Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in AmericaDuke University Press, 23.06.2000 - 160 Seiten Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America is the first study of stand-up comedy as a form of art. John Limon appreciates and analyzes the specific practice of stand-up itself, moving beyond theories of the joke, of the comic, and of comedy in general to read stand-up through the lens of literary and cultural theory. Limon argues that stand-up is an artform best defined by its fascination with the abject, Julia Kristeva’s term for those aspects of oneself that are obnoxious to one’s sense of identity but that are nevertheless—like blood, feces, or urine—impossible to jettison once and for all. All of a comedian’s life, Limon asserts, is abject in this sense. Limon begins with stand-up comics in the 1950s and 1960s—Lenny Bruce, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Elaine May—when the norm of the profession was the Jewish, male, heterosexual comedian. He then moves toward the present with analyses of David Letterman, Richard Pryor, Ellen DeGeneres, and Paula Poundstone. Limon incorporates feminist, race, and queer theories to argue that the “comedification” of America—stand-up comedy’s escape from its narrow origins—involves the repossession by black, female, queer, and Protestant comedians of what was black, female, queer, yet suburbanizing in Jewish, male, heterosexual comedy. Limon’s formal definition of stand-up as abject art thus hinges on his claim that the great American comedians of the 1950s and 1960s located their comedy at the place (which would have been conceived in 1960 as a location between New York City or Chicago and their suburbs) where body is thrown off for the mind and materiality is thrown off for abstraction—at the place, that is, where American abjection has always found its home. |
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... essay that first appeared in Raritan: A Quarterly Review 14, no. 3 (winter 1997). The chapter ''Journey to the End of the Night'' is based on an essay that first appeared in Jx: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 1, no. 1 (autumn 1996) ...
... essay that first appeared in Raritan: A Quarterly Review 14, no. 3 (winter 1997). The chapter ''Journey to the End of the Night'' is based on an essay that first appeared in Jx: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 1, no. 1 (autumn 1996) ...
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... essays on Jewish stand-up as it flourished for several years before 1960 and a few years after (first on Lenny Bruce, second on Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, third on Mike Nichols and Elaine May), three essays onstand-up inits wake(first ...
... essays on Jewish stand-up as it flourished for several years before 1960 and a few years after (first on Lenny Bruce, second on Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, third on Mike Nichols and Elaine May), three essays onstand-up inits wake(first ...
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... essay, but it was lurking there, and I want to leave that essay as originally written because I still like the way it formulates the issue. The conclusion of the Bruce essay is that ''stand-up is the resurrection of your father as your ...
... essay, but it was lurking there, and I want to leave that essay as originally written because I still like the way it formulates the issue. The conclusion of the Bruce essay is that ''stand-up is the resurrection of your father as your ...
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... essays, impressed by the beautiful abstract geometry ofstand-up. I treat this at the beginning of my essay onBruce, and again at some length in my essay on Brooks and Reiner and at points thereafter. The appeal of comedy for me is akin ...
... essays, impressed by the beautiful abstract geometry ofstand-up. I treat this at the beginning of my essay onBruce, and again at some length in my essay on Brooks and Reiner and at points thereafter. The appeal of comedy for me is akin ...
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... essay on Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, I make much of the homosexuality buried in their homosocial act. Thus queer theory comes up for the first time in the book, but not the last. It comes up in the first place because stand-up has been ...
... essay on Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, I make much of the homosexuality buried in their homosocial act. Thus queer theory comes up for the first time in the book, but not the last. It comes up in the first place because stand-up has been ...
Inhalt
1 | |
11 | |
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks | 28 |
Mike Nichols and Elaine May | 50 |
David Letterman with Kristeva Céline Scorsese | 68 |
Richard Pryor in Concert | 83 |
Ellen DeGeneres and Paula Poundstone | 104 |
Notes | 125 |
Works Cited | 139 |
Index | 145 |
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