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The Comedy Of Democracy
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Book Synopsis The Comedy of Democracy by : James E. Combs
Download or read book The Comedy of Democracy written by James E. Combs and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1996-02-28 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of society and politics as drama has drawn much attention in recent years. Yet despite the heritage begun by Aristophanes, few students of politics and the social order have taken comedy and comic inquiry seriously. This book revives the Aristophanic notion of democracy as comedy. Herein the reader will find why and how different aspects of American democracy—public opinion, interest groups, the presidency, and so on—are comic. It is the author's contention that the comic perspective offers insight and understanding on the actual operation of democracy. And they invite all those who wish to understand why American democracy is so comic to join them in their inquiry.
Book Synopsis Comic Democracies by : Angus Fletcher
Download or read book Comic Democracies written by Angus Fletcher and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2016-06-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Invites its readers to note the leaders and people who are willing and able to laugh, with and at themselves . . . Our political life may depend upon it.” —The Review of Politics For two thousand years, democratic authors treated comedy as a toolkit of rhetorical practices for encouraging problem-solving, pluralism, risk-taking, and other civic behaviors that increased minority participation in government. Over the past two centuries, this pragmatic approach to extending the franchise has been displaced by more idealistic democratic philosophies that focus instead on promoting liberal principles and human rights. But in the wake of the recent “democracy recession” in the Middle East, the Third World, and the West itself, there has been renewed interest in finding practical sources of popular rule. Comic Democracies joins in the search by exploring the value of the old comic tools for growing democracy today. Drawing on new empirical research from the political and cognitive sciences, Angus Fletcher deftly analyzes the narrative elements of two dozen stage plays, novels, romances, histories, and operas written by such authors as Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, William Congreve, John Gay, Henry Fielding, and Washington Irving. He unearths five comic techniques used to foster democratic behaviors in antiquity and the Renaissance, then traces the role of these techniques in Tom Paine’s Common Sense, Jefferson’s preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Washington’s farewell address, Mercy Otis Warren’s federalist history of the Revolution, Frederick Douglass’s abolitionist orations, and other documents that played a pivotal role in the development of the American Republic. After recovering these lost chapters of our democratic past, Comic Democracies concludes with a draft for the future, using the old methods of comedy to envision a modern democracy—rooted in the diversity, ingenuity, and power of popular art. “Fletcher’s main theory is convincing and will open up new fields of inquiry. This accessible work is for those interested in political science, cultural history, and comic theory as well as classical literature.” —Choice
Book Synopsis Strange Bedfellows by : Russell Leslie Peterson
Download or read book Strange Bedfellows written by Russell Leslie Peterson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A significant number of Americans get some of their "news" about politics and national affairs from comedy shows. Is "infotainment" a debasement, or a replacement, for traditional news outlets?
Book Synopsis The Coen Brothers and the Comedy of Democracy by : Sara MacDonald
Download or read book The Coen Brothers and the Comedy of Democracy written by Sara MacDonald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both critically and commercially successful filmmakers, the Coen brothers have written, produced, and directed numerous acclaimed films over the past three decades. Sara MacDonald and Barry Craig demonstrate that their comedies, in particular, which are often dismissed as mere entertainments, actually present substantial philosophic and political arguments. They examine five of the Coen brothers’ comedies: Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou, and Hail Caesar!. In those works, they discover insightful engagements with such ideas as questions of human freedom, the relationship of reason to religion, and the nature of liberal democracy in the American regime. They demonstrate how sometimes explicitly, but generally implicitly, the Coens draw on thinkers such as Homer, Plato, Dante, and Hegel, while simultaneously presenting popular entertainment.
Book Synopsis The Joke Is on Us by : Julie A. Webber
Download or read book The Joke Is on Us written by Julie A. Webber and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume brings together scholars of comedy to assess how political comedy encounters neoliberal themes in contemporary media. Central to this task is the notion of genre; under neoliberal conditions (where market logics motivate most actions) genre becomes “mixed.” Once stable, discreet categories such as comedy, horror, drama and news and entertainment have become blurred so as to be indistinguishable. The classic modern paradigm of comedy/tragedy no longer holds, if it ever did. Moreover, as politics becomes more economic and less moral or normative under neoliberalism, we are able to see new resistance to comedic genres that support neoliberal strategies to hide racial and gender injustice such as unlaughter, ambiguity, and anti-comedy. There is also an increasing interest with comedy as a form of entertainment on the political right following both Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the U.S. Several essays confront this conservative comedy and place it in context of the larger humor history of these debates over free speech and political correctness. For comedians too, entry into popular media now follows the familiar neoliberal script of the celebration of self-help with the increasing admonishment of those who fail to win in market terms. Laughter plays an important role in shaming and valorizing (often at the same time!) the precarious subject in the aftermath of global recession. Doubling down on austerity, self-help policies and equivocation in the face of extremist challenges (right and left), politics foils the critical comedian’s attempt to satirize and parody its object. Characterized by ambiguity, mixed genre and the increasing use of anti-humor, political comedy mirrors the social and political world it mocks, parodies and celebrates often with lackluster results suggesting that the joke might be on us, as audiences.
Download or read book Campaign Comedy written by Gerald Gardner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues of our presidential elections and the virtues and flaws of our candidates come into sharp focus when illuminated by the wit of political observers. America's humorists brighten the electoral scene, reminding us that we needn't always look at presidential campaigns with a solemn air. Thanks to the satiric insights of America's wits, we are able to keep a sense of perspective about the candidates, particularly when their follies and foibles are most intolerable. It is the presidential campaign humor created by America's comedians, humorists, journalists, editorial cartoonists, and the candidates themselves that writer Gerald Gardner celebrates in Campaign Comedy. He reviews the humor, from the caustic to the comedic, that most recently targeted Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot in the explosive 1992 election. He also focuses, in a campaign-by-campaign format, on the humor generated by the presidential campaigns ranging back to the epochal struggle between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Candidates including Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon Johnson, and the men they defeated are also the subject of the hilarious or vicious wit that is chronicled here. Campaign Comedy is brimming with relevant and pithy humor from Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Art Buchwald, Mark Russell, Bob Hope, Mort Sahl, Garry Trudeau, and the closet wits who supplied the presidential candidates with the "spontaneous humor" that they employed during their campaigns. Gardner also highlights the campaign humor of television's most famous political shows, "That Was the Week That Was," "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," and "Saturday Night Live." Gerald Gardner provides a delightful reminder that humor is a basic form of communication through which the media, the humorists, and the candidates convey their skepticism, anger, and differences. He makes it clear why humor is the most essential element in a democracy and why it is the one ingredient that no totalitarian society seems to possess.
Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy by : Martin Revermann
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy written by Martin Revermann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a unique panorama of this challenging area of Greek literature, combining literary perspectives with historical issues and material culture.
Book Synopsis Citizens on Stage by : James F. McGlew
Download or read book Citizens on Stage written by James F. McGlew and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Old Comedy's representation of the citizen in fifth-century democratic Athens
Download or read book Greek Tragedy written by Edith Hall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated introduction to ancient Greek tragedy, written by one of its most distinguished experts, which provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the dramas. A special feature is an individual essay on every one of the surviving 33 plays.
Book Synopsis Aristophanic Comedy and the Challenge of Democratic Citizenship by : John Zumbrunnen
Download or read book Aristophanic Comedy and the Challenge of Democratic Citizenship written by John Zumbrunnen and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-23 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locates in Aristophanes' comedies a complex comic disposition appropriate to the fundamental challenge of ordinary citizenship in a democracy.
Book Synopsis Democracy in Crisis by : Jeff Miller
Download or read book Democracy in Crisis written by Jeff Miller and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2021-12-23 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The storming of the US Capitol building in January 2021 focused attention on the multiple threats facing contemporary liberal democracies. Beyond the immediate problem of Covid-19, the past two decades saw political polarization, a dramatic rise in inequality, global warming and other environmental threats, as well as the growth of dangerous cultural and political divisions. Western liberal democracies find themselves in the midst of what political theorists call a legitimation crisis: major portions of the population lack confidence in the ability of governments to address our most pressing problems. This distrust in government and traditional political parties opened the door to populist leaders and a rising tide of authoritarianism. Liberal democracies face major structural and normative challenges in the near future that require us to look beyond the traditional set of solutions available. Democracy in Crisis points back to the world's first democratic government, Ancient Athens, to see what made that political arrangement durable and resistant to both internal and external threats. The argument focuses on several distinctive Athenian institutions and practices, and considers how we might reimagine them in the modern world. The book addresses questions of civic ideology and institutions, with extended treatment of two distinctive Athenian institutions, ostracism and sortition.
Book Synopsis The Dance of the Comedians by : Peter M. Robinson
Download or read book The Dance of the Comedians written by Peter M. Robinson and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively account of the comedy of politics and the politics of comedy from Artemus Ward to The Daily Show
Download or read book Reproducing Athens written by Susan Lape and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era. Menander's romantic comedies--which focus on ordinary citizens who marry for love--are most often thought of as entertainments devoid of political content. Against the view, Susan Lape argues that Menander's comedies are explicitly political. His nationalistic comedies regularly conclude by performing the laws of democratic citizen marriage, thereby promising the generation of new citizens. His transnational comedies, on the other hand, defend polis life against the impinging Hellenistic kingdoms, either by transforming their representatives into proper citizen-husbands or by rendering them ridiculous, romantic losers who pose no real threat to citizen or city. In elaborating the political work of romantic comedy, this book also demonstrates the importance of gender, kinship, and sexuality to the making of democratic civic ideology. Paradoxically, by championing democratic culture against various Hellenistic outsiders, comedy often resists the internal status and gender boundaries on which democratic culture was based. Comedy's ability to reproduce democratic culture in scandalous fashion exposes the logic of civic inclusion produced by the contradictions in Athens's desperately politicized gender system. Combining careful textual analysis with an understanding of the context in which Menander wrote, Reproducing Athens profoundly changes the way we read his plays and deepens our understanding of Athenian democratic culture.
Download or read book Beyond a Joke written by S. Lockyer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-11-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humour is pervasive in contemporary culture, and is generally celebrated as a public good. Yet there are times when it is felt to produce intolerance, misunderstanding or even hatred. This book brings together, for the first time, contributions that consider the ethics as well as the aesthetics of humour. The book focuses on the abuses and limits of humour, some of which excite considerable social tension and controversy. Beyond a Joke is an exciting intervention, full of challenging questions and issues.
Book Synopsis Against Demagogues by : Prof. Robert C. Bartlett
Download or read book Against Demagogues written by Prof. Robert C. Bartlett and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timeless comedies on resisting tyranny from one of history’s greatest comic playwrights. Against Demagogues presents Robert C. Bartlett's new translations of Aristophanes' most overtly political works, the Acharnians and the Knights. In these fantastically inventive, raucous, and raunchy comedies, the powerful politician Cleon proves to be democracy's greatest opponent. With unrivalled power, both plays make clear the dangers to which democracies are prone, especially the threats posed by external warfare, internal division, and class polarization. Combating the seductive allure of demagogues and the damage they cause, Against Demagogues disentangles Aristophanes' serious teachings from his many jokes and pratfalls, substantiating for modern readers his famous claim to "teach justice" while "making a comedy" of the city. The book features an interpretive essay for each play, expertly guiding readers through the most important plot points, explaining the significance of various characters, and shedding light on the meaning of the plays' often madcap episodes. Along with a contextualizing introduction, Bartlett offers extensive notes explaining the many political, literary, and religious references and allusions. Aristophanes' comedic skewering of the demagogue and his ruthless ambition—and of a community so ill-informed about the doings of its own government, so ready to believe in empty promises and idle flattery—cannot but resonate strongly with readers today around the world.
Download or read book Satire TV written by Jonathan Gray and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines what happens when comedy becomes political, and politics become funny. A series of original essays focus on a range of programmes, from 'The Daily Show' to 'South Park'.
Book Synopsis Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind by : Edith Hall
Download or read book Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind written by Edith Hall and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.
