It's the review of the volume The Cultural Set Up of Comedy: Affective Politics in the United States Post 9/11 by Julie Webber. I was invited to review it. Webber’s study is an interesting, often inspiring and yet uneven book. It analyzes how various forms of comedy, including stand-up, satire, and film and television scripts, function in political and social life. In particular she focuses on the struggle for democracy, as in the Arab Spring, and on comic representations of gender concerning homosexuality and women and the responses they produce. She also examines news parodies such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, arguing that they normalize middle-class anger at the conservative retrenchment apparent in the past decade. Overall, The cultural set up of comedy is a thought-provoking study, concluding that comedy is not necessarily progressive, since several of the scripts that Webber analyzes scarcely challenge current interpretations of culture. Despite my reservations, it is a rich, recommendable and readable book that covers a variety of issues, even if often less closely than this reviewer would have liked. A wealth of information is made available to its primary audience, namely students of political science, but it will also interest specialists in humor, gender, masculinity, and cultural studies.

Book Review of Julie Webber. The Cultural Set Up of Comedy: Affective Politics in the United States Post 9/11 (Chicago: The U of Chicago, 2013).

BACCOLINI, RAFFAELLA
2016

Abstract

It's the review of the volume The Cultural Set Up of Comedy: Affective Politics in the United States Post 9/11 by Julie Webber. I was invited to review it. Webber’s study is an interesting, often inspiring and yet uneven book. It analyzes how various forms of comedy, including stand-up, satire, and film and television scripts, function in political and social life. In particular she focuses on the struggle for democracy, as in the Arab Spring, and on comic representations of gender concerning homosexuality and women and the responses they produce. She also examines news parodies such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, arguing that they normalize middle-class anger at the conservative retrenchment apparent in the past decade. Overall, The cultural set up of comedy is a thought-provoking study, concluding that comedy is not necessarily progressive, since several of the scripts that Webber analyzes scarcely challenge current interpretations of culture. Despite my reservations, it is a rich, recommendable and readable book that covers a variety of issues, even if often less closely than this reviewer would have liked. A wealth of information is made available to its primary audience, namely students of political science, but it will also interest specialists in humor, gender, masculinity, and cultural studies.
2016
Baccolini, Raffaella
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/585296
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