her audience’s active involvement in asking them to donate blood. At the author’s request, De Salvatore kindly agreed to take part in this study by providing her script and answering questions in a semi-structured interview carried out online due to the COVID-19 pandemic (cf. De Salvatore 2021, Appendix 1). Before the interview, I examined the data to establish what questions to ask regarding the reasons and rationale behind creating DM55. The questionnaire is divided into two parts. Part one includes a series of demographic questions (henceforth Q1, Q2, etc.). De Salvatore was free to answer or not for privacy reasons; however, she provided answers (henceforth A1, A2, etc.) to all the questions asked. At the time of the interview, De Salvatore stated she was 48 years old, single with no children (De Salvatore 2021, A1–A4). She is a second generation American whose parents are from Calabria (A5), a region in southern Italy.

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According to De Salvatore’s (2013) script, her parents moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, when they were young. De Salvatore lived in the United States for 30 years and has been living in Italy for 18 years now (De Salvatore 2021, A6). She decided to move to Italy “to discover my roots, travel. learn [sic.] Italian” (ibid. A7). Although she was formally educated in Italian at the university level, her language competence was mostly developed at home and while living in Rome. De Salvatore masters Italian at a very good level, but she is not bilingual and this is partly due to the fact that, as she explains during her shows, her parents spoke a mix of English, Italian and Calabrian. Also, she admits “No wonder I needed ESL or english [sic.] as a second language as a kid” and adds “its [sic.] a miracle I [De Salvatore] teach it now” (De Salvatore 2013). Conversely, her English is at native academic level and often very elaborate and specifc regarding, for instance, colour since she majored in art history (cf. Extract 3). However, by reading the script, it is possible to notice that some grammar rules (e.g. capital letters as in the quote above, omission of the apostrophe in contractions such as “didnt” or “Im”) are often overlooked and phonetically reduced structures (e.g. gotta, gonna) or typos (“he is six year old”) can also be found. When I asked De Salvatore about the fact that her script seems written to be performed (Q10), she answered: “Stand up especially one of one hour must absolutely be scripted (…) [the show] is based on my life and having a blood illness requiring blood transfusions. This show required a proper writing style to follow an arc like most shows” (De Salvatore 2021, A10). “Writing style” refers clearly to the way pre-prepared jokes or routines are created while the script is an essential starting point for her performance, which can be adapted to the situation and/or the response obtained from the audience (cf. Quirk 2015 and Dore 2018 for similar fndings). Consequently, spelling inconsistencies, typos, etc. are not relevant in terms of performance and are reported as scripted but overlooked. As for her interest in stand-up comedy (Q08), De Salvatore pointed out she always loved it “from sketch like Saturday Night Live to stand up starting at teen age years” (A08). Most importantly, when I asked her why she had decided to write this show, she explained it was: “a moral obligation to help the blood supply which is a constant problem in many regions of Italy”. She also added: I also thought it was time to share my struggles with secrecy and shame with people so they could relate, connect, be inspired and if they have a life challenge it could in some way help them. I just never knew how till I met comedian-writer Kissy Dugan who said she would make it funny and serious to drive important points. I was never secure in sharing my story in fear of pity…but making it funny was what helped me go with the idea. (De Salvatore 2021, A09; my emphasis) As pointed out in De Salvatore (2021, A09), Kissy Dugan is a writer who helped De Salvatore to turn her experiences and life experiences with her illness into comic material and jokes. De Salvatore’s testimonial confrms the idea that there

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is a very fne line between something being potentially funny and a pitiful experience for both the comic and the audience. The fear of being pitied is also reported in De Salvatore’s answer to my question about her family’s support of her desire to talk about her illness, and in particular about her mother’s reluctance to share family matters on stage (cf. Fiadotava 2020: 6 for similar considerations). De Salvatore remarked: She [De Salvatore’s mother] didn’t want me to share my secret in fear of pity, being treated diferently by ignorant people. But when I got to the age of being ready to be open, she was 100% my support system and on my side. They [her family] loved it…and even when there were many shows where I would call her saying I can’t do this, I am embarrassed or what if people don’t like it……she would give me the right words and strength to get on that stage and share my story. (De Salvatore 2021, A12) As for my question “Do you believe in the power of stand-up comedy as a means of social change or engagement?” (Q12), De Salvatore commented: I think it is one way to get attention…and to make something serious a little bit lighter. People don’t want to be bombarded with sadness because life is hard enough. Through the power of connection and humor it is the right balance. BUT like my show it is NOT all stand up because I have points that needed to be heard loud and clear. This part of the show is monologue style with some jokes BUT more dramatic. The right balance of drama and comedy is a perfect way to get the message across for something challenging. (ibid. 2021, A12; emphasis in original) De Salvatore’s answer is again consistent with the literature and the idea that stand-up can be a way to raise awareness (Double 2017; Fiadotava 2020) or draw attention (Sandahl 2003: 49) rather than ignite real change, even if De Salvatore’s activism has paid of over the years, as demonstrated by the many people who took selfes while donating blood (cf. note 1). That said, the ability of stand-up comedy to infuence or persuade the audience may also depend on other contingent factors, which can be social and/or cultural. For instance, in my last question, I enquired as to the countries where she had performed her DM55 show and what feedback she received, De Salvatore answered: Italy has been the best. The audience north and south LOVE me and my story. I did it once in the USA….and it felt heavy for the audience. And when I tried to pitch it to hospitals in the USA for patients while I received praise no one was keen. The UK said it was too strong for their patients (I pitched it to thalassemia groups) who were mostly Muslim and live in secrecy. A show like this is too bold. I never pitched it out of hospital wards so it could have a diferent interest. At the end of the day, it talks about a

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Calabrese [sic.] mama, with lots of Italian references and me being loud and bold, … maybe only meant for Italy. (De Salvatore 2021, A12; emphasis in original) The mixed response to De Salvatore’s show by diferent communities is worth debating. While Italians across the country appreciated her show, the American audience found it “heavy”, thus confrming that the treatment of difcult themes in humorous terms is far from an easy task (Sørensen 2016; Double 2017). Interestingly, De Salvatore’s comment about her performance in the United Kingdom brings up issues connected to religion. The thalassaemic patients were mostly Muslim and, in her opinion, this factor makes them hide their illness; consequently, this has had an impact on the overall reception of the show. It could be worth exploring this aspect further in the future, for example, by interviewing the Muslim thalassaemic communities in the United Kingdom and Italy. Finally, the fact that De Salvatore also makes ample use of humorous culture-specifc references (Dore 2019: 174–226), code-mixing and code-switching to elicit humour may have also contributed to making the show more difcult to appreciate by non-Italians or people unfamiliar with Italian culture (cf. Dore 2022). All in all, De Salvatore’s answers attest to the fact that crafting a routine about illness with efective jokes requires skill. Quirk (2015: 102) makes use of Koestler’s (1964) bisociation theory to explain that such jokes must entail contrast and Double (2020: 108–109) employs this theory to show how he creates his own jokes and how they work in stand-up comedy in general. In a nutshell, bisociation is a cognitive process provoked by the presence of two incompatible ideas in the same text (or context), which can also explain the incompatible or opposing frames or scripts3 in a joke. Koestler’s bisociation theory is a valid tool that has also contributed to shaping subsequent linguistic theories of humour such as Raskin’s (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH) and Attardo’s (1994) General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). SSTH and GTVH have expanded the notion of opposition and refned the analytical process whereby opposition is triggered by the jab lines and punchlines4 that evoke scripts that are not only incompatible and in opposition but also overlapping. Therefore, the textual analysis below will be carried out by taking into consideration all the insight, theories and the literature reported above to ofer an exhaustive picture of the way stand-up comedy can result in active social engagement.

Standing Up for a Cause As Mintz (1985: 79) rightly points out, stand-up is based on the creative distortion and exaggeration of situations that aim to poke fun at people or describe incongruous contexts. As we will see, De Salvatore’s show is no exception, but such situations are mostly based on her life experiences and family humour, which help her to win her audience over (Brodie 2008). Truly enough, for comedians, sharing family humour depends on the particular circumstances of their family

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and “it is often up to the comedians and their family members to decide where the boundary lies, and whether that boundary must always be upheld” (Fiadotava 2020: 12). The instances discussed below are reported sequentially as scripted and essentially show how De Salvatore exploits family humour and her life experiences to create humour and encourage blood donation. Extract 1 opens the show and is an example of metatheatre in that De Salvatore pretends to be talking to her mother before going onstage:

Extract 1. MOM: OOO NOOOO!!!! That’s no good. Whattt?? Ma still with this teatro??

Marsha nobody gotta know nostra business. MARSHA: Mom, sometimes this is my business. And I don’t even know if I’m

going to talk about it. MOM: It’s not funny. MARSHA: Well, tragedy plus time equals comedy mother. I’ve gotta get ready

for the show. (…) MOM: Marsha… break your legs.

Like Double (2017: 146), De Salvatore here refers to an oft-quoted phrase attributable to Steve Allen that drives De Salvatore’s whole show: “Comedy equals tragedy plus time” (line 6). Also, De Salvatore’s act matches Double’s (2017: 148, 213) defnition of a common stand-up technique (instant character) in which the comedian makes an instant transition from narrator to character, using voice, gesture, posture or facial expression to impersonate somebody (or something) else (Rutter 2001: 308 calls it character footing). De Salvatore’s catharsis can be explained because she does not report the event, she performs it (Hymes 1975: 19, quoted in Seizer 2017: 222). She takes turns impersonating herself and her mother while they are having a conversation, as she also does with many other incidental characters. De Salvatore’s routine is based on conceptual or script oppositions as well as language oppositions. The language oppositions are achieved via code-mixing and code-switching American English and Italian (“teatro”, theatre; “nostra”, our). Clearly, De Salvatore knows that her audience have sufcient knowledge of both languages and can confdently interject these Italian words into her English routine. This technique is consistent with existing literature on the use of code-switching and code-mixing to create in-grouping between the comedian and the audience (Adetunji 2013) and construct shared identity (Tsang & Wong 2004). By doing so, De Salvatore ofers an impressionistic (and exaggerated) picture of the conversations within her family. The punchline features De Salvatore’s mother’s incorrect use of the English idiom “break a leg” (“break your legs”), which is used in the context of theatre or other performing arts to wish a performer good luck. All these elements make this extract funny and entertaining.

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De Salvatore onstage wearing an apron with Calabria on it

De Salvatore accompanies her performance with various visual prompts (e.g. a feather boa, posters of her favourite pop singers and band, etc.) and wears an apron with Calabria on it when she impersonates her mother (cf. Figure 11.1). This choice may reinforce the stereotype about people in the south of Italy, but it also authenticates what she is saying (Double 2017: 149). Extract 2 shows De Salvatore’s cathartic descent into her mother’s memories to expose and ridicule her aunt’s narrow-mindedness (Seizer 2017: 214). In extract 2, De Salvatore comes onstage wearing an apron with Calabria on it (cf. Figure 11.1).

Extract 2. (Marsha in Calabria apron) I thought to myself… ‘Myself ’ I cannot do this. No. Cincinnatti was not where we needed to be! We need to be with la famiglia, for the love… for support… for understanding. We need to be with the doctors who treat this everyday and are famous for their cures… we need to be in Calabria (…) SO I take my beautiful baby to the blue sea. To the bitch of Fuscaldo. Bitch. Biitch… BEECH. (PAUSE)The place where the sand is (…) The baby is playing and the breeze is blowing. Its a belissima giornata. And Giuseppina appears with a lasagna and an ignoranza she says, “Oh! Ma questa a la bimba malatta! Non e mostrosa come imaginavo!” This is the sick baby. She doesn’t look like a monster at all.

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Now there is a bitch on the BEECH of Fuscaldo! This is not love, support or understanding. The color from my tanned face went away and I became the same color as the white beach I was standing on. Everyone was looking at me. And everyone was looking at her. And no one said anything. I scooped up the baby and never went back to that beach. In extract 2, De Salvatore’s continues to apply Allen’s theory that “comedy equals tragedy plus time” (see extract 1). She mixes tragic and comic situations in a timely manner to obtain the intended efect. She impersonates her mother by telling the audience about the time she took De Salvatore to Calabria as a young girl because Italian doctors are said to be very familiar with thalassemia and better trained at dealing with it. Mamma De Salvatore recounts an upsetting experience when a member of her own family became the prototypical example of the profoundly misconceived view some people have about thalassemia and the symptoms patients may display (“This is the sick baby. She [Marsha] doesn’t look like a monster at all”). Since some patients may develop skeletal abnormalities, the aunt was surprised to fnd a “normal” baby. De Salvatore has never had evident physical deformities, but Aunt Giuseppina becomes a prototypical example of the ableism of the normative group and the (able-bodied) privilege these people consciously or unconsciously subscribe to (Nario-Redmond 2019: 13, 36, 87 and passim). De Salvatore reports the exact words in Italian and ofers a translation for her English-speaking audience, probably because this passage is longer and more difcult to process. Throughout her show, she makes use of many expletives, which Seizer (2011: 209, quoted in Double 2017: 153) sees as originating in a “realm of intimacy”, therefore helping to create a bond between the comic and their audience. De Salvatore’s homophonous pun (“beach” vs. “bitch”) seems to have a twofold humorous objective. On the one hand, it pokes fun at De Salvatore’s mother’s poor command of English (as happens to many Italian immigrants or foreigners in general), although the meaning of both words appears clear to Mamma De Salvatore (after all, swear words are quickly learnt in any L2). On the other hand, and most importantly, it is an efective way to criticise her aunt’s normative views as ignorant and outdated (Nario-Redmond 2019: 192), thus also distancing herself from them and purging herself of the toxic efects of such a person and experience (Seizer 2017: 215; cf. also Raskin 1985: 39 on relief theories). Clearly, the audience are called to take part in this cathartic process and, while laughing at the scene, they are also likely to empathise with Mamma De Salvatore and little Marsha. In extract 3, De Salvatore further recounts her mother’s predicament in trying to fnd a cure for her daughter’s illness by referring to a well-known doctor in Cosenza, Italy. As mentioned earlier, the doctor’s name was changed for ethical reasons. Still impersonating her mother, De Salvatore says:

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Extract 3. Okay, so we still had the doctors. This was a disease of the mediterranean and we were on the mediterranean. The best of the best… they would help her grow big and strong and be healthy. Because that is all any mother wants. A healthy child. Dr. Francesco briganti He was the primario of the department of ospedale di Cosenza. He was the best. He knew everything and he would know how to fx my daughter. (…) My heart beat fast as the doctor came in the door. He looked directly at the baby. I said buon giorno dottore… and I thought he wasn’t so nice but he was completely focused on the baby. I watched him (her eyes go back and forth) watch her. I watched her as she watched him. I was watching and waiting for his words of wisdom. PAUSE. He said nothing. He examined her without saying, ‘ciao bambina… niente.’ I thought he was freddo… cold but maybe he was very professionale. He started to write. And I wanted to know about what. SO I said, ‘I take very good care…the baby naps twice a day, she eats the vegetables…’ Then I said ‘The cure will take how long?’ Cure, there is no cure. Okay but a treatment. Signora, treatment? But surely there is something we can do. Signora… lei non deve fare niente. Perche la bimba sara morta a 18 anni. The doctor said I couldn’t do nothing. my baby would be dead by 18. SCENE 3 MUSIC CURE DELITE Recording 20:14;38 When I was 18… I wanted to call that doctor and say HELLOOOOO… but instead I went away to college and I declared my major. ART HISTORY. (British Accent) In this scene, De Salvatore relies on existing stereotypes regarding more or less educated people in order to subvert them. She skilfully shows her mother’s sheepish approach to the doctor, who instead appears rather stand-ofsh (“freddo”). This, she speculates, is perhaps due to his willingness to be professional (“professionale”). However, the contrast becomes sharper when Mamma De Salvatore’s unquestioned faith faces Doctor Briganti’s brutal comment: “la bambina sarà morta a 18 anni” (the girl will be dead by 18). However, this upsetting scenario is immediately subverted by De Salvatore playing “Groove is in the Heart” by house and dance music group Deee-Lite. This upbeat song creates an efective contrast with the doctor’s ominous prediction, underlined by De Salvatore’s sarcastic comment: “When I was 18… I wanted to call the doctor and say HELLOOOOO”. Aside from being humorous, this punchline can also instil hope in other people and their families going through similar experiences. This

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is further underscored by De Salvatore’s last comment about being able to attend university and study art history. The use of a British accent is a mild humorous reference to the fact that many Americans consider this accent to be “posh” and sophisticated. In extract 4, De Salvatore explores being subjected to experimental treatments, which is another important issue connected with this illness and how patients cope with such situations.

Extract 4. One treatment resulted in me becoming jaundiced. “Oh my god! Im yellow! What am I going to do?” My mother always had advice: MARSHA you need abbonzature. Marsha, take the sun… the sun always helps everything. Little lesson in color mixing and skin care… yellow and brown makes GREEN LIGHT ON I turned GREEN. lucky Irish shamrock GREEN. Like a cuter slimmer and sweeter Incredible Hulk. Green isn’t even one of my best colors. Im more of a mauve. GREEN LIGHT OFF Years later when I came out to those friends, they fnally asked, ‘is that why you were chartreuse at your birthday party?’ I thought it was more like a sea foam green… but yes. Again, an unpleasant experience is conveyed through the lens of humour. De Salvatore becomes the source of her mild self-disparaging humour, which can also increase audience acceptance (Scarpetta and Spagnolli 2009: 18). The combination of the treatment and sun exposure made her skin turn green like the Marvel Comics character and superhero The Incredible Hulk. De Salvatore cleverly underlines this opposition by having a green light projected onto her onstage. The visual and verbal efect is a powerful message that makes the audience laugh at the situation rather than at De Salvatore. Yet, they are also forced to refect on what it means to be a patient and, sometimes, a guinea pig to help cure people and advance science. Another interesting aspect of this scene is that De Salvatore’s background and education infuence her way of describing the situation. The fact that she studied art history (cf. extract 3) explains why her friends and she use very precise terms to describe shades of colours such as “lucky Irish shamrock GREEN”, “mauve”, “chartreuse” and “sea foam green”. This aspect adds a further layer of humour to the scene and confrms fndings in the literature regarding stand-up comedians’ ability to combine high and low culture (cf. Double 2020: 19–24). Finally, it is worth noting that De Salvatore skilfully avoided letting her friend fall prey to paternalistic or benevolent ableism (Nario-Redmond 2019: 336–337) by reporting how they focused on the colour of her skin rather than her illness. As the show proceeds, De Salvatore’s story moves from her youth in the United States to her new life in Italy. In extract 5, she talks about a humorous incident with her Roman fatmate Daniela, who was unaware of De Salvatore’s condition:

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Extract 5. When I moved to Rome, I had to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours (putting on layers and the monitor). Routine cardio check-up for patients like me. I looked like I was on a Kamikaze mission with bombs strapped to my chest… to hide it… and I want to say I am gifted in the realm of fashion. I knew exactly how to layer my look so as not to raise suspicion. Unfortunately, the machine made a humming sound that was almost inaudible. But my roommate Daniela had sonic hearing… and the gig was almost up. “What was that? Did you hear that?” She turned of every electronic device in the house to locate the hum. She was going crazy… meanwhile I just sat there eating popcorn. Silent liar that I was. Secrets had to be kept even if Daniela was losing her mind. The target of the humour here is frst De Salvatore when she describes herself as a kamikaze on a bombing mission, thus conjuring up an incongruous scenario that some may not like to laugh about (cf. Dore 2018: 115 on the audience’s reaction to sensitive material in stand-up comedy). Be that as it may, most humour here is however created at Daniela’s expense and her obsession with identifying the annoying and repetitive sound of De Salvatore’s heart monitor. The conceptual clash is conjured up by an contrasting and opposing situation in which Daniela is going insane while De Salvatore is calmly “eating popcorn”. De Salvatore’s last comment (“secrets had to be kept even if Daniela was losing her mind”) reinforces this image and becomes the punchline of the joke. Clearly, the situation is exaggerated for humorous purposes and the audience can laugh at Daniela and the situation in general. In a similar vein, De Salvatore makes a series of humorous comparisons with diferent types of addictions to explain how important blood is for people with thalassemia, as reported in extract 6.

Extract 6. I can totally see how people get addicted to gambling. Little old ladies with Oxygen tanks playing the slots in Vegas. Welfare recipients frequenting betting on the ponies at the OTB. Card sharks whose lives stop while playing blackjack for days straight…. while the world goes by. There is a high when you hit that sweet spot! When the slots starts to chime… when your horse comes in frst… when you’ve got a two jacks and an Ace. When they call DM55… I have hit the hemoglobin lottery! DM55 is the secret code that the Roman Hospitals use to let me know that they’ve got blood and it’s for me! Im not a vampire… dont get nervous. Besides someone over here has been eating garlic! (indicate to an area of the audience) Here, De Salvatore exploits humorous images, including old ladies playing in Las Vegas, people on unemployment benefts at of-track betting (OTB) parlours

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or gamblers playing blackjack. The contrast between people with thalassemia who crave blood and addicts’ obsessions can surely arouse laughter in the audience. However, and more intriguingly, it could be argued that De Salvatore may be indirectly poking fun at the audience, as she is assuming that some of them may have experienced some sort of addiction in their life and can therefore relate to the excitement she feels when the hospital calls her to inform her that her type of blood is available. The punchline about not being a vampire appears self-disparaging, but soon turns into a teasing comment about some people in the audience with unpleasant eating habits (“eating garlic”; cf. Seewoester Cain 2018 on teasing and audience engagement). Clearly, the members of the audience are unlikely to take such ofences at face value and will probably laugh with De Salvatore (Dore 2018). Towards the end of the show, De Salvatore comments: “I’m the Blanche Dubois of blood supply… I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers!” This quote from Tennessee Williams’s (1947) play A Streetcar Named Desire encapsulates the central issue of her act and its purpose (cf. Figure 11.2). People with thalassemia live their life hoping that other people will be generous enough to donate blood, but De Salvatore also adds: “I had to do something more than relying on the kindness of strangers. I had to be proactive” (ibid. 2013; cf. also Sandahl 2003: 36 on empowerment and activism by queer and disabled performers). To do this, she had to overcome her fear of pity and ask people to donate blood, although she does this on her own humorous terms, as explained in extract 7.

FIGURE 11.2

De Salvatore during her show

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Extract 7. Blood is not something made or produced… you can’t get it from a stone. It is a precious commodity and only given by others. (…) now that my closet was just for dressing and no longer for harboring secrets… I could ask people to donate blood. SO I did! “can you give blood?” “could you donate?” “would you come down to the blood drive?” When I was open…people were open. “I’ll go immediately!” Great! Blood donating unfortunately requires more than a yes. There are rules that apply. (TO AUDIENCE) Have you traveled to Asia or Africa in the last six months? Have you taken any antibiotics, steroids or illicit drugs? Have you been whoring it up recently? Because there are rules to donating. Sadly, some of my fun and interesting friends have been turned down because of these rules. Looks like I might need to fnd some fying phobic, drug free friends who are frigid to help my cause! Of course there were those who said, “I don’t like needles!” You are tattooed from head to toe, get your ass down to the centro trasfusionale now! As in other cases of solo performances by disabled people (Sandahl 2003: 42–43), De Salvatore compares her choice to self-disclose her illness with homosexuals’ choice to disclose their homosexuality (“coming out of the closet”) by indirectly alluding it (“now that my closet was just for dressing”) and adding humour to her line. Moreover, she makes teasing remarks targeting the audience and friends: “Have you taken (…) illicit drugs?”, “Have you been whoring it up recently?” and “drug free friends” are jab lines that comment on people’s promiscuity and drug-taking. De Salvatore’s disparaging comments are mild but efective. The audience are likely to laugh at her friends, but they are also the targets of her remarks, as explained by the stage directions (“TO AUDIENCE”). Again, the audience will not take these attacks at face value. Yet, De Salvatore’s hints aim to encourage them to act diferently from her friends to avoid becoming part of the laughable group. This is further reinforced by the punch line which underlines the incongruity of some friends expressing their fear of needles and De Salvatore rebuking them by pointing out that they are covered in tattoos. As happens throughout the show, De Salvatore uses “centro trasfusionale” (blood drive) in Italian because she is aware her English-speaking audience know what it is or can understand it from the context. Extract 8 is De Salvatore’s monologue that concludes the show, when she thanks those who have donated blood thus far and those who will do it in the future.

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Extract 8. I am thankful for the characters who have given me an opportunity to live this life. If I have had 500 people volunteer to give me blood and I need 500 more people to give me blood. That’s a thousand thank yous I need to send out. But I ain’t licking a thousand envelopes so this is my thank you. I stand before you as a whole person who is transfusion dependent. Whose life depends on it. And every three weeks, because of someone else’s generosity. I am able to experience life just like anyone else. I was able to have a crush on Warren Leskowitz in frst grade because someone gave me blood. I was able to pass chemistry (by the skin of my teeth) because someone gave blood. I was able to slam dance and body surf at the concert because someone gave me blood. I was able to graduate college, study abroad, travel to Sweden on my 21st birthday, celebrate a full moon party in Thailand and date a LAZIALE… because someone gave me blood. I was able to toast at a gay wedding, lecture at a University, work as a clown doctor and create the only english speaking comedy club in Rome because someone gave me blood. I hope you can see that I experienced this life because I have gratitude everyday. So thank you! De Salvatore’s monologue is imbued with moving words but also interjected by humorous jab lines (in italics in the text). Probably, the most humorous one for people living in Rome is the reference to dating a “Laziale” (Lazio supporter) and it is worth explaining. Roma and Lazio are the two football teams based in Rome. Most Romans support Roma while Lazio supporters are a minority in the city as most of them live in other cities in the region. Also, Lazio supporters are often infamously seen as being right-wing and hooligans. By making such a comment, De Salvatore is perhaps also challenging the audience’s misconceptions about Lazio fans. Most importantly, it also contributes to demystifying ideas linking disability with asexuality (Nario-Redmond 2019: 15–16). All in all, this monologue certainly serves its purposes as it is equally moving and humorous.

Conclusion Humour can be an efective means to foster social and political engagement, but it has to be handled carefully (Sørensen 2016). This becomes even more evident when stand-up comedians decide to deal with painful issues onstage. Yet, when such comics are directly afected by the issue they debate, humour can be seen as more acceptable (Double 2020). In light of this, this chapter has been devoted to discussing some examples taken from Marsha Josephine De Salvatore’s (2013) one-woman show DM55 and her answers to a semi-structured interview with this author. Although De Salvatore seems to share other comedians’ view that stand-up comedy cannot change the world (Double 2020), she believes in the fact that it can at least shed some light on important issues (cf. Section 3).

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Moreover, even if comedians may not become “change agents”, as postulated in Quirk (2015: 195), De Salvatore’s routine has proven successful in encouraging many people to donate blood, and these small, incremental changes testify to the persuasive power of stand-up. From an analytical standpoint, this chapter has mostly concentrated on the language mechanisms De Salvatore exploited to convey humour, but sound and visual prompts used during the performance have also been considered (e.g. cf. extracts 2–4; Figures 11.1 and 11.2). The analysis shows that stand-up comedy can serve many purposes. Firstly, it can help to raise awareness about genetic illnesses. To do this, De Salvatore recasts upsetting life experiences relating to her disease under a humorous light, making fun frst and foremost of herself, but also teasing her family, friends and, to some extent, the audience. Secondly, stand-up comedy can challenge stereotypes about sick people and the stigma they are subject to. They are not “monsters” (extract 2) to be ashamed of or, worse, pitied by others because they are destined to die young (extract 3). De Salvatore’s catharsis for releasing her pain has resulted in a positive outcome for both herself and the audience. By doing so, she has freed herself and her family from the underlying tensions caused by her illness. Besides, with her show, De Salvatore encourages her audience to rethink the way they see sick people by proving that the latter can laugh about themselves and need no pity (Sandahl 2003: 42). Most importantly, her solo performance helps her to call her audience to action by openly asking them to donate blood, and many people willingly oblige. Truly enough, the mixed responses De Salvatore has received in diferent countries demonstrates that cultural and religious factors play a fundamental role in the way activist stand-up is received (cf. Section 3). And yet, De Salvatore’s routine proves efective in subverting misconceptions about illnesses, inciting those sufering to have a more positive attitude to life and stand up for things that matter. Lastly, despite being limited to a single case study, this work has hopefully contributed to shedding light on the persuasive power of stand-up comedy, as proven by the many testimonials posted by people on De Salvatore’s Facebook page (cf. note 1). Some may have donated blood once after attending her show while others have become regular donors. This is tangible proof that standing up for a cause is possible.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Marsha De Salvatore for agreeing to be part of this project, ofering her material and answers to my questions. I am also grateful to Violetta Canitano who kindly granted permission to reproduce her pictures.

Appendix 1 – Questionnaire 1. Age (optional)? 2. Education?

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Marital status (optional)? Children (optional)? Composition of your family of origin? How long have you permanently lived in the USA and in Italy so far? Why did you decide to move to Italy?

About Stand-Up Comedy: 8. When did you start becoming interested in stand-up comedy and start doing it? 9. Your one-woman show titled DM55 is based on your life as a person with thalassemia. Why did you decide to do it? 10. Why did you write scripts for your shows? As far as I can tell, your script seems written to be performed, but do you follow them or depart from them when performing? 11. In reading the script, your mother does not seem to be very happy about you telling strangers about your illness. Was this difcult to cope with? Did you get your family’s support eventually? 12. Do you believe in the power of stand-up comedy as a means of social change or engagement? 13. What countries have you performed in? If so, what kind of feedback did you receive? Were there any remarkable diferences in the audience response?

Primary Sources De Salvatore, Marsha Josephine. 2013. DM55. Unpublished Script.

Notes 1 Pictures of Marsha De Salvatore’s tours to promote blood donation through her DM55 shows and testimonials of people donating blood can be retrieved at: https://www. facebook.com/dm55becauseyoucantgetbloodfromastone/photos/?ref=page_internal 2 In Nario-Redmond’s (2019: 6) words, ableism is defned as: “prejudice and discrimination toward individuals simply because they are classifed as disabled – regardless of whether their impairments are physical or mental, visible or invisible”. 3 Scripts are described as containing “information which is typical, such as wellestablished routines and common ways to do things and to go about activities” Attardo (1994: 200). In other words, they are mental structures that help us to order our background knowledge and sequences of events. 4 Attardo (2001: 82–90) distinguishes between “jab lines”, which are humorous triggers that occur within the body of a joke or an exchange, and the “punch line”, which normally occurs at the end of it.

Works Cited Adetunji, Akin. 2013. “The Interactional Context of Humor in Nigerian Stand-up Comedy”. Pragmatics 23(1): 1–22.

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Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Attardo, Salvatore. 2001. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Brodie, Ian. 2008. “Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy”. Ethnologies 30(2): 153–180. Carroll, Noël. 2014. Humour: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Salvatore, Marsha. J. 2021. Email Interview with Margherita Dore. Dore, Margherita. 2018. “Laughing at You or Laughing with You? Humour Negotiation and Inter-Cultural Stand-up Comedy”. In Tsakona, V. and Chovanec, J. (eds.), The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor in Everyday Encounters. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 105–126. Dore, Margherita. 2019. Humour in Audiovisual Translation. Theories and Applications. New York and London: Routledge. Dore, Margherita. 2022. Humour, language variation and self-translation in stand-up comedy. In Dore, M. (ed.) Humour in Self-Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 113–140. Double, Oliver. 2017. “Tragedy Plus Time: Transforming Life Experience into Stand-up Comedy”. New Theatre Quarterly 33(2): 143–155. Double, Oliver. 2020. Alternative Comedy: 1979 and the Reinvention of British Stand-Up. London: Bloomsbury. Fiadotava, Anastasya. 2020. “The Path of the Comedian Is always going to be a Lonely One”: Comedians’ Mediation between Family Humour and Public Performance”. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 14(2): 1–16. Hymes, Dell. 1975. “Breakthrough into Performance”. In Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth Goldstein (eds.), Folklore: Performance and Communication. The Hague: Mouton, 11–74. Howitt, Dennis and Owusu-Bempah, Kwame. 2005. “Race and Ethnicity in Popular Humour”. In Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering (eds.), Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 45–62. Lockyer, Sharon and Mayers, Lynn. 2011. “It’s about Expecting the Unexpected”: Live Stand-up Comedy from the Audiences’ Perspective”. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 8(2), 165–188. Mintz, Lawrence E. 1985. “Stand-up Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation”. American Quarterly 37(1): 71–80. Morreall, John. 1983. Taking Laughter Seriously, Albany: State University of New York Press. Nario-Redmond, Michelle R. 2019. Ableism. The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley- Blackwell. Quirk, Sophie. 2015. Why Stand-Up Comedy Matters. How Comedians Manipulate and Infuence. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Quirk, Sophie. 2018. The Politics of British Stand-Up Comedy. The New Alternative. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Rutter, Jason. 2001. “Rhetoric in Stand-up Comedy: Exploring Performer-Audience Interaction”. Stylistyka 10: 307–325. Sandahl, Carrie. 2003. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer? Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” GLQ 9 (1–2): 25–56. Scarpetta, Fabiola and Spagnolli, Anna. 2009. “The Interactional Context of Humor in Stand-Up Comedy”. Research on Language & Social Interaction 42(3): 210–230. Seewoester Cain, Sara. 2018. “Teasing as Audience Engagement: Setting up the Unexpected during Television Comedy Monologues”. In Villy Tsakona and Jan Chovanec (eds.), The Dynamics of Interactional Humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 127–154.

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Seirlis, Julia Katherine. 2011. “Laughing all the Way to Freedom? Contemporary Stand-up Comedy and Democracy in South Africa”. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 24(4): 513–530. Seizer. Susan. 2011. “On the Uses of Obscenity in Live Stand-Up Comedy”, Anthropological Quarterly 84(1): 209–34. Seizer, Susan. 2017. “Dialogic Catharsis in Stand-up Comedy: Stewart Huf Plays a Bigot”. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 30(2); 311–327. Sørensen, Majken Jul. 2016. Humour in Political Activism. Creative Nonviolent Resistance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Taher, Ali T., Musallam, Khaled. M and Cappellini, Domenica M. 2021. “βThalassemias”. The New England Journal of Medicine 384(8): 727–743. Takemoto, Tina. 1997. “Performativity and Diference: The Politics of Illness and Collaboration”. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 27(1): 7–22. Tsang, Wai King and Wong, Matilda. 2004. “Constructing a Shared Hong Kong Identity in Comic Discourse”. Discourse and Society 15(6): 767–785. Williams, Tennessee. 1947. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New American Library.

12 WHICH DIRECTION DO WE PUNCH? The Powers and Perils of Humour against the New Conspiracism Chris A. Kramer

I Laugh Because It Is Absurd There is irony, and perhaps some disappointment, in the possibility that it was a well-placed bit of humour that played a role in getting us to the miserable situation we are in today—there was a violent insurrection against the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, with threats of more to come, and as of this writing there are nearly one million dead in the United States alone due to COVID. Both of these debacles have been exacerbated, and one largely caused, by consistent propaganda peddled by the most powerful person in the world. A case can be made that Donald Trump decided to run for president shortly after being comedically humiliated by Seth Meyers and President Obama (who was born in the United States) at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011: “Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”1 It was, and still is, an absurd thought that such a man would ever run for president, and it invoked much laughter. The quip was written by comedian Jon Rineman who now deeply regrets what might be called a comedic backfre. Even if Trump is ofcially out of power, and even if he is severely sanctioned or imprisoned as a result of one of the multitude of current lawsuits against him,2 Trumpism in all of its absurdity will remain. As of this moment, there is still a regrettably large proportion 3 of Trump supporters who think he won the 2020 election and over 140 representatives who voted to overturn Biden’s manifestly fair victory, and they did this the very night of the Capitol coup in which they experienced frst-hand the whipped up rage of their own followers.4 In addition, the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) not only had Trump as the headliner, less than two months after the attack, but consisted of multiple panels on how the 2020 election was stolen, and zero on how to avoid another violent attack on the Capitol. Indeed, DOI: 10.4324/9781003352808-16

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some prominent politicians, such as Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, have, without irony, pushed the accusation that it was Antifa that perpetrated the coup and not MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters intent on “stopping the steal.” At a House hearing, Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia said that Jan. 6, was like a “normal tourist visit.”5 These beliefs are based on laughably false assertions,6 yet it is not clear what the role of humour should be in response to this tragedy of errors. Comedians and those in general who recognise the potency of socio-political humour are in a unique position today, unlike the period before the U.S. Civil War or even the stark divisions in 1968. Comedy has become intimately, and perhaps, for better or worse, irrevocably intertwined with our daily discourse and likely for similar reasons that mis- and dis-information spreads so quickly—the internet.7 It is not clear that there is more unhinged conspiracism than ever before, but it does appear to be more accessible, both for those who truly believe the absurdities and those who laugh at them. Perhaps there is a connection here; “I laugh because it is absurd” and Christian apologist Tertullian’s “I believe because it is absurd.” First, we need to analyse just what it is that might warrant comedic consciousness raising that should raise our heckles.

“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.” Voltaire8 Implied in Voltaire’s assertion is that there is a connection between truth and justice, or that ignorance, fawed epistemic webs, repugnant and absurd beliefs, are causally related to injustice.9 This view has its roots in Socrates’ famous line that “no one knowingly does evil.” A parallel can be found in the Buddha’s therapeutic metaphysical-epistemological-ethic, which diagnoses sufering as caused by foolish desires. But it is not ignorance alone that leads to atrocities. Were that the case, the world would be overrun by diminutive tyrants à la Lord of the Flies. In fact, ignorance can be a very useful state of being as long as one is self-aware. This is not a contradiction. Socratic wisdom is the recognition of one’s own ignorance on a given matter; Socrates knows when he does not know. Mark Twain warns us that “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know; it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so” (quoted in Hurley 109), anticipating the Dunning-Krueger efect. So, there is peril with people in power who profess knowledge, yet possess a paltry portion, not just with ignorance as such. What constitutes power is not obvious, but those with political clout, fnancial leverage, or the bully pulpit of social infuencers and talk-radio hosts, stand as examples in this case.10 Their feelings of certainty attained without having done the underlying epistemological labours, breeds unjust arrogance and it is contagious. In many cases, it is merely the assertion that they are certain, when in fact they know little to nothing of what they speak. They are bullshitters as we will see. They know how to tweak audiences’ emotions in a way that asks little of their intellect. To the extent that it does, the reasoning is extremely narrow in

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its scope, focused on rationalising the self-sealing coherence of alternate realities with no discernible concern for what might actually be true. It is a unique blend of motivated reasoning, a lack of interest in logic, and identity-sustaining sectarianism, that does not invoke, indeed it actively disengages, our truth-seeking thinking, that top-down, slow, conscious work toward fguring out how things are and how they should be. It can do more than propagate absurd beliefs; the faulty beliefs cause unjust actions in the name of justice, and this is a most dangerous coupling. The man who sincerely believed that Comet Pizza housed a sex-trafcking ring run by Hilary Clinton, genuinely felt he was going there, armed with an assault rife, to free the children. Many rioters who stormed the Capitol on the 6th truly accepted the deluge of lies that the election was stolen from them, and their righteous anger spilled into deed. What else could they do but fght for the country, since, they supposed, no one else would. Notice how a lack of sincerity and interest in what is true profered by those with infuence, can instil false, but sincere and deeply held beliefs in masses of people. Consequently, it is helpful to distinguish the mindsets and intentions of the purveyors of propagandistic conspiracy theories from those of the followers.11 This is diferent even from the conspiracies of the recent past, where intellectual efort is spent to connect the dots and “justify” the conclusion that we did not actually land on the moon, for example.12 Admittedly, claims like the above are extraordinary, and as Carl Sagan was wont to respond, they require extraordinary evidence. But what happens when none is forthcoming? More to the point of the next section, how do we respond when the purveyors of this sort of verbal refuse make no efort to defend their wild and dangerous accusations at all?

Bullshit, Propaganda, and the New Conspiracism First, let’s wade into some bullshit, and then see how it can seep into propaganda, and fnally land into the toilet of conspiracism.13 This will require a philosophical plumber of sorts. Thankfully, there is philosopher Harry Frankfurt. He argues that bullshit is a rhetorical device with the sole intention to persuade. To win. To defeat whatever political, ethical, philosophical foe one has. Rhetoric, used negatively here, includes methods of public speaking or writing that are practical for the user. It benefts them, their group, their party, their clan, or nation. It can do all this while its user remains blithely indiferent to reality. In fact that might be a precondition for bullshit. Consider Frankfurt’s example of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s displeasure with a friend of his who might have fallen prey to the thoughtless allure of bullshit: Wittgenstein devoted his philosophical energies largely to identifying and combating what he regarded as insidiously disruptive forms of “non-sense.” He was apparently like that in his personal life as well. This comes out in an anecdote related by Fania Pascal, who knew him in Cambridge in the

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1930s: I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.” (Frankfurt 24) One response to Wittgenstein’s response to Fania’s bullshit is to accuse Wittgenstein of being an asshole. “Take me seriously but not literally,” Fania might exclaim. But maybe being an asshole on occasion is necessary to ferret out bullshit, especially when it matters. Of course, this is a rather innocuous case that might reveal more about Wittgenstein’s orneriness than what bullshit is. Also, it’s trivially true, no one really knows what it feels like to be a dog run over by a car. But then why do we speak this way so often, with such little care? Wittgenstein is irate at his friend because her description is, as Frankfurt notes, “unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality. She does not even think she knows, except in the vaguest way, how a run-over dog feels. Her description of her own feeling is, accordingly, something that she is merely making up. She concocts it out of whole cloth; or, if she got it from someone else, she is repeating it quite mindlessly and without any regard for how things really are” (Frankfurt 29–30). In most cases, these phrasings, vignettes, or simple curly-cues of shitty word-salads are inherited—we “got them from someone else”—and it is this anonymisation of reality-indiferent talk that perpetuates an irresponsible, inauthentic, uncaring style of thinking that feeds into propaganda and the new conspiracism, which spreads like wildfre via unread (surely unresearched) blog posts, tweets, and Facebook memes and “news.” This is not a trivial point; the manner in which we speak afects, and is afected by, the way we think; “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” Orwell warns us (Orwell 6). Oddly, it is the liar who is closer to sincerity than the bullshitter, and it is the bullshitter who has joined ranks with new varieties of propaganda and conspiracism. The bullshit artist is quite adept at spinning phrases that require the bare minimum of thought while providing its user with some degree of sophistic success in fooling her audience that she knows what she is talking about, and might even actually care about it. Contrasting the bullshitter from the liar, Frankfurt purports: “But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilised in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, colour, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the ‘bullshit artist’” (Frankfurt 53). If you say something false, that should initially be deemed an unintentional mistake coming from someone who is genuinely interested in the truth. If you engage in spin, especially of the political sort, you are also presumably interested in the truth; just not all of it. You want your favoured candidate, for whom you are the spokesperson, to be looked upon favourably. So you might take something that they did indeed say, and attempt to dress it up, or, if there is no escaping the fact that your cherished politician

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just outright lied, you seek refuge in euphemism: “He or she spoke inelegantly. Inartfully.”14 Spin-doctors are extraordinarily adept at coining new terms and stipulating new meanings in order to evade a negative interpretation of their candidate, their party, or their worldview. But while this rhetorical tactic does not reach the level of bullshit-propaganda, or “shit-prop,” a variant strain of agitprop, it can provide the fertile ground for it. Special counsel to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway masterfully coined a new term, seemingly on the fy, to describe what all rational people listening would call a lie, “alternative facts.”15 This well-wrought bit of bullshit played a tremendous role in opening up new avenues toward a “posttruth” era in which only visceral appeals rather than reality-based facts dominate our discussions. Yet, Frankfurt informs us, when you lie, as when you make an honest mistake or even engage in spin, you are interested in the truth. In fact, you are supremely interested in the truth when you lie. It takes a lot of mental efort to consistently sustain a falsehood that you know ain’t so, because all the while you have to track what you take to be the truth, bury it, and on a second mental track, persist with the same made-up story that you believe is plain wrong. Telling the truth is easy: What happened? Oh, this happened. Just spit out what you immediately recall. This does not mean fguring out what is true is easy. But you cannot be so fippant with a lie. You need to know, or at least believe that you know, what the truth in question is, and then keep it hidden. This is not what is happening when one is steeped in shit-prop. For the well-versed bullshit artist, bullshitting is second nature—much easier even than telling the truth. It requires no real mental efort other than the recognition that the claim that they are making can help their cause, persuade a large enough segment of the populace, or win a debate. What is true? Don’t know. Don’t care. It takes too much time and efort to keep track of the truth. And what’s the point in doing all that work when the truth might be at odds with the position I happen to be defending? Frankfurt claims that “bullshit is a greater enemy to the truth than lies are” (61), because the bullshitter pays no attention whatsoever to the truth, while liars must. It is an easy transition into propaganda that is fuelled by truth-apathetic bullshit. When bullshit is enjoined with propaganda that seeks political-social ends, whatever artistry might have been present is replaced with brute repetition. “Truth” becomes tied to how often and by whom a proposition is posted, tweeted, retweeted, blogged, Instagrammed, etc. Signifcantly, propaganda does not require lying and it need not be false, nor even completely insincere. According to Jason Stanley, “propaganda depends for its efectiveness on the presence of fawed ideological belief,” but the propositions uttered by propagandists might actually be true. For example, the phrase “there are Muslims among us,” spoken at a place in which that claim is true, is “used to elicit fear of Muslims” (Stanley 2015, 43), so it is more complex than merely fnding falsehoods or lies. What matters is how the propagandistic rhetoric is employed. Hitler sincerely believed that Jews were a menace to the German nation.

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He can be wrong about the Jewish people, but that is quite diferent than saying he was lying about them. Hitler, through Joseph Goebbels, the “Reich Minister of Propaganda,” wore his anti-Semitic beliefs on his SS-emblazoned sleeves. This sort is rather easy to see. How do you know its propaganda? It came from the Ministry of Propaganda! But that was “old” propaganda. The new form found in nations that do not have such ministries helpfully labelled for us is harder to deal with: “The distinctive danger propaganda poses in liberal democracies is that it is not recognized as propaganda” (Stanley 2015, 47). This form of propaganda hides behind fowery nationalistic language that explicitly espouses democratic ideals, while in deed undermines those very values. Stanley defnes it this way, “Undermining Propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals” (Stanley 2015, 53–4). Put another way, “Propaganda in a democracy in fact often takes this form: speech that inhibits, rather than further, the ideals of public reason” (Stanley 2015, 93). An unjustifed set of beliefs, a fawed ideology, might have within it true claims, but this in no way constitutes knowledge, nor, importantly here, an interest in knowledge. The key point is that it is marked by a lack of sincerity in the search for truth: we sincerely want to save the children from sex-trafcking rings, say QAnon leaders, while providing no actionable information to help out with what is a very real problem. We sincerely want to ensure free and fair elections, say the propagandising politicians who assert, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen, even as some of them actually won on the very ticket they claim was fraudulent—only the Presidential bubbles were rigged? Under the pretence of a perceived injustice, these propagandists actually engage in behaviours and policy changes that will make voting more difcult thereby undermining democracy. When shit-prop fuses with the nefarious eforts of delegitimising democracy and undermining knowledge for personal gain, the miasmic mixture plants the seeds for a new conspiracism: “Conspiracy theory is not new, of course, but conspiracism today introduces something new—conspiracy without the theory. And the new conspiracism betrays a new destructive impulse: to delegitimate democracy” (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2).16 It largely succeeds in this to the extent that it undermines the various hitherto acceptable sources of information and knowledge; universities, peer review journals, edited journalism, science: The new conspiracism strikes at what we think of as truth and the grounds of truth. It strikes at what it means to know something. The new conspiracism seeks to replace evidence, argument, and shared grounds of understanding with convoluted conjurings and bare assertions. Among the threats to democracy, only the new conspiracism does double damage: delegitimation and disorientation … The new conspiracism is something different. There is no punctilious demand for proofs, no exhaustive amassing of evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of the

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operators plotting in the shadows. The new conspiracism dispenses with the burden of explanation. Instead, we have innuendo and verbal gesture: “A lot of people are saying” … Or we have bare assertion: “Rigged!”—a one-word exclamation that evokes fantastic schemes, sinister motives, and the awesome capacity to mobilise three million illegal voters to support Hillary Clinton for president. This is conspiracy without the theory…What validates the new conspiracism is not evidence but repetition. (Muirhead and Rosenblum 3, 9) What recourse is there against brute assertion with no intent to provide support? Paraphrasing Christopher Hitchens, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” While this principle might be useful for normal practices of rational exchange of ideas, it is otiose in response to the new “bullpropashitacism.”17 Ignoring this virulent epistemic strain will not make it miraculously go away.

“The truth will out”? This idea, whether espoused in the Bible, Mark Twain, or Shakespeare,18 has become a truism; we have all heard something like it so many times that it is just obviously true. A related slogan: “It’s funny ‘cause it’s true,” or “There’s truth in comedy,” also sounds just obvious. We will address the latter clichés in section VII. But even if the proposition “The truth will out” is true, it matters when it will out! No one today benefts from the fact that historians hundreds of years from now confrm that the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol was in fact perpetrated by Trump supporters and not Antifa. Our epistemic web of beliefs today matters.19 It has likely always been the case that sensational, extreme, absurd, false stories spread very quickly, like bullshit-infused gossip, while the truth, like Aesop’s tortoise, lags behind, eventually overtaking the hare. However, our “post-truth”20 reality might imply we can no longer rely on our clichés prophesying the inevitability of truth and justice. In the original fable, the hare, here representing fantastical falsehood, has a signifcant advantage over the lumbering, tortoise, here representing tarrying truth. Much like fake news, the purveyors of it know its advantages, and mock those who are concerned about reality,21 running circles around the truth-laden tortoise. But recall, it was the torturously slow, yet bold, tortoise who confronted the hare with the challenge to race in the frst place; the arrogant hare responds with ridiculing laughter. If Twain is correct, that “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand,”22 what can the reality-based contingent do? Signifcantly, the laughter of the hare aroused the attention of otherwise disinterested bystanders. We have something similar today, but the audiences now cannot aford to pretend they are innocent, passive members of a crowd. No, they are participants with much to lose; they’ve got a tortoise in this fght.

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We need to make the truth more interesting without falling into the abyss of conspiratorial bullshit. Indeed, there can be no bullshit in truth-telling with the goal of justice, even if we might fnd useful analogies with a well-wrought tale.23 Now, truth needs a boost, a faster and more agile vehicle, but without compromising epistemic and moral virtues (more on these below). We are told that “slow and steady wins the race,” but as with any well-worn slogan, we must be vigilant and not assume it’s true and that the conspiratorial bullshit artists will nap in their hammocks, like that foolish hare, and allow the truth to catch up. The global phalanx of fake-news peddlers, conspiracy theorists, bullshitters, and propagandists have immediate and far-reaching access to masses of people at any time, so in a very real way, the sun never sets on this new empire of fabrications. This means that reliance on moralising allegories of the past, or the traditional modes of resistance against democracy-delegitimising propaganda, might be naive. Before we can address a new mode of comedic resistance, we need to frst establish that humour should be used at all against the new amalgamation I have called—and the neologism is growing on me—“propashitaspiracism.”

“Stand Back and Stand By” or Stand-Up and “Fight Like Hell”?24 The host of Real Time, comedian Bill Maher, has repeatedly asserted that it is fne to hate Trump, but you cannot hate Trump supporters. Is there a corollary that you can laugh at Trump, but not at his supporters? Yes (kind of ). It’s complex. Comedians who are interested in truth and justice should laugh at people like Trump when they make comments like those addressed in sections I-III above. Straightforward logic, reason, appeals to evidence have not been terribly successful in highlighting the propaganda and then convincing people that it is propaganda; recall the analysis from Stanley on how propaganda hides in democratic nations. Normally, it is sound advice to suggest we do not laugh at a person, but instead at their behaviour, just as you would caution against attacking a person directly rather than their arguments—the logical/comedic variant of “hate the sin love the sinner” might be “laugh at/rebut the fallacy, respect the fallacy-maker.” This is to avoid the ad hominem fallacy. But in this case, as with people like the arch-conspiracist Alex Jones, the powerful propashitaspiracists’ character is at issue, thus it should be the focus of our attention. They are not arriving at a fawed ideological set of beliefs accidentally on their epistemic journey to truth and justice. Their fundamental character faw is their lack of certain virtues, and in their place are the vices of arrogance, laziness, closed-mindedness, and most importantly for our discussion, lack of sincere concern for truth and reality. Thus, truth and justice are irrelevant to them, making their character ripe for critique. Calling out only their logical and/ or epistemic faws is as exhausting as it is inefective; you will never complete the task and it fails to get at a root cause.25 Regarding its inefcacy, it is analogous to chastising a child who cheats in chess only to fnd out she thought the game was checkers, and doesn’t even know, nor care about, the rules of chess.

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While the character of the individual is at issue in this case, the laughter does not have to be derisive nor hateful to achieve the goal of subverting the dominant propashitaspiracism narrative. In fact, when ridicule is the main mechanism, there is less humour than mere mockery, and rather than successful satire, the result is more like the alt-right’s use of “humour.” The scare quotes imply it likely does not even rise to that level; rather, it is simply an expression of felt superiority, and rarely if ever does that attitude crack open others, much less the individual laugher, to see where they have made an epistemic mistake.26 If wit is wielded only as a brute weapon, those in power receiving the brunt of it can absorb the barbs and use them to reinvent themselves as the victims. There is no evidence that humour of any sort really makes much of a diference with respect to changing the minds or attitudes of powerful propashitaspiracists. It’s true, Trump is extraordinarily sensitive to laughter at his expense, but in the four years of his presidency, no comedic jab had a discernible infuence on his attitude or action. In addition, third-party audiences sympathetic to folks like Trump, those to (and for) whom the subversive comedy should be directed, will likely brush it of as a purely partisan attack on their own identities. If humour is to succeed against the propagandising Trumps of the world, it has to reveal the diferences, and there are lots of them, between him and those who follow him. The central distinction here is the gaping chasm between the sincerity of the adherents and the bullshit of the Trumps. What about the supporters of Trump-like propashitaspiracists? It is true, there are potentially negative consequences of laughing at such folks, QAnoners, for example. In an article published in Wired, Whitney Phillips argues that it is counterproductive in a practical sense to direct laughter at conspiracy theorists, but not immoral: “Rather, it’s a warning that jokes about conspiracy theories are strategically inefective. In fact, they’re likely to backfre and dump even more refuse into the already toxic political waters. One problem is that making fun of something, spreads that thing just as quickly as sharing it sincerely would.”27 This sounds correct; assuming the jokes are reactionary, overly broad in scope, demeaning in intent and in consequence, meant only as a blunt instrument of “making fun of ” its target. But that does not exhaust the possible forms of humour. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.” This was the remark made by Edgar Maddison Welch upon realising that Comet Ping Pong did not actually house a child sex-trafcking ring in its basement; the pizzeria does not even have a basement. His reaction is kind of amusing, but note, Welch is not like those who fed him the propashitaspiracism: “Welch seems to have sincerely believed that children were being held at Comet Ping Pong. His family and friends wrote letters to the judge on his behalf, describing him as a dedicated father, a devout Christian, and a man who went out of his way to care for others” (LaFrance 2020). Is it problematic and inefective to laugh at such a person? Probably. What about his beliefs and actions, and how can those targets of our laughter be properly distinguished from the mere mockery of the man? If they cannot, then it is likely truth and justice-conscious comedians will need to narrow their targets considerably

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or fnd their humour only enjoyed by a very thin slice of the populace and with no real causal efcacy in the drive toward consciousness raising, much less resistance to, dangerous propashitaspiracism.

Classic Conspiracism and Subversive Comedy Traditional propaganda and conspiracy theories, like those perpetrated by the Nazis against Jewish people, were often met with humour, and in some cases, with demonstrable success. Philosopher John Morreall reminds us that it was the cabaret entertainers and cartoonists who frst recognised and raised awareness of the dangers of the rise of Hitler. This subversive humour became an actual mode of resistance: “This critical spirit worked against the Nazi propaganda machine. Research on brainwashing, indeed, has shown that wisecracking humour may be the single most efective way to block indoctrination … Because humour interfered with their propaganda and revealed the awful truth about the Nazis, they were quite afraid of it,” going so far as to promulgate laws in which “circulating and listening to anti-Nazi jokes were acts of treason” (Morreall 120–121). That is not the situation we are in today, but it is informative to see its efectiveness. First, notice how comedy and comedians can embody much needed epistemic virtues. The following is largely from Morreall’s (2009, 126–129) comparisons between what I would name the overlapping virtues of philosophical and humorous attitudes: (1) ideally both engage in and nurture forms of conversation that rely upon interaction between/among interlocutors. (2) Both are often concerned with everyday banalities that the majority of the populace usually ignores, until they see the oddities for what they are by being confronted with an amusing bit that might spread quickly online. (3) Both require and foster the appropriate emotional and cognitive distance from the object of laughter/study such that one is interested enough in the matter emotionally to be able to think about it and want to do so, but not too close to it that emotions override one’s cognitive capacities.28 (4) Both encourage that we look at the world and our place in it from novel perspectives. (5) Both humourists and philosophers are critical thinkers open to analysing common assumptions as they encourage refection: “A standard procedure in both comedy and philosophy is to bring up a widely accepted idea and ask three C questions: Is it clear—what exactly are those who believe this saying? Is it coherent—do its parts ft with each other and with other ideas of the people who hold it and is it credible—do we have good reasons to accept it? Comedy and philosophy thrive on ‘No’ answers to these questions—on confusion, fallacies, and other incongruities in the way people think, speak, and write” (Morreall 2009, 128). Finally, “comedians and philosophers often think in counterfactuals, mentally manipulating possibilities as easily as most people think about realities. Thought experiments have been standard in comedy and philosophy since ancient Athens” (Morreall 2009, 128). These are all relevant and useful in responding to propaganda and conspiracism. What, if anything, needs to be added to show that comedy has a role in resisting the current attacks on democracy and knowledge?

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Novel Forms of Propaganda and Conspiracism Call for New Modes of Resistance With new strains of a virus, it is often necessary to develop updated forms of prognoses and inoculation. This is the case with the current socio-political mutation now known by everyone as propashitaspiracism.29 Truth can be hidden in a number of ways and information necessary to adjudicate fact from fction can be manipulated even by unwitting conspirators. This should elicit cautiousness in those who view humour as a means to truth. Comedy is not the ideal means to track The Truth, but it can be instrumentally valuable in uncovering error, and if done well, it can motivate others to not only see diferently, but more broadly, with openness and even humility. In philosophy, epistemology in particular, humility can be found in fallibilism. One of the most enduring representations of political and religious fallibilism can be found in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. He supports a robust freedom of thought in speech and writing, especially in defence of what prima facie appears to be patent nonsense; if the thoughts counter to our worldview are prohibited, then we sufer because our views become “dead” and “dogmatic.”30 Mill is concerned, perhaps to a fault, that we place too much stock in what we take to be the truth, and too content when we think we possess it. The phrase “Truth will out” does not have to refer to Truth in an absolute sense, 31 and Mill harangues those who think otherwise: [T]he dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes… It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufcient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. (Mill On Liberty 28–29) Being laughed at can feel like being “persecuted,” especially if one senses their very identity is threatened (see Stanley 186). But even if an extreme view is presupposed, that comedy is necessarily sectarian where there is in-group solidaric laughter at an out-group other, comedy can still play a positive role in what can be called “epistemic repair” that need not undermine another’s sense of self. But there are plenty of psychological biases that get in our way toward this goal. Mill is prescient with his understanding of what could now be called motivated reasoning, in which one believes something that might otherwise sound ludicrous, but because it coheres well with how we wish the world to be, such doubts and dissonance are ignored or actively stifed, as they are deemed to confict with who we are or wish to be. Consumers of propashitaspiracism are ignorant, to be sure, and much of their epistemic lacunae are exacerbated by the insincere propashitaspiracists, but in many cases, it is appropriate to diagnose it

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as an “aggressive ignorance” as philosopher José Medina calls it, for which these true believers are culpable, especially if this wilful unknowing leads to action. Philosopher Lewis Gordon calls this mindset “epistemic closure” in the context of racism and stereotyping (these two are not unrelated to much of the new conspiracism today): “In the act of epistemic closure, one ends a process of inquiry. In efect, it is the judgement ‘say no more’… In contrast, epistemological openness is the judgement ‘there is always more to be known’” (Gordon 2000, 88). It is in this way the consumers of propashitaspiracism are not beyond some sort of moral sanction for maintaining absurd beliefs and fuelling the fres for the possibility of harm. Legal options for remediating these beliefs, as Mill exclaims, are not desirable, nor are the traditional purely logical responses: “The distinctive and controversial property of ideological belief [connected with identity] is its resistance to rational revision” (Stanley 187). But a social sanction through epistemically open humourists has appeal. Referencing Mill, the truth and justice comedians have the capacity to infict “social penalties” upon the sincere, but sorely mistaken, followers of QAnon-sense. How this is done matters especially with respect to concerns with self-identifcation: “Comedy can create a new kind of community, one based not on homogeneity or rigid identities but rather on a shared dislocation out of customary lines of identity” (Willett and Willett 36). Admittedly, they are arguing from a feminist-comedic standpoint primarily and how such fumerists can speak truth to power, but their analyses of the potential for parrhesiastic pugilism can be applied here: This laughter ensues as they confront the diversity of unjust sufering with the pleasures of an unexpected sociability. Laughter lowers defenses and crosses enemy lines because it does not rely on a common identity or collective pain to generate that wave of sociability…. Doing mischief in the age of misinformation, the comedian riddles mockery with the empathic humor … The aim is not to give in to fear or to give anxiety free rein, but to redirect them to the facts. Against media bubbles and the echo chambers of friends liking friends, truth-teller comedians strip away the facade…. (Willett and Willett 141) While I think the efcacy of comedy is exaggerated a bit here, the stage is set for the possibility of epistemic repair.

Comedic Virtues in Response to Propashitaspiracism Humour devoid of empathy used as resistance, even against the most vile propashitaspiracism, is little more than a crude weapon that accosts its target’s socio-political or even religious centre, confuses rather than cajoles one to reconsider their convictions, and is politically inefcacious. Relatedly, humour sans humility almost inevitably veers toward the vices of the oppressors.32 Borrowing

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from Medina’s contrast between the epistemic virtues of the oppressed and the vices of the privileged, I argue that humourists with the motivation to seek truth and justice can cultivate in others a way of seeing that is close to how oppressed folk have learned to see out of the necessity for survival. This expanded mode of perceiving is essential for comedic resistance to absurdities spewing forth from positions of power, but, signifcant here, especially for sustaining an openness and humility that can be directed toward those who have fallen for the propashitaspiracism and who, based on all appearances, seem to be genuinely concerned about democracy and freedom, even if the people they are listening to manifestly do not. Many of the propagators spreading the propashitaspiracism are not in possession of power, but have gone too far down the rapid rabbit hole which has been made more inviting during the pandemic—unemployed with a lot of extra time on their hands and nowhere to go, seeking defnitive answers to why we are in this situation. This does not make them above reproach, it just matters how we approach the reproaching. Consider the “three epistemic virtues: humility, curiosity/diligence, and open mindedness. As they appear among the oppressed, these epistemic virtues are the mirror-image of the epistemic vices of the privileged (arrogance, laziness, and closed-mindedness)” (Medina 43). The epistemic virtues provide the sort of playful, open attitude comedians would need to adopt against the aggressive and arrogant ignorance of the most recent manifestations of propashitaspiracism, especially when the fawed ideological beliefs are posted and repeated by those in positions of power, and thus privilege: “In the same way that the three vices of privileged subjects converged in what I called active ignorance, the three virtues of oppressed subjects also have a converging point: a special kind of lucidity, subversive lucidity, which can take diferent forms, including critical and experiential lucidity” (Medina 45, my italics). It is imperative that comedians avoid hyper-partisan thinking and presumptions of being on top, epistemically or politically, of those to whom their humour is directed. This is easier said than done, as humility is not typically the frst thing that comes to mind with humour.33 The overriding theme is Medina’s “subversive lucidity” as necessary to respond to propashitaspiracism. The following are interrelated proposals for how comedians/humourists might achieve this. 1 The humour ought to be used to “repair” fawed beliefs, and much less so as an assault. Melding logical virtues with comedic ones, we can call attention to erroneous beliefs without going to war. It is a common confusion, one perpetuated in professional philosophical circles, that there is an underlying determining metaphor, “argument is war.” This creates an adversarial relationship between anyone who engages in argumentation (Lakof and Johnson Ch. 1, 1980). This umbrella metaphor prohibits alternative renderings of “argument” that can achieve similar goals, such as striving for justifcation of beliefs, but without presuming our interlocutors are enemies. An ideal is to amend this metaphor, and the concomitant ones that follow from it, like

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2

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“attack his position,” to something more amenable to conversation, or enlightening interactions, where the other would want to have the weaknesses in their web of beliefs exposed so that they can fx them and be better for it.34 Likewise, humourists can use their openness and critical refection to playfully expose errors in others’ beliefs (and their own), without belittling or crushing their “opponents” or even viewing them as such. Not all comedy has to “kill” in order to succeed. Similar to an ideal philosophical attitude, the comedic attitude should exemplify and cultivate in others, “epistemic openness.” Extending the virtues of epistemic openness, Gordon notes: “Combined, one receives ‘good’ data, ‘solid’ data, ‘rigorously acquired’ data, but never complete data. It is by staying attuned to the incompleteness of all data with regard to human beings that one makes the approach humanistic. It is a method that reveals that when it comes to human beings there will always be more to learn, and hence, more to research” (Gordon 93). Another way of framing this is with Millsian fallibilism, humility without self-deprecation. This attitude reveals to others that searching for the truth matters but without either presuming one has it already nor that absurd beliefs must be granted equal consideration—just some. The humour should be directed at ideas not the people pushing them. This is not simply to say we should only laugh with rather than at others, as if we wholeheartedly agree with them—we do not! In fact, the laughter is a form of social correction, but not in Henri Bergson’s sense of status-quo supporting humour.35 It is not to laugh of or away our genuine concerns, nor to laugh around them, though that is closer to the mark. The humourist must be able to distinguish between the vicious characters of those pushing propashitaspiracism from the victims of it, even as the latter sincerely hold and spread those ideas. That behaviour must be addressed and in a manner that is not perceived (because it is not intended) to undermine the believers’ sense of self. Subversive humourists ought to invoke a collaborative attitude. Comedy is already the most collaborative art form, requiring audiences to do more work than in any other form just to understand what is being presented, and then enjoyed. But, this fact does not diminish the worry about in-group thinking in comedy. It is far easier to have an audience of like-minded folks fll in the purposely omitted material in a joke, thus, we need something like the solidaric empathy of the sort proposed by (Willett and Willett) that simultaneously calls out the fawed beliefs and reveals a common interest in sincerely striving for truth and justice. This takes us to the last interconnected virtue. Expanding on Medina’s call for diligent curiosity, I would embed sincere interest in truth and justice. Comedy requires some degree of shared background expectations and experience. If comedic resistance against propashitaspiracism is to have any success, the truth and justice-seeking humourists must appeal to the common ground of sincerity in maintaining underlying

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shared values. Genuine curiosity can be seen in many of those who have followed the “crumbs’ dropped by the anonymous Q; they innocently proclaim to be following the evidence, “thinking for themselves,” “doing their own research,” “questioning authority.” These are all the right sorts of things to say when hoping to appear objective and a critical thinker interested in truth; indeed, it sounds a bit like Socrates. Let’s be clear—Socrates they are not. Some of them are simply lying; they are not genuinely interested in truth and justice and are fully aware QAnon has nothing helpful to ofer; they are beneftting from the chaos like price-gougers during a hurricane. But unless it is clear how we can delineate the sincere from the duplicitous, as we can with the Trumps, the charitable and humble approach is to give them the beneft of the doubt. We need not go as far as Mill in this, but we can show we are interested in the same goals as they are, while revealing the fawed means they have used to get there. Recall from section II, saying you are investigating and “connecting the dots” is quite diferent than actually doing that, and it is instructive to consider how Socrates, for example, addressed those who claimed to know and to have done the laborious intellectual tasks in uncovering truth. He asked all the right questions (we call it Socratic Method today) from a place of authenticity and admitted ignorance. Granted, he was humorously ironic and frankly arrogant on many occasions where he claimed to know less than his interlocutors, when he surely knew more, and he knew that he did, but this is quite diferent than assuming he has THE correct answer. He did not attack those who made logical or defnitional errors, he simply helped navigate them toward recognising where they have contradicted themselves. This is both a philosophical and comedic ideal but without the arrogance. Morreall’s description of the three C’s is useful here. There can be foolishness among the sincere, but if they are genuinely without pretence, they would wish to be aided in their discoveries. This implication should be highlighted by any socially conscious comedian even in the act of attempting epistemic repair via humour. No one really wants to be wrong, especially if their errors lead to harm. The man who was arrested after attempting to free the children from Comet Ping Pong did ofer a sincere apology, but he did not make it clear he has disavowed QAnon-type beliefs as such. Apparently, we cannot follow Mill here and assume a “legal sanction” might sufce to halt the propagation of absurdities. Hence, I advocate for a nuanced social sanction through comedy. Humour straddles the line between pure emotional appeals and pure reason, without eschewing either. This enables humourists to engage others where they are motivated (their emotions) but with critical refection. It has been a tool in the resistors’ arsenal for centuries in the fght against oppression and the bullshit and propaganda that is used to sustain injustice. Our current strain of propashitaspiracism is diferent, but not so much so that comedy has no role in response to it. This is not a missive imploring those with the facts and the funny to “fght fre with fre,” or it is not entirely that. The fres set by arsonists must

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be distinguished from those set with intention and care to alleviate the damage caused by runaway blazes. We should also, believe it or not, diferentiate the controlled burns initiated by fre departments from those malicious infernos set by space lasers fred by devious Jewish cabals.36 Yes, that has to be said. And no, logical argument as a means of rebuttal to such biblically sized absurdities will not, by itself, adequately counter it.

Notes 1 Was his joke the reason Trump ran for president? Some say so, and it torments him—The Boston Globe. Accessed 16 January 2021. This chapter will be quite abstract, analysing specifc moral and epistemological concepts at the intersections of politics and humour, rather than focusing on any particular comedian’s work. 2 Report: Trump Is Terrifed About Going to Prison After Losing the Election, as He Should Be | Vanity Fair. Accessed 23 November 2020. 3 Trump’s Ideas Flourish Among State and Local Republicans—The New York Times (nytimes. com). Accessed 13 December 2020. 4 Trump is not the cause of this conspiratorial theorising, but he is the most prominent and consequential sounding board for it. He has hoisted the likes of Alex Jones out of the repugnant gutter and mainstreamed his primarily wealth-generating propaganda, and worse, he has provided QAnon folks with a messianic fgure (that Trump meets that criteria of a holy-warrior seeking justice might make us grin). They still revere Trump even as the prophesying Q, the putative high-level government insider who dribbles out “crumbs” or clues about how Trump will “save the children” from the Satanic sex-slave ring run by Democrats, has so far been proven wrong about almost all predictions. The goal posts are just moved: Trump will really be inaugurated on March Fourth. When that did not happen, Trump is really behind the scenes, executing the enemies of the state, we just are not shown this in mainstream media. Etc. 5 See Two former Trump ofcials testify over January 6 Capitol riot | khou.com. Accessed 5 January, 2022. 6 Trump’s failed eforts to overturn the election by the numbers (usatoday.com). Accessed 2 January 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/20/f bi-evidence-capitolinsurrection-plan-460836. Accessed 2 March 2021. 7 This is not to say there was no conspiracy theorising prior to the internet; rather, the internet provides a much faster medium through which lies, mis- and dis-information spread. As I use the term, an example of misinformation would be a reporter unintentionally making a factual mistake. Subsequent admission of the error and the sincere attempt to correct the record helps to distinguish it from dis-information. The latter is akin to some kinds of propaganda or intentionally false information with the malicious goal to deceive. There is an interesting story that Stalin coined the term “disinformation” but gave it a faux French etymology, Désinformation, to falsely associate the term and concomitant activities with Western origins. That sounds about right; much like the term “neologism”, it does what it says, or to give it a cliché that actually makes sense here—and ONLY in this case!— it is what it is, the moment it’s born. Importantly, comedians are prone toward the former, even though they intentionally make factually incorrect assertions at times, the misinformation, some like Jon Stewart even calling it “fake news”, is not malicious, and in fact, can be used to combat knowledge-destroying propaganda and conspiracy theories. 8 Well, Voltaire certainly had a knack for turns of phrase that succinctly encapsulate an idea, even if he did not put it in exactly those words, see Voltaire on Capitol Hill: ‘Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities’ | Voltaire Foundation: Welcome - University of Oxford. Accessed 20 January 2021. 9 Throughout the chapter I will reference “truth and justice-conscious comedians”, and “we”, in response to propagandising bullshit and conspiracism. I am surely begging

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some questions here with presupposing who qualifes for the former and who gets included in the latter. It is one of my hopes that the circle of the “we” expands rather than contracts through a narrowly tailored comedic resistance. For an argument from phenomenology on expanding the “we” through empathy and laughter, see Kramer (2012). For a clear and concise analysis of the problems of power and punching in comedy, see Julin (2021). For a thorough introduction to QAnon and the “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory, see LaFrance (2020). Granted, it did lead one intrepid conspiracy theorist to directly confront Buzz Aldrin (who, according to the “ofcial story” actually landed on the moon), and attempt to enlighten him about the moon-landing hoax, while calling Aldrin “a coward, and a liar and [for some reason] a thief ” for refraining from swearing on the Bible that he landed on the moon, see Swear on the bible you walked on the Moon—Buzz Aldrin punches guy—YouTube. Accessed 2 March 2021. This in turn led to what I might consider a just response from Aldrin: he punched the man in the face. There is only so much one can take and only so much one can do in response to such insistent and incessant absurdity. However, as I will argue below, comedy might provide a more reasonable, and emotionally intelligent punch. Borrowing from a t-shirt I once saw on sarcasm, “subversive humour is punching a person in the face, with words.” I will spend the most time on bullshit as I think it is fundamental to the new brands of propaganda and conspiracism and will help inform what a comedic response to it should look like. Spellcheck informs me this is not a word. https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/conway-press-secretary-gavealternative-facts-860142147643. Accessed 25 October 2019. Note that Chuck Todd audibly laughs upon hearing her defend the notion that Trump’s Inauguration audience might have been larger than Obama’s by way of undermining our ability to ever get accurate data regarding quantifying crowd sizes. This employment of strategic scepticism just to save face for a lie about a rather trivial point, is indeed worthy of laughter. But it matters how we do it. Quassim (Ch. 1, 2019) argues that the demarcation line between what I have been calling the classic conspiracy theories that may or may not be true, and the new brand of conspiracism without any theory is that the latter is politically motivated in some fashion—it is a form of propaganda and it is wholly speculative, ofering no means to connect any actual dots or publicly available data that can be found in actual conspiracies like the NSA spying on citizens or the vile Tuskegee syphilis examples. Note that no genuine conspiracy has ever been unearthed by conspiracy theorists; rather, it is through more traditional means such as investigative journalism and/or whistle-blowers. For more on this, see Räikkä (2018). “Propashitaspiracism”? Coining new terms is hard. If you question the origin of a well-known saying, guess one of those three, in this case it’s the last one: Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. But there are similar phrasings in scripture. It is amazing how some incredible beliefs can persist. Consider the putative vegetable lamb: How could it happen that, for centuries, European scholars could assert—with apparent certainty and seriousness—that lambs grew on trees? How could a belief with no supporting evidence, a belief that should have appeared—given all available experience concerning both plants and animals, and, indeed, regular exposure to lambs—simply absurd, nonetheless persist for centuries? (O’Connor and Weatherall 2)

That’s funny. And not unrelated to our concerns here. 20 Nicole Cooke (2017) does a good job describing this epistemic state early on from a library science perspective.

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21 See Greene (34-8) for an enlightening, and disheartening, look into the alt-right’s use of irony and humour to attract new acolytes, but mostly to pester and troll “normies.” Their made-up stories mixed with jokes at the “snowfake” left, spread rapidly; far too quickly to be fact-checked and refuted. 22 It’s Twain: The Mysterious Stranger. If true, what flls the void created by laughter at propagandistic conspiracy theorists? It is important to note that the phrase originated in the young Satan, and such a being is less interested in flling any voids with truth. We need humour to do more than bring people together (which at the same time cordons of others), and we need more than the wit herself to succeed in using humour for self-examination. Those who need to be apprised of the truth AND act on that recognition, should be the targets of anti-propaganda humour. 23 There can be propaganda though, if done right. See Kramer (2021) on Dave Chappelle’s Positive Propaganda. 24 These are both infamous lines spoken by Trump. The frst was when he was asked whether he would condemn racist groups like the Proud Boys. See Proud Boys celebrate after Trump’s debate callout (nbcnews.com). Accessed 8 March 2021. The second was during his fery speech on January 6th, leading up to the Capitol attack: Transcript of Trump’s Speech at Rally Before US Capitol Riot | Political News | US News. Accessed 9 March 2021. 25 The New York Times attempted to keep tabs on just the number of ad hominems Trump committed. It appears they gave up around May 2019: https://www.nytimes. com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html. Accessed 10 March 2021. 26 For an analysis of subversive humour against oppression, see Kramer (2020). The tactics suggested there are similar to what I am proposing in this chapter, but with propashitaspiracism there are important subtleties that have to be taken into consideration. 27 See https://www.wired.com/story/please-please-please-dont-mock-conspiracytheories/. Accessed 15 February 2021. There is the additional concern that with a humorous or ironic rebuttal that relies on parody, for example, especially when presented online, it is hard to distinguish pure trolling from a sincere, but humorous, critique. This is a variant of Poe’s Law: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist [for example] in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article” (see Greene). Related to QAnon: “An old Sarah Silverman–Patton Oswalt sketch about child abduction, for instance, was recently passed around as a horrifyingly frank document of Hollywood complicity” The 2020 Congressional Candidates Who Support QAnon (nymag.com). Accessed 11 March 2021. 28 I have amended this point considerably. I disagree with Morreall on his view that a humorous attitude must be one that is “practically disengaged” (Morreall 2009, Ch. 2). There is no space to present that case here, but see Kramer (2015; 2020) for the arguments. 29 If I use it enough, perhaps the verbal contagion will ensue. 30 If anything, the intellectual exercise benefts us in the way some aspects of conspiracy theorising can—indeed, there are actual conspiracy theories in which the U.S. government has engaged in a cover-up. See Räikkä (2018) for examples and the complexities in demarcating conspiratorial thinking from critical thinking. 31 For an amusing evisceration of this idea related to comedy, see Sills (2021). She rightly clarifes that jokes do not provide us with “absolute Truth.” Happily, such an ideal is not necessary with the humour sought out here. 32 There is quite a bit of research on the efectiveness, or lack, of directly confronting others’ social, religious, and especially political views. For recent philosophical approaches similar to the one advocated in this chapter, see Stanley (2015), Quassim (2019), and Anderson (2021), all of whom make reference to the concern that to aggressively argue against another’s socio-political view, especially if it is steeped in conspiracism, will likely only be perceived as an attack on one’s identity.

Humour against the New Conspiracism

253

33 A critique against Morreall’s advocacy of a sense of humour is that he assumes an overly individualistic account as it ignores the signifcance of humour as a social act that cannot be detached from the asymmetrical power dynamics of in-group/ out-group interaction. Philosopher Jean Harvey views his “assessment of the value of humour strictly from ‘the winners’ circle’” (Harvey 1999, 7). While a number of the people arrested after the 6th riot, e.g., are relatively successful professionals, from business owners to teachers, and there are at least two members of Congress who have in the very recent past, and likely still do, support QAnon nonsense (Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene), this is not necessarily representative of the demographics of such believers. The power relations vis-à-vis propashitaspiracists and the consumers of it makes this very complex because the latter can be found all along the political demographic spectrum, though of course, the majority who think the 2020 election was rigged are Trump-Republicans, “Trumplicans” as they have been monikered. 34 For a brand new metaphor, see Kramer (forthcoming): argument as civical engineering. This notion connects the dual meanings of “civic” and “civil” fostering a more collaborative conception of argumentation. 35 Although Bergson does claim that the object of laughter is always rigidity (inelasticity) in thought or action, he adds the following problematic assertions: “Laughter must be something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE. By the fear which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity…” (Bergson 18). In the same text, he claims that “Each member must be ever attentive to his social surroundings; he must model himself on his environment; in short, he must avoid shutting himself up in his own peculiar character as a philosopher in his ivory tower. Therefore society holds suspended over each individual member, if not the threat of correction, at all events the prospect of a snubbing, which, although it is slight, is none the less dreaded. Such must be the function of laughter. Always rather humiliating for the one against whom it is directed, laughter is, really and truly, a kind of social ‘ragging.’… The truth is, the comic character may, strictly speaking, be quite in accord with stern morality. All it has to do is to bring itself into accord with society” (Bergson 65–66). He continues, “Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness” (Bergson 91). 36 See Bruce Y Lee’s “Did Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Blame A ‘Space Laser’ For Wildfres? Here’s The Response.” (Jan. 20, 2021). Did Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Blame A ‘Space Laser’ For Wildfres? Here’s The Response (forbes.com) Accessed 21 April 2021.

Works Cited Anderson, Elizabeth. “Talking to the Other Side.” Interview on The Philosopher and the News, Elizabeth Anderson & Talking to the Other Side (buzzsprout.com), Accessed 20 April 2021. Bergson, Henri. “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.” In The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, edited by John Morreall, New York, Suny, 1987, pp. 117–126. Cassam, Quassim. Conspiracy Theories. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2019. Cooke, Nicole A. “Posttruth, Truthiness, and Alternative Facts: Information Behavior and Critical Information Consumption for a New Age.” Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, vol. 87, no. 3, 2017, pp. 211–221. Gordon, Lewis. Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought. New York, Routledge, 2000. Greene, Viveca, E. “‘Deplorable’ Satire: Alt-Right Memes, White Genocide Tweets, and Redpilling Normies.” Studies in American Humor, Ser. 4, vol. 5, no. 1, 2019, pp. 31–69.

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Harvey, Jean. Civilized Oppression. Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefeld Press, 1999. Hurley, Matthew, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams. Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2011. Julin, Grant. “What’s the Punch Line”: Punching Up and Down in the Comic Thunderdome.” In It’s Funny Cause It’s True: The Lighthearted Philosopher’s Society Introduction to Philosophy through Humor, edited by Jennifer Marra Henrigillis and Steven Gimbel, Lighthearted Open Access, 2021, pp. 166–181. Kramer, Chris A. “Argumentation, Metaphor, Simile, and Analogy: It’s like Something Else.” Inquiry: Critical Thinking across the Disciplines. Forthcoming. Kramer, Chris A. “Dave Chappelle’s Positive Propaganda.” In Dave Chappelle and Philosophy, edited by Mark Ralkowski, Chicago: Open Universe, 2021. Kramer, Chris A. “Subversive Humor as Art and the Art of Subversive Humor.” The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, pp. 153–179. Kramer, Chris A. “Incongruity and Seriousness.” Florida Philosophical Review Special Issue: “Philosophy of Humor and Humorous Philosophy, vol. XV, no. 1, Winter 2015, pp. 1–18. Kramer, Chris A. “As If: Connecting Phenomenology, Mirror Neurons, Empathy, and Laughter.” PhaenEx, vol. 7, no. 1, Spring/Summer 2012, pp. 275–308. LaFrance, Adrienne. “The Prophecies of Q: American Conspiracy Theories Are Entering a Dangerous New Phase.” The Atlantic, June 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/toc/2020/06/ Lakof, George, and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980. Medina, Jose. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Batoche Books Kitchener, online edition: https://eet.pixelonline.org/fles/etranslation/original/Mill, %20On%20Liberty.pdf. (1859), Accessed 15 January 2021. Morreall, John. Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Malden MA, Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2009. Muirhead, Russell, and Rosenblum, Nancy. A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2019. O’Connor, Cailin, and Weatherall, James Owen. The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2019. Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. 1946, http://www.orwell.ru/library/. Accessed 14 March 2019. Räikkä, Juha. “Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories: An Introduction.” Argumenta, vol. 3, no. 2, 2018, pp. 205–216. Sills, Liz. “Stop Saying That Things are Funny Because They’re True.” In It’s Funny Cause It’s True: The Lighthearted Philosopher’s Society Introduction to Philosophy through Humor, edited by Jennifer Marra Henrigillis and Steven Gimbel, Lighthearted Open Access, 2021, 00. 94–103. Stanley, Jason. How Propaganda Works. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2015. Willett, Cynthia, and Willett, Julie. Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. absurd 3, 52–3, 110, 123, 234–7, 241, 246, 248n2, 251n19 activism 215, 217, 220, 228 aesthetics 174, 191 afective xiii, 19, 182–3, 186–9, 191–2; see also afect theory afect theory 184 American xiii–xiv, 4, 9, 13, 41, 75–6, 79, 97–8, 103, 166n11; see also United States apolitical 1–2, 8, 14 Australian 17 barb 243 British 4–5, 9, 75, 97, 135; see also United Kingdom bullpropashitacism 4, 22, 241; see also propashitaspiracism bullshit 18, 22, 236–39, 241–3, 249, 250n9, 251n12 caste xiv, 2, 11–12, 14–15, 17, 24, 91–2, 94–6, 98–100, 102–3, 106, 107n3, 110, 151, 152, 161–4 catharsis 23, 95, 222, 231 censorship 24, 40–1, 45, 50, 55, 72n5, 133, 154–5, 157–8, 161, 164; see also self-censorship charged humour 6–10, 13, 32–5, 39, 41–6, 54–5, 152 citizenship 2, 13, 16–17, 23, 25n3, 35, 46n1, 77, 86, 95, 149, 151–3, 157, 163–4

claims 2, 17, 20, 24, 25n3, 203–4, 206, 210, 237, 239–40, 253n35 class 2, 10, 12, 14–15, 17, 24, 35, 50, 52, 80, 84, 92–7, 99, 101, 103, 106–7, 110–11, 116, 118–22, 153, 161–3, 173, 176n2, 185, 188, 191, 192n4 cliche 77, 123, 154, 241, 250n7 clubs 2, 25; see also pubs; venue collaborative act 2, 4, 23, 248 collective xiv–xv, 23, 25n3, 33, 78, 112, 152, 189 comedy collectives 7, 19, 164n1 comic persona 1, 16, 18–19, 21, 56, 119; see also comic stage persona comic stage persona 184–5, 214 communicative act 2; see also communicative and collaborative art form communicative and collaborative art form 4, 23 conspiracism 22, 235–8, 240–1, 244–6, 250n9, 251n13, 251n16, 252n32 contact zone 12, 14, 111, 117–19, 124 contestation 6, 92, 100 cosmopolitan 37, 94–5, 99–100 culture: hegemonic 2; industry 2, 17, 24, 98, 100, 171, 173, 175; urban 78, 80, 86–7; banlieue 80; dominant 100; popular 151 democracy 22, 41, 154, 240, 242, 244, 247 digital 7, 16, 19, 24, 93, 96, 98, 106, 151, 153, 158, 162

256 Index

disability 98, 230 discourse 2, 5, 14, 16–17, 23–4, 25n3, 42–4, 49, 54–5, 66, 77, 95–6, 103, 106, 115, 136–7, 139, 142–4, 147n8, 149–52, 154, 163, 171–2, 186, 209, 211n2, 236, 240 discrimination xvii, 13, 44, 68, 71, 77, 153, 173 dissent 1, 190, 209 distribution 2–3, 25, 92, 104, 170 economic 17, 23, 105, 170, 172, 174, 188; see also socio-economic efcacy 4, 18, 20–1, 23, 45, 183, 187, 197–9, 203–5, 210, 242, 244, 246 elite 2, 8, 12, 17, 24, 99, 142, 153; see also non-elite epistemic 22, 236, 241, 248–9, 251n20 escape 11–12, 23, 39, 91–5, 106–7, 175 ethics 4, 18, 20–1, 45, 54, 197–9, 202–5, 208, 210 ethnicity 2, 4, 12, 33–4, 52, 55, 70, 77, 111, 116–18, 121, 176n2 ethnography/ethnographic 11, 20, 25, 34, 91, 182, 197 euphemism 239 fake news 198, 241–2, 250n7 fallacy 242 falsehood 239, 241, 245 folkloric humour 17, 153 feminist 17, 20, 46n1, 54, 151, 153, 161–4, 166n11, 170, 173–4, 184, 188, 202, 216, 246; see also feminist humour feminist humour 16, 152 fumerist 246 gallows humour 13 global 4–6, 9, 11–12, 14, 18, 22, 24, 45, 92–7, 100–3, 106–7, 111–12, 121, 172, 198–9, 242; see also globalisation globalisation 95, 100, 102 glocal 4–5, 24 hierarchy 5, 54–5, 100, 106; see also hierarchical hierarchical xiii, 33, 151, 172, 174–5 hip-hop 76, 78–81, 86, 122 identity 1–2, 4–5, 8–9, 12–13, 15–17, 21, 24, 31–3, 42, 53, 75, 77, 79, 84, 92, 94–5, 97, 100, 102–3, 105–6, 110–11, 113, 119, 136–9, 142, 146, 150, 152, 161, 222, 237, 245–6, 252n32 ideology 2, 6, 20–1, 23, 33, 60, 66, 120, 137, 163, 187, 198, 200, 205, 207–8, 210, 240

immigrant 83, 86, 110, 121, 201, 207–8, 224 Indian-ness 12, 14, 92 indigenous 12, 110, 122, 165n8 information 11–12, 24, 33, 110, 182, 192, 236, 240, 245 infrastructure 11, 68–9, 92, 99–100, 103–4, 106–7, 182–3 injustice 2, 8, 22, 31–2, 35, 41, 139, 236, 240, 249, 202n4; see also justice innuendo 241 intent 19–20, 175, 198, 210, 236, 241, 243 international 112, 203 intersectionality 4, 110, 112, 118, 162 irony 3, 44, 55, 57, 235–6, 252n21 Jew 239–40, 244 justice 1, 42, 46n1, 121, 142, 236–7, 241–3, 246–8, 250n4, 250n9; see also injustice knowledge 2, 16, 22, 36, 49, 53, 111–12, 114, 122, 125, 142, 147n8, 153, 164, 201, 236, 240, 244, 250n7 language xviii, 4, 14, 21, 25, 34, 36, 45, 49, 53–4, 80, 99, 105, 111, 116–17, 142, 147n8, 150, 154–5, 160, 163–4, 175, 187, 197, 200–1, 203, 205, 219, 222, 231, 233, 238, 240 leisure 95 liberal 11, 50, 91, 95, 203, 240; see also neoliberal margins 3, 13, 15, 18–19, 173; see also marginalised; periphery; subaltern marginalised 1–2, 50, 54, 110, 161–2, 165n4, 173, 176, 209; see also periphery masses 12, 37, 42, 99, 237, 242 media 11, 18, 20, 25, 41, 44, 50, 56–7, 60, 77–8, 80, 82, 87, 92–6, 98–9, 100–7, 116– 17, 150–5, 160, 163, 170, 182, 197–8, 201, 217, 246, 250n4; see also social media mediascape 12, 25, 200 middle class 2, 80, 93–7, 99, 101, 103, 106, 120, 153, 185 mockery 243, 246 Modi xiv, 150, 155, 159–60, 162, 165n4 moral xiv, 20, 22, 103, 183, 189, 202, 205, 209, 219, 242, 246, 250n1, 253n35; see also morality morality 165, 205 music 35–8, 46n10, 79, 80, 101–2, 170, 225; see also rap Nation 9, 32–3, 41–2, 55, 58, 63, 66–7, 75, 95, 99, 114–15, 118–20, 124, 131, 141–2,

Index 257

150, 152–3, 201, 214, 237, 239–40, 242; see also international; national; transnational national 31–6, 40–2, 45, 49, 64, 66, 81, 96, 99–103, 105, 111, 114, 124, 132–4, 139, 151–2, 164; see also international; transnational nationalism 152, 208 neoliberal 12, 17, 95, 100, 151, 161, 163 News 9, 55, 57, 60, 79, 83, 151, 197–8, 201, 203, 238; see also fake news non-elite 152 observational comedy xvii, 2, 6, 162 OTT xvii, 7, 17, 24, 104; see also streaming partisan 5, 243, 247 performer xiv, 1–2, 4, 6–7, 11–12, 15–16, 18–21, 34–8, 42, 51, 54, 75–6, 78, 80–1, 83–6, 91–2, 94–5, 98–100, 103, 107, 110– 12, 115, 119–21, 123–5, 132–5, 145, 182, 185, 190–1, 200–2, 209, 214, 218, 228 periphery 79, 84, 152 phatic 19–20, 182–6, 189–91; see also phaticity phaticity 19, 182–3 post-truth 5, 22, 23–4 power dynamics 5, 16, 23 privilege xiv, 13, 17, 21–4, 71, 114, 117, 149–51, 153, 162, 224, 247 production 2, 12, 14, 17, 24, 35, 39, 91, 95–100, 102–6, 170–2, 174, 215 propaganda 4, 18, 21–2, 122, 237–42, 244–5, 249 propashitaspiracism 4, 22, 242–9; see also bullpropashitacism public 3, 5, 7, 12, 18–19, 22–3, 31–7, 39, 41–5, 56–7, 60–1, 71, 83, 92, 111, 115, 122, 131, 144, 150–1, 153, 155, 157, 159, 162–3, 171–2, 174, 184, 190–1, 197–8, 201, 203, 217, 237, 240 pubs 2, 25; see also clubs; venue QAnon 22, 240, 243, 246, 249, 250n4, 251n11, 252n27, 253n33 race 1–4, 9, 12–13, 33, 55, 70, 77, 84, 110–11, 113–14, 116–17, 120–1, 123–5, 188, 191, 241–2 rap 25, 60, 78–81, 126n7, 200; see also music reason 5, 22, 236–7, 240, 242, 245, 249 reception 2, 21, 24–5, 31, 125n5, 175, 176n2, 221 religion xiii, 34, 45, 51, 55, 70–1, 103, 107n3, 138, 151, 158, 161, 221; see also religious

religious 10, 12, 15, 24, 26n12, 32, 34–6, 41, 45, 51, 55, 70–1, 113, 131–2, 147n2, 152, 157, 159, 164, 231, 245–6, 252n32 representation 1–2, 12, 17–18, 23–4, 43, 86, 111, 150, 155, 157, 162, 171, 175, 186, 191, 245 resistance 5, 22, 25, 71, 142–3, 163, 171, 175, 176n2, 215, 242, 244–8, 251n9; see also revolution revolution 4–5, 16–17, 20, 23, 54, 119, 132, 136, 171, 197, 205, 211n7 rhetoric 2, 5, 18, 32, 34, 42, 45, 144–5, 154, 184, 189, 198, 237, 239 ridicule 3, 14, 17, 22, 24, 53, 137, 143, 216, 223, 243 right-wing 91, 152, 159, 162, 207–8, 230 safe comedy 8, 16 satire 6, 26n7, 26n12, 39, 53–5, 111, 243 self-censorship 7, 34 sexuality 2, 13, 17, 34, 84, 102–3, 110, 118–19, 151, 156–7, 162, 170–7 shit-prop 239–40 shock comedy 1, 8 situated knowledge 2, 16–17, 153, 164 slogan 55, 133, 241–2 social justice 1, 46n1, 121 social media xvii, 8, 24, 36, 39, 44, 51, 56–7, 135, 146, 158, 197, 201, 203 socio-economic 4, 24, 42, 44, 50 spokesperson 13, 24, 32, 34, 45, 238 stereotype 67–8, 116, 118, 124, 200, 223 stories 36, 41, 49, 135, 140, 145, 175, 200, 218, 241; see also storytelling storytelling 36 streaming 24, 85, 92, 104, 136, 157, 172, 198, 200 subaltern 14, 171, 174 subversion 2, 4, 9, 158, 173 subversive 2, 17, 19, 22, 25, 31, 46n1, 123, 152–3, 243–4, 247–8, 251n12, 252n26 superiority 6, 13, 52, 120, 152, 164n2, 183, 216, 243 target 1, 4, 35, 42, 53–4, 61, 80, 141, 142, 227, 243, 246 television 3, 11–12, 16, 31, 34, 36, 38–41, 49, 75–86, 92, 99–106, 134, 150, 200 theatre 10, 35–40, 43, 79, 83, 103, 105–6, 131, 134, 200, 222 threat xiv, 51, 153, 158, 161, 164, 235, 240; see also threatening threatening 122–3, 125, 156 transgender 19, 60, 190, 199, 201

258 Index

transnational 12–14, 24, 92, 96, 105–6, 111–12, 114, 119–20, 124 Trump, Donald J. 9, 22, 60, 235, 236, 239, 241–3, 249, 251n15, 252n24, 253n33 truth xiii, 5, 8, 15, 21–2, 35, 111, 121, 123–4, 131, 137–9, 144–5, 151, 160, 206, 236–49, 250n9, 252n22; see also post-truth truism 19, 210, 241 tweet 18, 58, 60, 238, 239

101, 110–12, 114, 116, 118, 120–1, 146, 217, 219, 226, 235 urban 2, 17, 25, 39, 50, 76, 78–81, 83, 86–7, 96, 98, 103, 107, 141–2, 153, 200

United Kingdom 3–4, 20, 24–5, 76, 81, 86, 111, 118, 120–1 United States xiv, 3–4, 8–9, 11–13, 15, 20, 22, 24–5, 39, 43, 45, 76, 79, 81, 86, 98,

worldview xiv, 2, 6, 11, 15, 45, 91, 95, 192n4, 239, 245 woke 9, 12, 24, 106; see also wokeness wokeness 151

venue xiv, 11, 32, 36, 39, 43, 46n4, 54, 75, 80, 84–6, 91–2, 96, 105, 186, 199, 217; see also clubs; pubs victim 21, 22, 71, 122, 174, 243, 248