A Vulgar Art
Author | : Ian Brodie |
Publisher | : Univ. Press of Mississippi |
Total Pages | : 240 |
Release | : 2014-10-29 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781626744059 |
ISBN-13 | : 162674405X |
Rating | : 4/5 (05X Downloads) |
Download or read book A Vulgar Art written by Ian Brodie and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-10-29 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Vulgar Art Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline’s central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize—“literature” or “theatre”; “editorial” or “morality”—and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus, that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience. Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian’s own community to gain larger and larger audiences. How do comedians recreate that atmosphere of intimacy in a roomful of strangers? This book regards everything from microphones to clothing and LPs to Twitter as strategies for bridging the spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural distances between the performer and the audience.