"So funny, it hurts". Cringe Comedy and Performances of Discomfort

Author: Alena Saucke
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3668055157

Master's Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Cultural Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies), course: Kulturwissenschaft, language: English, abstract: This thesis examines the relatively recent and increasingly popular phenomenon of cringe comedy. The characteristic feature of cringe comedy is the exposure of the viewer to prolonged states of social discomfort in the form of vicarious embarrassment, framed in a faux-realist aesthetic. Appearing increasingly since the turn of the millennium, cringe comedies employ the prolonged suspension of discomfort, deviating from the traditional sitcom. Since academic research on the topic has been limited, this thesis incorporates theoretical perspectives on comedy, embarrassment and shame, television and cultural history, insights from the fields of humor research, affect theory, the sociology of emotions and psychology as well as cultural and media studies. Drawing upon these sources, the author attempts to situate cringe comedy within the late capitalist comedic landscape, and analyze it as an aesthetic bound to the post-Fordist traits of hyperflexibility, hyperperformance and the increasingly blurred lines between work and play. The common experiential thread shared by cringe comedy shows is the endurance – on the part of the viewer – of a kind of voluntary shame stasis, provoked by repeated social faux pas, mixed with desperation and failure, and rarely ending in a comforting comedic resolution. These moments provide an interesting diversion from the usual hyperflexible performances of the late capitalist stage. In allowing for prolonged and awkward gaps, refusing to quickly fill them with socially scripted comfort, and delaying or altogether avoiding a return to a smooth equilibrium, cringe comedy grants us time to question the current methods of managing affective imbalance. In the words of Elspeth Probyn, the benefit of shame (as performed and triggered in these comedies) could be the introduction of “acute sensitivity“ (2) towards ourselves and others. While numerous cringe comedy shows will be referenced,the main analysis centers on the 2005/2014 HBO series The Comeback.

"So Funny, it Hurts". Cringe Comedy and Performances of Discomfort

Author: Alena Saucke
Publisher:
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9783668055162

Master's Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Cultural Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies), course: Kulturwissenschaft, language: English, abstract: This thesis examines the relatively recent and increasingly popular phenomenon of cringe comedy. The characteristic feature of cringe comedy is the exposure of the viewer to prolonged states of social discomfort in the form of vicarious embarrassment, framed in a faux-realist aesthetic. Appearing increasingly since the turn of the millennium, cringe comedies employ the prolonged suspension of discomfort, deviating from the traditional sitcom. Since academic research on the topic has been limited, this thesis incorporates theoretical perspectives on comedy, embarrassment and shame, television and cultural history, insights from the fields of humor research, affect theory, the sociology of emotions and psychology as well as cultural and media studies. Drawing upon these sources, the author attempts to situate cringe comedy within the late capitalist comedic landscape, and analyze it as an aesthetic bound to the post-Fordist traits of hyperflexibility, hyperperformance and the increasingly blurred lines between work and play. The common experiential thread shared by cringe comedy shows is the endurance - on the part of the viewer - of a kind of voluntary shame stasis, provoked by repeated social faux pas, mixed with desperation and failure, and rarely ending in a comforting comedic resolution. These moments provide an interesting diversion from the usual hyperflexible performances of the late capitalist stage. In allowing for prolonged and awkward gaps, refusing to quickly fill them with socially scripted comfort, and delaying or altogether avoiding a return to a smooth equilibrium, cringe comedy grants us time to question the current methods of managing affective imbalance. In the words of Elspeth Probyn, the benefit of shame (as perfor

Comedy on Stage and Screen

Comedy on Stage and Screen
Author: Wieland Schwanebeck
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2022-09-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3823395335

This book introduces readers to the genre of comedy, both on the stage and on the screen. It chronicles the history of comedy, starting with Ancient Greece, before summarising key chapters in Anglophone literary history, such as Shakespearean comedy, Restoration comedy, and Theatre of the Absurd. The book features an overview of key comic techniques (including slapstick, puns, and wit), as well as concise summaries of major theoretical debates (including the superiority theory and the Freudian account of laughter). The book works with many examples from the history of Anglophone comedy, including Oscar Wilde, Monty Python, and classic sitcoms. It addresses current research into cringe humour and the controversial topic of diversity in the field of comedy, and it connects classical tropes of comedy (like the fool or the marriage plot) to present-day examples. The book thus serves as an up-to-date study guide for everyone interested in comedy and its various subgenres.

A Little Life

A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804172706

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

I Love You, Beth Cooper

I Love You, Beth Cooper
Author: Larry Doyle
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061842494

Denis Cooverman wanted to say something really important in his high school graduation speech. So, in front of his 512 classmates and their 3,000 relatives, he announced: "I love you, Beth Cooper." It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is. And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species. And then there's Kevin, Beth's remarkably large boyfriend, who's in town on furlough from the United States Army. Complications ensue.

Going Bovine

Going Bovine
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2009
Genre: Automobile travel
ISBN: 0385733976

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

Shaking the Sugar Tree

Shaking the Sugar Tree
Author: Nick Wilgus
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020-03-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1646563190

Wise-cracking Wiley Cantrell is loud and roaringly outrageous -- and he needs to be to keep his deeply religious neighbors and family in the Deep South at bay. A failed writer on food stamps, Wiley works a minimum wage job and barely manages to keep himself and his deaf son, Noah, more than a stone’s throw away from Dumpster-diving. Noah was a meth baby and has the birth defects to prove it. He sees how lonely his father is and tries to help him find a boyfriend while Wiley struggles to help Noah have a relationship with his incarcerated mother, who believes the best way to feed a child is with a slingshot. No wonder Noah becomes Wiley’s biggest supporter when Boston nurse Jackson Ledbetter walks past Wiley’s cash register and sets his sugar tree on fire. Jackson falls like a wet mule wearing concrete boots for Wiley’s sense of humor. And while Wiley represents much of the best of the South, Jackson is hiding a secret that could threaten this new family in the making. When North meets South, the cultural misunderstandings are many, but so are the laughs, and the tears, but, as they say down in Dixie, it’s all good.

Inside Jokes

Inside Jokes
Author: Matthew M. Hurley
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2011
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 026201582X

Some things are funny -- jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed -- but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature -- aka natural selection -- cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.

Only a Joke Can Save Us

Only a Joke Can Save Us
Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2017-09-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0810135825

Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess. After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka Zupancic, McGowan, working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay. Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy.

Knee Deep in Life

Knee Deep in Life
Author: Laura Belbin
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2020-08-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1473578868

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'I just howled. Bloomin' love you' Giovanna Fletcher 'You're hilarious. Thank you for making me laugh every day' Mrs Hinch When does Mary Effing Poppins arrive? Laura Belbin survived hitting her thirties (oh, to be wrinkle-free again), anxiety (just), motherhood (two adorable little shits) and the new body that went with it (a left tit that sags slightly more than the right, anyone?). In Knee Deep in Life she gives a fearless and filthy account of her transformation from no-responsibilities woman to being in demand 24/7, the heartaches and humiliations, and most importantly, her (definitely-pushed-to-the-limits-but-totally-indestructible) marriage to Steve, the man who helped her to hold it together when post-natal depression kicked in. Full of heart and wit - not to mention swearing that would make a sailor blush - this is the beast of a book Laura intends on riding into the hands of those people who doubt themselves every single day: the ones who have struggled to accept the way they look; the mums-to-be about to find themselves taking their first step towards parenthood; and the women bossing it like badasses every single day but never getting the credit they deserve. You are more than enough.