Sunday, April 12, 2015
The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter
This reading was very interesting. Cynthia and Julie Willett discuss the role of humor and how it affects social norms and political movements. Humor is something that can completely level the hierarchy of social norms through its appeal to irony and laughter. The importance of humor comes as one that, throughout history, has been crucial to that shaping of micro-norms in everyday life, some things society finds funny and others society does not. But the important thing is that humor can be exclusive to a certain group of people, shaping the way in which they think of themselves as beings in a realm of micro-norms and therefore changing the affects of these norms on them and others. Through humor the norms change and cognitive habits change with it, and by proxy so do political movements."Individuals regardless o f gender perpetuate these
norms through practices that are often perceived as voluntary. Just as
ridicule and humor provide an arsenal o f tools that can reinforce these
norms and practices, so too this arsenal can tear those conventions
down."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think your claim that "humor can be exclusive to a certain group of people" is really relevant and important. One female comedian that comes to mind is Amy Schumer. Schumer often makes jokes about sleeping with minority men, but then she makes racist jokes about them after. At the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night, she also made a racist joke about Latina women. I bring Schumer up because on Monday we were talking about whether Margaret Cho's stand-up about her mom was offensive. I think that if she didn't have the identity she was making fun of it would definitely be considered offensive- and this is basically the comedy Schumer is doing. I have read that Schumer considers herself a feminist, and she is often portrayed that way, but I wonder where the line is drawn when she is making fun of other races in her comedy that she has no identification with. Is this still "fumerism" and where is the line drawn for when humor is exclusive to an audience of the comedian's own identity?
ReplyDelete