Topic
Comedy
About: Comedy is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8400 publications have been published within this topic receiving 67483 citations. The topic is also known as: humor.
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TL;DR: This paper used data from both the 2004 Pew Research Center Political Communications Study and the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey to show that young people are tuning in to late-night comedy in addition to, rather than in the place of, news.
Abstract: This article explores two largely untested assumptions that dominate popular and scholarly examinations of the “late-night comedy audience.” The first assumption is that young people are tuning in to late-night comedy programs instead of the news. The second assumption is that there is one monolithic “late-night audience.” Using data from both the 2004 Pew Research Center Political Communications Study and the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, this article provides evidence that challenges these two assumptions, illustrating that young people are tuning in to late-night comedy in addition to—rather than in the place of—news and that the audiences of various late-night comedy programs have distinct sociodemographic and political profiles
178 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: The movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas. Indeed, the dependability of movies to provide such experiences lies at the center of the medium's appeal and power. Yet cinema's ability to influence, even manipulate, the emotions of the spectator is one of the least-explored topics in film theory today. In Passionate Views, thirteen internationally recognized scholars of film studies, philosophy, and psychology explore the emotional appeal of the cinema. Employing a novel cognitive perspective, the volume investigates the relationship between genre and emotion; explores how film narrative, music, and cinematic techniques such as the close-up are used to elicit emotion; and examines the spectator's identification with and response to film characters. An impressive range of films and topics is brought together by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, including: the success of Stella Dallas and An Affair to Remember as tearjerkers; the power of Night of the Living Dead to inspire fear and disgust; the sublime evoked in The Passion of Joan of Arc, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and The Children of Paradise; the emotional basis of film comedy as seen in When Harry Met Sally; the use of cinematic cues in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Local Hero to arouse emotions; the relationship between narrative flow and emotion in Once Upon a Time in the West and E.T.; the emotive use of music in The Elephant Man and A Clockwork Orange; Stranger than Paradise's sense of timing; desire and resolution in Casablanca; audience identification with the main characters in Groundhog Day and The Crying Game; portrayal of perversity in The Silence of the Lambs, Flaming Creatures, and Shivers; and empathy elicited through closeups of actors' faces in Yankee Doodle Dandy and Blade Runner. Passionate Views offers a new approach to our understanding of film and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the emotional power of motion pictures and their relationship to the central concerns of our lives, as well as by the techniques filmmakers use to move an audience.
177 citations
Book•
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17 Aug 2001
TL;DR: Lakoff as discussed by the authors argues that the struggle for power and status at the end of the century is being played out as a war over language and argues that controlling language is a basis for all power, and therefore it is worth fighting for.
Abstract: Robin Lakoff gets to the heart of one of the most fascinating and pressing issues in American society today: who holds power and how they use it, keep it, or lose it. In a brilliant and vastly entertaining discussion of news events that have occupied an enormous amount of media space - political correctness, the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, Hillary Rodham Clinton as First Lady, O. J. Simpson's murder trial, the Ebonics controversy, and the Clinton sex scandal - Lakoff shows that the struggle for power and status at the end of the century is being played out as a war over language. Controlling language is a basis for all power, she says, and therefore it is worth fighting for. As a result, newly emergent groups, especially blacks and women, are contending with middle- to upper-class white men for a share in 'language rights.' Lakoff's introduction to linguistic theories and the philosophy of language lays the groundwork for an exploration of news stories that meet what she calls the UAT (Undue Attention Test). As the stories became the subject of talk-show debates, late-night comedy routines, Web sites, and magazine articles, they were embroidered with additional meanings, depending on who was telling the story. Race, gender, or both are at the heart of these stories, and each one is about the right to construct meanings from languagein short, to possess power. Because language tells us how we are connected to one another, who has power and who does not, the stories reflect the language war. We use language to analyze what we call 'reality,' the author argues, but we mistrust how language is used today - witness the 'politics of personal destruction' following the Clinton impeachment. Yet Lakoff sees in the struggle over language a positive goal: equality in the creation of our national discourse. Her writing is accessible and witty, and her excerpts from the media are used to great effect.
176 citations
Book•
13 Nov 1998
TL;DR: A role analysis of working-class respectability can be found in this article, where the authors discuss the Victorian middle class and the problem of leisure, and the role of the barmaid as cultural prototype.
Abstract: Introduction: social history, cultural studies and the cad 1. The Victorian middle class and the problem of leisure 2. A role analysis of working-class respectability 3. Ally Soper's half-holiday: comic art in the 1880s 4. Business and good fellowship in the London music hall 5. Champagne Charlie and the music hall swell song: 6. Music-hall and the knowingness of popular culture 7. The Victorian barmaid as cultural prototype 8. Musical comedy and the rhetoric of the girl, 1892-1914 9. Breaking the sound barrier Notes Index.
175 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the ideological implications of racial stereotypes in comedy through a textual and audience analysis of Rush Hour 2 and found that most participants found the film's racial jokes inoffensive, regardless of race.
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the ideological implications of racial stereotypes in comedy through a textual and audience analysis of Rush Hour 2. Although Asian, Black, and White focus group participants differentially engaged with racial stereotypes in the film, most participants, regardless of race, found the film's racial jokes inoffensive. Many Asian and Black participants found a positive source of pleasure in the negative portrayals of their own race and did not produce oppositional discourse. Our study suggests that the generic conventions and textual devices of comedy encourage the audience to naturalize racial differences rather than to challenge racial stereotypes.
148 citations