Overview
- Combines arguments and personal experiences from a broad range of contributors, including scholars and stand-up performers
- Avoids and complicates the stereotype of tragic comedians or sad clowns to explore the nuances of ‘darkness’ in comedy
- Addresses the paradox of comedy and tragedy
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Comedy (PSCOM)
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About this book
This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
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Keywords
Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Darkness from the Outside
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Front Matter
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Darkness from the Inside
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy reminds us that tragedy can be equally the source, target, inspiration, and frictional underside of our laughter … . The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy provides an important introduction to an obviously germane aspect of the form and is very welcome in the rapidly emerging field of (Stand up) comedy studies.” (Antti Lindfors, The European Journal of Humour Research, Vol. 10 (2), 2022)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Patrice Oppliger is Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Boston University, USA. Her most recent book is Tweencoms Girls: Gender and Adolescence in Disney and Nickelodeon Sitcoms.
Eric Shouse is Associate Professor of Communication at East Carolina University, USA. His work has been published in HUMOR, Comedy Studies, and Text and Performance Quarterly.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy
Editors: Patrice A. Oppliger, Eric Shouse
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Comedy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37214-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-37213-2Published: 11 April 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-37216-3Published: 11 April 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-37214-9Published: 10 April 2020
Series ISSN: 2731-4332
Series E-ISSN: 2731-4340
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 320
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Comedy Studies, Popular Culture, Performers and Practitioners