That's Not Funny
How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A 2022 Best Comedy Book, Vulture
A rousing call for liberals and progressives to pay attention to the emergence of right-wing comedy and the political power of humor.
"Why do conservatives hate comedy? Why is there no right-wing Jon Stewart?" These sorts of questions launch a million tweets, a thousand op-eds, and more than a few scholarly analyses. That's Not Funny argues that it is both an intellectual and politically strategic mistake to assume that comedy has a liberal bias. Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx take readers––particularly self-described liberals––on a tour of contemporary conservative comedy and the "right-wing comedy complex."
In That's Not Funny, "complex" takes on an important double meaning. On the one hand, liberals have developed a social-psychological complex—it feels difficult, even dangerous, to acknowledge that their political opposition can produce comedy. At the same time, the right has been slowly building up a comedy-industrial complex, utilizing the humorous, irony-laden media strategies of liberals such as Jon Stewart, Samantha Bee, and John Oliver to garner audiences and supporters. Right-wing comedy has been hiding in plain sight, finding its way into mainstream conservative media through figures ranging from Fox News's Greg Gutfeld to libertarian podcasters like Joe Rogan. That's Not Funny taps interviews with conservative comedians and observations of them in action to guide readers through media history, text, and technique. You will find many of these comedians utterly appalling, some surprisingly funny, and others just plain weird. They are all, however, culturally and politically relevant—the American right is attempting to seize spaces of comedy and irony previously held firmly by the left. You might not like this brand of humor, but you can't ignore it.
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Boston College communications professor Sienkiewicz and Marx, a film and media studies professor at Colorado State University, examine the "growing influence of conservative comedians" in this provocative study. Debunking the idea that right-wing comedy is an oxymoron, the authors lump together neo-Nazi provocateurs, late-night talk show host Greg Gutfeld, "paleocomedians" like Tim Allen, and podcast host Joe Rogan, whose "messy libertarianism" has won his show 11 million YouTube subscribers. Discussing the "complex series of algorithms, recommendations, and appearances" that link these and other comedians, the authors note that "in a few clicks, one can move from Gutfeld on Fox News laughing at a story about immigrants... to a song parody on YouTube of Oasis's ‘Wonderwall' featuring the line ‘Today is gonna be the day/ that we're gonna fucking gas the Jews.' " Elsewhere, Sienkiewicz and Marx analyze the "art of trolling"; take note of the "middle-class domestic settings, deference to white patriarchal authority, subservient women characters" of many network sitcoms; and persuasively argue that liberals must contend with the "aesthetic appeal" and "economic success" of right-wing comedy. Though the not-insignificant differences between these styles of comedy get somewhat obscured, Sienkiewicz and Marx succeed in raising the alarm. Progressives will want to take notice.
