Publications
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Cringe Comedy and the Suspension of Empathy
Cringe comedy has been an ascendent form of comic media for the past two decades, testing viewers’ ability to endure extreme levels of awkwardness and abjection. One popular mode of cringe comedy — practiced by the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen, Nathan Fielder, and Eric Andre — involves staging interactions between a comedian and real… Continue reading
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Meta Humour in the 1950s Sitcom: Parafiction and Self-Reflexivity in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
Scholars of television in the United States have noted an undercurrent of self-reflexivity in the early sitcom, typically understood as techniques that call attention to the medium’s artifice and the apparatus of television itself. However, one aspect of self-reflexivity in early television sitcom that warrants deeper analysis is the use of parafiction, or the deliberate… Continue reading
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Parafiction in the 1950s Sitcom: Meta Humour and Self-Referentiality in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950–1958) portrays the domestic life of its titular comedians as a pair of married vaudeville and radio entertainers. Replicating the dynamic of their own successful vaudeville and radio double act, Burns plays the put-upon but patient straight man, leaving most of the comedic heavy lifting to Allen, whose… Continue reading
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Friends with Benefits: Neoliberalism and Heteronormativity in the Bromance Film
Critical readings of the bromance film genre – as typified by Judd Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) – often focus on how such films ostensibly reconfigure the tropes of the romantic comedy away from privileging heterosexual coupledom and towards platonic male friendship. The romantic comedy has long been identified as an agent of neoliberal ideology… Continue reading