Money may well be one of the last taboos. The reasons are tangled: as perhaps the most significant measure of success, it's judged as bad taste or somehow indelicate to talk about. The silence means there's plenty of space for shame to flourish, while the convention that it's gauche or even vulgar to talk about… Continue reading Breaking the Silence: Money
Category: stand-up
Parasocial Activity: Chloe Petts and John Tothill
We think we know stand-ups: it's an art form that encourages a sense of intimacy, and we can forget that carefully crafted stage personas are distinct from the messier reality of fully rounded, flawed human beings. Throw podcasts into the mix – hour upon hour of easy conversation piped into listeners' ears – and boundaries… Continue reading Parasocial Activity: Chloe Petts and John Tothill
Comedian’s Comedian
Luke McQueen's return to the Fringe is an audacious bonfire of the vanities - both his own and the comedy ecosystem more generally; the gatekeepers, the chummy podcasts, the expensive clowning courses. Directed by Jordan Brookes, the show shares clear DNA with Brookes's own solo work, playing with what's real and what's not, and interrogating… Continue reading Comedian’s Comedian
Ahir Shah: Ends
Ahir Shah's recent Netflix special, Ends, is both a celebration of British multiculturism and a testimony to the sacrifice of his grandparent's generation, who arrived in the 1960s in search of a better life for their families. Rightly celebrated as a very beautiful act of commemoration - and an unusually positive account of multiculturism, Shah's… Continue reading Ahir Shah: Ends
Female masculinity
'Tiny bisexual women are realising masculinity doesn't have to be attached to men', Chloe Petts observes in a sly aside, and as a bit of a geezer, she's clearly delighted. And it's not just the tiny bisexual women: due in part to the work of stand-ups like Petts, there's an increasingly widespread awareness of the… Continue reading Female masculinity
Strategic vulnerability
A degree of vulnerability is central to stand-up, and integral to the expectation of candid revelation. It's a vexing concept from a feminist perspective, however, because of its association 'both with femininity and with weakness and dependency' (Gilson, 2016, 71). In stand-up, vulnerability is perhaps most apparent in self-deprecation or self-satire, an aspect of comic… Continue reading Strategic vulnerability
Dick jokes
The dick joke retains its dominant conceptual status, but it’s no longer the straightforward staple it once was. #MeToo, concerns about ‘toxic masculinity’ and social justice campaigns which prioritise minority groups while challenging the centrality of the white, male perspective are all working to complicate the conventional forms of sexually explicit material. However, these new… Continue reading Dick jokes
Sex comedy
‘Sex comedy’ is a rather nebulous classification; films like American Pie (1999), and much of Judd Apatow’s oeuvre (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad) fit the bill, with ancient Greek and Restoration comedies and the films of Doris Day and Rock Hudson providing a lineage for comedies that revolve around sex. It’s a genre that can be… Continue reading Sex comedy
Fixing the Fringe
These are torrid times for the Edinburgh Fringe. After the soaring costs of last summer made for a stressful festival experience for many performers, pressure is building for evidence of real change. There was a cautious welcome early in March for the bursaries for artists and companies launched by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The subsequent announcement in… Continue reading Fixing the Fringe
Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares
Leo Reich’s debut Fringe show is dazzling. A portrait of rabid Gen Z narcissism that is brilliantly funny, and despite the artfully superficial persona, threaded through with melancholy and rage; emotion which is ironic and also not. Reich is incisive about the conditions that have generated contemporary pathologies - the warping effects of technology for… Continue reading Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares
Humour in the Arts 