Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth Cynthia Willett, Emory University Julie Willett, Texas Tech University Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Publication Place: Minneapolis, MN Publication Date: 2019-12-17 Type of Work: Book | Final Publisher PDF Publisher DOI: 10.5749/j.ctvr69540 Permanent URL: https://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/vf4z1 Copyright information: 2019 by Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Accessed October 1, 2021 11:53 AM EDT Uproarious Uproarious How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)— a collaboration of the Association of American Uni- versities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries— and the generous support of Emory University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Learn more at openmonographs.org. Different versions of chapter 1 were previously published as Cynthia Willett, Julie Willett, and Yael D. Sherman, “The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter,” Social Research 79, no. 1 (2012): 217– 46; Copyright New School University; reprinted by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press; and as Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett, “The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter: Bitches, Whores, and Other Fumerists,” in Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture, ed. Sharon Crasnow and Joanne Waugh (Plymouth, U.K.: Lexington Books, 2013): 15– 36. A different version of chapter 2 was published as “Going to Bed White and Waking Up Arab: On Xeno- phobia, Affect Theories of Laughter, and the Social Contagion of the Comic Stage,” Critical Philosophy of Race 2, no. 1 (2014): 84– 105; copyright 2014 The Pennsylvania State University; reprinted by permission of The Pennsylvania State University Press. A different version of chapter 3 was published as Cynthia Willett with Julie Willett, “Can the Subaltern Animal Laugh? Neoliberal Inversions, Cross- Species Solidarities, and Other Challenges to Human Exceptionalism,” in Interspecies Ethics, by Cynthia Willett (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 29– 59; copyright 2014 Colum- bia University Press; reprinted with permission of Columbia University Press. Copyright 2019 by Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett Uproarious: How Feminists and Other Subversive Comics Speak Truth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Willett, Cynthia, author. | Willett, Julie, author. Title: Uproarious : how feminists and other subversive comics speak truth / Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett. Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018061115 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0828-7 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0829-4 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Wit and humor—Social aspects. Classification: LCC PN6149.S62 .W55 2020 (print) | DDC 306.4/81—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018061115 UMP BmB 2019 In Sisterhood Contents Introduction: Revamping the Four Major Theories on Humor 1 1. Fumerism: Feminist Anger and Joy from Roseanne Barr to Margaret Cho and Wanda Sykes 21 2. Fighting Back against Islamophobia and Post- 9/11 Nationalism: Dean Obeidallah, Maysoon Zayid, Hari Kondabolu, and Others 47 3. Can the Animal Subaltern Laugh? Mocking Alpha Males with Georgia and Koko 71 4. A Catharsis of Shame: The Belly Laugh and SlutWalk 99 5. Solidaric Empathy and a Prison Roast with Jeff Ross 121 Conclusion. Humor Can’t Wait: In the Tragic with Tig Notaro and Hannah Gadsby 149 Acknowledgments 155 Notes 157 Index 189 Introduction Revamping the Four Major Theories on Humor There does have to be a revolution of form in order to accommodate different voices. — Hannah Gadsby, New York Times The “out and outspoken” queen of comedy, Wanda Sykes, has no problem speaking truth even in the face of a difficult crowd.1 After the election of Donald Trump, she quipped, “I am certain this is not the first time we’ve elected a racist, sexist, homophobic president. He’s just the first confirmed one.”2 Like Sykes, we understand what is funny to some is not funny to others, but we also see how once mar- ginalized game- changing comedians have come to center stage to re- veal the profound relevance of humor in American politics. As Sykes puts it, “My comedy is speaking truth to power and speaking up for people who don’t have a voice because those are the kinds of comics I grew up with.” After all, she continues, “That was their style: Rich- ard Pryor, George Carlin, Dick Gregory and Moms Mabley.”3 By the early twentieth- first century across the U.S. cultural and political landscape, the comic, building on a rich legacy, has become our truth teller.4 From late- night television shows such as those hosted by Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah to stand-up per- formances at New York’s Muslim Funny Fest, humor is not merely for escape but also a way to handle our gut instincts and to get to the guts of an issue. Yet we know that conventionally audiences ex- pect laughter to serve as mere amusement. We also know that under the cover of amusement, toxic jokes turning on race, Islamophobia, homophobia, or misogyny and rape are used as a tool of oppression 1 and a form of cruelty. But what of humor turned around and aimed at the abuse of power? This book is about how humor from below can serve as 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. In so doing, we challenge the philosophical foundation of humor as a simple device for debasement or for detach- ing ourselves from messy situations and their emotions. Instead, we offer a humor that connects body and soul, and that connects us with each other. This humor of connection is what self- described neuro- divergent comic Hannah Gadsby claims when she strives to “break comedy in order to rebuild it.”5 Since the time of Plato, philosophers and critics have treated the comedic as of lesser worth than serious art, and of little value compared to rational discourse.6 Those with an appreciation for high art tend to dismiss comedy as lowbrow, fueled as it often is by raw emotion. Laughter and ridicule are said to expose how the body, with its animal instincts, rattles the brain and weighs down the soul. When humor has been appreciated by intellectual elites, it is most valued as a cerebral game and an elevated skill of true wit that ra- tional minds play. Because women and others who are socially dis- empowered are viewed as closer to animals and ruled by emotion, they have been perceived as less capable of true humor and rele- gated to mockery’s natural targets. Their laughter, unlike that of the assumed more logical mind, has been thought to display unseemly emotions and a body out of control. Our question is how we might shift the study of the comedic from the cerebral tease while unmask- ing cruelty excused as mere amusement (“it was just a joke”) to ex- pose humor’s underlying power plays together with its strategies for talking truth. By embracing women, animals, and other subversive creatures as comedy’s central agents rather than its targets, we aim to revamp the major theories that have for too long defined the meaning of laughter and humor. The socially disempowered have historically found humor to be a tool of resistance in hidden (and not so hidden) transcripts that recharge the social atmosphere and body politics, yet their humor has been ignored to such a degree that they often are not even considered 2 INTRODUCTION funny. Think about a debate that cultural critic Christopher Hitchens rekindled in 2007 when he attempted to explain “Why women aren’t funny” in Vanity Fair.7 Backed up by modern “science” (he cites a single study of ten men and ten women), Hitchens’s answer is that Mother Nature (that “bitch”) made it so that men have to find some way to appeal to women, and humor is apparently the trick. “The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips so many fellows with very little arma- ment for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already ap- peal, if you get my drift.” Hitchens indulges in the usual misogynist humor of the patriarch in this case by donning the mask of the under- dog. Under the surface of this elevated show of wit, and arguably the science behind it, is a lowbrow tits- and- ass joke. Debates over who is funny move beyond an ongoing battle of the sexes and its cis-gendered heteronormative subtexts. Following