Learning and Laughing about Gender and Sexuality through Humor

The Woody Allen Case

Bibliographic Data

ID12412866
AuthorsAndreas G Philaretou (Cyprus College, Cyprus, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume14
Issue2
Pages133-144
Publication date2007-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Men s Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1060-8265 • E-ISSN: 1933-0251
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3149/jms.1402.133
OpenAlexW2081389199
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited27

Humor is a social phenomenon that tends to relieve stress on an individual level and collectively constitutes a powerful mechanism for disseminating both abstract and real-life knowledge about the human condition. Woody Allen attempts to captivate his audience by bringing both intellectual concepts and real-life scenarios into a comedic crucible utilizing the human instinctual drives for lust, love, and happiness as his major catalysts. Allen's films offer a dialectical approach to the study of human sexuality as good and bad, humorous and dramatic, lustful and emotional, fearful and fearless, fulfilling and frustrating. Although often accused of being an essentialist chauvinist male, Allen may be viewed as a moral social constructionist who deconstructs traditional gender arrangements and reconstructs a feminine and masculine sexual ethos utilizing sexual humor. Throughout the deconstruction and reconstruction process the audience is made aware of the historical, social, and cultural forces that influence human affairs as well as the vicissitudes, ambiguity, and melodramatic nature of human sexuality

Aesthetics · Ethos · Happiness · Human sexuality · Lust · Psychoanalysis · Social constructionism · Social science · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Social Psychology · Theater, Performance, and Music History

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub