3: Alternative Comedy and Resistance to ‘Thatcher’s Britain’

Author:
James Brassett
Publication Date:
13 Jan 2021
Pages:
57–76
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529208474.ch003
Restricted access
Rights and permissions Cite this chapter
Buy article/chapter (
GBP  £20.00
)

The emergence of (what became known as) ‘alternative comedy’ is widely regarded as an important critical moment in the history of British comedy, where comedians began to break with the idea that their craft was ‘just for laughs’ (Giappone, 2017). A range of new acts fundamentally reinvented the nature and form of comedy to place in question prior conceptions of the gag, the audience, and the overall ‘point’ of humour. Whereas the satire boom had touched upon politics through the nature of its targets and a wider public debate over whether it really changed anything, alternative comedy foregrounded a set of avowedly resistant concerns with anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-capitalism and ‘Thatcher’ (Lee, 2010; Schaffer, 2016).

While the previous chapter explored a certain ‘anti-elitist elitism’ in the satire boom, whose protagonists were mainly white, male, upper-class, Oxbridge and so on, the egalitarian politics of alternative comedy was often embodied in the comedians themselves, who came from ‘art schools’ and ‘lesser universities’. Suddenly comedians were working-class, black, female, they had regional accents, were angry, or anarchic. A punk mentality informed their audience interactions as the new medium of ‘stand-up’ explored the possibilities of spontaneity, provocation and violence in humour (Sayle, 2016). In addition, surviving outside the Oxbridge production line of student reviews and BBC commissions required an alternative economic model. Their circuit consisted of pioneering new comedy clubs like The Comedy Store and the Comic Strip, as well as regional arts centres, student unions and pubs.

  • Aitken, R. (2007) Performing Capital: Toward a Cultural Economy of Popular and Global Finance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Amoore L. and Hall A. (2013) ‘The clown at the gates of the camp: sovereignty, resistance and the figure of the fool’, Security Dialogue 44: 93–110.

  • Andrews, M. (1998) ‘Butterflies and caustic asides’, in S. Wagg (ed.) Because I tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference. London: Routledge.

  • Anonymous (2016) ‘Alt-right: online poison nearly turned me into a racist’, The Guardian, 28 November 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/alt-right-online-poison-racist-bigot-sam-harris-milo-yiannopoulos-islamophobia (accessed 24 August 2020).

  • Bakhtin, M. (1984) Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

  • Bakker, I. (2007) ‘Social reproduction and the constitution of a gendered political economy’, New Political Economy, 12(4): 541–56.

  • Bedford, K. (2019) Bingo Capitalism: The Law and Political Economy of Everyday Gambling, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Bergson, H. (1911) Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Copenhagen and Los Angeles: Green Integer.

  • Berlant, L. and Ngai, S. (2017) ‘Comedy has issues’, Critical Inquiry 43: 233–49.

  • Best, J. and Paterson, M. (eds) (2010) Cultural Political Economy. New York: Routledge.

  • Billig, M. (2005) Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage.

  • Bleiker, R. (2000) Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Brassett, J. (2009) ‘British irony, global justice: a pragmatic reading of Chris Brown, Banksy, and Ricky Gervais’, Review of International Studies 35(1): 219–45.

  • Brassett, J. (2016) ‘British comedy, global resistance: Russell Brand, Charlie Brooker, and Stewart Lee’, European Journal of International Relations 22(1): 168–91.

  • Brassett, J. (2018) Affective Politics of the Global Event: Trauma and the Resilient Market Subject. Abingdon: Routledge.

  • Brassett, J. (2018a) ‘British comedy and the politics of resistance’, in J. Webber (ed.) The Joke is On Us: Political Comedy in Late Neoliberal Times. New York: Lexington Books, pp 177–92.

  • Brassett, J. and Heine, F. (forthcoming) ‘Men behaving badly: representations of masculinity in post-global financial crisis cinema’, International Feminist Journal of Politics.

  • Brassett, J. and Rethel, R. (2015) ‘Sexy money: the hetero-normative politics of global finance’, Review of International Studies, 41(3): 429–49.

  • Brassett, J. and Smith, W. (2010) ‘Deliberation and global civil society: agency, arena, affect’, Review of International Studies 36(2): 413–30.

  • Brassett, J. and Sutton A. (2017) ‘British satire, everyday politics: Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, and Charlie Brooker’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(2): 245–62.

  • Brassett, J. Browning, C. and O’Dwyer, M. (forthcoming) ‘EU’ve Got to be Kidding: Anxiety, Humour and Ontological Security’, Global Society.

  • British Comedy Guide (2016) ‘Alexei Sayle Talks to Stewart Lee’, 3 March 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLsJu7rqs8o (accessed 4 September 2019).

  • Brodkin, S. (2017) ‘Interview with Richard Herring’, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.

  • Brooker, C. (2014) ‘Benefits Street: poverty porn or just the latest target for pent-up British fury?’ The Guardian, 12 January 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/12/benefits-street-poverty-porn-british-fury (accessed 24 August 2020).

  • Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limitations of ‘Sex’. London: Routledge.

  • Butler, J. (1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.

  • Butler, J. (2005) Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press.

  • Butler, J. (2010) ‘Performative agency’, Journal of Cultural Economy 3(2): 147–61.

  • Carpenter, H. (2000) That Was the Satire that Was: The Satire Boom of the 1960s, London: Victor Gollanncz.

  • Cerny, P. (1997) ‘Paradoxes of the competition state: the dynamics of political globalization’, Government and Opposition 32(2): 251–71.

  • Chandra, U. (2015) ‘Introduction: Rethinking subaltern resistance’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 45(4): 563–73.

  • Coe, J. (2013) ‘Sinking giggling into the sea’, London Review of Books 35(14): 30–1.

  • Coogan, S. (2011) ‘Steve Coogan: I’m a huge fan of Top Gear, but this time I’ve had enough’, The Guardian, 5 February 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2011/feb/05/top-gear-offensive-steve-coogan (accessed 24 August 2020).

  • Cook, W. (2001) The Comedy Store: The club that Changed British Comedy. London: Little, Brown and Co.

  • Corbyn, J. (2015) Speech to the Labour Party Annual Conference, http://press.labour.org.uk/post/130135691169/speech-by-jeremy-corbyn-to-labour-partyannual (accessed 10 May 2016).

  • Critchley, S (1999) ‘Comedy and finitude: displacing the tragic-heroic paradigm in philosophy and psychoanalysis’, Constellations, 6(1): 108–22.

  • Critchley, S. (2002) On Humour. London: Routledge.

  • Davies, M. (2016) ‘Everyday life as critique: revisiting the everyday in IPE with Henri Lefebvre and postcolonialism’, International Political Sociology 10(1): 22–38.

  • Davies, W. (2016) ‘Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit’, Goldsmiths, Political Economy Research Centre, http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/

  • Dean, J. (2019) ‘Sorted for memes and gifs: visual media and everyday digital politics’, Political Studies Review 17(3): 255–66.

  • De Goede, M. (2005) ‘Carnival of money: politics of dissent in an era of globalising finance,’ in L. Amoore (ed.) Global Resistance Reader, London: Routledge.

  • Denby D. (2010) Snark. New York: Simon and Schuster.

  • Dodds, K. and Kirby, P. (2013) ‘It’s not a laughing matter: critical geopolitics, humour and unlaughter’, Geopolitics 18(1): 45–59.

  • Dryzek, J. (2006) Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World. Cambridge: Polity.

  • Elias, J. and Rai, S. (2018) ‘Feminist everyday political economy: space, time, and violence’, Review of International Studies 45(2): 1–20.

  • Elias, J. and Roberts, A. (2010) ‘Feminist global political economies of the everyday: from bananas to bingo’, Globalizations 13(6): 787–800.

  • Enloe, C. (2014) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Evening Standard (2015) ‘King of Satire: Armando Iannucci on Veep, Jeremy Corbyn and his new film about the last days of Stalin’, 8 October 2015, http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/king-of-satire-armando-iannucci-on-veepjeremy-corbyn-and-his-new-film-about-the-last-days-of-stalin-a3085421.html

  • Fielding S. (2011) ‘Comedy and politics: the great debate’, 29 September, http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/2011/09/29/comedy-and-politics-the-great-debate (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Fielding, S. (2014a) A State of Play: British Politics on Screen, Stage and Page, from Anthony Trollope to The Thick of It. London: Bloomsbury.

  • Fielding S. (2014b) ‘New Labour, “sleaze” and television drama’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 16(2): 326–48.

  • Flinders M. (2013) ‘Dear Russell Brand’, OUP blog, 30 October, http://blog.oup.com/2013/10/dear-russell-brand-politics-comedy-jeremy-paxman/ (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality, vol. 3: The Care of the Self. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  • Foucault, M. (2007) ‘What is critique?’, in M. Foucault, The Politics of Truth, S. Lotringer (ed.), trans. L. Hochroth and C. Porter, Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext, pp 41–81.

  • Fox, K. (2014) Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

  • Freud S. (2003) The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious. London: Penguin.

  • Friedman, S. (2011) ‘The cultural currency of a good sense of humour: British comedy and new forms of distinction’, British Journal of Sociology 62(2): 347–70.

  • Gamble, A. (1994) Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy and the British State, 4th edn. London: Palgrave.

  • Giappone, K.B.R. (2017) ‘Laughing Otherwise: comic-critical approaches in alternative comedy’, Journal for Cultural Research 21(4): 394–413.

  • Grayson, K. (2018) ‘Popular geopolitics and popular culture in world politics’, in R. Saunders and V. Struvok (eds) Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Inter-discipline. London: Routledge, pp 43–62.

  • Grayson, K., Davies M. and Philpott, S. (2009) ‘Pop goes IR? Researching the popular culture–world politics continuum’, Politics 29(3): 172–85.

  • Griffin, P. (2013) ‘Gendering global finance crisis, masculinity, and responsibility’, Men and Masculinities 16(1): 9–34.

  • Guillaume, X. (2011) ‘Resistance and the international: the challenge of the everyday’, International Political Sociology 5(4): 459–62.

  • Guillaume, X. and Huysmans, J. (2019) ‘The concept of ‘the everyday’: ephemeral politics and the abundance of life’, International Political Sociology 54(2): 278–96.

  • Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Hanks, R. (2000) ‘The distorted world of Chris Morris’, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/the-distorted-world-of-chris-morris-281039.html (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Hardy, J. (2017) ‘Interview with Stuart Goldsmith’, The Comedians Comedian Podcast, 15 May 2017.

  • Heath-Kelly, C. and Jarvis, L. (2017) ‘Affecting terrorism: laughter, lamentation, and detestation as drives to terrorist knowledge’, International Political Sociology 11(3): 239–56.

  • Herod, A. (2007) ‘The agency of labour in global change: reimagining the spaces and scales of trade union praxis within a global economy’, in J. Hobson and L. Seabrooke (eds) Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 27–44.

  • Higgie, R. (2017) ‘Public engagement, propaganda or both? Attitudes towards politicians on political satire and comedy programs’, International Journal of Communication 11: 930–48.

  • Hobson, J. and Seabrooke, L. (eds) (2007) Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Holland, J. (2019) Fictional Television and American Politics, from 9/11 to Donald Trump. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

  • Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso.

  • Hunt, L. (2010) ‘Near the knuckle? It nearly took my arm off! British comedy and the “new offensiveness”’, Comedy Studies 1(2): 181–90.

  • Iannucci, A. (2012) ‘Interview with Richard Herring’, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, 26 June.

  • Iannucci, A. (2015) ‘It’s time for a very British revolution’, New Statesmen, 20 April, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/armando-iannucci-it-s-time-very-british-revolution (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Iannucci, A. (2016) ‘From Trump to Boris, I wouldn’t write The Thick of It now – politics already feels fictional enough’, New Statesman, 11 June, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/trump-boris-i-wouldn-t-write-thick-it-now-politics-already-feels-fictional (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Innes, A. and Topinka, R. (2017) ‘The politics of a poncy pillowcase’: migration and borders in Coronation Street’, Politics 37(3): 273–87.

  • Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Kapoor, I. (2012) Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity. London: Routledge.

  • Kovesi, S. (2012) ‘Interview with Stewart Lee’, Department of English and Modern Languages, Oxford Brookes University, 7 May, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-2rVyizLt8 (accessed 19 September 2019).

  • Kuipers, G. (2011) ‘The politics of humour in the public sphere: cartoons, power and modernity in the first transnational humour scandal’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 14(1): 63–80.

  • Kumar, N. (2018) ‘Interview with Richard Herring’, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.

  • Langley, P. (2007) ‘The uncertain subjects of Anglo-American financialization’, Cultural Critique 65 (Winter): 66–91.

  • Langley, P. (2008) The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Langley, P. and Leyshon, A. (2012) ‘Financial subjects: culture and materiality’, Journal of Cultural Economy 5: 369–73.

  • Lee, S. (2009) Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, Series 1 Episode 3, ‘Political Correctness’, 20 March 2009.

  • Lee, S. (2010) How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-up Comedian. London: Faber and Faber.

  • Lee, S. (2012) ‘Interview with Richard Herring’, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.

  • Lee, S. (2014) Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, Series 3, Episode 3, ‘Satire’, 15 March 2014.

  • Lee, S. (2014a) ‘What to do if millions of Romanian vampires pitch camp at Marble Arch’, The Guardian, 5 January, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/05/romania-immigration-uk-stewart-lee?CMP=fb_gu (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Lee, S. (2014b) ‘Public art cant be used for adverts. But my subconscious is up for sale’, The Guardian, 11 May 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/11/public-art-adverts-subconscious-for-sale-stewart-lee (accessed: 24 August 2020).

  • Lee, S. (2018a) ‘Content Provider’, recorded live at the Palace Theatre, Southend on Sea, April, released via BBC i-Player and YouTube.

  • Lee S. (2018b) From the Desk of Stewart Lee: From the Metro-Lib-Elite Desk of Stew Art Lee, 2018, Message from My Brain, April 12 2018, https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/2018/04/from-the-metro-lib-elite-desk-of-stew-art-lee-may-2018/ (accessed 24 August 2020).

  • Lockyer, S. (ed.) (2010) Reading Little Britain: Comedy Matters on Contemporary Television. London: I.B Tauris.

  • Lockyer, S. and Attwood, F. (2009) ‘“The sickest television show ever:” Paedogeddon and the British press’, Popular Communication 7(1): 49–60.

  • Lockyer, S. and Pickering, M. (2008) ‘You must be joking: the sociological critique of humour and comic media’, Sociology Compass 2(3): 808–20.

  • Lockyer, S. and Pickering, M. (eds) (2009) Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Malik, S. (2010) ‘How Little Britain does ‘race’’, in S. Lockyer (ed.) Reading Little Britain: Comedy Matters on Contemporary Television, London: IB Tauris, pp 75–94.

  • McCrum, R. (2000) ‘Have we taken irony too far?’, The Guardian, 10 July, https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/jul/10/features11.g21 (accessed 12 September 2019).

  • Meikle, G. (2012) ‘“Find out exactly what to think next!”: Chris Morris, Brass Eye, and journalistic authority’, Popular Communication 10(1–2): 14–26.

  • Morreall, J. (ed.) (1987) (ed.) The Philosophy of Laughter and Humour. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

  • Morton, A.D. (2007) ‘Peasants as subaltern agents in Latin America: neoliberalism, resistance and the power of the powerless’, in J. Hobson and L. Seabrooke (eds) Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 120–38.

  • Norcott, G. (2018a) ‘Interview with Christopher Hope: Audiences are bored of Brexit themed comedy’, 27 July, Chopper’s Brexit Podcast.

  • Norcott, G. (2018b) ‘Brexit voter stereotypes’, Comedy Unleashed, 21 June, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imCGfN-GZHg (accessed 11 October 2019).

  • Odysseous, L. (2001) ‘Laughing matters: peace, democracy and the challenge of the comic narrative’, Millennium 30(3): 709–32.

  • O’Neill, B. (2017) ‘Britain’s comics can’t stand Brexit – but the joke is on them’, The Spectator, 6 April, https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/britains-comics-cant-stand-brexit-joke/ (accessed 11 August 2019)

  • Orwell, G. (1945) ‘Funny, but not vulgar’, Leader Magazine, 28 July, http://orwell.ru/library/articles/funny/english/e_funny (accessed 14 August 2019); republished in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, London Penguin, 1968, p 781.

  • Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Rossdale, C. (2019) Resisting Miltarism: Direct Action and the Politics of Subversion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

  • Sabur, R. (2017) ‘Comedians claim anti-Brexit jokes are damaging their careers as audiences outside London walk out in offence’, The Telegraph, 4 April, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/04/comedians-tell-anti-brexit-jokes-damaging-careersas-audiences/ (accessed 11 October 2019).

  • Salter, M. (2011) ‘No joking!’, in V. Bajic and W. de Lint (eds) Security and Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, pp 31–48.

  • Saunders, R. (2009) The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody and the Battle Over Borat. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

  • Sayle, A. (2007) ‘Bernard Manning and the tragedy of comedy’, The Independent, 20 June, http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/bernard-manning-and-the-tragedy-of-comedy-26438527.html (accessed 12 August 2020).

  • Sayle, A. (2013) ‘Alexei Sayle: I’m still full of hate’, The Guardian, 22 January, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jan/22/alexei-sayle-still-full-hate (accessed 4 September 2019).

  • Sayle, A. (2014) ‘Interview with Richard Herring’, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.

  • Sayle, A. (2016) Thatcher Stole My Trousers. London: Bloomsbury.

  • Schaffer, G. (2016) ‘Fighting Thatcher with comedy: what to do when there is no alternative’, Journal of British Studies 55(2): 374–97.

  • Scott, J.C. (1987) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  • Scott, J.C. (2012) Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Seabrooke, L. (2010) ‘What do I get? The everyday politics of expectations and the subprime crisis’, New Political Economy 15(1): 51–70.

  • Sillito, D. (2017) ‘How many pro-Brexit comedians are there?’, BBC website, 5 April, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39507659 (accessed 11 October 2019).

  • Solomon, T. and Steele, B (2017) ‘Micro-moves in international theory’, European Journal of International Relations 23(2): 267–91.

  • Southwell, T. (1998) Getting Away with It: The Inside Story of Loaded. London: Ebury Press.

  • Steele, B. (forthcoming) ‘A catharsis of anxieties’: insights from Goffman on the politics of humour’, Global Society.

  • Sutton, A. (2019) ‘Generalised comedy production’, paper presented at workshop on ‘Humour and Global Politics’, University of Warwick, 7–8 May.

  • Sutton, A. (forthcoming) ‘Generalised comedy production: British comedy production and stand-up’, Global Society.

  • Tilley, L. and R. Shilliam (2018), ‘Raced Markets: An Introduction’, New Political Economy, 23(5): 534–543.

  • Van Zoonen, L.t and Wring, D. (2012) ‘Trends in political television fiction in the UK: themes, characters and narratives’, Media, Culture & Society 34(3): 263–74.

  • Vintaghen, S. and Johansson, A. (2013) ‘“Everyday resistance”: exploration of a concept and its theories’, Resistance Studies 1: 1–46.

  • Wagg, S. (1992) ‘You’ve never had it so silly: the politics of British satirical comedy from Beyond the Fringe to Spitting Image’, in D. Strinati and S. Wagg (eds) Come on Down? Popular Media Culture in Post-war Britain. London: Routledge, pp 254–84.

  • Wagg, S. (1996) ‘Everything else is propaganda: the politics of alternative comedy’, in G.E.C. Paton, C. Powell and S. Wagg (eds) The Social Faces of Humour: Practices and Issues. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp 321–44.

  • Wagg, S. (2002) ‘Comedy, politics and permissiveness: the “satire boom” and its inheritance’, Contemporary Politics 8(4): 319–34.

  • Ward, S. (2001a) ‘Introduction’, in S. Ward (ed.) British Culture and the End of Empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 1–20.

  • Ward, S. (2001b) ‘No nation could be broker’: the satire boom and the demise of Britain’s world role’, in S. Ward (ed.) British Culture and the End of Empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 91–110.

  • Watson, M. (2007) ‘Towards a Polanyian perspective on fair trade: market based relationships and the act of ethical consumption’, Global Society, 20(4): 435–51.

  • Weaver, S. (2011) The Rhetoric of Racist Humour: US, UK and Global Race Joking. London: Routledge.

  • Weaver, S. (2019) ‘Brexit irony, caricature, and neoliberalism’, in J. Webber, (ed) The Joke is On Us: Political Comedy in Late Neoliberal Times, New York: Lexington Books, pp 65–86.

  • Webber, J. (2013) The Cultural Set Up of Comedy: Affective Politics in the United States Post 9/11. Chicago: Intellect.

  • Wilmut, R. (1980) From Fringe to Flying Circus. London: Eyre Methuen.

  • Wilson, J. (2017) ‘Hiding in plain sight: how the “alt right” is weaponizing irony to spread fascism’, The Guardian, 23 May, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt-right-online-humor-as-a-weapon-facism (accessed 14 August 2019).

  • Žižek, S. (2008) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

Content Metrics

May 2022 onwards Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 537 222 12
Full Text Views 7 1 0
PDF Downloads 6 1 0

Altmetrics

Cover The Ironic State
The Ironic State
British Comedy and the Everyday Politics of Globalization
Author:
James Brassett