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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Seite 2
... funniest people in America. That would be impossible to substantiate; it is impossible to be lucid about what that ... funny but were simply not given the same breaks by the stand-up establishment as Jewish men. That many comedy sites ...
... funniest people in America. That would be impossible to substantiate; it is impossible to be lucid about what that ... funny but were simply not given the same breaks by the stand-up establishment as Jewish men. That many comedy sites ...
Seite 7
... funny . And what modern Jewish comedian is not in an important way already a black comedian ? There was stand - up comedy before 1966 , but that is when the term came into existence , and what seems to have been established over the ...
... funny . And what modern Jewish comedian is not in an important way already a black comedian ? There was stand - up comedy before 1966 , but that is when the term came into existence , and what seems to have been established over the ...
Seite 8
... funny Letterman has ever said. This seems justifiable in retrospect, since it is in the nature of Letterman's work that no single moment of his career could be brilliantly exemplary (his distinc- tion is in the hegemony of unchanging ...
... funny Letterman has ever said. This seems justifiable in retrospect, since it is in the nature of Letterman's work that no single moment of his career could be brilliantly exemplary (his distinc- tion is in the hegemony of unchanging ...
Seite 11
... funny , it is . You may be ( collectively ) puzzled by your amusement or disapprove of it , but you cannot be wrong about it . This means three things . First , individual reservations are irrelevant : any member of the audience who is ...
... funny , it is . You may be ( collectively ) puzzled by your amusement or disapprove of it , but you cannot be wrong about it . This means three things . First , individual reservations are irrelevant : any member of the audience who is ...
Seite 12
... funny; they make the joke more or less funny. Because it is plausible to assert that an audience is wrong about, say, an opera (critics will judge) or a novel (posterity will judge), opera and litera- ture can stake claims to ...
... funny; they make the joke more or less funny. Because it is plausible to assert that an audience is wrong about, say, an opera (critics will judge) or a novel (posterity will judge), opera and litera- ture can stake claims to ...
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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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
abjection adult aggression American audi audience baby Bardamu begins blackface body Brooks and Reiner Brooks's Brown Carl Reiner castration Céline comedy teams comic concert cultural David Letterman death DeGeneres's desire Ellen DeGeneres ence escape essay excremental vision fantasy father feel female fruit funny hereafter abbreviated heterosexual homosexual homosociality horror humor insofar jazz Jerry Langford Jes Grew Jewish comedians Jews Johnny Carson joke Kant kidding Kristeva laugh laughter Lenny Bruce lesbian male male-male means Medusa Mel Brooks merely Mike Nichols Mumbo Jumbo nectarine ness Nichols and Elaine outrage pain paradox Paula Poundstone performance phallic phallus Phyllis Diller play punch line repressed Richard Pryor ridiculous routine Rupert Sedgwick seems sexual Sigmund Freud skirt stage stand-up comedy story sublime suburban term theory thing Thoreau tickling tion trans Trapp triangulation turns University Press urine Wollenberg woman women York