Conscious Laughter: Fake Laughs and Guffaws
As I’ve noted, John C. Meyer draws a useful distinction between laughing with and laughing at – when we laugh with people, we draw them closer, when...
Category: Stand Up Comedy
My academic “wheelhouse.” This site used to be entirely devoted to stand-up comedy, but as I’ve begin to branch out into my other interests, I’ve collected everything to do with stand-up here.
Laughing With Victims At Butts
Apologies for reposting, but in trying to organize the site I think it will be more useful to break the theory out from the cases. This enables me to just link ...
John C. Meyer’s Four Functions of Humor
John C. Meyer was interested in how people use humor – what their purpose is. Meyer’s first conception is that people can use humor to unite us or t...
Common Interpretations of Laughter
I have previously discussed John Limon’s theory of absolute stand-up. This theory states that the audience “[makes the comic’s] jokes into jokes, or refuse[s] t...
Jay Leno on Anti-Political Funny Stuff
Tim O’Shei interviewed Jay Leno for The Buffalo News (6/23/2017) about his philosophy on stand-up, and in Leno’s responses I see a few popular notio...
John Limon on Laughter: Is It Crucial?
I’ve talked a bit about how John Limon defines a genre of “absolute stand-up,” as marked, in part, by authorial intent. Yet he also distinguishes his abs...
Persona
I’ve already written a bit on the documentary, Dying Laughing, but there’s a lot more to say there [plus, I transcribed quite a bit of stuff, so I&#...
Rory Scovel’s Lenny Bruce Opening
If the title doesn’t already tell you: *Warning: Explicit Language* Rory Scovel’s new special, Rory Scovel Tries Stand-up for the First Time on Netf...
The Difference Between Silverman and Maher
I’ve already written about Bill Maher’s recent N-word problem; however it’s not the first time he’s been a part of a discussion about ra...
Iliza Shlesinger and Jokes About Vaginas
Controversy I’m a fan of Iliza Shlesinger; seen her live, watched all her specials. So when, on Monday (6/12/2017), Deadline’s Matt Grobar posted an...