The Politics of Awkward Comedy

Awkward! The Politics of Awkward Comedy

Tom van der Krieke 10550003 Research Master Thesis Department of Media Studies University of Amsterdam 28 June 2019 Supervisor: Abe Geil Second reader: Carolyn Birdsall

Abstract

This thesis seeks to trace the politics of an emotion that has become all too common in the Western world: the feeling of awkwardness. The popularity of awkward comedy since television series like The Office (2001-2003) and Curb Your Enthusiasm has been enormous. What does this popularity say about the current political and economic systems? Part of this investigation is into the notion of awkwardness itself. Film reviews from the early 20th century mostly refer to awkwardness when discussing certain physical features. Not only does this thesis seek to trace the political roots of awkwardness, but it also seeks it in the ontology of the medium of film and television as well with the help of theories on film by Giorgio Agamben and Siegfried Kracauer. To come closer to an understanding of the political meaning of awkwardness this thesis also seeks to gain a better understanding of the link between comedy and awkwardness through the humour theories of Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson. These theories will provide an answer as to why we laugh at awkward comedy as well as provide an understanding of the relationship between awkwardness and society. Awkwardness also has a certain affective and contagious quality to it. That is why this thesis also seeks to understand how awkwardness works as a negative affect through the works of Sianne Ngai and Laurent Berlant. Ultimately all these different sides of awkwardness together show how it is a notion, which is constantly changing with the politics and economics of the era. It will be argued that research on the subject of awkwardness ultimately can lead to understanding of power, through its many qualities.

Table of Contents

1. An Awkward Introduction…………………………………………………………………..p. 4

2. A Brief History of Awkwardness in Film and Television……………………………...p. 8 2.1 The Use of the Term Awkwardness in Early Film Reviews…………………………p. 8 2.2 Slapstick and Physical Awkwardness………………………………………………….p. 10 2.3 Television and Social Awkwardness…………………………………………………...p. 15 2.4 I Love Lucy…………………………………………………………………………………..p. 17 2.5 The Party…………………………………………………………………………………….p. 18

3. Awkwardness and Comedy………………………………………………………………...p. 22 3.1 Bergson and Awkward Laughter………………………………………………………...p. 23 3.2 Freud and The Awkward Ego…………………………………………………………….p. 25 3.3 The Office…………………………………………………………………………………….p. 27 3.4 Curb Your Enthusiasm…………………………………………………………………….p. 30

4. Awkwardness and Affect…………………………………………………………………...p. 34 4.1 Cringe Comedy……………………………………………………………………………..p. 34 4.2 Eighth Grade………………………………………………………………………………..p. 38

5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………p. 44

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..p. 45

1. An Awkward Introduction

Life for many people often feels like a string of awkward moments. This awkwardness can be found in the workspace, romantic relationships, or friendships. It often expresses fears of doing something wrong in a social context. This particular feeling has become popular over the last twenty years or so. In shows like The Office (2001-2003) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-) humour shifted to a sole focus on awkward moments. MTV even created a show with the name Awkward. (2011-2016). This show undoubtedly helped popularize this particular phrase by describing certain moments in once life. An exclamation of the word awkward indeed has become a term of its own. Memes with the phrase “that awkward moment when …” have also been and are still a popular way to describe certain pains from daily life. While many people recognize awkwardness in their own life, or even defining big parts of their life, awkwardness has not yet been recognized as a defining emotion of our time. Emotions like anger (Pankaj Mishra), fear (Heinz Bude), and anxiety (Sianne Ngai), have become recognized as emotions that define the post 9/11 Western world. Awkwardness could easily be added to this list, as it is a dominating force in daily life, as well as dominating popular culture. Adam Kotsko undertakes one of the few investigations into this phenomenon in his book “Awkwardness”. Kotsko investigates awkwardness from a philosophical and a political perspective. The etymology of the word awkwardness contains the words ‘awk’ and ‘ward’. Awk is a medieval English word for something that has been turned into the wrong direction, while the -ward part implicates some form of movement, as in backward or forward. Awkwardness is thus a movement in the wrong direction (Kotsko 6). Kotsko believes that we are currently in “a state of cultural awkwardness” (17). This awkward state according to Kotsko is to be traced back to the 1960s and post-Fordism. Fordism had been a fairly stable economic system that created a huge (white) middle-class in the United States. In the mid 1960s however it became clear through social unrest that this economic system had hugely neglected the African-Americans and women in its growth (Kotsko 18). What the social movements in the 1960s provided was considerable improvement for women and African- Americans, but any radical changes were halted. For Kotsko the origins of the awkward age are to be found here. The normative social model saw some great changes, while “they did not produce any viable positive alternative” (Kotsko 19). What then came into being was a world where people do not know how to attain and retain equality, as well as a world where people do not really know their place anymore. In the 1970s a lot of the foundations that helped create a middle class through the model of Fordism, became depleted by decreasing the power of the unions, and deindustrialization (Kotsko 20).

This thesis seeks out to trace the political implications of awkward comedy. Kotsko already heads into this direction with his focus on the economic conditions into which awkwardness came into being. Kotsko dives into the political and economic forces that created awkwardness but fails to trace this awkward comedy through the history of film and television. This thesis will seek an answer to the following question: what are the underlying politics and economics that have created the subgenre of awkward comedy in the early twenty-first century? This question will be answered by looking at three relatively unexplored areas of awkwardness, namely tracing the history of awkwardness, explaining the link between awkwardness and humour theory, and tracing the affective qualities of awkwardness. Each chapter will deal with one of these topics paired with a focus on particular political and economic systems. In the analysis of various films and television series with awkward comedy these theories will be further explained. The first chapter looks at the origins of the word awkward and how this word has been used since the start of comedy film. Unsurprisingly, the meaning of the word awkward in describing comedy has immensely altered. In early film reviews the use of the word awkward was almost exclusively used to describe a form of physical comedy. This physical comedy in the form of slapstick already has some mimesis that can also be found back in the type of humour that we have now come to describe as awkward comedy. This chapter attempts to trace the roots of awkwardness by both looking at the ontologies of film and television, while simultaneously also focussing on the economic systems. In this chapter the focus will be on Fordism and post-Fordism as economic systems that first allowed a certain awkwardness to grow. To trace back the politics of awkwardness in history it is crucial to find a moment where this form of comedy finds a shift. To do this the first chapter will be analysing an episode of the well-known television series I Love Lucy (1951-1957). I Love Lucy is one of the first television sitcoms, and was the first sitcom to introduce several techniques that can still be recognized to this day in the genre; these are the three-camera setup and the use of a live audience. The other object that this chapter will be analysing is the ground-breaking and in some ways radical comedy film The Party (1968). This is one of the first films to deal with awkwardness on a much more social level. What this chapter will attempt to provide is trace the histories of awkwardness through both film and television, as these are the places where the awkward comedy can predominantly be found today. In the second chapter we jump to the early 21st century, where a wave of awkwardness hit the sitcom genre with The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. This chapter will try to gain a better grip on the philosophical relationship between awkwardness and comedy. To do this, this chapter will be mainly focussed on the field of humour theory, where there is a philosophical inquiry in why we laugh at certain types of comedy. There is an

explicit link between comedy and awkwardness. Just try to think of watching a show filled with social awkwardness without having to laugh at it. This would be pure torture! Henri Bergson’s Laughter provides key insights into the reason why we laugh at something. Traditionally there have been three theories of humour: superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity theory (Critchley 2). According to the superiority theory we laugh at something or someone because there is a feeling of being superior. This is the theory that dominated philosophical thinking on laughter until the eighteenth century. The relief theory argues that there is a certain tension that gets released through laughter. This is where Freud’s theory on humour also fits in. Incongruity theory argues that humour is created through a felt incongruity between what we know to be true and the reality that takes place in the joke (Critchley 3). Bergson’s theory on laughter partially tries to make this incongruity theory more precise with his notions of the living and the mechanical, but it must be said that a big part of Bergson’s theory on laughter is also to be traced back to the superiority theory. Bergson seems to think that humiliation is a very important function of humour. Focus will be on neoliberalism in this chapter, and the alienation of the neoliberal subject. Although Kotsko solely uses examples of comedy shows and films in his essay, he fails to explicitly link the relationship between awkwardness and comedy together. The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm will be analysed, which have had a central role in popularizing awkward comedy. While the American remake of The Office has also become very popular, the focus in this chapter will be on the original British version, as this is much more relentless in its awkwardness than the American version. These two series are also the prime examples of awkwardness in Kotsko’s book. Analysis of these two shows will provide a better understanding of the link between awkwardness and comedy, as well as help understand the link between neoliberalism and awkwardness. Chapter three will discuss the affective qualities of awkwardness. When we witness something awkward happening in our lives, it often has a very contagious quality. This negative affect will be further explored in this chapter with the theories of Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai. Awkward comedy is often also referred to as ‘cringe comedy’. This name also implies some form of an affective relationship towards this awkwardness. The theories of Ngai and Berlant will help to gain a better understanding of the The main political focus here will be on the awkwardness that is linked to the use of social media. Analysis of the film Eighth Grade will help to understand how affect and awkwardness work together, and that the affective response to awkward comedy has the possibility for a brief moment critical understanding of power structures. Ultimately all these chapters will provide important insights into awkwardness and it’s social, political, and economic roots. This will be an exploration of awkwardness through history, the ontology of media, as well as economic systems. All chapters separately provide

explorations of different aspects of awkwardness, and show how this particular feeling has become such a predominant one over the last twenty years. This research will provide key insights into not only the political roots of awkwardness, but also the political and subversive power that awkward comedy might have.

2. A Brief History of Awkwardness in Film and Television

2.1 The Use of the Term Awkwardness in Early Film Reviews

The word awkward as we have come to use it in relation to comedy, or embarrassing situations, has been attached this meaning over the last twenty years or so. If one before this era were to talk about an awkward film, this would have probably indicated that it was not very well made. The awkwardness would then have related to the bad aesthetics of a film. In the present awkward film and television is recognised as a particular subgenre of comedy. The fact that the very idea of awkwardness has shifted can tell a lot about the era of the early 2000’s where awkward comedy accelerated through series like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The focus of these shows and their particular form of comedy that solely stems from awkward situations kick-started a whole subset of comedy films and series that we now have come to recognize as awkward comedy. This awkwardness of course does not appear out of thin air. There is a large history throughout multiple decades of awkward comedy. Mr. Bean (1990-1995) is for example a very famous example of a character getting in all kind of awkward situations. The big difference between shows like The Office and Mr. Bean is that The Office extracts its awkwardness from social interactions and situations, while Mr. Bean is more about awkwardness stemming from the physical actions from its protagonist. This chapter attempts to trace back awkwardness throughout the history of film and televisual comedy to find how this particular subgenre has come into being. As far as I am aware no attempts at tracing awkwardness through film history have been undertaken. Doing this will give crucial insights into the subgenre as it stands now, as it will provide the opportunity to trace back certain techniques and tropes of awkwardness. This will also allow gaining a better understanding of the politics in which awkwardness is able to arise. It will be argued that an important precursor to the current wave of awkward comedy is Blake Edward’s The Party (1968). Analysis of this film will shine light on the tropes and techniques that directors use to film awkwardness, as well as help place awkwardness in the era of post-Fordism. A good place to start in researching how awkwardness was perceived in earlier films is to do research into old film reviews. The Media History Digital Library is a great help in this respect as it provides many scanned in magazines from the early 20th century. This will give an understanding of how the word awkwardness was used in that era with regards to film. I have used the terms ‘awkward’, ‘awkwardness’, and ‘awkward comedy’ to find relevant reviews. Starting with the results of the word ‘awkward’ it is first of all very striking that a lot of articles are about the “awkward age” of teenage and child actors. In the Motion Picture Magazine, dated somewhere between 1917 and 1918 there is a photograph of Charlie Chaplin to be found, with a caption under it reading: “from this picture it will be seen that

Charlie Chaplin is not the homely, awkward clown that he appears to be, but a really handsome, charming young man” (May 45). This article clearly refers to the appearance of this film star, and is quick to claim that the star persona of Chaplin is not in any way appearing to be awkward in their real life. The same goes for a small piece in Photoplay of 1932. This little article is about the breakthrough of Danish actress Gwili Andre. There is a referral to the life before the actress had the big breakthrough in film. The article reads: “a few years ago this girl begged for a job posing for commercial photographers. Then she was awkward, badly dressed, glum” (Photoplay 20). There is a lot of effort from these magazines in showing that film stars are not awkward. This idea of awkwardness does not have much to do with what we now recognize as something awkward. Now we recognize certain social behaviour or social interactions as being awkward, but these articles seem to refer much more to physical appearance. In a film review from March 1924 in Photoplay for the film The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924) there is a comment of how much the leading actor resembles Abraham Lincoln; “the resemblance is striking, both in the face and the tall awkward figure” (Photoplay 45). This film review is again using the term ‘awkward’ to refer to a physical aspect. While most of the uses of the word ‘awkward’ seem to refer to the physical appearance, there is one exception that is worth mentioning. In the Moving Picture World of February and March 1920 there is an advertisement piece on a film called The Amateur Wife (1920). This advertisement describes the plot of the film. A part of this description reads: “fresh from a French convent she was so awkward and shy that it hurt” (Moving Picture World 8). Here the word awkward seems to denote more of a meaning that is closer to how it is currently used. This sentence appears to use the term awkward here in a more social context, as it is mentioned along with the character’s shyness. The other uses of the word awkward were all about physical appearance, so it could as well be that ‘awkward’ here refers to physicality. Along with the word shyness it appears to be more social though. It is also very interesting that this advertisement says that the main character was “so awkward and shy that it hurt.” This seems almost directly related to the cringe comedy that is popular now, where it hurts to watch the awkwardness evolve on screen. It is fair to say though that this still refers more to the appearance of the character, as this was still a silent film. The rest of the plot states that the main character undergoes some form of transformation or makeover. Although this use of the word ‘awkward’ seems to be a lot like how we use it now, it still reflects more of a physical awkwardness. Using the term ‘awkward comedy’ will help find out whether or not people used to describe comedy as awkward in the first half of the 20th century. In The Film Daily of September 12, 1920 there is a film review of Merely Mary Ann (1920). The final sentence of the film review reads: “Babe London, a fat girl, gives a demonstration of awkward comedy that is very effective” (The Film Daily 11). This use of the word awkward in relation to comedy

implies that in the twenties there was already some acknowledgement of an idea of awkward comedy. But what this sentence also seems to indicate is that this awkwardness mainly comes from physicality. Babe London was a comedy actress who became famous in the silent era. It was indeed because of her big physical appearance that she was cast as the fat girl very often. She is most remembered for her role in the Laurel and Hardy film Our Wife (1931). Babe London was always cast as the ‘fat girl’. After she had lost weight she never received a big part in a comedy film again. This awkward comedy thus seems directly related to the physical appearance of Babe London. Physicality was of course much more important in silent film. The gags and the humour in early comedy was also much more physical. In two reviews from the 1940s the actors Al “Fuzzy” St. John and George “Gabby” Hayes are described as adding awkward comedy to Westerns. These actors were famous for playing the crazy sidekicks of cowboys. The sidekicks were often weird hillbillies with strange catchphrases. The awkward comedy in these works could very well be based on them being outsiders, and them being very different from the hero of the story. With these reviews from the 1940s we are already closing in what we recognize as awkward comedy now. What can be gained from the reviews where this phrase has been used is that awkward comedy was first perceived as being a form of comedy that was mainly physical and that this has slightly shifted more towards something that ‘outsider’ characters are able to provide. In this latter case awkward comedy is not something that affects the audience directly, but is more about an outsider being awkward and weird to the protagonist.

2.2 Slapstick and Physical Awkwardness

The most common trait in describing awkwardness of all the reviews above is that there is some form of physicality in awkwardness. To further understand this particular form of awkwardness it will be crucial to look at slapstick comedy, as this is the genre that thrives on this physicality. Slapstick comedy derives from the Italian comedy form of commedia dell’arte, a fifteenth century form of comedy where touring players would play an efficient and speedy kind of farce (Jeffers McDonald 87). The players saw plot as less important to their act. According to Jeffers McDonald the comedy in slapstick lies in the tension between “control and its loss” (87). Charlie Chaplin for example displays control and unnecessary niceties while his surroundings are one of chaos and poverty. The name slapstick comes from a wooden stick with two flat sides. When one would hit another performer with this stick this would produce “a satisfyingly big noise but only a small amount of actual discomfort” (McDonald 87). During the World War I period the slapstick genre had become very popular (Thompson & Bordwell 63). The physical gags were presented in a longer program of short films. The big names connected to this form of comedy are Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton,

Harold Lloyd, and Laurel & Hardy. Sound film has gradually lessened the interest and impact of the slapstick film, but elements of slapstick comedy still persist within comedy films to this day. According to Siegfried Kracauer comedy film even died with the appearance of sound in film (216). Kracauer sees the root of filmic comedy in its concern with “alienated physical existence” (216). The awkwardness in the physicality of the characters in early film comedy could very well be attributed to this alienated physical existence. Giorgio Agamben sees cinema as the place where society tries to reclaim its lost gestures. Agamben argues that the late nineteenth century is the age where bourgeois society has lost its gesturers (49). As a primary example of the way we lost our gestures, Agamben uses the example of the writing of the scientist Gilles de la Tourette. De la Tourette tried to analyse movement by separating and segmenting the different stages of a movement. This is of course what Muybridge also famously tried to do by capturing the movement of a horse. These examples are precisely the place where gesture got lost according to Agamben. Silent film is than the prime example of the space where society tries to regain these gestures. Agamben goes as far as to state that not the image, but the gesture is at the heart of cinema. This means that cinema no longer belongs to the area of the aesthetic, but to that of the “realm of ethics and politics” (Agamben 56). This is because the gesture is “the exhibition of mediality: it is the process of making a means visible as such” (Agamben 58). Agamben argues that the gesture itself hints at it being a mediality; a true purposiveness without a purpose. Where a word shows us our being in language, a gesture in film has the same effect. What does this mean with regards to the awkward physicality of the slapstick genre? A society that has lost its gestures is surely to feel a certain bodily awkwardness. Slapstick is of course filled with gestures and creates a gag out of it. It offers a complex relationship with our lost gestures. Especially in slapstick a complex relationship towards our gestures can be found. Slapstick does not only show the absurd and mechanical aspects of our gestures, it also deconstructs and fragments these gestures. Slapstick is indeed filled with the tension between control and loss, and this is especially true for the movements and gestures of the characters. The characters desperately try to hold on to their gestures in a world of chaos where they are threatened to lose these gestures altogether. The embarrassment or awkwardness in slapstick partly comes from the physicality and gestures, but there is also already a certain societal embarrassment to be found in slapstick comedies. Slapstick from the beginning saw people striped from their clothes among other fully clothed people for example (Kracauer 213). Instances like this already have some deep social fears and anxieties built into it. The pleasurable thing in slapstick comedies according to Steven Shaviro is the “transgression of rules of propriety, and the joyous destruction of regulations and norms” (110). This destruction or rather deconstruction of regulations and norms is what can be found back in awkward comedies of today. Shaviro

uses the comedies of Jerry Lewis as example in his text, for example the film Cracking Up (1983). In this film the protagonist visits a museum and is desperately trying to make sense of the many masterpieces that are hanging on the wall. At one point a horse on one of the paintings pees over the protagonist and other paintings come alive as well. The respectfulness towards the artwork of the protagonist quickly turns to embarrassment. Chaos ensues in Jerry Lewis’ films because of his hyperconformism (Shaviro 111). This is something that is to be found as well in the character of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm for example, by trying to adhere to a set of social rules, chaos ensues. Characters trying to adhere to the rules rather then defying them can be found in many slapstick comedies. Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, although a lower-class figure, is constantly trying to adhere to the rules and norms of the bourgeoisie. A large part of the embarrassment in the work of Jerry Lewis also comes down to his physical comedy. Shaviro sees Jerry Lewis’ gestures as “overdetermined, twisted and turned, fragmented and exploded” (120- 121). What happens to the body of Jerry Lewis is embarrassing because of the pain that is inflicted on it while he is trying to respect the rules, paired with his “anxious and incompetent personas” (Shaviro 121). Slapstick comedy already has a focus on the social world, but gestures and movement are their main concern. In awkward comedy of the last twenty years or so these roles have shifted. Awkward comedy’s main concern is the world of social norms, and traces of slapstick and the physical discomfort can be found back here as well. As stated earlier, Kracauer sees the end of silent film as the end of film comedy. In Kracauer’s theory of film he finds two tendencies that have been there since the very start of the medium: realistic and formative tendencies. Kracauer seeks to find an ontology of film, by comparing it to that of photography. These tendencies are what sets film apart from photography. Kracauer finds the films of the Lumière brothers to be the example of the realistic tendencies, while the formative can be found in the work of Georges Méliès. Kracauer describes the realistic tendency of the Lumière films as “nature caught in the act” (31). These films tried to capture daily life on camera. Méliès on the other hand used film to create great illusions and dream worlds. Kracauer writes on the films of Méliès that they substitute “staged illusion for unstaged reality, and contrived plots for everyday incidents” (32). What Kracauer finds to be the key aesthetic in the realistic tendency of film is movement. The static camera of the Lumière brothers was capturing movement. Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895) is one of those films that is just about capturing movement. When the mobility of cameras later changed cinema became more about the movement of cameras themselves. Also part of creating a realistic setting for the film is staging, as “a staged real-life event evokes a stronger illusion of reality on the screen than would the original event on if it had been captured directly by the camera” (Kracauer 35). A formative quality of film on the other hand is one where reality is altered in a significant

manner. More often than not these tendencies are combined in films, but the formative qualities of film in the theory of Kracauer seem to be more in favour of creating a good depiction of reality. Kracauer sees the essential role of film in a focus on physical existence, which affords “insight and enjoyment otherwise unattainable” (37). Movement is thus what makes a film cinematic. When comedies moved away from their focus on physicality, it died in the theory of Kracauer exactly because of this lack of movement. According to Kracauer this was not because any social conditions, but because of a shift in the medium of film itself: the rise of sound film (216). Although Kracauer is fairly strict in his views on the sound film, there is something here to be found that we find in modern awkward film as well. First of all, all the awkward projects that are described in this thesis do follow the realistic tendency. A big part of awkward comedy actually comes from the fact that it is very close to reality. Formative qualities of film are used to create even more realism in these comedies. As we will see with I Love Lucy and The Party is that movement is a very big part of awkward comedy. Speech created different social layers that could be perceived as awkward. If gestures were what the bourgeoisie had lost in the late nineteenth century, from the 1960s onward the bourgeoisie seems to have lost its grip on controlling the social norms. The reason for this changing cannot only be found in the medium itself, but is also because of a change in socio-economic systems. While slapstick has its roots in Taylorism and Fordism, the change toward a social awkwardness is deeply rooted in post-Fordism. Fordism is a particular form of capitalist production. Henry Ford effectively created a division of labour to make standardized consumer goods (Jessop 2). This form of production not only drastically altered labour, but also had a huge societal impact. Fordism was able to spread wealth among the population, which created a middle class (Jessop 7). Within Fordism consumption saw two trends: “first, growing private consumption of standardized, mass- produced commodities in nuclear family households and, second, provision of collective goods and services by a bureaucratic state” (Jessop 7). Slapstick reflected this machinery and mechanics, while itself also being a commodity of modern industrialization. The American slapstick of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon was greatly respected by many avant-gardists in Europe (Jacobs and D’Haeyere 31, Hatherley 15), especially because of their reflection on Fordism. The Keystone FilmCompany was most famous for their elaborate gags involving machinery. At the time there was much concern on the enormous growth of machinery, and Keystone was able to re-appropriate “technology as sources of pleasure, not anxiety, offering carnivalesque images of out-of-control machinery that bracketed off the more distressing aspects of American culture’s encounters with the machine” (King 278). Viewed from this angle Keystone did as much fetishizing of the machinery as Fordism itself, but as one places gestures and movements as being central to the silent film era, it would be more fair to say that the almost mechanical acting of the

slapstick actors resembles the fragmented body that suffers from the rise of technology and machinery. With the technological advancements that allowed speech other issues of Fordism could come to the foreground. Speech turned away from alienated physical existence and was able to allow more attention to the social world. This was still in the era of Fordism of course, and it was a change in the medium of film itself that allowed this shift to happen. It was in the sound era “when the highly specific social codes involving speech were added to more general codes of governing behaviour and dress, that comedies moved beyond slapstick caricatures of middle-class and upper-class society and began to reflect more nuanced social distinctions” (Beach 2). From the sound film onwards the focus became less on the body and more on social distinctions. Charlie Chaplin’s silent films were of course already pointing in this direction, but remained somewhat of a caricature of the lower classes. While early sound film was still a highly transgressive genre (Beach 5), in the screwball comedies of the 1930s one can find this new focus on the social world. Many of these films still involve some physical elements of slapstick comedy, but their main focus is a battle of the sexes. Not only are screwball comedies spoofing love stories, the most common plots of the screwball comedy revolve around “an upper-class heiress involved with a middle- class man or a wealthy man involved with a women of working- or middle- class background” (Beach 50). Not only is there more of a focus on the social status of gender in screwball comedy, this genre is also increasingly using speech to denote the difference in class between the characters. These focuses on cross-class relations can be traced back to Fordism. The 1930s not only saw a huge rise in consumer culture, they also were a time of growing disparity and poverty. Ironically enough it was the growing consumer culture of Fordism that brought different classes closer together in their shared interest (Beach 50). But it is not until the 1960s that we can finally speak of a new form of awkwardness, and the roots of this new awkwardness are to be found in post-Fordism. Fordism did create a middle-class in the United States, and helped create a consumer culture, but this was notably only a white middle-class (Kotsko 18-19). The oppression of Afro-Americans, and women still not having a good place in society led to a lot of unrest in the 1960s, paired with the Vietnam war, the “sexual revolution” and an experimental drug culture, this was a decade of many changes” (Kotsko 19). There was much needed emancipation for these groups, but failed to have any radical changes. The seeming stability that Fordism had provided lost its grip, and people became more aware of their place in society. This is one way in which post- Fordism is used in this thesis, literally denoting the moment that Fordism had lost its cultural grip. Fordism remained somewhat intact for a decade, but the seeming cultural stability of Fordism quickly lost footing (Kotsko 19). This created an awkwardness extending to the social world, where the white middle-class male does not know his place in the world anymore. It is not until the late 1970s and the early 1980s when the economic system shifts

to a post-Fordist mode as well (Albertsen 348). A growing complexity of class fragmentation creates even more awkwardness. It is in The Party that the cracks in the model of Fordism can be found, and this film also identifies a move towards an awkwardness of a bourgeoisie that has lost its grip on social norms. Before diving into The Party it is also crucial to do a brief history of the root of awkwardness in television as well, as The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm were frontrunners in having a comedy that solely had its focus on the awkwardness of social norms in daily life. To do this a brief examination of the sitcom genre will follow paired with an analysis of I Love Lucy.

2.3 Television and Social Awkwardness

The relationship between awkwardness and television is a complex one. Television quickly found its way into the routine everyday life of people as both a disturber and a comforter (Silverstone 3). Without getting to deep into the ontology of television there are of course a number of big differences between television and cinema. The ontology of television is more to be found within its liveness (Couldry), seriality (Mittell), and flow (Williams), which makes it a very different medium than cinema. The sitcom genre in particular shows the unique liveness of television. Although the sitcoms are of course not a direct live broadcast, they do pertain some sense of liveness in their use of the laugh track. This use of the laugh track is “an obvious demonstration that television is a medium sold on its ‘liveness’, and is able to respond to real world events quicker than film and newspapers” (Mills 50). The laugh track also has a clearly comical purpose, in the fact that it tries to reclaim laughter as a social event, but the laugh track also points to a different point that makes the medium of television fairly different than that of film. Cinema mostly remains a visual medium, whereas the placement of the television in the living room also makes it much more a medium of sound. That is not to say that sound is immensely important to cinema, but the role of sound in television definitely sets itself apart from cinema. Fictional television not only draws much of its aesthetic qualities from film, the radio also had a huge role to play in the development of television (Hilmes 155). Many sitcoms also choose to film in front of a live audience instead of using the laugh track to create even more of a sense of liveness. It is somewhat of a strange device the laugh track. With television having a central place in the living room and daily life of people it can be on at any time without people actually watching what is evolving on screen, but listening to it anyway. While one may miss some of the more physical jokes if one does not pay full visual attention to the television, one can still laugh at many of the jokes and follow a large part of the storyline. The laugh track points to something very essential within the medium of television, namely its duplicating of the social sphere in the living room.

Much less a medium of gesture, the medium of television is more one where people try to reclaim their social life. How to define the sitcom and its relationship to awkwardness? Sitcom, which is short for situation comedy, has its roots in radio, and has been a relatively stable genre since it first appeared on television (Hartley 65). The industry could fairly easy make a lot of money out of a sitcom, by only using a few sets, and having in-house producers and screenwriters produce a lot of work in little time (Hartley 65). The sitcom genre can generally be placed in two different categories: family sitcoms and workplace sitcoms. Family sitcoms distinguish themselves “from serials and drama series by their focus on internal family roles” (Hartley 66). The stories of these sitcoms are mostly about fairly unusual family setups. These unusual families, like The Addams Family (1964-1966) suggest that “like modernity, progress, science, and reason themselves, the modern suburban family was shadowed by darker and mostly unspoken ‘others’ from pre-modern and irrational traditions” (Hartley 66). Family sitcoms were able to highlight some of the grittier underpinnings of a seeming stable consumer culture (Hartley 66). The workplace sitcom traditionally tended to focus on sexual chemistry, with an “almost obsessive focus on ‘situations’ that occurred in relationships rather than in workplaces as such” (Hartley 67). Of course later on a lot of hybrids between these two genres appeared; like Friends (1994-2004), and Seinfeld (1989-1998). These shows of course did not have to focus on either family or work anymore as they revolved around a group of friends. In these friend-centred shows the groups of friends still give the feeling of a family (Feuer 70). Traditionally the plot structure of an episode in a sitcom would start with the familiar status quo, then a ritual error would be made, followed by a lesson learned from this error, and finally the familiar status quo would again be restored (Marc 190- 191). Only sitcoms that were more radically breaking with the genre would break this formula, like Seinfeld. In Seinfeld the characters never seem to learn their lesson. Co-creator Larry David had the motto while writing of: no hugging, no learning. Later shows like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which will be discussed in depth within the next chapter, would extensively deal with awkwardness within the sitcom genre. Let’s see the influence of some of the characteristics of slapstick in the early sitcom genre, by analysing an episode of I Love Lucy. This sitcom from the 1950s has made some crucial technical developments of which some are still prevalent within the genre today. The most important invention is the three-camera setup. This setup allowed for three cameras to film a scene from three angles at the same time. A brief analysis of this sitcom will help to gain a better understanding of the genre from which later awkward sitcoms have stemmed.

2.4 I Love Lucy

Other than being a family sitcom, I love Lucy can more specifically be seen as an “unruly woman sitcom” (Rowe). This specific subgenre of the sitcom evolves around “an icon of a grotesque female whose excesses break social boundaries” (Feuer 68). I Love Lucy is thus very much already in the sphere of displaying the strict boundaries of American society in the 1950s and constantly breaking these. The precise political power of the unruly woman is unclear, but this figure has also helped make disobedience of the social order thinkable (Rowe 83). At the same time I Love Lucy is very much indebted to physical slapstick. Many of the laughs come from the physical comedy displayed by Lucille Ball. Technically speaking, I Love Lucy was the first series to use the famous three-camera setup that the sitcom is famous for. This development made the sitcom less stiff and makes it feel less like watching something on stage (Mills 39). The three-camera setup also was able to create two jokes out of one joke, “one from the funny thing that is said and another from someone else’s reactions to it” (Mills 39). This technological development highlights a shift towards more of a comedy that is aware of the reactions to others to what is being said. Notably, I Love Lucy was also unique in its use of a live audience. This was chosen by the producers to create more of a unique reaction of the audience to Lucille Ball (Elrick). The sitcom genre from the beginning already is more concerned with the social world then the previous comedy genres. In the first episode of the second season of I Love Lucy, “Job Switching” (1952), both elements of slapstick and a comedy that is more concerned with the social world can be found. In this episode Ricky finds that Lucy is spending too much of his money. After they have an argument about this, the men, Ricky and Fred, decide to take on the housework, while the women, Lucy and Ethel, try to find a job. The reversal of the gender roles does not end up as planned. While the men are clearly struggling with the housework, the women find a job at a candy factory. At this factory Lucy and Ethel have to wrap candies at an assembly line. In this Fordist factory there is a clear labour division, where there are many different stations in which every job has a vital role to the end product. In the scene that is most reminiscent of slapstick in this episode, Lucy and Ethel try to wrap chocolates, while the assembly line is working at an extremely fast pace. The women cannot keep up with the line, and decide to eat some of the chocolates and hide them so that their boss will not fire them. This scene is very reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s struggles with the assembly line in Modern Times (1936). Like Chaplin the women cannot keep up with the speed of the machine. Where Chaplin gets caught up in the machinery itself, the women try to gain a grip on the machine, but ultimately fail. The use of gesture here is one of fragmentation and loss. Like slapstick film Lucy here displays a loss of gesture, but what the rest of the episode besides the slapstick gags displays is a significant awareness of the social world and the

roles that are assigned in this world. The women are clearly assigned the role of housewife, while the men have jobs and are supposed to provide for their wives. Lucy disobeying these social norms has the potential for showing other women in a similar position that this disobedience is an option. The social status quo at the end of the episode is restored, with the men and the women both realizing that they belong back in the role that they were assigned. This makes it difficult to ascribe true feminist or political meaning to this episode. While I Love Lucy does not induce much awkwardness in the audience, the gender reversal does display an awkwardness of sorts in the characters. It especially displays the inability of the men to adapt to their newly assigned roles. Real social embarrassment is not to be found in this show yet, but I Love Lucy does reveal that the sitcom from its start already started to move towards a more social awkwardness.

2.5 The Party

The pivotal moment when awkwardness finally moves to the realm of social embarrassment can be found in Blake Edwards’ The Party from 1968. In The Party an Indian actor accidentally blows up a film set. The producer of the film tries to have the actor blacklisted from Hollywood, but instead the actor accidentally gets invited to a Hollywood party. This is basically the entire plot there is to this film. The rest of the The Party sees the actor, Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers), trying to blend into the party that consists of a world with social norms that seems entirely strange to him. The Party displays awkwardness in its gestures and slapstick comedy, but shifts its focus more to a social awkwardness. In the Pink Panther films where Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers had already worked together traces can already be found of this shift happening, but these inspector Clouseau films were much more centred on a figure of chaos. Inspector Clouseau “exudes logical disconnectedness” (Lehman & Luhr 79), and is almost an alien to the logical world. Hrundi V. Bakshi is also a source of much chaos, but is also a very recognizable character in the way that he is just trying to fit in with the rest of the party. The very premise of this film would already induce much anxiety in people. Going to a party of a big Hollywood producer without knowing anybody there, would make a lot of people feel awkward. When Hrundi enters the enormous mansion for the first time there is already some form of discomfort there. One of the shoes of Hrundi is muddy and he desperately tries to clean his shoe. He does this in a pool of water that is flowing through the house. When Hrundi puts his shoe in the water he quickly loses it. A shot-reverse shot of Hrundi and the guests of the party already establishes the mood. The other guests of the party see Hrundi struggling while he is looking for his shoe, while Hrundi laughs back at the other guests somewhat embarrassed. Hrundi remains a real outsider throughout the party. When Hrundi

has finally retrieved his shoe he is trying to mingle with other people. When a group is laughing because of an anecdote Hrundi joins in with the laughter, without having heard the anecdote. The moment he joins in laughing, the other people stop their laughter altogether. When he then tries to join a conversation with a different group of people he again starts laughing without having heard the entire story. The state senator tells that he has been robbed. Again, Hrundi does not seem to fit in very well with the rest of the party. When he is later invited to dance with a girl his classical way of dancing makes it awkward for the girl dancing with him. It could be said that the radical difference in norms comes down to Hrundi coming from a totally different cultural background, and this is in part true of course. But there is also an inherent awkwardness to the bourgeois and privileged setting that Hrundi ends up in. Hollywood itself is portrayed as a conservative place in The Party. The precredit sequence of the film starts of at the desert, where the style of filming is recognizably an action epic. Vast plains are seen, while colonial troops are moving through it. Then Hrundi is blowing a horn, and thousands of native troops are appearing from their hiding places. Hrundi is being shot multiple times, but is still blowing the horn. This sequence is parodying adventure films like Gunga Din (1939) (Lehman & Luhr 139). It quickly turns out that the world that was understood to be the diegesis has been a film set. Both the director and the producer of the film scold Hrundi for his bad acting. The producer, C.S. Divot, angrily walks up to his trailer, where he snaps his fingers to a woman bathing in the sun, demanding to have sex with her. After he had already been scolded, Hrundi accidentally blows up an expensive film set. Not only does this opening sequence show what kind of film The Party is not going to be, it also shows the worst behaviour of the people working in the industry. Knowing the social upheaval of the 1960s these guests must be even more aware of their privileged position. To a large extent the awkwardness at this party is caused by the refusal of these privileged people to give up their norms. In the first half of the film most of the awkwardness stems from Hrundi having a different cultural background, while in the second half it is caused more by the refusal of the privileged to adapt. The curiosity of Hrundi leads him through the first half of the party. He does not seem to make a lot of new friends or make connections with the people there. The only one who he has a conversation with at the beginning of the party is ‘Wyoming Bill’ Kelso, who is a famous actor that plays in westerns. Hrundi asks for Wyoming Bill’s autograph, and he gets one. But Wyoming Bill Kelso seems rather condescending in constantly calling Hrundi “little fellow”, or pretending to shoot Hrundi because he thinks Indians and Native Americans are the same. The one person Hrundi does seem to have a connection with is Michele Monet. This French aspiring actress is like Hrundi a true outsider to the party. She has come to the party with the same producer that blacklisted Hrundi for accidentally blowing up his expensive set, C.S. Divot. In the opening

sequence Divot was already seen on set having a blonde woman around to just have sex with, which he is also being very rude to. Now C.S. Divot is trying to do the same with Michelle, offering her a role in his film in exchange for sex. When Michelle rejects his advances, he blacklists her just like he has tried to do with Hrundi. While Hrundi is trying his best to be kind and respectful, the rest of the party does not really seem to care about him. Hrundi largely gets ignored, or forgotten altogether. This becomes most prevalent in the dining scene. All the guests are seated along a long table. When Hrundi tries to get a chair there seem to be no chairs left. A chair is found for him, but it is much lower than the rest of the table. Even worse is that the chair is placed next to the kitchen door, which opens to both sides. This table placement is rather humiliating for Hrundi. But ultimately Hrundi and Michelle get their revenge. Although they are not explicitly looking for revenge, they both have been humiliated in different ways at the party. When Hrundi has fallen into the pool, and Michelle has rescued him from the pool, both of them have wet clothes. Hrundi is forced to drink alcohol, which makes him less interested in the social norms. Michelle tells C.S. Divot that she wants to stay at the party, and not go home with him. When they both decide to stay, they clearly do not want to adhere to the rules in the house anymore, and enjoy the party on their own terms. In their rejection to conform, their awkwardness quickly disappears. When the daughter of the Clutterbucks arrives with her hippie friends and a painted elephant the social order of the party has definitely shifted. Hrundi wants the elephant washed, as he says it is disrespectful to his culture to have slogans on an elephant. This event leads to the mansion being filled with foam. Now the social order has totally broken down. Alice Clutterbuck cannot handle this, and faints multiple times. The very presence of the counter- culture with a different set of norms, makes Alice Clutterbuck panic. Fred Clutterbuck on the other hand seems more concerned with the presence of Russian dancers in his house. Both are forced to deal with their prejudices and are not handling it very well. Blake Edwards effectively uses multiple techniques and tropes to create awkwardness. In The Party Edwards often makes use of reaction shots. When Bakshi just got totally wet because of the sprinkler installation in the garden, he walks in to a room where they are all listening to Michelle sing. When he appears soaking wet, behind Michelle, a reaction shot is seen from everyone at the party just staring at Bakshi. These shots are almost never just of one person, but multiple people staring back at Bakshi. This works very well in making the audience feel this embarrassment as well. Edwards does the same through the placement of Bakshi in the frame. Often Bakshi is not at all in the centre of the frame, but in the background or on the side. When Bakshi is feeding the bird for example in the foreground Clutterbuck is seen talking to someone, and Bakshi appears behind him in the frame feeding the parrot. This framing device again gives the possibility to see the reactions of other people to the behaviour of Bakshi. It is exactly in shots like these that a

shift from physical to awkward comedy is created. It is not yet social awkward comedy to the extreme, as Bakshi often manages to escape towards the other side of the mansion when something really awkward has happened. Later on, in especially Curb Your Enthusiasm, these confrontations would be the primary focus of the awkwardness. According to Peter Lehman and William Luhr, The Party “may be the single most radical film made in Hollywood since D.W. Griffith’s style came to dominate the American cinema” (163). They argue this because it goes directly against the bourgeois modes of representation that has been the standard since D.W. Griffith. This style is about well-constructed plots and a centred narrative action, but in The Party Edwards rejects this. Even the dialogue often cannot be fully heard, and does not have a central role within this film. What makes The Party even more radical is the shift of awkwardness towards the social realm. The Party breaks with the social norms, and at the same time the narrative constructions of the bourgeoisie. This indeed makes The Party one of the most radical films ever produced in Hollywood. This chapter has been trying to find the roots of awkwardness through the history of film and television. What old film reviews revealed was that awkwardness in the early stages of film was more understood as a physical awkwardness. This directly correlates with the theories of Agamben and Kracauer who placed gestures and movement at the centre of film. The loss of gesture of the bourgeoisie can be found at the heart of the ontology of early cinema. Kracauer goes as far as to state that film comedy died with the appearance of sound in film. Although gesture and movement do remain at the heart of cinema, there is a change that can be detected with sound in film. Speech allows for more focus on differences in class, for example. This means a shift towards the social world. The invention of television created even more change towards the social world, but also hinted at somewhat of a loss of the social world. With post-Fordism and the social upheaval of the 1960s, the bourgeoisie lost its control over the social and cultural norms. Here the true definition of awkwardness as we now know it can be found. The Party is deeply embedded in this era and effectively shows the loss of control over its norms from the bourgeoisie. The Party can be seen as not only a precursor of awkward comedy today, but already recording the very origins of this awkwardness. The decades that followed saw even more growing awkwardness. Woody Allen shows a person very anxious and awkward about his position in society for example. This awkwardness would reach a crucial point in the early 21st century, where it became a particular form of comedy in its own right.

3. Awkwardness and Comedy1

The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm were both series from the early 21st century that shifted comedy to an almost exclusively socially awkward position. As we are moving towards the 21st century with this chapter, we are now coming even more in the territory of post-Fordism, and neoliberalism. While Kotsko has his main focus on post-Fordism, which is a helpful term in acknowledging the radical shifts that have happened in economics and society after Fordism, this chapter will try to focus on neoliberalism to explain the political side of awkwardness. Neoliberalism better explains the economic situation of the early 21st century then post-Fordism. Neoliberalism represents “the post World War II renewal of the capital’s attempts to empower its position on society” (Wrenn 506). This has meant a shift from the state as a space that cared for the employment and protection of its citizens against the market, to a state that propagates individual responsibility and the protection of the free market. This economic model that has dominated society created a neoliberal identity that is “isolating, disconnected from any larger community, and as such leaves the individual alienated” (Wrenn 507). The alienation that takes place within neoliberalism will be the central theme running through this chapter, accompanied by an exploration of humour theory, which will further explain how this alienation is linked to awkwardness and comedy. Kotsko’s essay on awkwardness already implies that there is a link between awkwardness and comedy in his essay, since all his examples are comedies. But nowhere does he make this link explicit. Kotsko does not further investigate why awkwardness seems to be predominantly found within comedy. Kotsko places awkwardness within the era of post- fordism, but the exact political meaning of awkwardness remains somewhat vague in his work. To gain a better understanding of the politics of awkwardness, this chapter will turn to the influential works on humour by Bergson and Freud. With the help of these theorists a greater understanding of awkwardness in relation to comedy can be formed. A theory of comedy is able to provide a better understanding of the comedy series that Kotsko discusses, and will also help to gain a better grip on the subject of awkwardness itself. Getting a better grip on why we laugh at certain things, and in particular why we laugh at awkward humour, helps to provide a better understanding of society in the early 21st century. Analyses of The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm will help to explain these theories of humour as well as help understand the political implications of awkward comedy.

1 Part of this chapter comes from an earlier student paper I have written on this subject for another course. See bibliography for the precise source.

3.1 Bergson and Awkward Laughter

In 1900 Bergson attempted to gain a serious philosophical understanding on the issues of laughter and comedy with a series of three essays on laughter, which would in 1924 would be bundled together in one book. For Bergson laughter is caused by “something mechanical encrusted upon the living” (16). Within this formula there are already traces to be found of the central duality within Bergson’s work on laughter, on the one side of this duality there is rigidity, automatism and repetition, while on the other side there is vitality, elasticity, and changeability. This tension between the mechanical and the living has its roots in Bergson’s broader philosophical project of élan vital, which is the on-going movement and life force of all living things. This movement is temporarily halted when the mechanical wins it from the living through which a moment of comedy is created. Noticing certain mechanical repetitions within a person’s behaviour could be very funny for example (Bergson 15). This is not just because this is a moment where the mechanical is encrusted upon the living, but also because this is a moment where a person appears to be a thing or a machine. An example that Bergson gives is that of the jack-in-the-box. According to Bergson a lot of comedy comes down to the fundamental principle that a jack-in-the-box displays. When one tries to close the lid on a jack-in-the-box it will only jump higher. On the one hand, there is the mechanical tool that is the jack-in-the-box itself, and on the other there is the life force that is trying to close the lid on the toy (Bergson 23-24). The Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupancic criticizes the mechanical-living duality for being too much of an oversimplification of comedy (114). Zupancic claims that this duality is not just the starting point of comedy, but might also be an effect of comedy (114). Going back to the example of the jack-in-the-box, Zupancic suggests that the repetition might not just stem from the mechanical, but that the human who is trying to get the toy in the box is just as much being engaged in repetition (124). As Zupancic rightly shows here, this repetition could just as well be part of the living. This questions the core of Bergson’s argument of “something mechanical encrusted upon the living”, as the example of the jack-in-the-box showed that it could as well be that the living is encrusted upon the mechanical. That is not to say that Zupancic argues for a simple reversal of the matrix that is put forward by Bergson, she rather tries to prove the point that through “‘mechanical’ repetition […] life can rise in front of us in all its vivacity, as well as produce the comic pleasure and the effect of ‘indestructibility’ associated with comedy” (126). In other words, comedy holds the possibility of a temporary revelation of the force of life, through the use of mechanical repetition. There could be a strong argument made for the fact that laughing at awkward humour shows the mechanical side of everyday life and society. At the same time there is inelasticity to be found within the characters in these awkward comedies as well. It could be said that a

lot of the comedy within the awkward comedies is created through the fact that characters try to fight the mechanical, like the jack-in-the-box, and the living are thus trying to overcome the mechanical in these instances. The tension between the living and the mechanical are pivotal in understanding awkward humour, but it will be necessary to use his duality in both ways, and not just in the “something mechanical encrusted upon the living” manner, but also in the way of the living trying to fight the mechanical. This is where Bergson’s work could be linked with more societal forces. When Bergson is writing on society his idea of laughter as a humiliating moment comes to the foreground. For Bergson society is a force that is almost always felt. He writes: “society holds suspended over each individual member, if not the threat of correction, at all events the prospect of a snubbing, which, although it is slight, is none the less dreaded” (Bergson 39). The function of laughter is then a means for society to enforce itself. This is very humiliating for the one at whom the laughter is directed. Laughter thus has a humiliating function for Bergson, because in laughter “we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed” (Bergson 39). According to Bergson this is also why comedy is much closer to real life than drama. This idea of laughter as a corrective is very interesting with regards to awkward comedy. Within awkward comedy there is also a strong form of societal pressure. The characters of these comedies are battling with these societal norms, but it might also be the case that we laugh at some characters exactly because they do not conform to the ruling norms. For the main characters in The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm it certainly seems to be the case that they either refuse to live up to society’s norms, or do not recognize that they are breaking these norms. The characters Larry David and David Brent are often not realizing their own position and have a certain refusal to feel ashamed about their behaviour. With Bergson’s notion of comedy as “a study of other men”, he might have already predicted that something as awkward comedy could come into being (Bergson 46). With the big difference being that Bergson sees comedy as a space where no other emotions come into play. Bergson writes: “depict some fault, however trifling, in such a way as to arouse sympathy, fear, or pity; the mischief is done, it is impossible for us to laugh” (40). In awkward comedy the faults of humans are exactly what is at display. This does not necessarily mean that sympathy is invoked, but there is a feeling of awkwardness that accompanies this humour. As can be read from his position on society Bergson sees it as being on the side of the mechanical, as it is a force that repeatedly corrects the behaviour of people.

3.2 Freud and The Awkward Ego

Sigmund Freud also has his ideas about the pressures of society in the form of the superego. Although Freud is writing around the same time as Bergson he has a different approach to the theory of humour. Freud’s writing on humour not only provides key insights into comedy, but it also means a break with his earlier writings. Where in previous works of Freud the superego was kind of a harsh master or parental figure to the ego, in his work Humour from 1927 the superego becomes able to “laugh at oneself” (Critchley 103). The superego for Freud was punishing the ego whenever the ego did not rise to the expectations of society. This punishment of the ego is reminiscent of Bergson’s humiliation in laughter. A feeling of humiliation would come from the superego punishing the ego for doing something that falls out of society’s strict norms. With his writing on humour Freud finds that it is through humour that the superego achieves a more soothing role. Freud clearly distinguishes between jokes and humour. Jokes provide a momentary relief in laughter, while humour seems to transcend the moment. According to Freud, humour is even rebellious, as it marks the triumph of the ego against the superego. Humour becomes a coping mechanism to deal with the real world, without it becoming a mental health issue like neuroses or intoxication (Freud 4543). This coping does not necessarily become a problem as it can be experienced as “especially liberating and elevating” (Freud 4545). Through humour the parental superego becomes less harsh towards the ego that is intimidated by the world, and becomes more of a comforting parent figure. The superego is through humour able to provide a soothing way to cope with reality. Simon Critchley sees Freud’s Humour as a sense of knowing one’s limitedness in the world, which becomes acknowledged with a smile. This is a smile instead of laughter for Critchley, as Freud opposes the idea that humour involves hearty laughter. But Freud never uses the term smiling, and Critchley seems to take Freud’s point too far as he finally claims that “we smile and find ourselves ridiculous” (111). Although Freud is explicitly talking about self-mockery when he is writing about humour, he is in no way implying that this is a self- deprecating type of humour. On the contrary, this self-mockery is a rebellious victory of the ego, which means that there is no ridiculing of the self going on, but rather a coping with the world. Freud’s distinction between humour and jokes seems quite problematic though, as shows like The Office clearly show that things can be laugh out loud funny without having to resort to the mere telling of jokes. This means that the transcending humour does not just resolves into smiling, but that it can also be the source of much hearty laughter. The soothing superego does become relevant in understanding the laughter at awkward humour. Within the awkward comedy there seem two different feelings fighting each other: that of feeling awkward and the need to laugh at this awkwardness. The superego can be seen as an entity that wants to adhere to the active social norms, but these

norms become heavily under attack by the awkwardness displayed in awkward comedy. As the ego finds itself in an awkward situation the superego might again strike as a parental figure telling the ego what to do differently. This conflict between the superego and the ego might be the cause of much of the awkward feeling, as the superego is telling the ego that it is not adhering to the social norms. The same might be true for the position of the spectator of the awkward, where the superego tells the ego that something that goes against all norms is happening. This is especially the case in the radical awkwardness, in which all previous forms of social norms have been abandoned altogether. The ultimate laughter at this awkwardness can be seen as the ego in turn trying to cope with this punishment from the superego, which then transforms the superego into the more comforting parent figure. Awkward humour ultimately provides a relief from social pressure. This does not explain everything about the awkward humour, but it does provide some insight into the way social norms impact us as individuals, and how the ego is impacted by these norms. There has to be some form of relief to this awkwardness, otherwise this would be an absolutely exhausting exercise for the ego to endure. Series that both provide the awkwardness and temporary relief from this awkwardness through their comedy are The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. What makes these series worth analysing is that Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office were the first shows in the early 21st century predominantly dealing with awkward humour. Both shows made a big break within the sitcom genre. Sitcom has been a very stable genre in which not much of the techniques had changed, but Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office noticeably shifted in form. Sitcoms most of the time made use of a three-camera setup, and were either filmed in front of a live audience, or made use of laugh tracks. Curb Your Enthusiasm noticeably broke with these traditions, by not making use of laugh tracks, and by using a more documentary style of filming instead of the three-camera setup. The Office followed Curb and went even further by creating a mockumentary sitcom. By steering away from the traditions of sitcoms, it could be said that these shows in their techniques already try to create more of an uncomfortable feeling then was previously the case in the sitcom genre. The content of both the shows is also way more radical than previous sitcoms. Larry David already changed the sitcom genre with Seinfeld, by completely changing the content of the sitcom. As we have already seen in the previous chapter, sitcoms traditionally were either family oriented or workplace oriented (Hartley 66-7). What these sitcoms shared was some form of emotional pay-off at the end of an episode where things would be restored to their previous order, or there were love arcs throughout the entirety of the series. In Seinfeld this has disappeared altogether. Instead of showing us the people we need to aspire to be, Seinfeld shows us characters that are deeply flawed. For a large part this came down to Larry David’s credo that there should be ‘no hugging and no learning’ for the characters.

Where previous sitcoms had some sort of resolution at the end of every episode, in Seinfeld the characters ended up the same or worse than before. Within Seinfeld there was already a close display of social norms to be found, but the characters always seemed to remain some ironic distance to the situations in which they found themselves, so any real awkwardness was avoided most of the time. In Curb Your Enthusiasm Larry David seems to be almost exclusively dealing with these social norms. By playing a somewhat obnoxious and very stubborn version of himself, Larry David is a character who moves from awkward situation to awkward situation. The Office is also very much about showing us deeply flawed beings. The characters are often immature, obnoxious, narcissistic, and seem downright unhappy most of the times. These are radical breaks with a genre that was until then concerned with happy endings. The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm thus become good starting points to delve into the relationship between awkwardness and comedy.

3.3 The Office

The Office follows the daily lives of a local branch of the paper company Wernhamm Hogg in Slough. The setup is that of a BBC documentary crew filming the employees. The Office makes use of the style of a mockumentary. This is a radically different approach to the genre than the traditional sitcom. The term mockumentary was first used to describe This is Spinal Tap (1984), and refers to a “fictional audio-visual text […] which looks and sounds like a documentary” (Hight 26). When referring to a mockumentary it is often implied that it contains satire or parody. Over the last two decades, the scope of this genre has widened and the term now seems to refer to genres outside of comedy as well. That is why Craig Hight argues that mockumentary now refers to a discourse rather than a comedic tool (26). Within The Office the mockumentary is used as a comedic tool, which hugely adds to the awkwardness of the show. The Office is not just a mockumentary, but can more specifically be regarded as a mockusoap (Hight 32). The mockusoap is a satirical take on the docusoap genre. The docusoap is a genre that came to prominence in the 1990s. The focus of the docusoap is on everyday life of ‘normal people’. Typical of the docusoap is that it asks for a critical investigation on how people act in the presence of a camera (Hight 32). In The Office the format of the docusoap is used to create great strings of awkward moments. The formal shifts in The Office create a radically different relationship between the audience and the sitcom genre. Where the three-camera setup created a position of omniscience for the viewer (Mills 62), the documentary style of filming in The Office puts the audience in a position of uncertainty. As was earlier discussed, the sitcom has been a fairly stable genre with its three-camera setup and recognizable laugh track. This traditional style is largely in line with the Superiority Theory of humour (Mills 63). It creates a position for the

audience where they have a certain distance towards the characters on screen, precisely because of the laugh track and the way it is filmed. When the laugh track is removed there is already a move away from this theatricality, and paired with the documentary style of filming this means a move away from the audience’s superiority altogether. Instead the audience gets much closer to the characters by abolishing these formal traits. The audience also recognizes the docusoap type of filming from their own experience with the genre, which creates even more of a closeness to the characters. The docusoap is known for filming the everyday life of people, but often also makes people behave awkwardly and different in front of a camera. The very presence of the camera in the office building seems to bring a lot of awkwardness with it. The characters almost constantly acknowledge the presence of the camera in The Office. Several characters perform awkward acts in trying to show off in front of the camera, especially the manager David Brent seems very happy with the arrival of the cameras. Brent has some rather grandiose tendencies and an extremely fragile ego. He reckons himself to be a rockstar, comedian, and feels that everybody working for him loves him. Every self-aggrandising thing Brent says is later undermined in the editing. The reality going on around him is radically different from what is going on in Brent’s head. For a big part this extreme narcissism of Brent causes the everyday awkwardness that Kotsko refers to. Kotsko sees everyday awkwardness especially prevalent within the workspace, where there are plenty of awkward co-workers (29). It is true that some individuals like David Brent, Keith, or Gareth seem to have an inherent awkwardness. Being put into a room with these individuals on a daily basis must already by a great source of awkwardness, but the presence of the camera makes it even worse. In the second season of The Office the characters are even aware of the previous season that aired. There are several random shots throughout the show where a janitor, who is not further introduced, looks awkwardly and full surprise into the camera. These moments show the unnatural presence of the camera in an already unnatural environment. In a way the camera actually disturbs the everyday of the people working in the office. An extra layer of awkwardness has come into an already awkward environment. The talking heads also disturb the everyday awkwardness. In these moments the characters often contradict themselves, or are lying to both the cameras and themselves. In The Office the everyday life is under constant pressure of society’s rules and norms. The third episode of the first season of The Office, The Quiz, especially shows how painful the series can get. In this episode it is the thirtieth birthday of Tim, and in the evening a pub quiz is organized, which David Brent is very excited about. David Brent and his friend Chris Finch have won this quiz six years in a row, and are looking to win it again. Chris Finch is an obnoxious man who constantly makes racist or sexist jokes, but is someone that David

Brent looks up to. Chris Finch is probably the only character in the series that is nasty and generally evil throughout the entirety of the series. While David believes that him and Chris are best friends, Chris repays this friendship by abuse and calling David a ‘fat bastard’. Striking within The Office is that Brent wants to be friends with Chris, as he himself is constantly on the lookout of not coming across as racist or sexist. But while doing so David often turns out to be racist or sexist. Within the everyday awkwardness of the office environment, which seems to be coming from certain individuals or co-workers, there is a constant pressure of society felt by the characters. This proves Kotsko’s point that awkwardness never comes from just an individual; it rather comes from the individual feeling societal pressures. In this case the pressures of neoliberalism on the individual subject. Within neoliberalism “the individual is taught that individual responsibility represents the pinnacle of justice” (Wrenn 506). In neoliberalism in a way undermines the idea of a society, as it has become a mere collection of individuals (Wrenn 506). In the overtly politically correct moments of The Office a certain displacement of the white middle class white-collar worker can be found. On the one hand there are the people like Chris Finch, who says things like “while you’re down there love” to Pam who is picking up her bag from the ground. Finch is obnoxious and does not seem to care about anything other people think of him. He does not necessarily make things awkward for people around him, as he is very outspoken about his racism and sexism. It is David who in trying to be not racist, while also doing everything to be liked by Chris. When asked about his comedy Brent answers with: “yeah there are limits to my comedy, there are things I would never laugh at. The handicapped, because there is nothing funny about them.” At first it seems like Brent is trying to make a political statement, but this quickly shows his own prejudices, saying; “at least the little handicapped fellow is able-minded.” The societal pressures felt by characters are reminiscent of Bergson’s notion of society. But society the work of Bergson is the place where laughter takes a turn towards humiliation. Is this humiliation where awkwardness and comedy collide in The Office? In The Office the humiliation is in a way more directed towards the audience. With the audience feeling more aligned with the characters because of the different techniques that are used within the show, the audience feels more in line with the humiliation that the characters endure on a daily basis. Although one could argue that there is still some form of superiority towards the characters in The Office, the change in form that the series displays creates a position in which we are able to recognize our own weaknesses as well. In the episode The Quiz a few people get humiliated. Dawn, Tim, Gareth, and David all have their moments of humiliation. Tim suffers the biggest humiliations in this episode. While it is his birthday, no one seems to recognize this but Dawn. Tim then receives a giant inflatable phallus as a gift from the fiancée of Dawn, Lee. Tim has a crush on Pam throughout the

series, which lead to a number of painful moments. At the end of the episode the humiliation has its worst turn yet, as Chris Finch throws one of the shoes of Tim over the building. Finch decides to do this as he turns out to be a sore loser, when he and David lost from Tim and Ricky. Finch proposes a different challenge to win the quiz, which is throwing an object over the building they are in. Under group pressure, in which Lee plays a big part as well, a shoe of Tim is taken of his foot. Finch succeeds in throwing the shoe over the building, which leads to Finch and Brent celebrating their win in a truly childish manner. Dawn wants to help Tim out finding his shoe, but her fiancée demands of her to go home with him. This leads to Tim ending up all alone on the parking lot of the building. This fairly sad ending to the episode is rather antithetical to the traditional sitcom. Instead of an ending that ends on a high note with a gag, this episode ends with a low point for Tim. The Office shows how much of an awkward place the awkward workplace is, and adds to this a number of characters who fail to adapt to new norms towards women, other ethnicities, other sexual preferences, and disabled people. This not only proves that modern work life is an alienating place, but also that there is a certain failure to adapt to the newer social norms. The Office provides a truly painful insight into the awkward neoliberal subject, and at the same time teaches us to cope with this true creating humour out of it. But the failure of a happy ending does leave a sense of the world that we fail to cope with. In this sense The Office does provides a relief of sorts, but is at the same time very confronting in not giving the audience a real relief.

3.4 Curb Your Enthusiasm

Even more confronting is what Kotsko describes as the ‘radical awkwardness’ that can be found in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Curb Your Enthusiasm is created by Larry David, and revolves around the life of a fictitious version of himself. The episode that this chapter will be analysing is “Trick or Treat” from the second season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, as this episode gives a great sense of what the entire show is about. Larry David in this episode has one clear objective; he is getting a bracelet for his wife Cheryl’s birthday, but there are five subplots that complicate him achieving this goal. First, Shelly who is making the bracelet wrongfully thinks that Larry wants an affair with her. There is also an incident outside a movie theatre where Larry is whistling Wagner, and gets confronted by another Jewish guy on this. Another subplot involves Larry telling a guy that he does not play golf anymore to make his friend Cliff Cobb, who sits in a wheelchair, feel better. Yet another plotline involves Larry not believing Cliff Cobb, when he says that his grandfather invented the Cobb Salad. And finally there is a subplot in which the house of Larry gets wrapped in toilet paper because he refused to give candy to two seventeen year old girls. At the end of the episode all of these

seemingly very different plotlines come together. As one can see these different plots all seem to be quite random, and disconnected from each other, but they always come together in the finale of an episode. What these subplots contain are misunderstandings (signals from Larry that are read wrong by Shelly), conflict (altercation on the whistling of Wagner, refusal to give Halloween candy to the girls, Cliff Cobb confronting Larry David on having an affair with his wife Shelly, Larry David in turn confronting Cliff on the truth of the Cobb Salad), and lying (Larry throughout the episode keeps lying to the guy he ran into earlier about the fact that he does not play golf anymore). These three tropes are a returning factor in most of the plots of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Most of the awkwardness comes down to the misunderstandings, conflicts, and lying throughout the show. A big part of the comedy and the accompanying awkwardness is also due to the accidentalness of the series. There are things that come on the path of Larry David that he seemingly cannot steer or control. According to Bergson the accidental is also a big part of what creates humour: “the comic is […] accidental: it remains, so to speak, in superficial contact with the person” (Bergson 10). Kracauer also saw accidents as the “very soul of slapstick” (62). The threat of death was something that never came true in slapstick comedy, and this was mostly because of chance events (Kracauer 215). Slapstick comedy thus captured the “fortuitous aspects of physical life” (Kracauer 215). With maybe the exception of season nine, there is little to no room for slapstick in Curb Your Enthusiasm. As we have seen in the previous chapter is that awkwardness has seen a shift from the physical towards the social. Where the accidental in slapstick might have provided insights into the awkwardness of the body, Curb Your Enthusiasm shows the fortuitous aspects of social life, and this social life is apparently extremely awkward. In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm Larry David moves through a series of seemingly random awkward events, which pile up and create more and more awkwardness as the episode proceeds. This randomness is almost like Larry David has an inescapable predestined path, and no matter how much he tries to change this path, in the end karma will find a back to haunt him. It is like Larry David is on his own trying to close the lid on the jack-in-the-box that is society, and the sheer mechanical power of society keeps winning it over Larry’s perseverance. The consequences of a lie that Larry David tells are not yet apparent in the moment, but could indeed make life even more awkward. Although Larry David is indeed very inelastic, there is some awkwardness that he cannot change, like the fact that Shelly thinks that Larry wants to start an affair with her. This awkwardness beyond the powers of Larry David shapes the rest of the other random events that occur in the episode. The accidentalness of the episode points towards the fortuitous aspects of social life. In a social sphere that is dominated by awkwardness, where we have become masters in detecting and avoiding awkward situations (Kotsko 2), the very

fortuitousness of social situations is what creates anxiety and subsequently more awkwardness. So how do these techniques and tropes relate to the duality posed by Bergson? It could be said that the handheld camera calls a lot of attention to the mechanism of the camera itself, and the entire artificiality of the series itself. While this use of the camera does not cause laughter, it does add another layer of the mechanism covering the living. The same could also be said for the improvised dialogues, which do tend to add to the comedic aspects of the series. Nowhere does the tension between the mechanic and the living become clearer than in these improvised dialogues. On the one hand these dialogues call a lot of attention to the mechanical, as they do not seem realistic, and clearly shows that the actors are acting in these instances, but these are also the moments in which the living wins territory against mechanism as it shows the actors themselves not knowing what the others will say, and this often creates spontaneous moments that are the direct opposite of repetition. There is a lot to be said that this tension between the living and the mechanical is where humour stems from throughout the series. This can also be found back in the main character Larry David. One reason for Larry David getting himself into awkward situations is his own inelasticity. In the episode “Trick or Treat” this is well summarized by Cheryl, who says to Larry: “you’ve got your own set of rules, and you think everybody is going to adhere to them, but they’re not, because nobody knows them”. If awkwardness is indeed caused by two sets of conflicting rules, then Larry David is not helping his case by being very inelastic with his own set of rules. This is of course where part of the comedy comes from, the fact that Larry cannot do right in any of the rules in L.A., but that they can in turn not do any good in the eyes of Larry, who has his own set of rules. There is a constant battle between Larry and society, and the inelasticity constantly changes from one to the other. Larry David is often the guy who keeps putting the jack-in-the-box back in his box to only make it worse and worse for himself. His inelasticity remains a great source of humour throughout the series. The ultimate radical awkwardness then comes from the fact that Larry is on the one hand misunderstood, and on the other hand is having his own set of rules to which other people cannot adhere. This ultimately creates multiple situations in which no norms seem to be guiding the social situations anymore. Comedy in Curb Your Enthusiasm is created through the improvised dialogues or the almost absurd turn of events within the episode. Bergson’s theory on laughter never seems far away as Larry David seems to fight against some invisible jack-in-the-box. Ultimately Curb Your Enthusiasm asks us to embrace awkwardness, or at least parts of it. The character of Larry David, at times seems to almost thrive on the awkwardness in his social life. Not that he is enjoying every part of these experiences, but he does not seem to mind making things more awkward for the people around him. Of course, only a sociopath could

go on living the way Larry David in the show does, but the meticulous display of awkwardness might just help in dealing with our own daily awkwardness. If we can learn to laugh at the most embarrassingly awkward situations, we may ultimately find a way to cope with societies demands and norms. Both Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office show the immense pressures that the characters feel from society. A part of this pressure is being well behaved by adhering to a certain set of rules and norms. In the case of The Office this means behaving to the norms that are normal within this neoliberal environment. David Brent keeps breaking these norms though by constantly being politically incorrect. In Curb Your Enthusiasm this link to neoliberalism may seem less obvious, because it is not as obvious a neoliberal environment as an office building. The fact that Larry David as a New Yorker from a Brooklyn background feels so out of place in the bourgeoisie environment of Los Angeles does actually say a lot about the politics there. The sets of norms of the bourgeois there are very particular and very hard for Larry David to adapt to. Again the bourgeoisie is seen desperately to control their social norms. Accidental moments get Larry David into trouble, but more often he gets into trouble because he does not agree with the norms that are set by the bourgeoisie. In this regard Larry David is a truly radical figure that tries to keep closing the jack-in-the-box of society. Showing both the mechanical side of society and that of Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm displays that awkwardness is not a one sided affair and that Larry David is as much a cause of awkwardness because he tries to keep fighting these norms.

4 - Awkwardness and Affect

4.1 Cringe Comedy

Awkward comedy has changed the affective landscape of traditional comedy. Whereas traditionally laughter would be seen as the end goal, or the affective response to comedy, awkward comedy proves that a feeling of awkwardness is also a possible response towards these comedies. Kotsko, Freud and Bergson help to give an answer to philosophical and psychological answers regarding awkward humour, but they do not provide insights into the affective qualities of awkwardness. Awkwardness is peculiar in that it is a very contagious feeling. If we witness an awkward situation in front of us between people, we cannot help but feel awkward ourselves. Awkward humour has also been called “cringe comedy”, which already implies an affective reaction to the films. The Oxford English Dictionary gives two notions of what it means to cringe: “bend one’s head in fear or in a servile manner”, or “experience an inward shiver of embarrassment or disgust”. Cringe comedy is mostly related to the latter notion of cringing, but everybody who has watched cringe comedy knows that the first notion is also very relevant. The cringing happens on two levels, both as an “inward shiver”, and an outward bodily manifestation by hiding your eyes for what is happening on the screen for example. What these two notions of cringing seem to have in common is some form of bodily reaction towards the awkwardness. On the one hand there is the actual hiding, while on the other hand there is something of an affective feeling or shiver caused by what is happening on the screen. This is why it becomes necessary to discuss awkwardness and cringe comedy from the framework of affect as well. Feeling awkward is often considered as a bad feeling and something to be avoided, which is why awkwardness could be framed as a negative affect. Sianne Ngai writes about what she calls “ugly feelings” to “expand and transform the category of “aesthetic emotions,” or feelings unique to our encounters with artworks” (6). Some of the negative affects Ngai discusses are envy, irritation, anxiety, and paranoia. These ugly feelings are, according to Ngai, emotions that are able to provide moments of critical thinking. This chapter will argue that awkwardness fits in with these categories of negative affect as well. Whereas neoliberalism holds the false promise of creating comfort (Reeser), the reality of a shared awkward social environment shows the actual world of discomfort that neoliberalism might be creating. Another characteristic of neoliberalism is its optimism. Neoliberalism continually promises people that their lives will get better if they consume. Laurent Berlant has called this cruel optimism, which exists “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (1). This chapter will also investigate the relation of affective awkwardness to this cruel optimism. It will be argued that awkwardness is an ugly

feeling that is a symptom of neoliberalism. Analysis of the film Eighth Grade (2018) will provide insight in how anxiety and cruel optimism work together in creating awkwardness. Eighth Grade is a great example of this as it provides insights into the lives of teenagers who are living in a culture of social media. This film shows how individualism as provided by social media in the neoliberal culture is also a great cause of affective awkwardness. How can awkwardness be considered as a negative affect? Like the ugly feelings that Ngai describes, awkwardness also has its negative connotations. Ngai finds a doubling in negativity in ugly feelings. There is already the negativity of the emotion itself, but this gets doubled by then feeling bad about experiencing that negative feeling (Ngai 10). Envy is an example of this. Feeling envious often goes together with the feeling that one should not be feeling envious. This doubling of negativity can be found in awkwardness as well. On the one hand there is the feeling of awkwardness itself, which is not pleasurable, and than there is the feeling bad about the feeling. Of the ugly feelings that Ngai describes, awkwardness seems to be most closely related to anxiety. Anxiety is often shared under the so-called “expectation emotions” (Ngai 209). An expectation emotion can be identified by its future- orientedness. This means that anxiety has an entirely different temporality, in that it disturbs the now by worrying about the future. Instead of just being considered about this temporality, Ngai also argues for looking at the spatial factors that create anxiety. Ngai comes to this point by following Freud, who went from looking at anxiety as an internal matter to a notion of anxiety as the “distinction between inside and outside” (211). This implies that there is already some form of the outside world within the experience of anxiety. Ngai writes: “the externalizing mechanism of “projection” may in fact constitute part of the problem of anxiety, as opposed to a psychic operation performed on one’s anxiety” (211). This means that there is a spatial moment of affect that could induce anxiety. There is of course an important difference here between fear in a moment of survival where one has to quickly respond to the outside world, and the more “neurotic” anxiety that takes place between the inside and the outside. But Ngai’s point here is that there is already something from the outside within anxiety, and this could well be the own projection of the person thrown into the world. Is this also the case with awkwardness? Awkwardness differs somewhat from anxiety in that it is not necessarily an expectation emotion. Instead of being concerned with the future it is more concerned with the present moment, or past awkwardness, but there is a certain anxiety in awkward moments. This anxiety can be related to Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism. People often have certain expectations, and awkwardness is one of the affects that can rise out of these expectations not being met. Anxiety and cruel optimism are seemingly closely related, as both are expectant of the future, but Berlant is mostly concerned about the present. Optimism, according to Berlant, is “not a map of pathology, but a social relation involving attachments

that organize the present” (14). People form affective relationships towards the good life in the present, while they are in reality getting worn out as well (Berlant 27-28). In other words, people “enable a concept of the later to suspend questions of the cruelty of the now” (Berlant 28). For Berlant it becomes crucial to perceive the present as a mediated affect, as “the present is what makes itself present to us before it becomes anything else” (4). With this notion of the present as a mediated affect, the now not only becomes the space, but also the temporality in which anxiety is born. Awkwardness is than also born out of this mediated affect. Anxiety and awkwardness also share the characteristic of not being an emotion that is directly related to survival. Whereas emotions like fear often have a clear object, with awkwardness and anxiety it is hard to pinpoint an exact object. The object of cruel optimism is “the thing within any object to which one passes one’s fantasy of sovereignty for safekeeping” (Berlant 43). The big difference between anxiety and awkwardness is that anxiety is more concerned with these fantasies, whereas awkwardness is the collusion of multiple fantasies and anxieties in a social environment. Social anxiety for example is the anxiety of being in “normal” social situations. This anxiety comes from fantasies in which other people are objects upon which certain fantasies are attached. Anxiety has the characteristic of projecting it onto others, as “an outward propulsion or displacement - that is, as a quality or feeling that the subject refuses to recognize in himself and attempts to locate in another person or thing” (Ngai 210). Awkwardness arises either out of cruel optimist fantasies or anxieties that clash in a social interaction. As the word cringing already implies, awkward comedy asks a lot of affective labour from its audience. With post-fordism, the economy in the Western world has moved away from the assembly line and has become more about immaterial labour (Hardt 94). Part of this immaterial labour has become affective labour. According to Michael Hardt with immaterial labour “production has become communicative, affective, de-instrumentalized, and “elevated” to the level of human relations – but, of course, a level of human relations entirely dominated by and internal to capital” (96). Hardt claims that affective labour has become a major part of modern Western economy. Over the last twenty years this affective labour has been moving towards television series and movies as well, where it becomes a form of labour to sit through the entertainment product. With regards to cringe comedy Pansy Duncan has called this form of affective labour “comic labour”. Duncan sees this as “labor that converges on our endurance of a state of ‘awkwardness’ whose negative phenomenological effects extend from psychic unease to real physical pain” (37). This notion assumes that there is an emotional as well as an affective labour at play in cringe comedy. To get to the traditional affective goal of comedy, laughter, the audience first has to endure awkwardness. The comic labour consists of an affective response of cringing to the awkwardness that is displayed on screen. In “Comedy Has Issues”, a paper that Berlant and

Ngai have written together, the authors see comedy as a space where anxiety is alleviated, but also as a place where anxiety is produced (233). According to the authors comedy can also be a space of “risking transgression, flirting with displeasure, or just confusing things in a way that both intensifies and impedes the pleasure” (Berlant & Ngai 233). Berlant and Ngai claim that comedy has internal to it a strength that is able to “hold together a greater variety of manifestly clashing or ambiguous affects” (239). Comedy is the one genre that is able to capture and pastiche a lot of other genres, and is thus also a space where a lot of different affects can be produced. With regards to cringe comedy this means that negative affects like awkwardness and cringing also become important. For Duncan the comic labour is most clearly on display in the gap “between the awkward’s constative source and it’s performative effect, between the cringing and the laughter” (50). Duncan argues that we mimic the cringing of the characters only to laugh about this cringing right after. According to Duncan the comic labour comes down to playification, where most labour goes into putting this labour back into play. In other words, there is the labour of having to emotionally engage with the awkwardness and having to mimic this awkwardness, followed by the labour of pushing this cringing back into play, and finally having the result of laughter, which makes fun out of this labour again. The argument that the real affective labour happens between the cringing and the laughter is convincing, but the notion of laughter as a form of play is missing the point. This would imply that comedy has to always return to some form of play, which seems not convincing at all. Especially with regards to cringe comedy this is often not the case. As analysis of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office will show this laughter is not necessarily a return to play. In the previous chapter the point has already been made about laughter being a coping mechanism. The argument that laughter would be a return to play, would suggest that the previous negative affect of the laughter is forgotten in that moment. This is not the case, as the laughter is very much related to the bad feeling of the awkwardness itself. Duncan does point to something very interesting in laughter in awkward humour though. This is the fact that we acknowledge both the awkwardness on screen and our own mimesis of this awkwardness, and in the laughter that follows part of the laughter stems from this mimesis. There is a doubling here that is reminiscent of the doubling in anxiety, but with laughter this is a more positive affect. The fact that Duncan defines the cringing and laughter as separate categories, also seem quite problematic. Often the pain of the awkwardness is still felt while laughing, these are thus not mutually exclusive. It is not always clear where the cringing begins and the laughter ends, or vice versa. The real comic labour within cringe comedy is not having to turn labour back into play, but the labour of having to mimic and experience these negative affects themselves. Cringe comedy explores clashes of anxieties, and in doing so explore previously unchartered territories of affect. With awkwardness comedy has found a way to explore

reactions from the audience that before were mostly to be found in horror films, namely to provoke bodily reactions of fear, and inward shivers of disgust, into the audience. Although these films and television series are comedies, they often dare to explore the awkward affect to great lengths. Awkwardness and laughter are not at all mutually exclusive in cringe comedy, and often work together. The “ugly feeling” of awkwardness is an affect that doubles the negative feeling. A good example of this is when someone blushes, and the person knows he is blushing; his face will only turn redder. Within the laughter at the mimesis of awkwardness there is also a doubling to be found. It is in between these moments of doubling that there is a possibility for critical thinking. Feeling awkward about feeling awkward makes one reflect on the situation that he is in. It will raise questions on what in the situation made it awkward for the person. This can also be claimed for the position of the audience in cringe comedy. The mimetic moment of feeling the contagious awkwardness of the characters is already in a sense this doubling of awkwardness, and already offers the possibility of reflection. The very act of laughing at this mimesis, is in a sense a coping with this feeling, but again offers a brief moment on reflection on this mimesis itself. In the case of Eighth Grade this means that the cringe comedy is able to provide a double reflection on neoliberalism and the individualism of social media.

4.2 Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade directed by comedian Bo Burnham explores the awkwardness of a fourteen- year-old girl who is about to graduate middle school and move on to high school. The protagonist, Kayla Day, is seen in her last week of middle school. Kayla creates inspiring advice vlogs for YouTube, while she is herself clearly suffering from social anxiety. Kayla rarely speaks in class, but in the vlogs she creates she is able to express herself. The age of Kayla is often regarded as the awkward stage, which is the age of puberty where kids are caught between their childhoods and fully becoming a teen. Eighth Grade explores this age in full length by following the perspective of a girl who inhabits a world of technologies and social media. These technologies make things even more awkward for Kayla. The film opens up with Kayla talking to her webcam to create a vlog. The very first image the audience sees of Kayla is a close-up, filmed by a webcam. This first image already has a particular uncomfortable quality to it. The close-up of Kayla is just a little too close to her face, while the image is also rather grainy, and of a bad quality. Kayla does not seem entirely comfortable in front of the camera as well. This opening sequence already carries a rather uncomfortable feeling with it. It becomes clear in this opening scene that Kayla often creates these videos as she says: “hey guys. It’s Kayla, back with another video.” She then goes on talking about “being yourself.” In this opening scene she tries to explain

what it means to be yourself. Within this vlog Kayla acknowledges that people find her quiet or shy at school, but she explains this by saying that it is her own choice to not talk, and that she is not scared to talk. She ends the vlog by stumbling over her own words, and then she ends with a hand sign and saying the word “Gucci”. Throughout the film these vlogs keep appearing. These vlogs in Eighth Grade work in a similar matter as the talking heads of The Office. They provide an opportunity for Kayla to directly talk to an audience about what she is doing, which later becomes undercut by how she is really interacting with other people. This start of the film also shows Kayla’s relationship to social media, and the enormous anxiety that this causes her. The awkwardness as displayed in Eighth Grade has a direct link to the use of social media and smartphones in general. Not only is Kayla creating her vlogs, she and her peers are constantly on their phones. Eighth Grade skilfully displays the affective relationship that teens and people in general have with their smartphones. Smartphones invite more affective responses of their users then previous mobile phones, as there is the touching and swiping of the screen. In the second scene of the film Kayla is woken up by the alarm clock on her smartphone, which already asks for an affective response from Kayla. Kayla is then applying make-up with the help of a YouTube tutorial. She returns to her bed to make a selfie using the Snapchat app. She takes a photo with a caption reading: “Just woke up like this… ugh.” Not only does Kayla apply full make-up for this picture, she also applies a beauty filter to the photograph. She decides to place the picture in her “Snapchat story”, which means that all of her friends on the Snapchat app can see the photo. When she has done this, she immediately shuts down her phone and clenches it to her chest in anxiously awaiting the outcome. The fact that one of the first things that Kayla does when she wakes up is going through all this effort for one picture already implies that she finds it very important to create a certain image of herself online. At the same time creating this image also seems to cause her massive anxiety. While already being anxious about her looks, the taking of the photograph induces more anxiety, but Kayla also seems rather optimistic about the outcomes of her vlogs and the use of social media. Kayla seems convinced that her online presence can alter the way people interact with her in real life. Moments where Kayla is caught up on her phone are moments of great awkwardness in this film. There is also something very awkward in the audience seeing how she lies on the picture by stating that she woke up like that, while the film shows the work that is going on behind this one photograph. Being complicit in this process as the audience, just after Kayla has stated in the vlog that people need to be themselves, already sets the tone for the rest of the film. Kayla in a way is occupied with her own affective labour through the many apps that she uses. The audience is then caught up in it’s own affective labour as it can be seen how bad Kayla wants to paint a certain picture of herself online.

Social media may in fact be the place where a lot of anxieties clash. Eighth Grade shows two layers of social media that cause anxiety. On the one hand there is the anxiety that is caused by the scrolling through the seemingly perfect lives of other people, at the same time there is also a definite anxiety that is caused by uploading something yourself. These pressures both cause anxiety, as well as they are some form of cruel optimism, making its users believe that they need social media to better their lives. The negative affect this causes is not recognized as such by Kayla. It is in the real social world that these cruel optimisms and anxieties become the source of awkwardness for Kayla. A pivotal moment in Eighth Grade is when Kayla is invited to a pool party. Kennedy, one of the popular kids, does not want to invite Kayla to her party, but the mother of Kennedy forces her to invite Kayla. Kayla already seems very anxious to go to the party, since she does not really have any friends at the party. The scene starts with another one of Kayla’s vlogs. This particular video is about “putting yourself out there.” Kayla explains why it is important to put yourself out there. The rest of this video is heard in the voice-over while Kayla is delivered to the house of Kennedy. This part of the scene is shot in a long take. Kayla steps out of the car and the camera follows her from the back, from a low angle. This low angle together with the ticking soundtrack and the voice-over make also create a heightening anxiety within the audience. In the voice-over Kayla clearly gives a made-up example in which she reverses the roles of the current birthday party. She says that she once had to invite a “weird girl” from her school because of her dad, but that anyone finally grew to love this girl. Kayla is of course the “weird girl” in this scenario, and the optimism that she displays in her vlog through lying displays her anxiety and hope for this party to be accepted by the rest. When Kayla is inside to change into her bathing suit, she starts panicking and hyperventilating. The anxieties and cruel optimisms start to clash when it is time for Kayla to give her birthday present to Kennedy. First Kennedy gets a present from another girl, which she is really excited about. While the unwrapping is happening there is a close-up of Kayla trying to fit in and mumbling some words about the gift. When Kayla’s gift comes after the wrapping paper already strikes Kennedy as not being a good present. Kayla’s gift is not in a beautiful gift bag like the other presents. The gift appears to be a card game, and Kennedy is clearly not happy with it. This birthday scene presents the way anxiety can lead to awkwardness. The vlog at the beginning of the scene already reveals some of the anxiety that Kayla is feeling about going to the party. Kayla copes with the anticipation and her anxiety by having her own inspirational story in which she was able to respect this weird friend. By creating this fictive story she expects or hopes for the same moral outcome as this weird friend. Kayla hopes or expects that people will learn to accept her at the party. The audience is taken into this world of anxiety by the filmmaker through her vlogs and the aesthetics of the cinematography that heighten this anxiety. This expectation emotion can be

linked with the cruel optimism of Berlant. Berlant sees cruel optimism as “a social relation involving attachments that organize the present” (14). Kayla wants to be accepted by people who she does not even seem to like. This optimism is something that she takes with her in present moments, while her anxiety is the future pressing down on her in the present. The awkwardness of the gift comes from the fact that both Kayla and Kennedy have opposite expectations that they take with them in that particular moment. Kayla wants to be accepted in the group and takes this optimism and anxiety of not being liked with her in the interaction. Kennedy on the other hand wants a perfect birthday that goes according to her plan. Kayla does not fit into this plan, and the gift that she sees as amateur does not fit in with this either. After she has received the gift there is a close-up of Kayla who is clearly disappointed and sad and feeling out of place. In the background Kennedy can be heard arguing with her dad. Her father brings out the birthday cake, but Kennedy says it is not yet time for the cake. What this scene demonstrates is that the anxiety with which Kayla enters the party keeps doubling. She already feels bad about going there and walking up to the house. When she gets into the bathroom to change, she clearly starts panicking. Anxiety is really hitting her at that moment on an affective level. Already being anxious going there and then getting into the house worsens the anxiety. This ultimately leads to awkwardness in the scene where Kennedy gets the present. There is already the cruel optimism to start the scene off with, where Kayla tells herself that everything is going to be fine at the party. The gift unwrapping scene shows how awkwardness comes from people’s different optimisms and anxieties. Kayla’s hope is to be accepted by the group, while she is also very anxious about this acceptance. Kennedy’s hope on the other hand is to receive ‘cool’ gifts, while her fear is to be falling out of grace with the group, which the presence of a ‘weird girl’ like Kayla could provide. When these finally come to conclusion it is awkward for both parties. Kennedy, although very mean, does not know what to do with this gift that is so different from the rest. Kayla on the other hand finds it hard to keep her appearance up when somebody just so rudely dismissed her gift. It is of course very striking here that Kennedy is extremely materialistic. This materialism does not fit in together very well with Kayla’s morals. Who just wants to get accepted and sees this gift as her way to get accepted by this group. Both of the girls wants and needs in this scene are not what they exactly need of course. Their cruel optimism is what makes things awkward for them here. The audience can clearly see that being a part of this group is not what Kayla exactly needs in her life. While Kennedy getting the perfect gift is also not a productive way to gain happiness. Awkwardness rises out of their optimism and anxieties that do not collide. At the same time Eighth Grade sees a shift towards an intimate awkwardness. Where in the previous chapters we saw social awkwardness that was rooted in a lot of social situations, Eighth Grade moves towards a much more private realm of awkwardness. The

awkwardness is still caused by social situations, but it is not exclusively in a social setting anymore. In one of the more awkward scenes of the film, Kayla is first seen endlessly scrolling through YouTube and Instagram. The scene shows what Kayla is watching on YouTube and Instagram, but at the same time also shows the reflection of her face in the screen. On Instagram she comes across the account of Aiden, who Kayla has a crush on. With her earplugs in she watches videos and pictures of Aiden, and starts practicing to kiss on her own hand. When her dad walks in to say goodnight this moment is quickly interrupted and Kayla throws her phone across the room, as this was a very intimate moment she was having. This scene becomes awkwardness precisely because the audience gains access to these very intimate moments, while the dad has no clue of why Kayla is acting so weird in this moment. There is a lot of affective labour that goes into a scene like this. There is another moment when Kayla grabs a banana from the kitchen to practice fellatio on, when her dad walks in. Again, the dad does not know what is going on, but the awkwardness in this scene comes from the fact that the audience knows what is going on. There is first the moment that can be recognized as mimesis of the awkwardness, which in the case of the ‘banana scene’ is not only the fact that she gets caught, but that she tries to prove that she was going to eat the banana, while Kayla clearly finds bananas disgusting. Between the mimesis of this awkwardness, and the subsequent laughter there is room for reflection in these scenes. What make these scenes so awkward is exactly the clues the audience gets through seeing what Kayla sees on her social media. In a way the role the Internet has come to play in our lives is far more intimate than any human interaction we find in our lives. Google probably knows the most intimate of our worries and secrets for example. By getting these glimpses of Kayla’s social media and Internet use, the audience becomes aware of her most intimate secrets. The reflection these scenes offer as to what the cause of this awkwardness is can be traced back to the Internet and social media. At first it might seem that the presence of the father makes things awkward, but the reflection that the intimate affective labour offers will point to these social media. The fact that Eighth Grade sees this shift towards a more intimate awkwardness might point towards a new dispositif or paradigm of awkwardness. The outsourcing of a part of the social world to the Internet may cause awkwardness to be moving towards the Internet as well. This means that awkwardness is still very much a social affair, but a part of it also becomes a private form of awkwardness. Moments like the birthday scene on the other hand show that anxiety and cruel optimisms, partly caused by social media as well, create awkwardness as well. The quality of the affect of awkwardness should not be underestimated. Not only is this affect shown in Eighth Grade, as Kayla is in a clear awkward or at least anxious affective relationship with her phone. But the film itself also shows the power of the affect of awkwardness. The very doubling of awkwardness, through mimesis, is

able to provide a brief moment of understanding the very roots of awkwardness, and through laughter coping with this awkwardness. In the affective labour that is put into cringe comedy, it could thus be said that it offers a critical relationship of the modes of power, and finally helps us to briefly cope with this system.

5. Conclusion

Our relationship with awkwardness has the potential to be subversive. Awkward humour is potentially able to reveal to the audience brief moments of the complex systems of power. Living in an awkward age, without a sense of community or society, and for that matter a failure to find a totality, awkward comedy holds the potential to reveal some of the fragmented sources of awkwardness and power. This thesis has traced awkwardness through its beginning in physical comedy to its social roots. In part the roots of this physical awkwardness can be found back in the ontology of the medium of film, as well as the culture of the time in which the bourgeoisie had lost their gestures. A gradual change towards a more social form of awkwardness came with sound film, and the invention of television. This saw comedy moving away from their slapstick roots, and moving into the realm of the social world. The most radical shift towards the social world could be witnessed in The Party. Where it could be seen that the social upheaval had their effect on the bourgeoisie losing their grip on the social norms, which in turn made it awkward for the outsiders of their norms like Hrundi. But ultimately this awkwardness turns around in The Party and it is shown that the hippie movement and various other outsiders make things awkward for the bourgeoisie. This, and the movements towards post-Fordism and neoliberalism is where the roots of the social awkwardness as we now know it is to be found. The second chapter showed that there is an intrinsic relationship between comedy and awkwardness. The theories of Bergson and Freud help understand society as somewhat of a mechanical force that punishes the ego in moments of humiliation or correction. Laughter can have a soothing role for the ego as it helps to cope with the realities of society. The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm show the struggles of the neoliberal identity to come to grips with these societal pressures. While the final chapter saw the role that affect might have in gaining a critical understanding of the political roots of awkwardness, with a final move towards a more intimate awkwardness, because of even more individualism and the social world having partly moved towards the Internet. This thesis has tried to answer the following question: what are the underlying politics and economics that have created the subgenre of awkward comedy in the early twenty-first century? The answer to this question are to be found in Fordism, post-Fordism, and neoliberalism. What this thesis has ultimately shown is that there is no steady notion of awkwardness as this is constantly changing with the culture, politics and economics of the time. The move towards a more intimate awkwardness sees awkwardness yet again moving into new realms. In the affective qualities of awkwardness there is ultimately the chance for critical understanding of this awkwardness and its political roots, which makes awkward comedy or cringe comedy the ultimate source to understand the politics of a certain era.

Further research could build on this research by doing a particular reading of an awkward comedy by adapting a certain feminist, Marxist, or post-colonial lens to an awkward comedy. The first comedies that exclusively dealt with social awkwardness were about middle-class or rich white men who felt threatened in their social status. Shows like Fleabag (2016-) also show this awkwardness moving to a more female perspective. A feminist reading could provide very interesting insights in what social norms create awkwardness for women. This thesis has dealt with the ontology of the medium of film and television with regards to awkwardness; the same could also be done for new media. A lot of memes with the term awkwardness have appeared on the Internet for example. As Eighth Grade showed, social media can be a great source of distress and awkwardness. There is definitely more research to be done here in the new media department.

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Media

Eighth Grade. Dir. Bo Burnham. A24, 2018. “Job Switching.” Episode 36. CBS, 15 September 1952. The Party. Dir. Blake Edwards. United Artists, 1968. “The Quiz.” Episode 3. The Office. BBC. 23 July 2001. “Trick or Treat.” Episode 13. Curb Your Enthusiasm. HBO. 7 October 2001.