A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America

A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America
ISBN-10
1617030074
ISBN-13
9781617030079
Category
Social Science
Pages
253
Language
English
Published
2011-08-01
Publisher
Univ. Press of Mississippi
Authors
Ted Gournelos, Viveca Greene

Description

A Decade of Dark Humor analyzes ways in which popular and visual culture used humor-in a variety of forms-to confront the attacks of September 11, 2001 and, more specifically, the aftermath. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from four countries to discuss the impact of humor and irony on both media discourse and tangible political reality. Furthermore, it demonstrates that laughter is simultaneously an avenue through which social issues are deferred or obfuscated, a way in which neoliberal or neoconservative rhetoric is challenged, and a means of forming alternative political ideologies. The volume's contributors cover a broad range of media productions, including news parodies (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Onion), TV roundtable shows (Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher), comic strips and cartoons (Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks, Jeff Danzinger’s editorial cartoons), television drama (Rescue Me), animated satire (South Park), graphic novels (Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers), documentary (Fahrenheit 9/11), and other productions. Along with examining the rhetorical methods and aesthetic techniques of these productions, the essays place each in specific political and journalistic contexts, showing how corporations, news outlets, and political institutions responded to-and sometimes co-opted-these forms of humor.

Get the book

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Search the book
eBay.com
eBay.com
Search the book

Similar books