Negotiating race in stand-up comedy: interpretations of ‘single story’ narratives

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how narratives of personal experiences among audience members in Midwestern comedy clubs shape their receptivity to the racial discourses deployed by stand-up comedians. Conducting a Midwest-based ethnography of comedy clubs located across three states, I collected data through a variety of methods, which included: live stand-up performance observations; interviews of comedians and audience members from the same shows to better situate their respective strategies and reactions; and audience surveys. My analysis reveals how the subtlety and art of stand-up performance styles combine with the pleasurable medium of humor to alternately reinscribe, challenge, or proudly celebrate audience understandings of race. The accounts shared by comedians and audience members at these clubs demonstrate the potential for stereotype humor – contingent on presentation styles and audience experiences – to foster ethnic solidarity or complicate racial-behavioral associations through repeated encounters with comedians who either indirectly challenge or actively critique familiar types.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• identity
• comedy
• performance
• audience

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Daniel Suslak and Susan Seizer for their mentorship throughout the research and writing process. Additional gratitude is extended to Marvin Sterling, Anya Royce Peterson, and peer reviewers for sharing their topical expertise and feedback on the relevant literature for this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Omi and Winant’s Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to 1980s elaborates on how structural barriers rendered the neoconservative approach of racial assimilation unattainable, so minority racial groups turned to ethno-racial identification to demand political rights and recognition (1986, p. 20).

2. In my ensuing discussion of audience member responses, I will be using pseudonyms to maintain their promised identity protection.

3. All italicized words in quoted passages denote the interviewee's emphasis as perceived by the author.