Abstract The stand-up comedy landscape has been transformed in recent years with an increased number of disabled comedians performing. Using semi-structured interviews with disabled comedians, this article provides a thematic analysis of the material and ideological motives, intentions and lived experiences of disabled comedians. Two themes are discussed: comedy management and control; and affirming disability through comedy. These themes are characterised by complexity and contradictions. The article concludes that, although not a straightforward process, stand-up comedy enacted by disabled comedians is potentially a powerful tool through which hegemonic norms around disability can be challenged and renegotiated. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2015.1106402#abstract Comedy and Disability
Comedy and disability have a complex and long relationship. On the one hand, cultural norms restrict members of society from laughing at people with disabilities and many non-disabled people fear disability and perceive ‘having a disability as tragic, pitiable, or just plain sad’ (Haller and Ralph 200323. Haller, B., and S. Ralph. 2003. “John Callahan’s Pelswick Cartoon and a New Phase of Disability Humor.” Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (3/4). http://dsq-ds.org/article/view/431/608 View all references). Yet on the other hand, across history, disabled people have been the source of humour. A large proportion of this history consists of jokes, words, images, comic narratives and humour that denigrate disabled people (Shakespeare 199941. Shakespeare, T. 1999. “Joking a Part.” Body & Society 5 (4): 47–52. [CrossRef], [CSA] View all references). Reid, Hammond Stoughton, and Smith (200636. Reid, K. D., E. Hammond Stoughton, and R. M. Smith. 2006. “The Humorous Construction of Disability: ‘Stand-up’ Comedians in the United States.” Disability & Society 21 (6): 629–643. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] View all references, 631) refer to this denigrating humour as ‘disabling humour’. From Aristotle, Plato and Socrates to the fool and jester of the Middle Ages, Elizabethan joke books and freak shows of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the introduction of asylums, such as Bedlam, impairments have been a source of amusement for non-disabled people (see Barnes 19922. Barnes, C. 1992. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Derby: BCODP. View all references; Clark 200310. Clark, L. 2003. “Disabling Comedy: ‘Only When We Laugh!’.” Paper Presented at Finding the Spotlight Conference, Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts, May 20. http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/Clark-Laurence-clarke-on-comedy.pdf View all references; Cross 201213. Cross, S. 2012. “Laughing at Lunacy: Othering and Comic Ambiguity in Popular Humour about Mental Distress.” Social Semiotics 23 (1): 1–17. [Taylor & Francis Online] View all references; Garland 199519. Garland, R. 1995. Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. View all references). Haller and Ralph (200323. Haller, B., and S. Ralph. 2003. “John Callahan’s Pelswick Cartoon and a New Phase of Disability Humor.” Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (3/4). http://dsq-ds.org/article/view/431/608 View all references) refer to this as the first phase of disability humour which often involved constructing people with psychological impairments as ‘representative fools’. Ridiculing disabled people is a ‘major feature’ (Barnes 19922. Barnes, C. 1992. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Derby: BCODP. View all references, 14) of contemporary film and television (Clark 200310. Clark, L. 2003. “Disabling Comedy: ‘Only When We Laugh!’.” Paper Presented at Finding the Spotlight Conference, Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts, May 20. http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/Clark-Laurence-clarke-on-comedy.pdf View all references; Haller and Ralph 200323. Haller, B., and S. Ralph. 2003. “John Callahan’s Pelswick Cartoon and a New Phase of Disability Humor.” Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (3/4). http://dsq-ds.org/article/view/431/608 View all references; Mallet 200926. Mallet, R. 2009. “Choosing ‘Stereotypes’: Debating the Efficacy of (British) Disability-criticism.” Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 9 (1): 4–11.10.1111/jrse.2009.9.issue-1 [CrossRef] View all references, 201027. Mallet, R. 2010. “Claiming Comedic Immunity. or, What Do You Get When You Cross Contemporary British Comedy with Disability.” Review of Disability Studies 6 (3): 5–13. View all references; Montgomerie 201032. Montgomerie, M. 2010. “Visibility, Empathy and Derision: Popular Television Representations of Disability.” ALTER 4: 94–102. View all references; Reid-Hresko and Reid 200537. Reid-Hresko, B. A., and K. D. Reid. 2005. “Deconstructing Disability: Three Episodes of South Park.” Disability Studies Quarterly 25 (4). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/628/805 View all references). Moreover, from vaudeville, Broadway and music hall through to contemporary established stand-up comedy circuits, jokes about disability made by non-disabled performers have repeatedly circulated on the live stage. For example, in the first half of the twentieth century, Harpo Marx, the second eldest of the American family comedy act the Marx Brothers, derived comedy from pretending he was unable to speak (Barnes 19922. Barnes, C. 1992. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Derby: BCODP. View all references) and jokes about famous deafblind author Helen Keller spawned the Helen Keller joke genre (Haller and Ralph 200323. Haller, B., and S. Ralph. 2003. “John Callahan’s Pelswick Cartoon and a New Phase of Disability Humor.” Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (3/4). http://dsq-ds.org/article/view/431/608 View all references). The first British disabled stand-up comedian, Barbara Lisicki (stage name Wanda Barbara), argues that non-disabled peoples’ fear of disabled people and/or the fear of becoming disabled manifests itself in ‘thinly disguised hostility and hatred’ (199225. Lisicki, B. 1992. “Nice Face, Shame about the Legs..! Confessions of a Disabled Female Stand-up Comic.” In Disability Equality in the Classroom: A Human Rights Issue, edited by R. Rieser, and H. Mason, 66–67. London: Disability Equality in Education. View all references, 66) evident in jokes about disabled people. Haller and Ralph (200323. Haller, B., and S. Ralph. 2003. “John Callahan’s Pelswick Cartoon and a New Phase of Disability Humor.” Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (3/4). http://dsq-ds.org/article/view/431/608 View all references) refer to this as the second phase of disability humour, which was largely characterised by non-disabled people making jokes about disabled people and emphasising their ‘limitations’. Martin (201028. Martin, N. 2010. “A Preliminary Study of Some Broad Disability Related Themes within the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.” Disability & Society 25 (5): 539–549. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] View all references) observes how derogatory and ‘othering’ language that was used in the 1970s and 1980s was prevalent in some comedy performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008 and 2009. More recently, due to ‘its proliferation on the comedy circuit’, some comedians have requested that fellow comedians refrain from using derogatory and disabling terms such as ‘midget’ in their performances (Berliner 20134. Berliner, G. 2013. “‘Midget’ is a Dirty Word.” Chortle: The UK Comedy Guide, March 19. http://www.chortle.co.uk/correspondents/2013/03/19/17458/midget_is_a_dirty_word View all references). Clark argues that, repeated over time, such disabling jokes and terms have a number of negative effects including: ‘damage done to the general public’s perceptions of disabled people, the contribution to the erosion of a disabled people’s “identity” and how accepting disablist comedy as the “norm” has served to exclude disabled writers/comedians/performers from the [comedy] profession’ (200310. Clark, L. 2003. “Disabling Comedy: ‘Only When We Laugh!’.” Paper Presented at Finding the Spotlight Conference, Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts, May 20. http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/Clark-Laurence-clarke-on-comedy.pdf View all references; see also Barnes 19922. Barnes, C. 1992. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Derby: BCODP. View all references). Following the laying of the foundations of the modern social movement of disabled people in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the rapid increased growth of political activity by disabled people during the late 1970s and 1980s (Campbell and Oliver 19969. Campbell, J., and M. Oliver. 1996. Disability Politics: Understanding Our Past, Changing Our Future. London: Routledge. View all references), the Disability Arts Movement ‘emerged from the mid-1980s onwards as disabled people began to develop their own voices and perspectives’ (Cameron 20097. Cameron, C. 2009. “Tragic but Brave or Just Crips with Chips? Songs and Their Lyrics in the Disability Arts Movement in Britain.” Popular Music 28 (03): 381–396.10.1017/S0261143009990122 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®] View all references, 383). Disabled comedians, such as Barbara Lisicki, were part of the Disability Arts Movement which was rooted in the social model of disability and provided ‘social spaces in which disabled people could come together to share and explore with each other insights and perspectives that had previously only been experienced individually’ (Cameron 20097. Cameron, C. 2009. “Tragic but Brave or Just Crips with Chips? Songs and Their Lyrics in the Disability Arts Movement in Britain.” Popular Music 28 (03): 381–396.10.1017/S0261143009990122 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®] View all references, 384). Such spaces included disability arts cabarets, workshops and festivals. Over the last decade there has been a continual increase in the number of disabled comedians performing live comedy in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, America, Australia and Canada. Performers such as Laurence Clark, Liz Carr, Josh Blue, Imaan Hadchiti and Tanyalee Davis are making jokes about impairment and their experiences of disability. Reid, Hammond Stoughton, and Smith (200636. Reid, K. D., E. Hammond Stoughton, and R. M. Smith. 2006. “The Humorous Construction of Disability: ‘Stand-up’ Comedians in the United States.” Disability & Society 21 (6): 629–643. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] View all references, 631) refer to this type of humour as ‘disability humour’. Whilst disabled comedians, such as Barbara Lisicki, were performing comedy when the Disability Arts Movement began, they were fewer in number and less customary to mainstream audiences than disabled comedians currently performing. Although, when compared with the number of non-disabled comedians, disabled comedians ‘remain rare’ (O’Hara 200633. O’Hara, M. 2006. “No Fear, No Frills.” Guardian Online, June 21. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jun/21/disability.socialcare View all references), currently disabled comedians are creatively shifting the comedy spotlight from disabled people as the targets of comedy to disabled people as comedy-makers and are performing to disabled and non-disabled audiences in recognised comedy venues, unlike their earlier counterparts. Liz Carr argues that ‘… people need to see that disabled people are funny … You know, our lives are quite fascinating and there’s a lot that people can learn from that’ (quoted in O’Hara 200633. O’Hara, M. 2006. “No Fear, No Frills.” Guardian Online, June 21. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jun/21/disability.socialcare View all references). Reid, Hammond Stoughton, and Smith refer to comedy performed by disabled comedians as an ‘emerging, liberatory art form’ (200636. Reid, K. D., E. Hammond Stoughton, and R. M. Smith. 2006. “The Humorous Construction of Disability: ‘Stand-up’ Comedians in the United States.” Disability & Society 21 (6): 629–643. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] View all references, 640) and Haller and Ralph (200323. Haller, B., and S. Ralph. 2003. “John Callahan’s Pelswick Cartoon and a New Phase of Disability Humor.” Disability Studies Quarterly 23 (3/4). http://dsq-ds.org/article/view/431/608 View all references) refer to this shift as the third and fourth phases of disability humour. The third phase is ‘characterized by people with disabilities taking control of the humour message’, where humour ‘doesn’t just go for the laugh; it allows non-disabled people to see issues related to disability in a different light’. The fourth phase focuses on comedy about disability that focuses on ‘normalcy, equality, and “bold honesty”’. Building on these shifts and changes within the comedy industry, this empirical article aims to specifically examine the material and ideological motives, intentions and lived experiences of disabled comedians who have performed live stand-up comedy in Britain. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. 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