Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy PDF Download

Author: Jack Black
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000378098
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film.

Author: Colin Quinn
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 1455507601
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
From former SNL "Weekend Update" host and legendary stand-up Colin Quinn comes a controversial and laugh-out-loud investigation into cultural and ethnic stereotypes. Colin Quinn has noticed a trend during his decades on the road-that Americans' increasing political correctness and sensitivity have forced us to tiptoe around the subjects of race and ethnicity altogether. Colin wants to know: What are we all so afraid of? Every ethnic group has differences, everyone brings something different to the table, and this diversity should be celebrated, not denied. So why has acknowledging these cultural differences become so taboo? In The Coloring Book, Colin, a native New Yorker, tackles this issue head-on while taking us on a trip through the insane melting pot of 1970s Brooklyn, the many, many dive bars of 1980s Manhattan, the comedy scene of the 1990s, and post-9/11 America. He mixes his incredibly candid and hilarious personal experiences with no-holds-barred observations to definitively decide, at least in his own mind, which stereotypes are funny, which stereotypes are based on truths, which have become totally distorted over time, and which are actually offensive to each group, and why. As it pokes holes in the tapestry of fear that has overtaken discussions about race, The Coloring Book serves as an antidote to our paralysis when it comes to laughing at ourselves . . . and others.

Author: Julie A. Webber
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498569854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
This edited volume brings together scholars of comedy to assess how political comedy encounters neoliberal themes in contemporary media. Central to this task is the notion of genre; under neoliberal conditions (where market logics motivate most actions) genre becomes “mixed.” Once stable, discreet categories such as comedy, horror, drama and news and entertainment have become blurred so as to be indistinguishable. The classic modern paradigm of comedy/tragedy no longer holds, if it ever did. Moreover, as politics becomes more economic and less moral or normative under neoliberalism, we are able to see new resistance to comedic genres that support neoliberal strategies to hide racial and gender injustice such as unlaughter, ambiguity, and anti-comedy. There is also an increasing interest with comedy as a form of entertainment on the political right following both Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the U.S. Several essays confront this conservative comedy and place it in context of the larger humor history of these debates over free speech and political correctness. For comedians too, entry into popular media now follows the familiar neoliberal script of the celebration of self-help with the increasing admonishment of those who fail to win in market terms. Laughter plays an important role in shaming and valorizing (often at the same time!) the precarious subject in the aftermath of global recession. Doubling down on austerity, self-help policies and equivocation in the face of extremist challenges (right and left), politics foils the critical comedian’s attempt to satirize and parody its object. Characterized by ambiguity, mixed genre and the increasing use of anti-humor, political comedy mirrors the social and political world it mocks, parodies and celebrates often with lackluster results suggesting that the joke might be on us, as audiences.

Author: Raúl Pérez
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503632342
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
A rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's expense. The insinuation is that laughter eases social tension and creates solidarity in an overly politicized social world. But do the stakes change when the jokes are racist? In The Souls of White Jokes Raúl Pérez argues that we must genuinely confront this unsettling question in order to fully understand the persistence of anti-black racism and white supremacy in American society today. W.E.B. Du Bois's prescient essay "The Souls of White Folk" was one of the first to theorize whiteness as a social and political construct based on a feeling of superiority over racialized others—a kind of racial contempt. Pérez extends this theory to the study of humor, connecting theories of racial formation to parallel ideas about humor stemming from laughter at another's misfortune. Critically synthesizing scholarship on race, humor, and emotions, he uncovers a key function of humor as a tool for producing racial alienation, dehumanization, exclusion, and even violence. Pérez tracks this use of humor from blackface minstrelsy to contemporary contexts, including police culture, politics, and far-right extremists. Rather than being harmless fun, this humor plays a central role in reinforcing and mobilizing racist ideology and power under the guise of amusement. The Souls of White Jokes exposes this malicious side of humor, while also revealing a new facet of racism today. Though it can be comforting to imagine racism as coming from racial hatred and anger, the terrifying reality is that it is tied up in seemingly benign, even joyful, everyday interactions as well— and for racism to be eradicated we must face this truth.

Author:
Publisher: Hoover Press
ISBN: 9780817937430
Category : Political correctness
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description

Author: The New York Times Editorial Staff
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1642823317
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The contemporary definition of "political correctness" did not begin to enter the cultural consciousness of Americans until the 1980s. Allan Bloom's criticism of higher education in The Closing of the American Mind sparked a conflict that has been continually discussed, satirized, and rehashed. With the election of President Trump in 2016 came a reenergized attack on P.C. culture, and a new wave of cultural critique in film, television, comedy, and literature. The New York Times articles collected in this volume cover the defining and redefining of political correctness since its inception, and suggest how this contentious concept may develop into the future. Media literacy questions and terms are included to further engage readers with the collection.

Author: John L. Jr. Jackson
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458759075
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
In this courageous book, John L. Jackson, Jr. draws on current events as well as everyday interactions to demonstrate the culture of race-based paranoia and its profound effects on our lives. He explains how it is cultivated and reinforced, and how it complicates the goal of racial equality. In this paperback edition, Jackson explores the 2008 presidential election, weaving in examples ranging from the notorious New Yorker cover to Saturday Night Lives political parodies.

Author: Dr. Allen Unruh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944212216
Category : Political correctness
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Want to sound clever, at the top of your game and the smartest person in the room? It's simple, read, remember and repeat some of my friend, Dr. Allen Unruh's thousands of one-liners. Your friends will wonder how you got so smart, so quick. Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of American Target AdvertisingTo describe Dr. Allen Unruh's book in one word: It's HUMOROUS. What's funny today? Anything that isn't politically correct. Political correctness stops humor. This book has wit, wisdom, and laughter on every page. It's time to add more fun to your life."We'll never win the war on women because half the country is sleeping with the enemy.z"The new Obamacare emergency number is: 1-800-YOU-DEAD And they have a new drug approved by the IRS called: SENDITOL.

Author: Caty Borum Chattoo
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520299760
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
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.

Author: Rebecca Krefting
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421414295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
A professor of American Studies—and stand-up comic—examines sharply focused comedy and its cultural utility in contemporary society. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, “charged humor,” and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs—they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions. Jokes loaded with vitriol and delivered with verve, charged humor compels audiences to action, artfully summoning political critique. Since the institutionalization of stand-up comedy as a distinct cultural form, stand-up comics have leveraged charged humor to reveal social, political, and economic stratifications. All Joking Aside offers a history of charged comedy from the mid-twentieth century to the early aughts, highlighting dozens of talented comics from Dick Gregory and Robin Tyler to Micia Mosely and Hari Kondabolu. The popularity of charged humor has waxed and waned over the past sixty years. Indeed, the history of charged humor is a tale of intrigue and subversion featuring dive bars, public remonstrations, fickle audiences, movie stars turned politicians, commercial airlines, emergent technologies, neoliberal mind-sets, and a cavalcade of comic misfits with an ax to grind. Along the way, Krefting explores the fault lines in the modern economy of humor, why men are perceived to be funnier than women, the perplexing popularity of modern-day minstrelsy, and the way identities are packaged and sold in the marketplace. Appealing to anyone interested in the politics of humor and generating implications for the study of any form of popular entertainment, this history reflects on why we make the choices we do and the collective power of our consumptive practices. Readers will be delighted by the broad array of comic talent spotlighted in this book, and for those interested in comedy with substance, it will offer an alternative punchline.