PERFORMANCE OF MORAL ACCOUNT- ABILITY AND THE ETHICS OF SATIRE IN STAND-UP COMEDY Antti Lindfors, University of Turku This paper explores one particular approach to satire in stand-up comedy, a popular cultural genre of oral performance, which is at the intersection of emotion and ethics. It is suggested that morally charged emotional language is particularly situated in stand-up due to the interactionally engag- ing features of this genre. The argument consists in framing satire as a practice and performance of moral accountability. The analysis explores how the invocation and potential dramatization of moral accountability and (intentional) agency dialectically enhance the emotional and moral ef- ficacy of satire, and why certain habitual practices constitute fruitful targets for satire. Several cases are presented to examine how satire gives rise to dialectic of moral accountability and emotion through the use of specific stylistic and textual devices. Keywords: satire, accountability, morality, emotion, stand-up comedy, performance One of the stereotypical, reified images evoked by hint at the nature of stand-up comedy as an intimate the popular cultural genre of stand-up comedy cer- and interactionally engaging form of performance tainly includes a person raging in front of others, as clearly laden with heightened expectations of re- a spectacle of anger – an image encapsulated distinc- sponsibility and competence for performers and au- tively in the comic personas of 1990s American per- dience members alike. Apart from apparent charac- formers like Andrew “Dice” Clay and Denis Leary ter comedians, one could read the action of standing (see Peterson 1997; Ahmed 2004). The attributes in stand-up comedy as implying a heightened moral of “brutal honesty”, “shamelessness”, and “unruli- standard (cf. Limon 2000). Prototypically speaking, ness”, frequently invoked by both practitioners, fol- stand-up comics stand behind their personas and lowers, and advertisers of stand-up alike, underpin words while often demanding similar accountability this impression of (emotional) liberty and fearless- and interactional investment from their audiences. ness as some of the genre’s most reiterated metaprag- In the following text, I explore the understandings matic emblems (e.g. Louis C.K. 2007; May 2015). and practices of emotion and satire in the perfor- While potentially construed as commercial aestheti- mance genre of stand-up comedy. Emotion provides cizations of emotion from just one perspective (e.g. an analytically compelling objective in the context Jameson 1991; Meštrović 1997), these attributes also of this genre, insofar as stand-up performances are Antti Lindfors 2017: Performance of Moral Accountability and the Ethics of Satire inETHNOLOGIA Stand-up Comedy. EUROPAEA 47:2 5 Ethnologia Europaea 47:2, 5–21. © Museum Tusculanum Press. mimetically structured around an emulation of It is in the latter focus that I am primarily interested spontaneous conversation while also regularly in- in the current effort. voking, inviting, and playing with strong affective responses from the audience. Although one should Preliminary Remarks obviously hesitate to label stand-up as an art form Moral indignation can be conveyed in comic con- dedicated to deception, it is fair to say that it is texts by using the stylistic and communicative de- based on certain “contrived misperception” (Taus- vice of satire; more often than not it also serves as sig 2006: 123). In this regard, the very leitmotif of a comic motive. Satirists are affectively invested in stand-up comedy could be construed as one of the their cause, for they claim to “speak ‘from the heart,’ double binds famously articulated by Gregory Bate- from a sense of acute, unmediated anger” (Rosen son ([1972]2000): “Be spontaneous!” This illusion 2012: 2), which can be historically traced back to of immanence, which in stand-up is coupled with a satire’s roots in magical curses and taunts (Elliott metacultural embrace of newness (Urban 2001; see 1970). Of the varieties of humorously inclined ex- also Wilce 2009b: 31, 34) that encourages improvisa- pression, satire can be seen as an exceptionally “pas- tion and authenticity, intersects in interesting ways sionate” and engaged mode of discourse, in contrast with the ongoing research into emotions as interac- with the (perceived) more distanced nature of many tional, performative, and embodied phenomena (for other types of humor and irony (cf. Oring 2003: 78; immanence in the theatrical arts since the 1970s, Chatman 2001: 30; Bergson 1935). Lehmann 2006: 18, 145–152, 96–97; Fischer-Lichte I propose that we should approach satire as an 2008: 18, 22–23). everyday communicative device (rather than, for ex- With an eye on what he labels the “reportability” ample, just a literary genre) that can be heuristically of narratives (also known as tellability), William understood as a form of ironic discourse that en- Labov (1997, 1972) generalized three thematic are as gages with ethics in very specific ways. Downplaying worthy of recounting across different cultures: “The the conventional viewpoint of satire as only negative universal principles of interest […] dictate that cer- social critique and emphasizing the multimodal af- tain events will almost always carry a high degree fordances and interactional aims of stand-up come- of reportability: those dealing with death, sex and dy as oral performance, I focus on how satire traces moral indignation.” It needs to be mentioned, and invokes a sense of moral accountability for the though, that such formulations that have to do with positions of both the producer and the target of sat- absolute standards of reportability have been heav- ire. The presumption is that this can be fruitfully ily criticized using more context-sensitive perspec- done by concentrating on instances of multimodal tives (e.g. Norrick 2005; Goldstein & Shuman 2012; satirical texts that manifest elaborate and/or extend- also Savolainen 2017). In any case, by spinning their ed fabrication, thus bringing forth this invocation of yarn around any of these subjects, comics may well accountability. In this regard, a particularly interest- increase the odds that listeners will be captivated. ing viewpoint of this discussion is the notion of in- While it is not uncommon for stand-ups to discuss tentionality, as far as the latter constitutes a promi- death at a very personal level – for instance in the nent aspect of the broader idea of agency. Finnish stand-up scene I have been following, Anit- I first address the issues of emotion, accountabil- ta Ahonen is known for frequently addressing heavy ity, and emotional expression in stand-up comedy by topics such as cancer and death, and Joni Koivu- elaborating on what can be described as emotional niemi has openly dealt with his mother’s passing as management or the instrumental use of emotion part of his set – and sex figures as a major thematic signs in ritualized performances. Taking cue from hub of stand-up even to the point of compromising the character of stand-up comedy as an elusive per- its tellability (i.e. becoming hopelessly clichéd), it is formance genre that simultaneously builds on inter- safe to say that moral indignation is not far behind. actional investment and responsibility, I argue for a 6 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 47:2 semiotically informed approach, by focusing on the central and culturally inexhaustible phenomena, pragmatic aspects of emotional expression in social such as comedy and satire, not only deserve but also interaction. This approach will be illustrated by require interdisciplinary perspectives without which looking at a sequence of stand-up from a recent com- their analysis would remain inexorably tenuous. mercial release by the popular South African comic Trevor Noah, which also can serve as a bridge to the Ration Your Passion: The Emotional following section on satire and ethics. Here I develop Expression in Stand-Up an outline of satire as a practice and performance of Insofar as stand-up comics may be considered ritual moral accountability that places its emphasis on the specialists, the presentation and management of cultural and social ramifications of satire instead of appropriate emotions (with respect to genre, occa- its more formal or technical definition. sion, narrative storyline, etc.) is a core element of In the final section I apply this conceptual frame- stand-up performances. Emotional expression is work to the topic and develop some of its further im- particularly highlighted in stand-up, as the bodily plications by using various examples, most notably co-present interactional set-up of the genre generally my field recordings of the Canadian-Finnish comic demands engagement, investment, and involvement Jamie MacDonald. This material consists of perfor- of its audiences in performance – most obviously by mances by MacDonald, which were recorded in Hel- their voluntarily joining in on the collective laughter sinki during late 2016 in the context of document- (for more on the intimacy and distance in stand-up, ing material for my dissertation. I have been drawn see Brodie 2014). Such intimacy and social cohe- toward societally and politically oriented or what sion, however ephemeral or temporary both may has elsewhere been called “charged” (Krefting 2014) turn out to be, is effectively produced by performers comedy, and paid particular attention to the inter- through their use of emotional language. Compara- sections between stand-up comedy and satire from bly, modalities and genres of discourse like personal the perspective of their concomitant communicative confessions, opinionated stance-taking, and gossip, forms and contexts. The various examples presented that both imply and invoke heightened forms of ac- in this paper, while perhaps seemingly disparate or countability, provide comics with potent means for sparing in quantity, represent a discretionary sam- interactional engagement (relatedly in terms of con- ple of ongoing work that I have chosen with an eye fession and gossip, see also Robbins & Rumsey 2008: for their relevance to problematize the interactional 409).