Bernard Schweizer, “Is Humor Inherently Subversive? Comparing the Performances of a Reactionary, a Christian, and a Liberal Comedian”

Many social historians of humor including Peter Berger, Jacqueline Bussie, Barry Sanders, and Alison Dagnes, present humor as an intrinsically subversive, destabilizing, even heretical phenomenon. Similarly, thinkers like John Morreall and Adam Krause have advanced strong conceptual arguments linking comedy a specific set of anti-authoritarian and liberal values. But does that characterization really hold up to scrutiny when applied to actual contemporary comedic practices? What about self-proclaimed Christian comedians like Brad Stine, Malcolm Lowry, or Anthony Griffith? Or even more counter-intuitively: what about “conservative satirists” like Evan Sayet, Dennis Miller, and Andreas Thiel? The very existence (and considerable popular success) of these comics calls into question comedy’s supposed subversive dynamics. Either the linking of comedy with subversiveness is debatable or the work of conservative and religious practitioners of comedy is somehow deficient in some important ways compared to the work of progressive, secular comedians. This talk proposes an answer to those questions.