Laughing all the way to freedom?: Contemporary stand-up comedy and democracy in South Africa

✍ Scribed by Seirlis, Julia Katherine

• Book ID: 120454456
• Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 325 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0933-1719
• DOI: 10.1515/HUMR.2011.028

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Stand-up comedy raises questions about the quality of and limits to democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. It does so by telling a before democracy and after apartheid story in the mushrooming of comedians and comedy venues and in the generational differences between comedians and their approaches to comedy since 1994. This before-and-after story marks out boundaries between the old puritanical strictures and censorship of the National Party's apartheid and the new possibilities for freedom and enjoyment in a democracy riddled with profound social and political problems of extreme violence and poverty — and run by the ANC, a ruling party with a strong sense of entitlement to State power.