The Cultural Set up of Comedy
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The Cultural Set Up Of Comedy Julie Webber AFFECTIVE POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES POST 9/11 Julie Webber The Cultural How do various forms of comedy – including stand up, satire and film and television – trans- form contemporary invocations of nationalism and citizenship in youth cultures? And how are attitudes about gender, race and sexuality transformed through comedic performances on social media? Set Up Of Comedy Cultural The Set Up Of The Cultural Set Up of Comedy seeks to answer these questions by examining comedic perfor- mances by Chris Rock and Louis C.K., news parodies like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, the role of satire in the Arab Spring and women’s groundbreaking comedic Comedy performances in television and the film Bridesmaids. Breaking with the usual cultural studies debates over how to conceptualize youth, the book instead focuses on the comedic cultural and political scripts that frame them through affective strategies post-9/11. ‘Webber’s insight into the nuances of comedy and politics is required reading for those who un- derstand the power of comedy ... and the comedy of power. Clearly, cultural savvy in these times requires a provocation beyond entertainment and intellect ... it demands we acknowledge the discourses and complexities of the political, and acknowledge comedy as an appropriate “read” for contemporary society.’ Shirley R. Steinberg, Professor of Youth Studies, Research Chair, The Werklund Centre for AFFECTIVE POLITICS Youth Leadership Studies, University of Calgary ‘With no role to play, citizens watch, as spectacle – the “daily show” – replaces public life, screens IN THE UNITED STATES substitute for the public square … Like the metaphoric “tug boat” Webber invokes, this book also knows “every angle of the giant ship it is steering into park … it has to see the larger picture.” Be sure to watch!’ POST 9/11 William F. Pinar, Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia Julie Webber is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Government and Women and Gender Studies. Her areas of in- quiry are modern and contemporary political theory, feminist theory, GLBTQ studies and educational theory. Her work focuses on the intersection of politics and education in both tragedy and comedy. intellect | www.intellectbooks.com Julie Webber The Cultural Set Up of Comedy 00313_FM.indd 1 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM 00313_FM.indd 2 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM The Cultural Set Up of Comedy Affective Politics in the United States Post 9/11 Julie Webber intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA 00313_FM.indd 3 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM First published in the UK in 2013 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2013 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA This ebook is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Series: Cultural Studies Toward Transformative Curriculum and Pedagogy Series ISSN: 2049-4025 Cover designer: Stephanie Sarlos Copy-editor: Michael Eckhardt Production managers: Melanie Marshall and Tom Newman Typesetting: Contentra Technologies Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-031-3 ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-145-7 ePub ISBN: 978-1-78320-144-0 Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, UK An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-1-78320-145-7. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. 00313_FM.indd 4 4/16/19 1:38 PM Contents Acknowledgments vii Chapter 1: The Cultural Set Up of Comedy 1 Chapter 2: Re-signifying the F-word: Comedy as Political Resistance or Entrenchment? 51 Chapter 3: Breaking the ‘Crass Ceiling’: Women as Comedians 75 Chapter 4: The Tone of Political Comedy in The Daily Show and The Colbert Report 107 Chapter 5: Globalizing Political Humor 151 Conclusion: After Comedy 185 Bibliography 191 Index 211 00313_FM.indd 5 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM 00313_FM.indd 6 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM Acknowledgments Writing this book has been a lot of fun for me. After writing about school violence and mass shootings in my previous work, the chance to write about political comedy was appealing. While this book certainly does not discuss all or even most of the political comedians working in the United States today, it does limit its range to deal with those comedians who explicitly reference political issues brought to the public’s attention by social media. I have several people to thank for their support and encouragement during the writing of this book. The first is my husband, Scott, for taking time out of his own schedule to give it to me to finish the manuscript. Without our teamwork, this could not have been possible. I also want to thank and apologize to my twin sons for working. I would much rather have been riding bikes or reading books with them. My parents are always encouraging of my work as well. I want to thank William M. Reynolds, the series editor, for his support and encouragement of the book. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for the glowing and sensitive review of the manuscript. I also want to thank Ali Riaz, Yusuf Sarfati and Kam Shapiro for reading drafts of chapters and making important comments. Thanks as well to Jeffrey Sconce for pointing me in the direction of some work in the field of communication; I am indebted to his version of ‘affect’ inspired by Raymond Williams. Three of the chapters were presented as drafts at conferences. Chapter 2 was presented at the 2011 Western Political Science Association Conference. I would like to thank Joan Tronto, as well as members of the panel, for thoughtful comments on the draft and supportive comments during the presentation. Chapter 3 was presented at the 2012 Western Political Science Conference in Portland, Oregon. I want to especially thank an audience member (whose name I did not catch) for her thoughts on Bridesmaids, as well as reminding me of the relevance of a particular scene from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Finally, Chapter 5 was presented at the Midwest International Studies Association Conference in 2012. Preparation of the book manuscript was supported by a Faculty Research Grant awarded in the spring of 2013 by the College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University. This book is dedicated to Scott, Finn and Alec. 00313_FM.indd 7 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM 00313_FM.indd 8 10/15/13 2:58:22 PM Chapter 1 The Cultural Set Up of Comedy 00313_Ch01_p001-050.indd 1 10/15/13 3:12:26 PM 00313_Ch01_p001-050.indd 2 10/15/13 3:12:26 PM Look, I can appreciate this. I was young too, I felt just like you. Hated authority, hated all my bosses, thought they were full of shit. Look, it’s like they say: if you’re not a rebel by the age of 20, you got no heart, but if you haven’t turned establishment by 30, you’ve got no brains. Because there are no storybook romances, no fairy-tale endings. So before you run out and change the world, ask yourself, ‘What do you really want?’ (Buddy Ackerman in Swimming with Sharks [George Huang, 1994]) his is a famous quote from a parody of Hollywood studio culture, Swimming with Sharks, starring Kevin Spacey in one of his signature performances as an ‘asshole.’ The film examines a cut-throat industry through the lens of a producer of Michael-Bay- Tlike films named Buddy Ackerman. As he says while critiquing the sound editing in one of his projects, ‘I told you, it’s gotta be loud, loud, loud! The audience should feel their balls tremble, their ears should bleed!’ His assistant (read: slave) is the Everyman, Generation Xer named ‘Guy.’ Guy believes that he can ‘work really, really hard’ and succeed honestly in Hollywood. Buddy schools him otherwise. The lead quote demonstrates a kind of political and cultural truism about American culture and its relationship to youth: that is, that young people are simply ‘playing around’ until it’s time to get serious. The ‘hard’ reality of life eventually bears down on a person and they give up the soft dreams of ‘fairy-tale endings’ and ‘storybook romances.’ Just such an event was said to take place on 9/11 that was meant to force the entire country into a decisive and serious tone and ask the question: ‘What do you really want?’1 Instead, contrary to all the predictions of the anti-irony crowd who longed for seriousness in American cultural life prior to 9/11, the media did not ‘return’ to a sober, reflective mode of information transmission, politicians did not earnestly make policy designed to improve the lives of their constituents (by and large), and Americans did not demand intelligent, thought-provoking news and cultural programming. Instead, most Americans got exactly what they wanted: the Michael Bay version of America on a daily loop on Fox News and other competing networks.