Laughing Mad

Laughing Mad
Author: Bambi Haggins
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780813539850

In Laughing Mad , Bambi Haggins looks at how this transition occurred in a variety of media and shows how this integration has paved the way for black comedians and their audiences to affect each other. Historically, African American performers have been able to use comedy as a pedagogic tool, interjecting astute observations about race relations while the audience is laughing. And yet, Haggins makes the convincing argument that the potential of African American comedy remains fundamentally unfulfilled as the performance of blackness continues to be made culturally digestible for mass consumption.

Mythology, Madness, and Laughter

Mythology, Madness, and Laughter
Author: Markus Gabriel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2009-10-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441115773

Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism explores some long neglected but crucial themes in German idealism. Markus Gabriel, one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary philosophy, and Slavoj Žižek, the celebrated contemporary philosopher and cultural critic, show how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom. Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, Gabriel, and Žižek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy. MARKUS GABRIEL is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, NY. He has published a number of books and journal articles in German, including Der Mensch im Mythos (De Gruyter, 2006), and Das Absolute und die Welt in Schellings Freiheitsschrift (Bonn University Press, 2006).

Laughing Fit to Kill

Laughing Fit to Kill
Author: Glenda Carpio
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2008-07-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0199719543

Reassessing the meanings of "black humor" and "dark satire," Laughing Fit to Kill illustrates how black comedians, writers, and artists have deftly deployed various modes of comedic "conjuring"--the absurd, the grotesque, and the strategic expression of racial stereotypes--to redress not only the past injustices of slavery and racism in America but also their legacy in the present. Focusing on representations of slavery in the post-civil rights era, Carpio explores stereotypes in Richard Pryor's groundbreaking stand-up act and the outrageous comedy of Chappelle's Show to demonstrate how deeply indebted they are to the sly social criticism embedded in the profoundly ironic nineteenth-century fiction of William Wells Brown and Charles W. Chesnutt. Similarly, she reveals how the iconoclastic literary works of Ishmael Reed and Suzan-Lori Parks use satire, hyperbole, and burlesque humor to represent a violent history and to take on issues of racial injustice. With an abundance of illustrations, Carpio also extends her discussion of radical black comedy to the visual arts as she reveals how the use of subversive appropriation by Kara Walker and Robert Colescott cleverly lampoons the iconography of slavery. Ultimately, Laughing Fit to Kill offers a unique look at the bold, complex, and just plain funny ways that African American artists have used laughter to critique slavery's dark legacy.

Rolling

Rolling
Author: Alfred L. Martin, Jr.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2024
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253068894

"Since slavery, African and African American humor has baffled, intrigued, angered, and entertained the masses. Rolling is a collection centering Blackness in comedy, especially on television, and observing that Blackness is often relegated to biopics, slave narratives, and the comedic. But like W.E.B. DuBois' ideas about double consciousness, and Racquel Gates' extension of his theories, we know that Blackness resonates for Black viewers in ways often entirely different for white viewers. Contributors to this volume cover a range of cases representing African American humor across film, television, digital media, and stand-up as Black comic personas try to work within, outside, and around the culture industries tilling for content. Essays engage with the complex industrial interplay of Blackness, white audiences, and comedy, satire and humor on streaming platforms, television networks, or digital media, and the production of Blackness within comedy through personal stories and interviews of Black folks working on crews and writing for television comedy. Rolling truly illuminates the innerworkings of Blackness and comedy in media discourse"--

African Americans on Television

African Americans on Television
Author: David J. Leonard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

A comprehensive look at the history of African Americans on television that discusses major trends in black TV and examines the broader social implications of the relationship between race and popular culture as well as race and representation. Previous treatments of the history of African Americans in television have largely lacked theoretical analysis of the relationship between representations and social contexts. African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings fills the existing void by supplying fundamental history with critical analyses of the racial politics of television, documenting the considerable effect that television has had on popular notions of black identity in America since the inception of television. Covering a spectrum of genres—comedy, drama, talk shows, television movies, variety shows, and reality television, including shows such as Good Times, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Chappelle's Show—this insightful work traces a cultural genealogy of African Americans in television. Its chronological analysis provides an engaging historical account of how African Americans entered the genre of television and have continued to play a central role in the development of both the medium and the industry. The book also tracks the shift in the significance of African Americans in the television market and industry, and the changing, but enduring, face of stereotypes and racism in American television culture.

Music and Sound in the Worlds of Michel Gondry

Music and Sound in the Worlds of Michel Gondry
Author: Kate McQuiston
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000244504

Michel Gondry’s directorial work buzzes with playfulness and invention: in a body of work that includes feature films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, to music videos, commercials, television episodes, and documentaries, he has experimented with blending animation and live action, complex narrative structures, and philosophical subject matter. Central to that experimentation is Gondry’s use of music and sound, which this book addresses in a new detailed study. Kate McQuiston examines the hybrid nature of Gondry’s work, his process of collaboration, how he uses sound and music to create a highly stylized reinforcement of often-elusive subjects such as psychology, dreams, the loss of memory, and the fraught relationship between humans and the environment. This concise volume provides new insight into Gondry’s richly creative multimedia productions, and their distinctive use of the soundtrack.

A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar

A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar
Author: Caty Borum Chattoo
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2020-03-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520299779

Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges. Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change. Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.

Reconsidering Social Constructionism

Reconsidering Social Constructionism
Author: Gale Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 573
Release: 2017-09-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351494449

With the impact of social interactionist and ethnographic methodology twenty-five years ago, the research agenda in social problems began to shift its focus, giving rise to the Social Constructionism movement. The present volume and the related shorter text, Constructionist Controversies, review the substantial contributions made by social constructionist theorists over that period, as well as recent debates about the future of the perspective. These contributions redefine the purpose and central questions of social problems theory and articulate a research program for analyzing social problems as social constructions. A generation of theorists has been trained in the constructionist perspective and has extended it through numerous analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary social life.The debates in this volume pose fundamental questions about the major assumptions of the perspective, the ways in which it is practiced, and the purposes of social problems theory. Their point of departure is Ibarra and Kitsuse's essay, cutting new theoretical ground in calling for ""investigating vernacular resources, especially rhetorical forms, in the social problems process.""Contributors are forceful proponents both within and outside of the social constructionist community, who take a broad array of positions on the current state of social problems theory and on the rhetorical forms that need exploring. They also lay down the general lines for diverse and often competing programs for the future development of the constructionist agenda.

Death by Laughter

Death by Laughter
Author: Maggie Hennefeld
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 634
Release: 2024-03-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 023155981X

Can you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries would have us believe. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy? Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorized and demonized, suppressed and exploited. In nineteenth-century medicine and culture, hysteria was an ailment that afflicted unruly women on the cusp of emotional or nervous breakdown. Cinema, Hennefeld argues, made it possible for women to laugh outrageously as never before, with irreversible social and political consequences. As female enjoyment became a surefire promise of profitability, alarmist tales of women laughing themselves to death epitomized the tension between subversive pleasure and its violent repression. Hennefeld traces the social politics of women’s laughter from the heyday of nineteenth-century sentimentalism to the collective euphoria of early film spectatorship, traversing contagious dancing outbreaks, hysteria photography, madwomen’s cackling, cinematic close-ups, and screenings of slapstick movies in mental asylums. Placing little-known silent films and an archive of remarkable, often unusual texts in conversation with affect theory, comedy studies, and feminist film theory, this book makes a timely case for the power of hysterical laughter to change the world.

Abjection Incorporated

Abjection Incorporated
Author: Maggie Hennefeld
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-01-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478003413

From the films of Larry Clark to the feminist comedy of Amy Schumer to the fall of Louis C. K., comedic, graphic, and violent moments of abjection have permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century social and political discourse. The contributors to Abjection Incorporated move beyond simple critiques of abjection as a punitive form of social death, illustrating how it has become a contested mode of political and cultural capital—empowering for some but oppressive for others. Escaping abjection's usual confines of psychoanalysis and aesthetic modernism, core to theories of abjection by thinkers such as Kristeva and Bataille, the contributors examine a range of media, including literature, photography, film, television, talking dolls, comics, and manga. Whether analyzing how comedic abjection can help mobilize feminist politics or how expressions of abjection inflect class, race, and gender hierarchies, the contributors demonstrate the importance of competing uses of abjection to contemporary society and politics. They emphasize abjection's role in circumscribing the boundaries of the human and how the threats abjection poses to the self and other, far from simply negative, open up possibilities for radically new politics. Contributors. Meredith Bak, Eugenie Brinkema, James Leo Cahill, Michelle Cho, Maggie Hennefeld, Rob King, Thomas Lamarre, Sylvère Lotringer, Rijuta Mehta, Mark Mulroney, Nicholas Sammond, Yiman Wang, Rebecca Wanzo