Dissent in Jest: the Political Aesthetics of Contemporary Media Humour

DISSENT IN JEST Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies DISSENT IN JEST: THE POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA HUMOUR By NICHOLAS H.F. HOLM, B.A. (Hons), B.Sc., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Nicholas H.F. Holm, 2012 Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2012) McMaster University (English and Cultural Studies) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Dissent in Jest: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary Media Humour AUTHOR: Nicholas H.F.Holm, B.A. (Massey University), B.Sc. (Massey University), B.A. (Hons) (Victoria University of Wellington), M.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Susie O’Brien, Ph.D. NUMBER OF PAGES: 303 ii Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies Abstract This dissertation argues that humour not only constitutes a central aesthetic strategy within contemporary mass media, but can also be understood as a form of cultural production that is central to how we understand our world as a site of value and politics. Drawing on an understanding of liberalism as a politics of “reasonable dissent,” I investigate how humour is thought to operate as an exemplary form of this politics through a consideration of popular and scholarly literature. I then complicate this theoretical and lay consensus regarding humour-as-dissent, through a consideration of the ways in which a range of specific filmic and televisual texts – Jackass, The Office, The Sarah Silverman Program, The Chappelle Show, The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report and Four Lions – produce an aesthetic of humour through the manipulation and mobilisation of textual strategies and affective registers, such as discomfort, absurdity and provocation. Questioning the easy understanding of humour as a means to challenge existing power structures, I instead argue that the currently dominant forms of media humour are better understood as a political aesthetic that opens up new avenues of understanding and critique even as it shuts down and short circuits previously tenable forms of political interpretation. Through an intertwining of close-reading of popular cultural texts and a critical engagement with wider theoretical models of media production and consumption, I thus propose that the aesthetic aspects of mass media, such as humour, can be understood as cultural precursors that inflect the ways in which we can imagine the problems and possibilities of contemporary politics. iii Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies Acknowledgements First, I’d like to thank my supervisor, Susie O’Brien, for trusting me, which in turn gave me the confidence to believe that I could combine Jacques Rancière with Jackass and somehow get away with it. Her incisive and supportive comments helped me get outside my own headspace and her guidance through all aspects of the academic world have proved invaluable time and time again. Heartfelt thanks also to my other committee members, Mary O’Connor and Lorraine York, whose enthusiasm for the project surprised and honoured me. Thank you all for all the new directions, suggestions and complications. I have no idea how you fixed all those commas. Second, I’d like to thank the stunningly supportive and friendly Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, and especially the graduate student community. I have learnt so much from people not directly involved with this project, including professors I have taught for and colleagues I have taught with. Thank you to administrative staff of Aurelia Gatto, Antoinette Somo, Ilona Forgo-Smith, and Bianca James for having my back and answering my never-ending questions. Thanks to my officemates, classmates and softball teammates. Third, I’d like to thank Geoff Stahl and Imre Szeman for helping me to get this far, and pushing me to be better and make more sense. Working with both of you changed the way I think Fourth, I’d like to thank the squirrels of Hamilton. You were an unexpected bonus. Fifth, I’d like to thank those whose friendship was integral to my not going mad while writing this thing. Your names are in alphabetical order to avoid charges of favouritism: Jesse Arsenault, Sarah Blacker, Richard Davila, Matthew Dorrell, Matthew Gaster, Adrienne Havercroft, Michael and Mariko Hemmingsen, Paul Huebner, Craig Jennex, Lisa Kabesh, Brandon Kerfoot, Eva Lane, Evan Mauro, Devon Mordell, Vinh Nguyen, Simon Orpana. Jon Smith, Emily West, Laura Wiebe, Matt Zantingh and our cavalcade of New Zealand visitors over the last few years. Completely compromising my earlier claims to non-favouritism, I’d also like to specially thank Carolyn Veldstra, for wanting to talk about the same things as me in the same place at the same time, Erin Aspenlieder, for being both a fellow robot and an amazing pep talker, and Pamela Ingleton, for so many reasons, but probably most for inviting me to have Christmas with her and her family. Thank you all for looking after me. iv Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies Sixth, I’d like to thank my family. My Mum for teaching me how to be cynical (they call it critical thinking here Mum, but it boils down to the same thing) and my Dad for teaching me that humour is pretty much the most important thing. You both taught me the pleasure of reading and the importance of being interested in things. One of your friends asked me, “With your parents, how could you be working on anything else, but humour?” I think the question was right on. And thank you to Robert for always laughing at the same things as me: even when no one else will. Finally, I’d like to thank Lucy: for supporting me and letting me support her; for trying to teach me how to calm down and giving me perspective; for encouraging me, keeping me in line and giving me free rein; for reading things, questioning things, and sharing things with me; and for accepting my teasing that I would put the squirrels after her in my acknowledgements. Thanks for doing this with me. v Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies Contents INTRODUCTION: HUMOUR FOR FUN AND PROFIT 1 CHAPTER ONE: LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE REVOLUTION: HUMOUR IN THE LIBERAL MOMENT 34 CHAPTER TWO: MORE THAN JOKES: MAPPING THE AESTHETICS OF POSTMODERN HUMOUR 95 CHAPTER THREE: THE CRITICAL SMILE: THE POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF POSTMODERN HUMOUR 198 CONCLUSION: THE LAST LAUGH 279 WORKS CITED 288 vi Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies Introduction - Humour for Fun and Profit (and Mental Wellness, Truth, Beauty, Critical Thinking and Progressive Politics) “The world likes humor, but treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts. It feels that if a thing is funny it can be presumed to be something less than great, because if it were truly great it would be wholly serious.” E.B. White, “Some Remarks on Humor” (244). This project is concerned with humour, and, most importantly, the potentially scandalous notion that humour is an important, perhaps central, aspect of the media-dominated English-speaking world. Despite all appearances to the contrary, humour is not trivial, nor a passing fancy, and though it may appear to be of less importance than the tragic, the serious, the somber and the grave, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, humour, understood here as an aesthetic, which is to say humour as a style or a form of cultural production, is taken as central to the ways in which we approach and understand the world as a site of meaning, politics and life itself. A therefore necessary and founding proposition of my investigation is that humour is important: both as a subject of study in- and-of-itself, and for what it can tell us about the political possibilities and conditions of a given society. Indeed, I will argue that this is particularly true of my society: the postmodern, allegedly post-ideological, (neo)liberal and highly mediated culture of the Anglophone West since the end of the Cold War.1 Bound together by innumerable historical events and assumptions as well as a common language, the UK and the settler states of North American and the South Pacific share a common media culture as a 1 I take up what might appear to be a somewhat unorthodox phrasing in comparison to the more customary evocation of Anglo-America in order to emphasise that, though the USA and to a lesser extent the UK, might constitute the central sites of English-language cultural production , they do not constitute the only sites of consumption for such texts. Instead, as a citizen of New Zealand and a resident of Canada, I seek to emphasis the ways in which the media aesthetics of humour extend beyond the borders of their origin. 1 Ph.D. Thesis – Nicholas Holm McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies consequence of the rapid transmission of the televisual and filmic texts that are the central objects of my investigation. It is in the context of this shared media culture that I will argue that a novel mode of humour emerges in the 1990s and 2000s, which comes to assume a prominent role in the cultural production and consumption of this Anglophone world. The central concern of this project is to consider how the contemporary manifestation of humour might be thought to have a bearing upon the political context of the moment – a question which I regard as of critical importance – while also addressing the broader question of how an aesthetic category might be though to function in a political manner.

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