Collin Williams on Jokes and Outrage
A lot of ink & pixels is given to the question of what is or is not an appropriate topic for humor. Collin Williams, in an interview with Rachel Jensen of S...
Tag: Carnivalesque
Chattoo, The Laughter Effect III. D. 3. Comedy Formats: Stand-Up Impacts
In May (2017), Caty Borum Chattoo, co-director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University and a comedy fan, released “The Laughter E...
Aditi Mittal on the Postmodern, Stand-up’s Power and Free Speech
Some folks would say, don’t you study American stand-up? What’s with the stuff on these Indian and Pan-Asian comics? Stay in your lane! Well, I just...
Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. I. a. – Introduction
This is the first of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to i...
Update: James Davis’ Interview with StarTribune.com
On reading the interview, I made some updates to Intentionality – where I talk about the idea that comics are first and foremost trying to get a laugh on-...
Can Comedy Be Serious?
Philip Stamato of Splitsider.com, talking about late night comedy (6/28/2017) pretty much nails the premise of my humor projects: It seems like nobody can agree...
More Problems with Satire
Brian Raftery of Wired.com (11/11/2016) points to the problems with satire as it is commonly understood: In fact, my dependence on satire was so severe this yea...
Carnival II: Real Action
In a previous post, I discussed a common, simple model of carnivalesque that was based off the idea of a Roman Catholic celebration of Carnival prior to Lent wr...
Carnival I: Simple Inversion
It’s fairly common, when talking about humor, to use the word carnivalesque (see for instance Fiske; Gilbert; Miller). The concept was most famously used...
How to Write a Joke
Everything starts with the jokes. Until you’ve got material that consistently gets laughs, you’ve got nothing – and you need at least five mi...