| Abstrakt: |
In the film The Aristocrats (2005) comedy audiences are given a rare glimpse inside the entertainment industry green room. An analysis of the age-old joke 'The Aristocrats', the film offers insight into the role of humor in everyday life, the gendered nature of comedy, and the powerful ties that bind stand-up and variety comedy performers. This paper applies Bakhtinian theories of laughter and the carnivalesque to The Aristocrats. In particular, I consider the way in which female comics construct humor from within a masculinized and often misogynist field. I find that comedy is able to make evident divergent perspectives while paradoxically also serving to pull people together into a common discursive framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
