AltComedy.com

Introduction: Taking Comedy Seriously

The academic study of comedy represents a fascinating paradox: applying rigorous analytical frameworks to understand what makes us laugh. While comedy is often perceived as frivolous entertainment, scholars across multiple disciplines have recognized humor as a complex social, psychological, and cultural phenomenon worthy of serious investigation.

The field of humor studies has expanded dramatically in recent decades, evolving from occasional philosophical treatises to a robust interdisciplinary field with dedicated journals, research centers, and academic conferences. This growth reflects a growing recognition that comedy offers unique insights into human cognition, social dynamics, cultural values, and historical contexts.

Alternative comedy, with its deliberate subversion of traditional comedic forms and its engagement with complex social issues, has become a particularly rich area for scholarly analysis. As Hannah Gadsby argued in her groundbreaking special "Nanette": "I'm not here to collect your laughter... I'm here to tell my story properly." This move toward treating comedy as a form of serious artistic and cultural expression has been mirrored in the academy's increasing attention to humor as a subject of rigorous study.

Theoretical Frameworks: How Do We Understand Comedy?

Several major theoretical frameworks have shaped scholarly approaches to comedy and humor. While these theories originated in philosophical traditions, they have been expanded and refined through interdisciplinary research:

Superiority Theory

Dating back to Plato, Aristotle, and later Thomas Hobbes, superiority theory suggests that laughter arises from a sense of triumph or elevation over others. We laugh at others' foibles, misfortunes, or perceived inferiority because it momentarily boosts our own sense of status or self-worth.

Modern applications of superiority theory have examined how comedy can reinforce social hierarchies and stereotypes, but also how alternative comedy often deliberately subverts this dynamic by making powerful institutions rather than marginalized groups the target of ridicule.

Relief Theory

Developed by Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud, relief theory proposes that laughter provides a release of psychological tension or repressed energy. Comedy allows us to address taboo subjects or express forbidden impulses in socially acceptable ways.

Contemporary scholarship on alternative comedy often draws on relief theory to explain the effectiveness of comedy in addressing difficult social issues like trauma, inequality, and political oppression. The theory helps explain why comedy can function as both entertainment and a form of social catharsis.

Incongruity Theory

Articulated by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, incongruity theory suggests that humor arises from the sudden perception of an incongruity or contradiction between expectations and reality. The unexpected juxtaposition of incompatible frames of reference creates comic potential.

This framework has been particularly useful for analyzing alternative comedy's deliberate subversion of comedic conventions and its play with audience expectations. The theory helps explain why anti-humor, surrealism, and meta-comedy can be effective despite (or because of) their deviation from traditional joke structures.

Benign Violation Theory

A more recent framework proposed by psychologists Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren, benign violation theory suggests that humor occurs when a situation is simultaneously perceived as a violation of norms or expectations but also as benign or non-threatening.

This theory has been particularly valuable for studying how alternative comedy navigates the boundaries of offense and acceptability, often deliberately creating tension between violation and benignity to provoke both laughter and reflection.

These theoretical frameworks provide complementary rather than competing perspectives on comedy. Most contemporary humor research recognizes that different comedic forms and contexts may activate different psychological and social mechanisms, requiring a multi-faceted analytical approach.

Research Methodologies: How Do We Study Comedy?

The interdisciplinary nature of humor studies has led to diverse methodological approaches to studying comedy. Each offers distinct insights while presenting unique challenges:

Textual and Discourse Analysis

Scholars in literary studies, linguistics, and communication analyze comedy as text, examining joke structures, narrative patterns, wordplay, and rhetorical techniques. This approach treats comedy as a form of discourse that can be deconstructed to reveal underlying meanings and techniques.

For alternative comedy research, textual analysis often focuses on how comedians subvert traditional joke structures, employ anti-climax, or use rhetorical devices to create both humor and social commentary. Researchers might analyze transcripts of performances, examining linguistic patterns and narrative strategies.

Ethnographic and Performance Studies

Researchers in anthropology, sociology, and performance studies observe comedy "in situ," attending to the social contexts, performer-audience dynamics, and embodied aspects of comedic performance. This approach recognizes comedy as a live, interactive experience rather than just a text.

Studies of alternative comedy venues, open mic cultures, and comedy festivals often employ ethnographic methods, with researchers conducting participant observation, interviews with performers and audience members, and analysis of how physical space shapes comedic interactions.

Experimental and Psychological Approaches

Psychologists and neuroscientists use experimental methods to study humor perception, cognitive processing of jokes, and physiological responses to comedy. These approaches seek to identify universal mechanisms underlying humor appreciation.

Research in this tradition might use functional MRI to observe brain activity during humor processing, measure facial expressions or laughter responses to different types of comedy, or conduct controlled experiments on how incongruity resolution contributes to humor appreciation.

Historical and Archival Research

Historians of comedy trace the evolution of comedic forms, performers, and institutions over time, situating comedy within broader social, cultural, and political contexts. This approach reveals how comedy both reflects and shapes historical moments.

Historical studies of alternative comedy often examine how movements like the British Alternative Comedy scene of the 1980s or the American "boom" of the 1990s emerged in response to specific historical circumstances and cultural shifts.

Critical and Cultural Theory

Scholars in cultural studies, critical theory, and media studies apply theoretical frameworks like feminism, critical race theory, or queer theory to analyze how comedy reflects, reinforces, or subverts power structures and cultural ideologies.

This approach has been particularly influential in analyzing alternative comedy's engagement with issues of representation, identity politics, and structural inequality.

The methodological diversity of comedy research reflects both the complexity of humor as a phenomenon and the value of approaching it from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Contemporary humor studies increasingly embraces mixed-method approaches that combine quantitative and qualitative techniques to develop more comprehensive understandings of comedy.

Key Disciplines: The Interdisciplinary Nature of Humor Studies

Comedy research spans numerous academic disciplines, each contributing unique insights to our understanding of humor:

Philosophy of Humor

Philosophical approaches to comedy explore fundamental questions about the nature of humor, its relationship to aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology. Philosophers examine comedy's cognitive dimensions, its moral implications, and its potential as a tool for truth-seeking.

Contemporary philosophical work on comedy often engages with the ethical boundaries of humor, the relationship between comedy and truth-telling, and the epistemic function of satirical comedy as a form of social critique.

Psychology and Cognitive Science

Psychologists study the cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of humor production and appreciation. Research in this area examines how humor develops across the lifespan, individual differences in humor preferences, and the psychological functions humor serves.

Recent psychological research on alternative comedy has explored how breaking comedic conventions affects cognitive processing, how humor can facilitate engagement with difficult topics, and the role of shared knowledge in appreciating complex or subversive comedy.

Sociology and Anthropology

Sociological and anthropological approaches examine comedy as a social phenomenon that both reflects and constructs group identities, cultural values, and social norms. These disciplines attend to how humor functions within communities and how it varies across cultural contexts.

Studies of alternative comedy from these perspectives often analyze comedy scenes as cultural fields with their own norms, hierarchies, and forms of capital, or examine how humor practices differ across global contexts.

Linguistics and Communication Studies

Linguistic approaches to comedy analyze the structural and pragmatic features of humorous language, including wordplay, irony, and conversational humor. Communication scholars examine comedy as a form of rhetorical discourse and study how humor functions in various communicative contexts.

Research on alternative comedy in these fields often focuses on how comedians strategically violate conversational maxims, employ complex forms of intertextuality, or use humor as a rhetorical strategy for addressing controversial topics.

Media and Performance Studies

Scholars in media and performance studies examine comedy as an art form and cultural practice shaped by specific mediums, performance contexts, and industrial conditions. These approaches attend to the embodied, audiovisual, and technological dimensions of comedy.

Studies of alternative comedy in these traditions might analyze how digital platforms have created new opportunities for experimental comedy, how performance venues shape comedic styles, or how television formats influence the development of alternative comedy.

Gender, Race, and Queer Studies

Scholars working at the intersection of comedy research and identity-based theoretical frameworks examine how humor reflects, reinforces, or subverts dominant ideologies around gender, sexuality, race, and other aspects of identity.

This work has been particularly influential in analyzing alternative comedy's engagement with representation, identity politics, and its potential as a tool for marginalized groups to challenge dominant narratives.

The interdisciplinary nature of humor studies reflects the complexity of comedy as a phenomenon that spans cognitive, emotional, social, cultural, and political dimensions. Increasingly, the most innovative comedy research brings together multiple disciplinary perspectives to develop more comprehensive understandings of humor.

Key Themes in Alternative Comedy Research

Several major themes have emerged in scholarly research specifically focused on alternative comedy:

Subversion and Transgression

Researchers have examined how alternative comedy deliberately transgresses boundaries and subverts expectations, both in terms of comedic form and content. This work analyzes how the violation of conventional joke structures, the embrace of awkwardness or failure, and the challenging of audience expectations functions as both an aesthetic and political strategy.

Studies of comedians like Andy Kaufman, Maria Bamford, or Bo Burnham often focus on how their formal experimentation disrupts conventional understandings of what comedy is and how it should operate.

Identity and Representation

A significant body of research examines how alternative comedy engages with issues of identity and representation, creating space for voices and perspectives historically marginalized in mainstream comedy. This work analyzes how comedians from marginalized groups use humor to challenge stereotypes, address discrimination, and articulate complex identities.

Research on performers like Hannah Gadsby, Hasan Minhaj, or Patti Harrison often focuses on how they navigate the complexities of performing identity, balancing personal experience with broader social critique.

Comedy and Trauma

Scholars have increasingly examined the relationship between comedy and trauma, analyzing how alternative comedians use humor to process, represent, and transform traumatic experiences. This research explores comedy's potential as a form of testimony, a means of reclaiming agency, and a way of creating community around shared experiences of trauma.

Studies of specials like Hannah Gadsby's "Nanette," Tig Notaro's "Live," or Cameron Esposito's "Rape Jokes" examine how these works challenge conventional expectations that comedy should always offer resolution or relief, instead using humor as a means to confront audiences with difficult realities.

The Politics of Alternative Comedy

Research on alternative comedy's political dimensions examines how comedians engage with social issues, challenge power structures, and contribute to public discourse. This work analyzes comedy as a form of critical cultural practice that can both reflect and shape political consciousness.

Studies of political alternative comedy examine how humor can function as a form of critique that bypasses defensive reactions, creates solidarity among marginalized groups, or makes complex political issues more accessible.

Mediation and Technology

Scholars have explored how changes in media technology and distribution platforms have shaped alternative comedy forms and practices. This research examines how different media environments—from small live venues to streaming platforms—create different possibilities and constraints for comedic innovation.

Recent work in this area has focused on how digital platforms have democratized comedy production, allowed for more experimental formats, and created new relationships between comedians and audiences.

These thematic areas reflect alternative comedy's dual nature as both an art form with its own aesthetic principles and a cultural practice embedded in broader social, political, and technological contexts. Research in these areas often bridges analytical approaches, combining formal analysis with attention to social and political implications.

Key Scholarly Contributions: Foundational Works in Comedy Research

Several seminal works have shaped the field of comedy research, establishing foundational approaches and inspiring subsequent scholarship:

Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World (1965)

Bakhtin's concept of the "carnivalesque" has been profoundly influential in understanding comedy's subversive potential. His analysis of how medieval carnival temporarily inverted social hierarchies and suspended normal rules provides a framework for understanding how comedy can create spaces of freedom and critique within otherwise rigid social structures.

Contemporary scholars of alternative comedy often draw on Bakhtinian concepts to analyze how comedians create temporary spaces where dominant norms can be questioned and alternative possibilities imagined.

Mary Douglas's Implicit Meanings (1975)

Douglas's anthropological analysis of jokes as playing with social structure—"a joke is a play upon form"—established important foundations for understanding comedy as both reflecting and commenting upon social categories and boundaries.

Her insight that jokes reveal the arbitrary nature of social classifications has influenced analysis of how alternative comedy often works to destabilize seemingly natural social categories and hierarchies.

Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren's "Benign Violation Theory" (2010)

McGraw and Warren's psychological theory of humor as requiring both violation and benignity has provided a nuanced framework for understanding how comedy navigates boundaries of acceptability and offense.

Their work has been particularly valuable for analyzing how alternative comedy often deliberately creates tension between violation and benignity, strategically making audiences uncomfortable while maintaining enough safety for humor to function.

Rebecca Krefting's All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents (2014)

Krefting's concept of "charged humor"—comedy that challenges social inequality and advocates for social justice—has become an important framework for analyzing politically engaged alternative comedy.

Her analysis of the economic and institutional barriers facing comedians who perform charged humor has informed studies of how alternative comedy scenes and platforms have created space for marginalized voices and perspectives.

Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Parody (1985) and Irony's Edge (1994)

Hutcheon's work on parody and irony as forms of "complicitous critique" that work both within and against dominant cultural forms has provided valuable frameworks for understanding how alternative comedy can be simultaneously entertaining and subversive.

Her attention to the "discursive communities" required for irony to function has influenced analysis of how alternative comedy often relies on shared knowledge and values among performers and audiences.

John Morreall's Taking Laughter Seriously (1983) and Comic Relief (2009)

Morreall's philosophical work on humor has provided comprehensive analytical frameworks for understanding comedy's cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions.

His analysis of humor as involving a "cognitive shift" that produces emotional enjoyment has influenced research on how alternative comedy often deliberately frustrates or complicates this process to create more complex audience responses.

These foundational works represent just a fraction of the rich scholarly literature on comedy. Contemporary humor research continues to build on these foundations while developing new methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks to address the evolving landscape of comedy in the digital age.

Emerging Research Directions

The field of comedy research continues to evolve, with several emerging areas of inquiry showing particular promise for deepening our understanding of alternative comedy:

Digital Ethnography of Comedy Communities

Researchers are increasingly using digital ethnographic methods to study how online comedy communities form, develop shared aesthetic values, and influence broader comedy cultures. This work examines how platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube have created new comedy ecologies with their own norms, hierarchies, and forms of cultural capital.

These approaches are particularly valuable for understanding how alternative comedy scenes develop outside traditional institutional gatekeepers, creating new pathways for innovation and diversity in comedy.

Affect Theory and Comedy

Scholars are bringing affect theory—which examines emotions as social and political phenomena rather than just individual experiences—to the study of comedy. This work analyzes how comedy creates, circulates, and transforms emotional states in ways that have broader social and political implications.

This approach is especially relevant for studying how alternative comedy often deliberately produces complex emotional responses beyond simple pleasure or amusement, including discomfort, recognition, or solidarity.

Global and Comparative Perspectives

As comedy research expands beyond its historical focus on Western traditions, scholars are developing more comparative approaches that examine how comedy functions across different cultural contexts. This work challenges universalizing assumptions about humor while identifying both commonalities and differences in how comedy operates globally.

Research on global alternative comedy scenes examines how comedic innovation occurs in different cultural contexts, how comedy travels across cultural and linguistic boundaries, and how non-Western comedy traditions offer different models of what "alternative" might mean.

Disability Studies and Neurodiversity in Comedy

An emerging body of research examines the intersection of comedy with disability studies and neurodiversity. This work analyzes how comedians with disabilities or neurodivergent perspectives use humor to challenge ableist assumptions, represent complex experiences, and reframe cultural understandings of disability and neurological difference.

Studies of comedians like Maria Bamford, Hannah Gadsby, and Shane Gillis explore how their work engages with mental health, neurological difference, or disability in ways that both entertain and educate audiences.

Computational and Quantitative Approaches

Researchers are beginning to apply computational methods to the study of comedy, using techniques like natural language processing, network analysis, or machine learning to identify patterns across large corpora of comedic texts or social media interactions.

These approaches offer new possibilities for identifying stylistic patterns, tracing the diffusion of comedic innovations, and analyzing how comedy circulates in digital environments.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Perhaps the most promising development in comedy research is the increasing collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. Projects that bring together scholars from different fields—combining, for example, linguistic analysis with psychological experiments, or historical research with performance studies—are generating new insights that would not be possible within single disciplinary frameworks.

The future of alternative comedy research likely lies in such collaborative approaches that can address the multi-dimensional nature of comedy as simultaneously an art form, a cognitive process, a social practice, and a cultural institution.

These emerging research directions reflect both the growing sophistication of comedy studies as a field and the evolving nature of comedy itself in an increasingly digital, global, and diverse cultural landscape.

Comedy Research Centers and Resources

For those interested in exploring comedy research further, several institutions and resources provide valuable entry points to the field:

Academic Research Centers

• The Center for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR) at Brunel University London brings together researchers from multiple disciplines to study comedy from sociological, psychological, and cultural perspectives.
• The Comedy Studies Research Network connects researchers across institutions and disciplines, hosting conferences and facilitating collaborative projects.
• The Humor Research Lab (HuRL) at the University of Colorado Boulder conducts experimental psychological research on humor perception and appreciation.
• The National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY combines a museum with an archive and research facilities dedicated to the history of American comedy.

Academic Journals

• HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research publishes interdisciplinary research on all aspects of humor and comedy.
• Comedy Studies focuses on comedy performance, history, and theory across media forms and cultural contexts.
• The European Journal of Humour Research emphasizes cross-cultural and comparative approaches to humor studies.
• Journal of Pragmatics regularly publishes research on linguistic and conversational aspects of humor.

Archives and Collections

• The National Comedy Center Archives house extensive collections of materials related to American comedy history.
• The British Stand-Up Comedy Archive at the University of Kent preserves materials related to British comedy, with particular strength in alternative comedy.
• The UCLA Film & Television Archive includes significant collections of recorded comedy performances and television comedy.
• The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University includes collections related to comedy performance and writing.

Conferences and Professional Organizations

• The International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS) hosts annual conferences bringing together researchers from diverse disciplines.
• The American Humor Studies Association focuses on literary and cultural approaches to American humor.
• The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) regularly includes panels on teaching with and about humor.
• The Popular Culture Association includes a Comedy and Humor Studies area at its annual conference.

These institutions and resources reflect the growing institutionalization of comedy studies as a recognized field of academic inquiry. They provide important infrastructure for developing new research, training new generations of scholars, and creating dialogue between comedy researchers and practitioners.

Conclusion: The Value of Taking Comedy Seriously

The academic study of comedy offers valuable insights not just into humor itself, but into fundamental aspects of human cognition, social interaction, and cultural expression. By taking comedy seriously as an object of study, researchers across disciplines have revealed its complexity and significance as both an art form and a social practice.

For alternative comedy in particular, scholarly research provides frameworks for understanding how innovation occurs, how comedy engages with social and political issues, and how humor can function simultaneously as entertainment and as a form of cultural critique. This research complements and enriches the work of comedy practitioners, critics, and fans by revealing patterns and dynamics that might not be immediately apparent in individual performances or texts.

As comedian Hannah Gadsby has observed, "Laughter is not our medicine. Stories hold our cure." Academic research on comedy helps us understand both the power of laughter and the complex stories that comedy can tell—stories about identity, power, trauma, and possibility that extend far beyond simple amusement or distraction.

By bridging the perceived gap between seriousness and humor, comedy research reminds us that some of our most profound insights into the human condition come precisely from those moments when we laugh in recognition, in surprise, or even in discomfort. In a world that often dismisses comedy as mere entertainment, academic research affirms its value as a rich and complex form of cultural expression worthy of our most serious attention.