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- Convenors:
-
Antti Lindfors
(University of Helsinki)
Ian Brodie (Cape Breton University)
Kristinn Schram (University of Iceland)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Narratives
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the ambivalent, awkward, and transgressive aspects of humor and comedy as employed to mark, cross, reinforce, and transgress social and cultural norms. We welcome papers that discuss both verbal and visual forms of humor, as well as the production and consumption of comedy.
Long Abstract:
Succinctly designated by Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai (2017) as "a pleasure spectacle of form's self-violation", capable of both producing and dispelling anxiety, humor and comedy are fundamentally ambivalent modes of cultural expression. As such, they are characteristically uncontained and uncontainable within genres, products, and forms of communication, their effects and affects potentially leaking over every conceivable border. In increasingly effacing the boundaries between political discourse and (political) satire with often unexpected and sometimes dangerous results, for instance, such ambivalence has been argued as lying at the heart of the "unprecedented political potential of humor in the early twenty-first century" (Petrovic 2018, 203).
This panel explores the ambivalent, awkward, and transgressive aspects of humor and comedy. Whether related to stand-up comedy as personal disclosure on a public arena that often purposefully breaks the quotidian social contract of what comprises civil talk, or awkwardness as a comedy trope that bends and suspends all rules of social conduct for maximally (un)pleasant affective response, or simply an upending of the audience's expectations of genre, we are interested in humor and comedy as the simultaneous marking, crossing, reinforcing, and transgressing of social and cultural norms.
We welcome papers that discuss both verbal and visual forms of humor, as well as the production and consumption of comedy.
REFERENCES
Berlant, Lauren, and Sianne Ngai 2017. Comedy Has Issues. Critical Inquiry 43:
233-249.
Petrovic, Tanja. 2018. Political Parody and the Politics of Ambivalence. Annual Review of Anthropology 47:201-16.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In the Romanian society there is a rich and complex imaginary that especially reflects the difficult relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The paper suggests an analysis of how this relationship was reflected in the new context triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in visual forms.
Paper long abstract:
It`s said about Romanians that they have humor no matter what. A Romanian saying reflects this feature through the expression `grin and bear it`. This paper suggests the analysis of the new context of COVID-19 pandemic and its effect upon the imagination of social actors in Romania. The analysis insists especially upon the relationship between parents-in-laws/mother-in-law – daughter-in-law and the way in which this was humouredly reflected in visual forms (caricatures and memes) which could be seen on different on line and social media. Marriage for Romanian society represents a social phenomenon with multiple affective, legally, social, cultural and economic repercussions. Marriage is invested with the power to build and strengthen the new kinship ties. From the relationship established between the two spouses derives another kinship relationship, that one between the wife and the husband`s parents and the one between the husband and the wife`s parents. So, through marriage, each of the two spouses enters into kinship/ affinity with the relatives of the other spouse. The word parents-in-law (mother-in-law and father-in-law) is used for this new kind of relationship. In the Romanian society there is a rich and complex imaginary that especially reflects the difficult relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The paper suggests an analysis of how this relationship was reflected in the new context triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in visual forms (caricatures and memes).
Key-words: marriage, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, pandemic, visual forms, Romanian society
Paper short abstract:
The paper investigates the use of humor in national minority festivals and theatrical productions, and discusses the possibilities of using heritage in combination with comedy to transgress a history of the ruling majority’s cultural hegemony.
Paper long abstract:
Important elements in narrative presentations of national minorities in contemporary festival contexts relate to, and make extensive use of, a shared history and heritage. New re-tellings of the narratives from oral tradition are significant parts of performances during festivals celebrating a common intangible heritage. Along with other narratives, humor and comedy of course are a part in this. In this paper I want to take festivals with theatrical elements celebrated among the Finn Forest and the Kven national minorities in Norway as my point of departure, and discuss dramatic (and humorous) presentations related to the use (and misuse) of illegally produced liquor (pontikka, moonshine) in these contexts. Confrontations with the representatives of the national authorities (police and sheriffs) results in comic incidents, calling for laughter among the attending public. Whether the drinking practices are appreciated or depreciated on stage or in other performances both incorporates and visualizes a “fleeting” or ambiguous boundary between “us” and “them”. In this way, the performances could comment on the long history of suppressing the minorities in Norwegian national state politics (most often termed Norwegianization politics). At the same time, the humorous context also allows for more nuanced and ambiguous understandings of heterogeneous identities in multi-ethnic and multi-national contexts.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the power of Gaelic names as a dynamic and transformative force in transgressive comedy. Folk and popular modes of intersectional code-switching between popular humour and small-group identity seek to creatively redress and subvert longstanding power imbalances.
Paper long abstract:
The trope of Irish and Scottish Gaelic names in global English-language humour is well attested and provides a noteworthy lens to explore popular majority-language conceptualisations of alterity and the esoteric. Recent iterations of these forms of transgressive comedic othering have revealed a dynamic and transformative force within contemporary comedic discourse that attempts to redress these power imbalances. From Stephen Colbert’s Late Show interview with Saoirse Ronan to parody music videos integrating Starbucks baristas' notorious misspelling of customers’ names, we find a dynamic web of comedic expression rooted in the subversive power names in endangered languages hold in post-colonial discourse. Simultaneously, habitual speakers of these endangered languages have taken to employing the power their names wield as a Shibboleth within wider folksonomies in social media (Cocq 2015) linked to what can be considered an enactment of digital dúchas/dùthchas (sense of belonging to a natural and ancestral world). A noteworthy recent example was the #dèantainmathort (‘what is your name?’) profile badge movement on Facebook in Summer 2020 with users replacing anglicized personal names with their Scottish Gaelic forms as a collective ‘folk’ response amid the Covid-19 pandemic to the release of a study that posited that Gaelic as a vernacular language in the Hebrides was in danger of dying out within a decade. Taken together, the power of names in forging small-group identity and building humour rooted in empathy reveals complex modes of intersectional code-switching between folk and popular discourses that seek to creatively redress and subvert longstanding imbalances in power.
Paper short abstract:
The article explores how political humour constitutes a different kind of social protest. This is linked with breaking rules (transgression). To laugh in the face of power is not to say: “I oppose you” but rather it is to assert: “your power has no authority over me.” This article explores relationships between humor, social engagement and discursive practices, using an interdisciplinary approach.
Paper long abstract:
The rapid development of social media in recent years has led to the emergence of new forms of political communication, in particular visual communication, represented by the genres “cartoons” and “memes”. These genres are the subject of many different disciplines: cultural studies, communication/media studies, media linguistics, political science, political linguistics, cognitive linguistics, semiotics. The paper deals with analysis of 1300 political cartoons and memes of President Zelensky, using computer based content analysis (MAXQDA 2020) and multimodal discourse analysis (MDA).
Accordingly, this article explores how humor, or more precisely, political humour constitutes a different kind of social protest that cannot be analyzed from an interdisciplinary point of view. To laugh in the face of power is not to say: “I oppose you” but rather it is to assert: “your power has no authority over me.” As such, this article maintains an inspection of the relationship between humor, social engagement and discursive practices.
The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for the analysis of multimodal genres not only expands the methodological tools of researchers of humorous discourse, but also ensures the reliability of the results. The analysis of political caricatures and memes, which cover certain aspects of Volodymyr Zelensky’s activity as president of Ukraine that his activity was and still is the object of rather sharp criticism, finds its expression in humorous genres.