A decade of dark humor
Subtitle: how comedy, irony, and satire shaped post-9/11 America
By: edited by Ted Gournelos and Viveca Greene
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Jackson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
ISBN-13: 9781617030062; 9781617030079
Subjects: Politics and government; Political culture; September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001; Humor; American Political satire; History and criticism; Influence; Mass media; American wit and humor; History
Description: Essays that illustrate how humor transformed 9/11 politics and 9/11 transformed humor With essays by: Gavin Benke Arthur Asa Berger Ted Gournelos Viveca S. Greene David Gurney David Holloway Lanita Jacobs Giselinde Kuipers Paul Lewis David Monje Michael Truscello Jamie Warner Aaron Winter A Decade of Dark Humor analyzes ways in which popular and visual culture used humor--in a variety of forms--to confront the attacks of September 11, 2001, and, more specifically, the aftermath. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from four countries to discuss the impact of humor and irony on both media discourse and tangible political reality. Furthermore, it demonstrates that laughter is simultaneously an avenue through which social issues are deferred or obfuscated, a way in which neoliberal or neoconservative rhetoric is challenged, and a means of forming alternative political ideologies.^

The volume's contributors cover a broad range of media productions, including news parodies (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, The Onion), TV roundtable shows (Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher), comic strips and cartoons (Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks, Jeff Danzinger's editorial cartoons), television drama (Rescue Me), animated satire (South Park), graphic novels (Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers), documentary (Fahrenheit 9/11), and other productions. Along with examining the rhetorical methods and aesthetic techniques of these productions, the essays place each in specific political and journalistic contexts, showing how corporations, news outlets, and political institutions responded to--and sometimes co-opted--these forms of humor.^

Ted Gournelos, Orlando, Florida, is assistant professor of critical media and cultural studies at Rollins College, and the author of Popular Culture and the Future of Politics: Cultural Studies and the Tao of "South Park." Viveca S. Greene, Northampton, Massachusetts, is visiting assistant professor of cultural studies at Hampshire College. Her work has appeared in The Nation, In Media Res, and We the Media: A Citizen's Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: popular culture and post 9-11 politics / Ted Gournelos and Viveca Greene; title: First responders. Everything changes forever (temporarily): late-night television comedy after 9-11 / David Gurney; title: "Where was King Kong when we needed him?": public discourse, digital disaster jokes, and the functions of laughter after 9-11 / Giselinde Kuipers; title: The Arab is the new nigger: African American comics confront the irony & tragedy of 9-11 / Lanita Jacobs; title: Humor, terror, and dissent: The onion after 9-11 / Jamie Warner; title: Enter the "war on terror." Laughs, tears, and breakfast cereals: rethinking trauma and post 9-11 politics in Art Spiegelman's In the shadow of no towers / Ted Gournelos; title: Republican decline and culture wars in 9-11 humor / David Holloway; title: Critique, counternarratives, and ironic intervention in South Park and Stephen Colbert / Viveca Greene; title: Humoring 9/11 skepticism / Michael Truscello; title: Rethinking post-9/11 politics. Laughing doves: U.S. antiwar satire from Niagara to Fallujah / Aaron Winter; title: Hummer rhymes with dumber: neoliberalism, irony, and the cartoons of Jeff Danziger / David Monje; title: Laughing all the way to the bank: Enron, humor, and political economy / Gavin Benke; title: What's so funny about a dead terrorist?: toward an ethics of humor for the digital age / Paul Lewis; title: Coda: humor, pedagogy, and cultural studies / Arthur Asa Berger.