Performative retrieving of humour for socio-political subversion: stand-up comedy as a form of creative resilience

With the particular focus on the Indian context, this paper attempts to study the genre of stand-up comedy as a form of creative resilience, by applying the theory of Fiske’s popular culture. Through the case study of select stand-up acts of comics like Rahul Dua, Saurav Mehta, Munawar Faruqui and K...
Ausführliche Beschreibung

With the particular focus on the Indian context, this paper attempts to study the genre of stand-up comedy as a form of creative resilience, by applying the theory of Fiske’s popular culture. Through the case study of select stand-up acts of comics like Rahul Dua, Saurav Mehta, Munawar Faruqui and Kunal Kamra, this paper analyzes English and Hindi satirical stand-up comedy in India. The papers also trace the evolution and differences between both the Indian English and the Hindi satirical stand-up comedy. It explores the elements of resistance put forward by the comics with the help of the new media laughscape that has provided them with a radical space, through which they direct their process of social transformation. The paper foregrounds the radical reimagining of humour wielded as a weapon for socio-political subversion. Ausführliche Beschreibung