Type: PhD
Status: Completed (August 2024)
Abstract: This thesis draws on the concept of parafictional persona to examine the increasingly pervasive phenomenon of comedians playing themselves in fictional media. With reference to case studies selected from American comedy from the dawn of broadcast media to the present day, I identify and describe five distinct but closely interrelated “modes” of parafictional persona: parafictional stardom (George Burns and Gracie Allen in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show); performative parafiction (Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm); proximate parafiction (Tig Notaro in One Mississippi); parodic parafiction (Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington in On Cinema at the Cinema); and parareality (Nathan Fielder in Nathan for You).
I adopt a persona studies approach to investigate each of these comedians, aligning theories of self, celebrity, and performance to analyse the construction and enactment of their polysemic public selves across fictional, nonfictional, parafictional, and social media. Within this approach I consider parafictional persona as a construct, noting common attributes and effects across the case studies, but also observing how they differ from each other and how they separately fit into wider structures of media and culture.
My research reveals these performers and texts to be emblematic of growing tensions in how we categorise and make sense of contemporary media, challenging traditional understandings of stardom, comic persona, and the self. By identifying and articulating these five modes of parafictional persona in comedy, this thesis illuminates the historical and contemporary meanings and significance of a highly self-reflexive mode of comic performance, representing a significant advance in the theorisation of persona and a novel contribution to persona studies, comedy studies, and media studies more broadly.
Citation (Chicago): Dixon, Bradley J. “Performing the Self: Parafictional Persona and the Comedian Comedy.” PhD Thesis, RMIT University, 2024.
Citation (APA7): Dixon, B. J. (2024). Performing the Self: Parafictional Persona and the Comedian Comedy [PhD Thesis]. RMIT University.