Winning over the audience: trust and humor in stand-up comedy

Abrahams, D. (2020) Winning over the audience: trust and humor in stand-up comedy. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 78(4), pp. 491-500. (doi: 10.1111/jaac.12760)

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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.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Abrahams, Daniel
Authors: Abrahams, D.
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities
Journal Name:Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Publisher:Wiley
ISSN:0021-8529
ISSN (Online):1540-6245
Published Online:09 November 2020
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2020 The Authors
First Published:First published in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78(4):491-500
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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