| Description |
Since its origins in the vaudeville tradition, the rhetoric of standup comedy has reproduced logics and discourses of systems of power, such as White supremacy and patriarchy. After all, it was not long ago that White men were the only ones who could be paid to tell jokes on a stage. While many have critiqued the racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced nature of comedic rhetorics, few have considered how identity-based comedy, particularly racial comedy, might function productively, rather than oppressively. This thesis represents the beginning of a necessary intervention into understanding humor and comedy as discursive spaces that need constant interrogation and interpretation, and to theorize comedic rhetoric beyond simplistic causal ways of understanding how persuasion and discursive action operate. Comedians, particularly those with marginalized identities who face discrimination and oppression within the very space of standup comedy, are limited (or not) in their agency to perform subversive comedy. What, then, might we be able to understand about race and racial identity, gender and embodied performances of pregnancy, and humor and systems of power? What is the relationship between the comedian, their joke, their audience, and the constructs of power in which they are all entangled? In this thesis, I use a rhetorical analysis to study the comedic rhetoric of Ali Wong in her two standup comedy specials, Baby Cobra (2016) and Hard Knock Wife (2018), in order to interrogate how Wong constructs Asian American, female, and female Asian iv American identity. At the core of this thesis is the argument that one must conduct varied readings of standup comedy that take into account its inherently polyphonic and polysemic nature. Thus, each chapter theorizes possible ways that Ali Wong humorously articulates racial and gendered identities, and approaches Wong's rhetoric differently based on assumptions of her agency, or lack thereof. By drawing from theories such as double consciousness, impersonation, racial triangulation, performativity, and carnival, I begin a critical interrogation into standup comedy as a productive, performative site of identity. |
