{"title":"Winning Over the Audience: Trust and Humor in Stand-Up Comedy","authors":"DANIEL ABRAHAMS","doi":"10.1111/jaac.12760","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article advances a novel way of understanding humor and stand-up comedy. I propose that the relationship between the comedian and her audience is understood by way of trust, where the comedian requires the trust of her audience for her humor to succeed. The comedian may hold (or fail to hold) the trust of the audience in two domains. She may be trusted as to the form of the humor, such as whether she is joking. She may also be trusted as to the content of the joke. This approach has two distinct virtues. The first is that it makes sense of partial successes. These are cases where the humor neither completely succeeds nor fails because the audience does not fully trust the comedian. The second is that it explains intuitions about ethically dubious humor and why certain classes of humor, especially those dealing in racialized and gendered identities, are more readily (but not necessarily) accepted from humorists of those identities.</p>","PeriodicalId":51571,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND ART CRITICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/jaac.12760","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND ART CRITICISM","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jaac.12760","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
This article advances a novel way of understanding humor and stand-up comedy. I propose that the relationship between the comedian and her audience is understood by way of trust, where the comedian requires the trust of her audience for her humor to succeed. The comedian may hold (or fail to hold) the trust of the audience in two domains. She may be trusted as to the form of the humor, such as whether she is joking. She may also be trusted as to the content of the joke. This approach has two distinct virtues. The first is that it makes sense of partial successes. These are cases where the humor neither completely succeeds nor fails because the audience does not fully trust the comedian. The second is that it explains intuitions about ethically dubious humor and why certain classes of humor, especially those dealing in racialized and gendered identities, are more readily (but not necessarily) accepted from humorists of those identities.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism publishes current research articles, symposia, special issues, and timely book reviews in aesthetics and the arts. The term aesthetics, in this connection, is understood to include all studies of the arts and related types of experience from a philosophic, scientific, or other theoretical standpoint. The arts are taken to include not only the traditional forms such as music, literature, landscape architecture, dance, painting, architecture, sculpture, and other visual arts, but also more recent additions such as photography, film, earthworks, performance and conceptual art, the crafts and decorative arts, contemporary digital innovations, and other cultural practices, including work and activities in the field of popular culture.