The Punk Turn in Comedy

The Punk Turn in Comedy PDF Author: Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319728415
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the interconnections between punk and alternative comedy (altcom). It explores how punk’s tendency towards humour and parody influenced the trajectory taken by altcom in the UK, and the punk strategies introduced when altcom sought self-definition against dominant established trends. The Punk Turn in Comedy considers the early promise of punk-comedy convergence in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s ‘Derek and Clive’, and discusses punk and altcom’s attitudes towards dominant traditions. The chapters demonstrate how punk and altcom sought a direct approach for critique, one that rejected innuendo, while embracing the ‘amateur’ in style and experimenting with audience-performer interaction. Giappone argues that altcom tended to be more consistently politicised than punk, with a renewed emphasis on responsibility. The book is a timely exploration of the ‘punk turn’ in comedy history, and will speak to scholars of both comedy and punk studies.

The Punk Turn in Comedy

The Punk Turn in Comedy PDF Author: Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319728415
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the interconnections between punk and alternative comedy (altcom). It explores how punk’s tendency towards humour and parody influenced the trajectory taken by altcom in the UK, and the punk strategies introduced when altcom sought self-definition against dominant established trends. The Punk Turn in Comedy considers the early promise of punk-comedy convergence in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s ‘Derek and Clive’, and discusses punk and altcom’s attitudes towards dominant traditions. The chapters demonstrate how punk and altcom sought a direct approach for critique, one that rejected innuendo, while embracing the ‘amateur’ in style and experimenting with audience-performer interaction. Giappone argues that altcom tended to be more consistently politicised than punk, with a renewed emphasis on responsibility. The book is a timely exploration of the ‘punk turn’ in comedy history, and will speak to scholars of both comedy and punk studies.

Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy

Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy PDF Author: Jack Black
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000378098
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film.

Alternative Comedy

Alternative Comedy PDF Author: Oliver Double
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350052817
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the late 1970s, the alternative comedy scene exploded into life in Britain and completely changed the style, subject matter and politics of British stand-up. Contemporary critics talked about it as 'anti-matter comedy' that 'makes you laugh while actually rearranging large chunks of your brain'. This book draws on a wealth of archive material – including unpublished recordings of early performances – and new interviews with key figures such as Alexei Sayle, Andy de la Tour and Jim Barclay, to provide a detailed history of the early scene and an examination of the distinctive modes of performance style which developed. Beginning with its origins, the volume traces the influence of American stand-up, and in particular the significance of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce as the originators of a style of stand-up that influenced the British pioneers of alternative comedy. It shows how the opening of the Comedy Store in 1979 provided a catalyst for a new movement, which grew outward from there with the foundation of the group Alternative Cabaret and the opening of the Comic Strip. But it also looks at smaller venues and less celebrated acts that have not been as well remembered, including ranting poets and street performers. Finally, it looks at alternative comedy's legacy, showing how it was the starting point for the UK's thriving and varied live scene, which encompasses anything from small pub gigs to huge arena tours.

It Never Ends

It Never Ends PDF Author: Tom Scharpling
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1647000327
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling’s harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.

Let's Start A Riot

Let's Start A Riot PDF Author: Bruce McCulloch
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1443426407
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Get Book Here

Book Description
A biting, funny, always revealing collection of personal stories from the legendary Kid in the Hall, comedian, writer and director, Bruce McCulloch Comedian, writer, director and legendary Kid in the Hall Bruce McCulloch chronicles his journey from wild early days as a ‘young punk’ in 80’s Alberta, to his flannel plaid days and futon nights in 90's Toronto, to becoming a ‘pajama-clad dad’ living in the Hollywood Hills. From scowling teenager to father of two, this biting, funny collection of personal stories, peppered with moments of surprising poignancy, proves that although this infamous Kid may be all grown up, his singular brand of humor and signature wit remain firmly intact.

I Killed

I Killed PDF Author: Ritch Shydner
Publisher: Crown Archetype
ISBN: 030749604X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a hilarious look at real life on the comedy circuit, some of America's most famous comics share their own stories of life on the road, gigs gone wrong, and unexpected, zany moments, with contributions by Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Bill Maher, Joan Rivers, Jeff Foxworthy, and others.

Daft Wee Stories

Daft Wee Stories PDF Author: Limmy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473517893
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
DAFT WEE STORIES is Limmy’s first book. It is a collection of stories. There are short stories. There are longer stories. There are stupid stories. There are thoughtful stories. There are upside-down stories. There are normal-way-up stories. There are weird stories. There are less weird stories. There are really weird stories. There is nothing else like it. Have a read.

Comedy After Postmodernism

Comedy After Postmodernism PDF Author: Kirby Olson
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
ISBN: 9780896724402
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
Is comedy postmodern? Kirby Olson posits that no one has been more marginalized than the comic writer, whose irreverent truths have always made others uncomfortable. In a literary age that purports to champion diversity, comic writers remain an underclass huddling at the fringes of the canon. Olson challenges the status quo by inviting the comic writer into the center of literary debate. In the growing discipline of humor studies, Olson is the first to create a substantial link between the fields of comedy and postmodernism, discovering in comic writers a philosophy of oddness and paradox that parallels and extends the work of the major postmodern thinkers. With elegant clarity, Comedy After Post-modernism examines: Edward Lear as he invents a comic picturesque to challenge the sublime of Kant and Ruskin Gregory Corso as he explodes the Great Chain of Being of his early Catholicism Philippe Soupault as a comic surrealist undoing the sacrificial aesthetics of André Breton P.G. Wodehouse as a social thinker with surprisingly deep affinities to anarchist Peter Kropotkin and radical social theorist Charles Fourier Stewart Home, the infamously violent punk author, as a pacifist whose narrative questions Marxist-anarchist terrorism in favor of patience and tolerance Charles Willeford, the maestro of the black humor police procedural, as a postmodern philosopher who deepens the problems of ethical and aesthetic judgment after postmodernism. "An original, splendidly researched, and necessary book. By pointing to the vast excluded literature of 'comic writers, ' Dr. Olson opens the door to a postmodern scholarship capable of greater flexibility. Comedy After Postmodernism evinces a lucid, passionate, and engaging style." --Andrei Codrescu There was an old man on the Border, Who lived in the utmost disorder; He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat, Which vexed all the folks on the Border. --From The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear

Running the Light

Running the Light PDF Author: Sam Tallent
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593978889
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
A bona fide “instant classic” (Doug Stanhope) novel that tells the story of a road comic crashing and burning by acclaimed comedian Sam Tallent Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight. Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father—comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when opportunity doesn't come—or worse—it comes and goes? “In vivid, electric sentences that read like cinematic tracking shots,” (Denver Post) Tallent hurls you into an absolute mess of a man’s life as we search for the mercy he does not want.

Poking a Dead Frog

Poking a Dead Frog PDF Author: Mike Sacks
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143123785
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Get Book Here

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR Amy Poehler, Mel Brooks, Adam McKay, George Saunders, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and many more take us deep inside the mysterious world of comedy in this fascinating, laugh-out-loud-funny book. Packed with behind-the-scenes stories—from a day in the writers’ room at The Onion to why a sketch does or doesn’t make it onto Saturday Night Live to how the BBC nearly erased the entire first season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—Poking a Dead Frog is a must-read for comedy buffs, writers and pop culture junkies alike.