Laughing at pink ribbon culture: Tig Notaro’s comedic subversion of the she-ro

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I conduct an ideological performance critique of Tig Notaro’s now-famous 2012 stand-up comedy performance, Live, in which she discloses her recent breast cancer diagnosis. Doing so places her firmly within the realm of dominant pink ribbon culture, which valorizes the she-ro, an attractive, all-conquering superhero. I argue that Notaro utilizes the literary and rhetorical trope bathos to subvert the she-ro ideal. Her subversion demonstrates the potential power of stand-up comedy to intervene in harmful and oppressive ideologies on behalf of marginalized and misunderstood populations and renegotiate these populations’ positions in the dominant culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Stand-up
• comedy
• breast cancer
• pink ribbon
• personal narrative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The phrase “female comedians” appears throughout the cited stand-up comedy literature. I use it here to remain consistent with that literature.

2 Yelled by an audience member during Notaro’s performance (Notaro, Live 00:25:53).