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Enacting Cultural Citizenship Through Charged Humor

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Enacting Cultural Citizenship Through Charged Humor ABSTRACT Title of Document: ‘WORKING THE CROWD’: ENACTING CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP THROUGH CHARGED HUMOR Rebecca A. Krefting, Ph.D., 2010 Directed By: Associate Professor Mary Corbin Sies, Department of American Studies Like many cultural practices, comic performance is one of a host of weapons in the arsenal of tactics, strategies, and offensive maneuverings available to individuals and communities seeking to redress inequitable distributions of wealth, power, rights, and cultural visibility. This dissertation examines contemporary jesters opting to use humor to develop community, instruct and mobilize audience members, and lobby for political and cultural inclusion. It is a kind of humor that illumines one’s position in a specific socio-political, historical matrix; it is humor that creates community and conversely demonstrates the ways in which one does not belong. An examination of the economy—the production, exchange, and consumption—of this humor reveals how and why comics produce charged humor or humor that illumines one’s status as second-class citizen and how this kind of humor is consumed in the US. I employ a mixed-methods qualitative approach using ethnography, archival research, and critical discourse analysis to investigate comic performances: stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, and one-woman shows. Throughout, I draw from dozens of contemporary comics performing in the US, but take as case studies: Robin Tyler, a Jewish lesbian comic and activist who is currently spearheading the marriage equality movement in California; Micia Mosely, a Brooklyn-based, Black, queer woman whose one-woman show, Where My Girls At?: A Comedic Look at Black Lesbians, is touring the country; and a group of young people (eighteen and under) participating in Comedy Academy programs (a non-profit arts education organization in Maryland), allowing them to author and perform sketch comedy. My sources for this project include popular culture ephemera such as print and electronic media, public commentary, documentaries about stand-up comedy, interviews with comics and industry entrepreneurs, performance and program evaluations, comic material (jokes), and performance texts. Drawing from nation and citizenship theories, cultural studies, performance studies, and a number of identity-based disciplines, I argue that humor intervenes on behalf of minoritarian subjects and it is part of our task to read these performances for the tactics and approaches they supply for being fully incorporated in the national polity. ‘WORKING THE CROWD’: ENACTING CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP THROUGH CHARGED HUMOR By Rebecca A. Krefting Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2010 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor Mary Corbin Sies, Chair Professor Nancy Struna Professor Martha Nell Smith Associate Professor Ronit Eisenbach Assistant Professor Faedra Carpenter Assistant Professor Jeffrey McCune © Copyright by Rebecca A. Krefting 2010 Dedication To all the comics that do. ii Acknowledgements To my chair, Mary Corbin Sies, your incisive feedback and comments throughout this process have been invaluable. Given your focus on material culture and candid admission that you are seldom amused, we were certainly an unlikely pair. I hope this project was amusing in some fashion, if only in my dogged refusal to acknowledge that Homi K. Bhabha is not a woman. My committee members have all informed and shaped this project and process in important ways. I hope you can see this throughout. Thank you to Nancy Struna, Ronit Eisenbach, Martha Nell Smith, Jeffrey McCune, and Faedra Carpenter. I am eternally grateful to Sharon Harley and the faculty and staff in the African American Studies Department who have supported me in many ways while earning this degree. Thanks to the participants who graciously volunteered hours of their time, enduring interviews, follow-up meetings, e-mails, and phone calls for the last several years: Harry Bagdasian, Robbie McEwen, Micia Mosely, Robin Tyler, Lisa Levin Itté, Pat Harrison, Dave Greene, Kenneth Winiecki, Moira Cutler, Shalonda Ingram, Austen Villemez, and Mary-Beth Waits. I am wildly grateful to the students, parents, and public school teachers and staff involved in Comedy Academy programs; most especially to Harry Bagdasian and Robbie McEwen who championed me throughout, and who are, as it turns out, two of my champions. There were many dedicated readers who commented on my work throughout the process and without whom, this process may have been untenable: Amelia Wong, Mark Sgambattera, Jill Dolan, Laurie Frederick Meer, Patrick Grzanka, Marcus Krefting, and Teresa Cross. I have to acknowledge my grandmother, Margaret Krefting—who recently asked that I refer to her as the iii Queenmum—for being a faithful and fastidious editor as I went through versions of each chapter. To my friends, who gave emotional support throughout (you know who you are): thank you. You all are my lifeline, my anchor, and when I am with you I laugh the loudest. Any blame for my preoccupation with humor can be attributed to my parents, Bob Krefting and Christine Anne, who instilled in me and my three brothers the value of humor and made laughter as important as eating my broccoli. Finally, I am deeply grateful for and quite possibly not deserving of the incredible support of my long-time partner, Teresa Cross. You are my best friend and my muse—when I am with you the world glows. iv Table of Contents Dedication..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements......................................................................................................iii Table of Contents.......................................................................................................... v Introduction: American Humor and Its Discontents..................................................... 1 Methods..................................................................................................................... 6 Literature Review.................................................................................................... 12 Project Overview .................................................................................................... 31 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 38 Chapter Two: Cultural Citizenship: What’s Humor Got To Do With It?................... 42 Cultural Citizenship: Not Just a Noun .................................................................... 44 Humor Enacting Cultural Citizenship..................................................................... 55 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 81 Chapter 3: Laughter in the Final Instance: The Consumption of Charged Humor (or why women aren’t perceived to be as funny as men)................................................. 84 The Question…....................................................................................................... 88 The Answer............................................................................................................. 98 Hitchens Revisited ................................................................................................ 119 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 123 Chapter 4: Guffaws of Protest: Towards a Queer(ful) Intersectional Politics.......... 128 Presenting: Robin Tyler ........................................................................................ 133 Queer(ful) Intersectionality: Radical Politics and Performances.......................... 144 In Terms of Belonging: The Marriage Equality Movement ................................. 164 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 173 Chapter 5: ‘Where My Girls At?’ ............................................................................ 179 The Crisis of the Ideal........................................................................................... 183 Disidentification Interrupted................................................................................. 202 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 213 Chapter 6: Making Citizens: Negotiating Belonging in Youth Comedy................. 218 Birth of a Comic Nation........................................................................................ 225 Kid Nation: Our Belonging Looks Different Than Yours.................................... 228 Locating Citizens .................................................................................................. 238 Do As I Say, Not as I Do… .................................................................................. 247 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 253 Chapter 7: Conclusion: Laughing All the Way........................................................ 259 Future Possibilities................................................................................................ 263 Future Scholarship ...............................................................................................
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