Gender, Humour and Transgression in Canadian Women’s Theatre

Natalie Meisner, Donia Mounsef
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract Are humour and laughter gender-specific? The simple answer, like most everything that is ideological, is “yes”. Many feminists in recent years have grappled with the question of humour and how it is often the site of much contestation when it comes to women using it as a tool of transgression. This paper probes the seemingly timeless antipathy between humour and representations of femininity through recourse to performance and theories of the body. This article holds the term “woman” up to scrutiny while simultaneously examining the persistence of both critical and philosophical recalcitrance and the way humour continues to function in both gendered and violent ways. How does gender “do” or “undo” humour? Laughter is no simple matter for women, due to the legacy of profoundly polarized and hyper-sexualized historical ambivalence between femininity and laughter. Acknowledging the problematic nature of the category “woman”, and after clearing some terminological distinctions (comedy, humour, irony, satire, and parody), this article investigates humour’s complicated and volatile relationship to gender and the way the laughing body of women on stage presents a fascinating double helix of sexual aggression and power
加拿大女性戏剧中的性别、幽默与越界
幽默和笑声有性别差异吗?就像大多数意识形态问题一样,简单的回答是“是的”。近年来,许多女权主义者都在努力解决幽默的问题,以及当女性把幽默作为一种越轨的工具时,幽默是如何经常引发争议的。本文通过表演和身体理论来探讨幽默与女性气质表现之间看似永恒的反感。这篇文章在审视“女人”这个词的同时,也审视了批判和哲学上的抗拒,以及幽默继续以性别和暴力的方式发挥作用的方式。性别如何“促成”或“破坏”幽默?笑对女人来说不是一件简单的事情,因为女性气质和笑之间深刻的两极分化和超性别化的历史矛盾。认识到“女人”这一范畴的问题本质,在澄清了一些术语上的区别(喜剧、幽默、反讽、讽刺和戏仿)之后,本文研究了幽默与性别之间复杂而多变的关系,以及舞台上笑着的女性如何呈现出一种迷人的性侵犯和权力的双螺旋
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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