The Professionalisation of Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter explores the contemporary institutional realities and obligations which stand-up comedians are under. These realities are sociologically explored in relation to wider, societal processes of ‘professionalisation’: stand-up comedy claims an exclusive jurisdiction for itself – the ability to know and produce a belief in the ‘funniness’ of the comedian. This professional knowledge is explored by demonstrating how a theory of ‘absolute stand-up’ drives contemporary comedy practice. This is illustrated by the modernist ‘writer’ ethos which governs contemporary stand-up material, as well as the desire for ‘comic originality’. These twin features are then situated in relation to the dramaturgy which underlines contemporary stand-up show writing.

Introduction

This chapter provides critical context to the relationship between comedy and sociology. First, the chapter explores Peter Berger’s Redeeming Laughter (2014). In particular the chapter examines Berger’s comparison of Mort Sahl and Talcott Parsons, facilitating an exploration of the history of stand-up comedy alongside the experiences of the Jewish diaspora. The chapter goes on to explore stand-up’s relation to New Left politics, before outlining the book’s argument with a summary of the following chapters.

The Critique of Comic Reason

This chapter brings together themes and arguments from the preceding chapters to outline a theory of stand-up comedians as proto-sociologists. It begins by outlining a potential ‘subterranean’ history of the elective affinity between New Left, ‘Alt. Comedy’ and British sociology. From this the chapter explores the distinctive figuration of and mode of critique provided by the stand-up comedian as a proto-sociologist. This is then illustrated through a reading of four contemporary stand-up comedians and their potential contribution to sociological knowledge.

Persona

This chapter asks what room is there for stand-up comedy as social critique in a ‘post-abjection’ society. In a society where a New Left politics is normative, ‘common sense’, where does this leave radical critique for stand-up comedians? If New Left ideals are mainstream ‘political sense’, how do comedians face up to the obligations of New Left political subjectivity from the social identities their personas fix them as? The ethics of selfhood which New Left hegemony obliges is viewed through stand-up personas as offering philosophies of ‘the subject’ which foreground the moral ought of leftist politics and the structurally compromised position of their social identities.

Representation

This chapter situates stand-up comedy in relation to a society of widening and deepening inequalities around class, race, and gender, especially within the arts and culture industries. The chapter explores the paradox that despite stand-up comedy being male dominated, predominately white and ‘middle-class’, it retains a New Left identity and leftist politics. This paradox is understood as a cultural consequence of the rise of Alternative comedy in Britain alongside the cultural and political ‘individualisation’ of ‘New Left’ ideals.

The Art of Stand-Up Comedy

This chapter provides a sociological theory of the stand-up comedian. It seeks to establish a theory of humour which arises in modern societies and the sociality that drives such humour. Although there are philosophical theories of humour, as well as anthropological theories of comedy figures – clowns, jokers, jesters, fools, tricksters – this chapter argues that a sociological theory of humour needs to be sensitive to the type of sociality, personhood and collective representations which drive contemporary stand-up comedy. To this end it outlines stand-up comedy as the art of ‘intra-personal’ relations where ‘self-other’, stranger sociality is built, improvised and performatively situated.