John Bruns (Professor, Film Studies Program and Department of English, College of Charleston)
December 5, 2023
Advisor: Erik Jon Byker, NHC Teacher Advisory Council
One of the most common ways of understanding how comedy functions—in film, literature, social and political discourse, and in all cultural artifacts—is that it relieves us of serious, even tragic, matters. It is sweet but brief respite from serious, critical engagement with matters we deem of importance. What this implies is that comedy cannot, or should not, try to tell us anything about serious, even tragic, matters. Looked at another way, “comic relief” is a reductive formula that gives short shrift to the force and reach of comedy and, at the same time, serves to reinforce cultural and academic attitudes that only sober matters are worthy of critical attention. Such is our shared, automatic thinking—or non-thinking—when it comes to comedy. What would it mean to do away with the idea of “comic relief” once and for all? What if we were to question the trivialization of comedy and argue instead that this trivialization is related in some way to the fear that, if left to its own devices, comedy will tell us what we simply do not want to hear?
Webinar Resources
These readings provide information about the usefulness of comedy as a critical tool, and about how irreverence is a healthy mode of thought.
- Kincaid, James R. “Cultivating the Obtuse.” In Annoying the Victorians, 14–16. New York: Routledge, 1995.
- Kincaid, James R. “Who is Relieved by the Idea of Comic Relief?” In Annoying the Victorians, 91–95. New York: Routledge, 1995.
- McGowan, John. “Liberal Democracy as Secular Comedy.” In Pragmatist Politics: Making the Case for Liberal Democracy, 149–58. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
- Stott, Andrew. Introduction to Comedy, 1–16. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Subjects
Literature / Education Studies / Literary Criticism / Literary Theory / Comedy / Cultural Studies /
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.