Dead funny
Posthumous liveness in mediatized stand-up comedy performance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20207679 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ben Hudson (0000-0001-9655-5374, University of Kent, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 255-267 |
| Publication date | 2012-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Media Practice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-2753 • E-ISSN: 2040-0926 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1386/jmpr.13.3.255_1 |
| OpenAlex | W2320858211 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 9 |
Time is precious to stand-up comedians. Jokes are told by the comedian and laughter is required as an immediate response. Failure to stay ‘in the moment’ will often result in a comedian losing their ability to read and manipulate their audience (Jaeger 2006: 123). They will be said to have ‘died’ on stage. This language of life and death is also central to the notion of time in performance. Live performance, traditionally, has been thought of as the physically co-present unfolding of a piece of artistic expression. Once mediatized, it becomes something else (Phelan 1993: 146), something ‘dead’.This article discusses the ways in which comedians use technology to extend their act beyond the physically co-present moment of the performance and collaborate with media to create a timeless performance experience. Using examples of practice as research undertaken by the author and work by well-known comedians, the article argues that time can be flexible in video-fed performance, achieving both presence and directness in communication, that recorded media can shift the site of live performance to an indefinite future by relating itself to the present-tense situation of the viewer and that the framing and interactivity of online media present a live method of interacting with recorded media
Aesthetics · Art · Comedy · Interactivity · Laughter · Literature · Liveness · Media studies · Multimedia · Sociology · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · History · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |