Humour in Times of Confrontation, 1901 to the Present

Shun-Liang Chao, Vivienne Westbrook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429558894
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Humour in Times of Confrontation: 1901 to the Present examines the various and surprising ways in which humour has been powerfully employed, through a wider range of media than possible at any other time in history, as a response to conflict.

With no earlier century undergoing more diverse, more extensive, and more intense conflicts than the period in question, the last twelve decades provide a unique landscape to explore the farthest edge of humour: its darkest side. This book argues that such conflict has not only traumatically shaped the modern psyche but created a fertile ground for humour to grow and evolve with the advent of new representations and technologies. The chapters in this volume focus on international conflicts that have been reported widely through news media but seldom regarded as material for serious humour studies. Each chapter begins by engaging with a particular form of confrontation before providing a case study of how it has contributed to the creation, enjoyment, and/or sharing of humour via different media.

This volume is a valuable resource to students and scholars of humour studies, modern cultural and social history, the history of technology, and media studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: “[W]‌hen the world is torn apart by so much conflict and division…”
• 1 Caricaturising the City: Humour and Racial Difference in New York City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century1
• 2 Red in the Face: The Great Depression, Nathanael West, and Cynical Humour
• 3 Juro Kubicêk’s Mein K(r)ampf: Derision, Dissent, and Denazification in Post-War Berlin
• 4 The Power and Limitations of Humour in State-Socialist Hungary in the Aftermath of the 1956 Revolution
• 5 “A demonstration is also FUN”: Folk Humour and Play as Tactics to Disrupt the Rational State during the 1968 Protests
• 6 Confronting Patriarchy: Humour and the British Women’s Liberation Movement, 1968–1992
• 7 Riotous Laughter: LGBTQ+ Humour in the Age of Stonewall
• 8 Survivalist Humour: Improvising at the Turn of the Millennium1
• 9 Confronting China’s “Little Pinks”: Political Humour in Namewee’s Love Song “Fragile”1
• Index