Comedy and Social Critique

Catalog description

Comedy has been used to shine a no-holds-barred light on everything from the rise of fascism to the inanities of fashion. Over the decades, it has raised a number of questions. Some of these are ethical. What can we legitimately find funny or make fun of? Are there things we shouldn't laugh at? Can and should comedy be delimited or censored? When does comedy become abuse? When does it become hate speech? Some of the questions we will consider are more general: does comedy change through history? Is it culturally specific? Is it gender-specific? Is it racially or religiously specific? Is there a point at which these specificities give way to the possibility of a form of humor common to us all and the unique role laughter plays in uniting us across these differences? Finally, we will explore the expressive forms of comedy, including parody, satire, slapstick, tragicomedy, stand-up, and physical comedy, which raises the question of whether comedy can be said to reside in the body. This question is central to the content and practice of stand-up as it is to the fiction we'll be reading in this class. It encompasses the categories of race, gender, and disability, as well as the politics of exclusion, violence, and censorship.