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Richard Pryor.

Understanding Richard Pryor's Use of the N-Word

Pryor's use of the word represented something valiant.
by Mark Anthony Neal via NewBlackMan (in Exile) on December 1, 2024
Johnny Carson hosting the Tonight Show.

The Amazing, Disappearing Johnny Carson

Carson pioneered a new style of late-night hosting—relaxed, improvisatory, risk-averse, and inscrutable.
by Isaac Butler via The New Yorker on November 6, 2024
Characters in the 1934 film "The Thin Man."

Fools in Love

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.
by Andrew Katzenstein via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2024
Man laughing.

The Most Hated Sound on Television

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.
by Jacob Stern via The Atlantic on April 15, 2024
Larry David.

The End of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Marks the End of an Era

Larry David is the last of his kind—and in several ways.
by Daniel Bessner via The Nation on April 8, 2024
A still from the film "It Happened One Night" of Clarke Gable watching Claudette Colbert hitchhike by showing her leg.

Our Timeless Romance With Screwball Comedy

Born out of the Great Depression, the genre reminds us that even in hard times there's laughter, love, and light.
by Olympia Kiriakou via Zócalo Public Square on February 8, 2024
Buster Keaton holds himself up against two walls.

Puzzled Puss: Buster Keaton’s Star Turn

Keaton had been on the stage longest, risen the highest, fallen the furthest, and left the most indelible legacy.
by John Lahr via London Review of Books on January 19, 2023
Comedian Charlie Hill on stage with a microphone.

‘Part of Why We Survived’

Is there something in particular about coming from a Native background that makes a person want to write and perform comedy?
by Ian Frazier via New York Review of Books on December 23, 2021

What Ever Happened to Chicken Fat?

Comedy from Mad Magazine to The Simpsons.
by Jackson Arn via 3 Quarks Daily on July 27, 2020
Richard Pryor

A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor

Comedian Richard Pryor's performance of Blackness throughout his career.
by Mark Anthony Neal via NewBlackMan (in Exile) on December 1, 2019
Donald Trump, holding microphones, surrounded by shock jocks

The Trigger Presidency

How shock jock comedy gave way to Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
by Ben Schwartz via The New Republic on April 24, 2019

In 1968, When Nixon Said "Sock It To Me" on 'Laugh-In,' TV Was Never Quite the Same Again

The show's rollicking one-liners and bawdy routines paved the way for cutting-edge television satire.
by Ryan Lintelman via Smithsonian on January 19, 2018

Want to Hear a Dirty Joke? Get a Woman to Tell It

The Courage and Comic Genius of Groundbreaking Female Stand-Ups
by Eileen Pollack via Literary Hub on January 4, 2018

Trump Hasn’t Killed Comedy. He’s Killed Our Stupid Idea of Comedy.

You and I have grown up during a period in which comedy became strangely bound up with truth and virtue. Trump has cut the knot.
by Andrew Kahn via Slate on July 19, 2017
Elaine May and Walter Matthau sitting on a bench in May’s film A New Leaf.

May Days

A new biography of an elusive comic talent.
by Lizzy Harding via Bookforum on February 11, 2025
Collage of popular culture references from 2008 onward.

That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore.

The 2008 election sparked an outburst of brightness and positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight — and cringe — is setting in.
by Nate Jones via Vulture on August 20, 2024
A poster for "The Gay Deceivers" of a naked man holding a pillow, with the tagline "Is he? Or isn't he? Only his draftboard and his girlfriend know for sure."

The Gay Deceivers Was an Early Landmark for Queer Cinema

This 1969 film offers a compelling context for queer cinema and culture prior to the 1970s.
by Ben Railton via The Saturday Evening Post on June 11, 2024
A masculine caricature of an Irish-American woman threatening an American woman in a kitchen.

From Saint to Stereotype: A Story of Brigid

Caricatures of Irish immigrants—especially Irish women—have softened, but persist in characters whose Irishness is expressed in subtle cues.
by Melanie Beth Curran, Margaret Lynch-Brennan, M. Alison Kibler, Peter Flynn via JSTOR Daily on March 27, 2024
Cover of "Outrageous," with tomato on face of man holding microphone

Endless Culture Wars

On Kliph Nesteroff’s book, “Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars.”
by Chris Yogerst via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 1, 2023
Jewish characters in television and film

The Long History of Jewface

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose is the latest example of the struggles around Jewish representation on the stage and screen.
by Jody Rosen via The New Yorker on October 7, 2023
"Spy vs. Spy" pointy-headed characters facing each other

Rethinking Spy vs. Spy: A Hand From One Page, A Bomb From Another

Like the spies themselves, the image we have of something is often what gets us in trouble.
by Gyasi Hall via Longreads on September 12, 2023
Henry David Thoreau with a propeller cap.

Henry David Thoreau Was Funnier Than You Think, Particularly on the Subject of Work

On the necessary “deep sincerity” of dark humor.
by John Kaag, Jonathan van Belle via Literary Hub on June 26, 2023
Illustration of Q-Anon vigilantes climbing an electrified letter Q.

QAnon Is the Latest American Conspiracy Theory

The rise of the right-wing paranoid fantasy, egged on by Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, reflects deep currents in American politics.
by Chris Lehmann via The Nation on February 6, 2023
A close up black and white image of a clown face showing a sinister smile.

The Creepy Clown Emerged from the Crass and Bawdy Circuses of the 19th Century

Today’s creepy clowns are not a divergence from tradition, but a return to it.
by Madeline Steiner via The Conversation on October 25, 2022
Ink drawing of Buster Keaton's face against pale pink background

Keep Your Eye on the Kid

Buster Keaton made his own kind of sense out of the perplexities of existence in ways baffling to those among whom he found himself.
by Geoffrey O'Brien via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
Drawing of a theater performer looking off to the side.

How Love Conquered a Convent: Catholicism and Gender Disorder on the 1830s Stage

'Pet of the Petticoats' extends the reach of Anglo-Atlantic anti-Catholicism to the stage, illustrating the ways its tropes and anxieties moved across genres.
by Sara Lampert via Commonplace on September 7, 2022
John Bubbles dancing and Buck Washington playing keyboard, performing in Brooklyn, New York, 1930.

Never the Same Step Twice

Where previous generations of dancers arranged their steps into tidy, regular phrases, John Bubbles enjambed over bar lines, multiplying, twisting, tilting, turning.
by Brian Seibert via New York Review of Books on April 21, 2022
Cast of "All in the Family"

Justice for All: The Religious Legacy of “All in the Family”

The show never took a singular position on social issues. The point was to wrestle with the story itself in hopes of sparking self-awareness and contemplation.
by L. Benjamin Rolsky via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on December 7, 2021
Jewish actress and filmmaker Ellen Richter, striking a pose on screen while two men give her suspicious looks.

The Silences of the Silent Era

We can’t allow the impression of a historical lack of diversity in the art form to limit access to the industry today.
by Pamela Hutchinson via Current [The Criterion Collection] on November 30, 2021
Dick Gregory

The Legacy of a Civil Rights Icon’s Vegetarian Cookbook

Dick Gregory was an activist, comedian, and trendsetter for Black vegans.
by Shea Peters via Atlas Obscura on July 21, 2021
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