Since the premiere of Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s show The Office (2001–2003), cringe comedy has turned into a global brand. Cringing involves the inability to extricate yourself from unpleasant situations, resulting in feelings... more
Since the premiere of Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s show The Office (2001–2003), cringe comedy has turned into a global brand. Cringing involves the inability to extricate yourself from unpleasant situations, resulting in feelings of vicarious shame. Cringe humour often results in “unstable jokes” (Jason Middleton) that involve protected groups like ethnic minorities and disabled people. It prospers not just in traditional genres (like the sitcom), but also in more interactive formats like reaction videos, where viewers are challenged to watch unbearable content. The success of cringe comics like Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David, and Julia Davis coincides with a cultural paradigm shift that has been linked to a resurgence of shaming/humiliation rituals and to what Adam Kotsko and Melissa Dahl identify as the “age of awkwardness”. Cringe articulates a deeply-felt discomfort and a degree of uncertainty when it comes to adopting to political correctness and changing attitudes in the cultural climate. This special issue of "Humanities" discusses the inclusivity of cringe humour, whether it affirms or violates norms and values, and addresses a variety of cringe comics and shows, including Larry David, 'BoJack Horseman', 'Flowers', and 'Veep'.
Awkwardness is something we are all familiar with. We recognise it when we experience it and identify it in other people or situations, but the question of what awkwardness is remains crucially unanswered. This thesis will take the... more
Awkwardness is something we are all familiar with. We recognise it when we experience it and identify it in other people or situations, but the question of what awkwardness is remains crucially unanswered. This thesis will take the contemporary prevalence of ‘Awkward Comedy’ in popular culture as impetus for a theoretical and philosophical study of awkwardness’ structures and effects. With HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm as its chief case study, this project asks what awkwardness tells us about the contemporary world. It shows that feelings such as awkwardness are not ‘natural’ occurrences – rather, they are informed by particular social and political movements, reflecting the logics and assumptions of their moment in history. Awkwardness as read through Curb both evidences its socio-political context and offers a means of critique, interrogating the standards of normativity through which it comports itself. It demonstrates the determinism inherent to our ‘free’ society, and affords a means of emancipation, through the active pursuit and embrace of our awkwardness.
We are obsessed with the specter of disaster and we seem to be living in catastrophic times. Since the events of 9/11, we exist in a state of high alertness and live with the constant awareness of threats of global proportion. Terrorism,... more
We are obsessed with the specter of disaster and we seem to be living in catastrophic times. Since the events of 9/11, we exist in a state of high alertness and live with the constant awareness of threats of global proportion. Terrorism, war, and forced migration, ecological instabilities and economic uncertainty, all contribute to an atmosphere of heightened anxiety. On the one hand, this situation has caused an increased desire for security and resulted in urgent calls for more assertive political measures that do not rarely threaten to weaken our constitutional rights. On the other hand, we have responded by adapting to a rhetoric of survival that informs our cultural imagination and guides our individual reactions to an alarming growth of contingency in our lives. From the success of TV-series to Giorgio Agamben's thoughts on the state of exception, this essay traces and analyzes the pervasive language of survival in popular culture and critical theory. I argue that "survival" must be seen as a central term for understanding how we conceptualize our lives in face of a perceived constant threat, and what this means for our responses to disaster and catastrophe. Against the background of recent events such as the refugee crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, this essay offers a discussion of the (bio)political consequences of a society that increasingly imagines its own reality as one of survival.
