The gaslight that illuminates the settings of "The Dead" is an antiquated technology on the verge of being replaced by electricity. For that reason, among others, it brings with it associations of nostalgia, foregone romance, and ghosts—in other words, the emotional landscape of "The Dead." These associations converge on the figure of Michael Furey, the "boy in the gasworks," who, in "The Dead," is re-presented by the gas that highlights and burnishes Gretta's hair, that, through its buried pipes, tracks her and Gabriel to the Gresham Hotel, and that literally rises from underground to throw a "shaft" between them, thus extinguishing the feelings of renewed passion that it had helped kindle. Coming from underground to confront a self-conscious member of the "Ascendancy," the gas also reinforces the political theme, running throughout the story, of disenfranchisement—of the Irish by the English, of women by men, of blacks by whites.

Taking laughter seriously

Gaslight, Ghostlight, Golliwog, Gaslight

The Rise of Humor: Hollywood Increases Adult Centered Humor in Animated Children’s Films Chelsie Akers Department of Communications, BYU Master of Mass Communication Children’s animated films have held a lasting influence on their audiences since the rise of their popularity in the 1980s. As adults co-view such films with their children Hollywood has had to rewrite the formula for a successful animated children’s film. This thesis argues that a main factor in audience expansion is adult humor. The results show that children’s animated films from 2002-2013 are riddled with many instances of adult humor while earlier films from 1982-1993 use adult humor sparingly. It is clear that over the years the number of adult humor occurrences has consistently increased. Furthermore, this research shows that adult male roles consistently deliver the adult humor.

background

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4723&context=etd

The Rise of Humor: Hollywood Increases Adult Centered Humor in Animated Children's Films

/pdf/a-dedication-to-the-banal-e-relevant-web-text-sites-and-ye8fx6zut4.pdf

A dedication to the banal: E-relevant web text sites and their role in user-generated culture

Writing from a literary perspective, the exploratory metaphor of ‘writing drunk’ is used as a framework to discuss the process of negotiating texts from disparate and unfamiliar contexts. With reference to the comedies of Aristophanes, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Jaroslav Hasek’s The good soldier Svejk , this paper examines the ways in which their status as ‘drunken’ texts can help illuminate a range of otherwise marginalised social and literary practices. This discussion draws on works by Freud, Nietzsche and Bakhtin, among others, as well as New Historicism and theories of humour. This article has been peer-reviewed.

'Writing drunk': Aristophanes, Rabelais, Hasek.

In this paper, I seek to understand the way in which humoristic street actions operate in a nonviolent struggle by examining the extensive staging of humoristic actions during the students’ nonviolent protest in 1996-7 in Serbia, and the nonviolent movement Otpor. The concepts of “excorporation” and “carnival” are in use to understand the operation of these actions. I argue that humoristic actions are defiant because they work to emasculate the opponent’s rhetoric by appropriating and juxtaposing it with other discursive forces, for the rhetoric to be mirthful. Humoristic actions, when manifest in the form of carnival, can also be disarming and transformative. Carnival-like actions generate the positive energy which transcends the reality of pending clash between protesters and authorities. The first section discusses the relationship between nonviolence and humor presented in existing scholarship. Then, humoristic actions staged in the Serbian case are categorized and detailed. The final section, through the concepts of excorporation and carnival, analyses the operation of humoristic street action.

/pdf/excorporation-and-carnival-in-humoristic-street-actions-504qrf1wh0.pdf

“Excorporation” and “Carnival” in Humoristic Street Actions Staged for Nonviolent Struggle: The 1996-7 Student Protests and the Resistance Movement (Otpor), Serbia

Taking laughter seriously

Citations

Gaslight, Ghostlight, Golliwog, Gaslight

The Rise of Humor: Hollywood Increases Adult Centered Humor in Animated Children's Films

A dedication to the banal: E-relevant web text sites and their role in user-generated culture

'Writing drunk': Aristophanes, Rabelais, Hasek.

“Excorporation” and “Carnival” in Humoristic Street Actions Staged for Nonviolent Struggle: The 1996-7 Student Protests and the Resistance Movement (Otpor), Serbia

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