This paper explores gender in stand‐up comedy based on 20 months of ethnographic research in Finland and recent media discussion involving the booking of performers for a national comedy tour. As the vast majority of stand‐up comedians are men, discussions of gender tend to focus on the anomalousness of female comedians. These debates often rely on essentialist views of women and stand‐up comedy, presenting female comedians as transgressive due to the perceived incompatibilities of women and comedy. However, the situation in the clubs and performances is more complex. I chart this territory by looking at gender in relation to ‘invention’ and ‘convention’ in stand‐up comedy performance. I explore how some of the conventional, established and expected aspects of stand‐up, such as the public use of power and threat of failure, are related to ideas of gender. I then go on to show how comedy enables invention, new and/or unique ideas and forms. This allows comedians to approach and enact gender in more digressive ways: taking indirect, experimental paths and imaginatively shifting between perspectives and positions to subvert and question roles and patterns. As stand‐up becomes more diverse, discussing gender requires a more nuanced approach going beyond a simple binary.
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In Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
- Published (Print):
- 01 Nov 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 550–563 (13 total)
Fiona Cullen
Much previous scholarly work has noted the gendered nature of humor and the notion that women use comedy in a different way than do their male peers. Drawing on prior work on gender and humor, and my ethnographic work on teen girl cultures, I explore in this article how young women utilize popular cultural texts as well as everyday and staged comedy as part of a gendered resource that provides potential sites for sex-gender transgression and conformity. Through a series of vignettes, I explore how girls do funny and provide a backdrop to perform youthful gendered identities, as well as establish, maintain, and transgress cultural and social boundaries. Moving on to explore young women and stand-up I question the potential in mobilizing humor as an educational resource and a site in which to explore sex-gender norms with young people.
In Girlhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 119–136 (18 total)
Pam Hirsch
On 1 February 1859 literary history was made with the publication of a novel called Adam Bede. Achorus of critical acclaim followed in periodicals across the political spectrum as, moving from left to right, the Westminster Review, the Athenaeum and the Saturday Review all trumpeted their approval. E.S. Dallas’s review in The Times is representative of the predominant tone with its opening declaration that ‘there can be no mistake about Adam Bede. It is a first-rate novel, and its author takes rank at once among the masters of the art’. Charles Dickens wrote a letter of praise, as did Jane Welsh Carlyle, while Queen Victoria’s admiration was such that she commissioned paintings of two scenes from the novel.
Perspectives of (and on) a Comedic Self
A Semiotics of Subjectivity in Stand-up Comedy
Marianna Keisalo
I was sitting in a bar in Helsinki after a comedy night chatting with well-established Finnish stand-up comedian Robert Pettersson, when he suggested that the key to comedy is “the relation of the performed material to the come-dian’s stage persona
In Social Analysis
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 116–135 (20 total)
Anti-racist Critique Through Racial Stereotype Humour
What Could Go Wrong?
Matthias Pauwels
mainstream comics to ‘deal with racial … difference’ (2014: 228). Think of stand-up comedians performing the behaviour attributed to a racial group in an exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek way. In most such instances, both the performance and the audience
The French Empire Goes to San Francisco
The Founding of the United Nations and the Limits of Colonial Reform
Jessica Lynne Pearson
Abstract
This article explores the French delegation's approach to debates about colonial oversight and accountability that took place at the Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in 1945, where delegates from fifty nations gathered to draft the United Nations (UN) Charter. Drawing on documents from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UN, and the American press, it argues that while French officials at home and in the empire were eagerly negotiating a new French Union that would put metropolitan France and the colonies on unprecedently equal footing, French delegates to the San Francisco conference were unwilling to take a stand for these reforms-in-progress. Ultimately, French delegates to the conference lacked confidence that the incipient French Union would stand up to international scrutiny as these delegates worked to establish new international standards for what constituted “self-government.”
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 35–55 (21 total)
Who is Afraid of Blacks in France? The Black Question
The Name Taboo, the Number Taboo
Louis-Georges Tin
In 2005, black people in France decided to create a national organization: the CRAN. The country had lived for decades on the myth of human rights and equality, and as a result, minorities were invisible, and were expected to remain so. Therefore, the two most important goals of the CRAN have been: to give a name, to give a figure. The taboo of the name was broken when black people decided to stand up for what they are, to call themselves "black," however unusual this might sound in French public discourse; the taboo of the figure was also broken when the CRAN decided to launch the issue of ethnic statistics in France. Until then, blacks would not exist as such in this country, and racial discrimination would remain ignored for the most part. But since this campaign was launched, ethnic statistics have become an important issue. The debate is still going on.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 32–44 (13 total)
“Boys Fight, Girls Fight“
Adolescent Girls Speak about Girls' Aggression
Melissa K. Levy
A perceived rise in girls' physical aggression is alarming the public as it collides with dominant views of femininity. Existing research focuses on either boys' violence or girls' non-physical aggression, leaving the realm of girls' physical aggression relatively unexplored. Using data from ethnographic observations and interviews, this study examines young adolescent girls' experience of their and their peers' fighting. Findings indicate that girls participate in fights to stand up for themselves and others, to show they are not afraid, and for fun. This study calls for continued in-depth research into girls' perspectives on aggression and violence in order to provide insight into how gendered, raced, and classed structures affect girls. It seeks, too, to address the problems that arise from girls fighting.
In Girlhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 45–64 (20 total)
Halima Krausen
It is often thought that, with an appropriate spiritual foundation to work towards moral responsibility and social justice, it would be enough if individuals to follow, as Kant suggests, “the moral law within me“, doing away with outdated structures and with traditions that seem to have become an end in themselves. Yet social structures and philosophical concepts in today's complex world have deep roots in values that, in the past, were understood to be religious and that can be neither denied nor replaced at random. Besides, isn't that “moral law within me“ that was the driving force behind a prophet to “stand up for what is just“, even against social and religious authority. Here is the root out of which traditions grow like branches and structures are built according to necessity. The Qur'anic vision presented here is one of using the diversity of the branches for a constructive competition in producing fruits of balanced justice and peace.
On difference and combination
Politics and social movement organizations in a Pennsylvania rust-belt region
Sharryn Kasmir
workers’ rights; Sunrise Movement Berks is a youth climate justice organization that advocates for the Green New Deal; and Berks Stands Up builds political and democratic engagement in the electoral arena. Each is a branch of a national- or state