Gender and Laughter Comic Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional and Modern Media

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. Gender – Laughter – Media:Theoretical Crossings

A Short Introduction to Theories of Humour, the Comic, and Laughter

Subversions of Gender Identities through Laughter and the Comic?

II. Gender B(l)ending: The Comic Impact of Cross-Dressing and Body Alteration

“Kiss a white Galathea, she will laugh and blush”: Laughter, Blush, and Gender Roles in Gottfried Keller’s Novella Cycle A Formula for Love. The Epigram (1881)

“A comic turn, turned serious”: Humour, Body Modification, and the Natural in Fay Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She Devil

“From now on, I am Carmen”: Imagining Cross-Dressing as Comic Protest in the Life and Work of Romanian-German Author Franz Hodjak

Where No Woman Has Gone Before: Humour and Gender Crossing in Star Trek’s Voyager and Enterprise

“To be educated is to become a Harlequin”: Cross-Skinning as Carnivalesque Hybridity in Michel Serres, Hannah Höch’s Dada, and Orlan’s Body Art

III. Cross-Cultural Encounters: Race, Gender, and the Comic

Multi-Layered Conflicts with the Norm: Gender and Cultural Diversity in Two Comedies of the German Enlightenment

Indigenous Laughter: The Voice of the Other in Tales from the “South Seas”

Subverting the Pantragic Heroine: Nestroy against Hebbel

Black and White in Color or Black Victory? The Comic Effect of Displacement in the Film Noirs et blancs en couleur (1976) by Jean-Jacques Annaud

The City as Stage of Transgression: Performance, Picaresque Reminiscences, and Linguistic Incongruity in Emine S. Özdamar’s The Bridge of the Golden Horn

IV. Gender, Genre, and the Comic: Literature, Radio,Television, and Cinema

Moral Ideal and Physical Desire: Gender Roles, Sex, and Comic Elements in the Rococo Tales of Christoph Martin Wieland

Social Satire, Literary Parody, and Gender Critique in French and German Fairy Tales of the Enlightenment: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friederike Helene Unger

“But I’m a Lady!” Undoing Gender Bending in Contemporary British Radio Comedy

Mockumentalism: Re-Casting the Void in Contemporary British TV Comedy

Couples and Friends: Comic Strategies and Social Structures in German and American Comedy Series

Affirmative Humour in Bully Herbig’s Parody of Star Wars/Star Trek: (T)Raumschiff Surprise

V. Comic Strategies: Gender and Laughter in Literature, Theory, Communication, and Art

May I Laugh about Women’s Lib? or: The Difficult Relationship of Humour and Feminism in Margaret Atwood, Caryl Churchill, and Helen Fielding

Aletheia as Striptease: Gendered Allegories of Truth in Heidegger, Gorgias, and Barthes

Judith Butler and the Problem of Adequacy, or: The Epistemological Dimension of Laughter

Comparing Same-Gender and Opposite-Gender Conversations: a Laughing Matter?

The Joy of Anti-Art: Subversion through Humour in Dada

List of Contributors