Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy

Description

Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess. After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka Zupancic, McGowan, working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay. Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Similar books

• 

  Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency

  By Santiago Zabala

  In this provocative book, Santiago Zabala declares that in an age where the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency, only contemporary art’s capacity to alter reality can save us.

• 

  "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!"

  By Ralph Nader

  This extraordinary story, written by the author who knows the most about citizen action, returns us to the literature of American social movements—to Edward Bellamy, to Upton Sinclair, to John Steinbeck, to Stephen Crane—reminding us in ...

• 

  Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement

  By Thomas Geoghegan

  A labor lawyer and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist argues that, even as organized labor seems to be crumbling in the United States, a revived—but different—labor movement is now more relevant than ever in America's ...

• 

  This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

  By Marilyn Johnson

  In a celebration of libraries and the dedicated people who staff them, the author argues that librarians are more important than ever, and discusses a new breed of visionary professionals who use the Web to link people and information.

• 

  Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets

  By Todd Mcgowan

  On August 15, 1971, Nixon tried to stem the tide of inflation and massive foreign redemption of dollars for gold by freeing the dollar from its link to the American supply of gold. As a result, the Federal Reserve could print dollars in ...

• 

  Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories

  By John McNally, Owen King

  With stunning illustrations by artist Chris Burnham, Who Can Save Us Now? offers a vibrant, funny, and truly unusual array of characters and their stories.

• 

  The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us from Ourselves

  By James Poulos

  Poulos dives into the original, beloved text to see what Tocqueville would say about our relationship to technology; our methods for coping with stress; our obsession with appearances; our workaholism; and our physical indolence.

• 

  We Can Only Save Ourselves: A Novel

  By Alison Wisdom

  Combining the sharp social critique of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere with the elegiac beauty of Emma Cline’s The Girls, this is a fierce literary debut from a writer to watch.

• 

  The Joke Is on Us: Political Comedy in (Late) Neoliberal Times

  By Julie A. Webber

  This book provides a critical assessment of the broad range of responses by political comedians to the acceleration of neoliberal policy following the 2007 recession.

• 

  Only a Black Athlete Can Save Us Now

  By Grant Farred

  This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.