The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy
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Beschreibung
This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
Patrice Oppliger is Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Boston University, USA. Her most recent book is Tweencoms Girls: Gender and Adolescence in Disney and Nickelodeon Sitcoms.
Eric Shouse is Associate Professor of Communication at East Carolina University, USA. His work has been published in HUMOR, Comedy Studies, and Text and Performance Quarterly.
This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
Combines arguments and personal experiences from a broad range of contributors, including scholars and stand-up performers Avoids and complicates the stereotype of tragic comedians or sad clowns to explore the nuances of ‘darkness’ in comedy Addresses the paradox of comedy and tragedy
Autor*in
Patrice A. Oppliger
Themen in »The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy«
Comedy Dark Humour Addiction Mental Illness Stereotype Performance Stand-Up Comedy
Stimmen zu »The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy«
“The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy reminds us that tragedy can be equally the source, target, inspiration, and frictional underside of our laughter … . The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy provides an important introduction to an obviously germane aspect of the form and is very welcome in the rapidly emerging field of (Stand up) comedy studies.” (Antti Lindfors, The European Journal of Humour Research, Vol. 10 (2), 2022)
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