Browsing by Subject "comedy"
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Item ?But it?s Just a Joke!?: Latino Audiences? Primed Reactions to Latino Comedians and their Use of Race-Based Humor(2012-02-14) Martinez, AmandaRacism persists individually and institutionally in the U.S. and race-based comedy prevails in media, accepted by diverse audiences as jokes. Media priming and Social Identity Theory theoretically ground this two-part experimental study that examines Latino participants' judgments of in-group (Latino) and out-group (White) alleged offenders in judicial cases after being primed with race-based stereotype comedy performed by an in-group (Latino) or out-group (White) comedian. First, participants read race-based stereotype comedy segments and evaluated them on perceptions of the comedian, humor, enjoyment, and stereotypicality. Second, participants read two criminal judicial review cases for alleged offenders and provided guilt evaluations. Importantly, a distinction was made between high and low Latino identifier participants to determine whether racial identity salience might impact responses to in-group and/or out-group members in comedy and judicial contexts. The results reveal that the high Latino identifiers found the race-based comedy segments more stereotypical than did the low Latino identifiers. Latino participants rated the comedy higher on enjoyment when the comedian was perceived to be a Latino in-group member as opposed to a White out-group member. The high Latino identifiers rated the White alleged offender higher on guilt than the Latino alleged offender after being primed with race-based comedy. Simply projecting in-group or out-group racial identity of comedians and alleged offenders with name manipulations in the study influenced how participants responded to the comedy material, and persisted in guiding guilt judgments on alleged offenders in the judicial reviews based on participants' Latino identity salience. A Latino comedian's position as popular joke-teller in the media overrides in-group threat, despite invoking in-group stereotypes in humor. Even with greater enjoyment expressed for Latino comedians' performing stereotypical race-based material, the tendency to react more harshly against perceived out-group members as a defense strategy to maintain positive in-group salience remained in real-world judgments on alleged offenders. Despite the claim that light-hearted comedy is meant to be laughed at and not taken seriously, jokes that disparage racial groups as homogeneous, simplistic, and criminal impact subsequent responses to out-group members in a socially competitive attempt to maintain positive in-group identity, to the detriment of out-groups.Item Heavy Metal Humor: Reconsidering Carnival in Heavy Metal Culture(2013-06-05) Powell, Gary BottsWhat can 15th century France and heavy metal have in common? In Heavy Metal Humor, Gary Powell explores metal culture through the work of Mikael Bakhtin?s ?carnivalesque theory.? Describing the practice of inverting commonly understood notions of respectability and the increasing attempts to normalize them, Bakhtin argues that carnivals in Francois Rabelais? work illustrate a sacrilegious uprising by the peasant classes during carnival days against dogmatic aristocrats. Powell asserts that Rabelais? work describes cartoonish carnivals that continue in as exaggerated themes and tropes into other literary styles, such as comedy and horror that ultimately inform modern-day metal culture. To highlight the similarities of Bakhtin?s interpretation of Rabelais? work to modern-day metal culture, Powell draw parallels to between Bakhtin?s carnivalesque theory and metal culture with two different, exemplary ?humorous? metal performances, GWAR and Anal Cunt. Powell chooses ?humorous? metal groups because, to achieve their humor, they exaggerate tropes, and behaviors in metal culture. To this end, Powell explores metal culture through GWAR, a costumed band who sprays their audience with fake body fluids as they decapitate effigies. He points out examples of Rabelais? work which Bakhtin uses to describe carnivalesque tropes, and threads them to modern-day metal culture. Powell then indicates how carnivalesque performances amplify with Anal Cunt, a ?satirical? hateful, grindcore group. In the band?s performance which is both serious and humorous at once, Anal Cunt draws on several carnivalesque behaviors. To dissect this band?s performance, Powell augments Bakhtin?s carnivalesque theory with Richard Schechner?s theory of ?dark play? and Johan Huizinga?s ?play communities? to more describe and illustrate why some aspects of modern-day metal culture do not match Bakhtin?s theory based on medieval French literature. However, carnivalesque humor becomes ambiguous and social and political problems arise as it escalates. As disrespectability is promoted, social and political tensions surface. Countering Bakhtin?s utopian notion of carnivalesque uprising, Powell highlights how socio-political turmoil presents itself in carnivalesque performance by referring to examples of confusion and concern regarding racism and sexism, something left unexplored in Bakhtin?s work. Powell suggests expanding and modernizing Bakhtin?s carnival could open pathways toward solutions to carnival culture?s socio-political ills.Item How to BBQ a comedy the UT way: the writing of Club Fed(2009-08) Pinkerton, Kevin Jeffrey; Kelban, Stuart; Lewis, Richard M.In this thesis report I describe in detail the conception of a fictional story set in present-day Florida and the Caribbean and its development as a screenplay, the University of Texas Graduate School learning environment that facilitated this writing exercise, and my reflections on the MFA process as a whole.Item Language and power in Roman comedy(2009-05) Rich, Laura Brooke; Moore, Timothy J., 1959-; Riggsby, Andrew M.The theory of powerless speech suggests that speakers in powerless social positions use more “powerless” speech acts than their social superiors. This report will use two such powerless speech acts, hedges and tag questions, to examine the interplay between the power relationships of Roman comedy and the language of its characters. The results of this study show that Republican Latin does not always follow the theory’s predictions, suggesting that hedges and tag questions may not be powerless speech acts in Latin; that the theory may need to be modified in order to accommodate Latin; or that the Saturnalian nature of Roman comedy prevents the expected outcome of powerless language.