Introduction
In a major work on social theory, Anthony King writes: ?Sociologists today have an undeveloped sense of humour. For all their talk of reflexivity they themselves conspicuously lack self-awareness.? (2004:3) In King?s radical call for a hermeneutic sociology that is not marked by a structure agency dualism in favour of life and its meaningful interpretation, he evokes the figure of Hamlet as the epitome of the man torn between life and its ghostly structures (King, 2004:227ff). For King (2004:230-233) sociologists? today are Hamlet?s torn from interpreting the social world adequately and illuminatingly if they stand between structures and agency: ?Life delights them not. It is important to turn back to life? concludes King (2004:238). Interestingly Hamlet?s ?man delight?s not me? soliloquy is begun, ?I have of late ?lost all my mirth.? Before his speech on the ?loss of mirth? is concluded his friend Rosencrantz smirks to his delight not in men which probes Hamlet to end a deeply metaphysical speech with a defence of his own heterosexuality: ?no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so,? replies Hamlet, as if responding to a school-boy quip of ?Ha! Gay!? From the metaphysical to the base, sociologists should delight in all aspects of life and through laughter reveal its meaning. This paper takes on Rosencrantz?s laughing attitude to delight not in men to suggest that sociologists, regardless of their Hamlet image, could in fact be humours if only they realise that what they say is of importance to what comedians have said or have to say on life. The two ? this paper argues ? are of recursive value to one another. This paper gives sociology back its mirth as it argues that comedians and sociologists could be two sides of the same coin interpreting life.
Despite comedians stature as ?celebrities? and multi-millionaire?s in a multi-billion pound industry (Freidman, 2011) this paper will study their potential contribution to a hermeneutic sociology ? an interpretation of life. Comedians are marginal social actors who gaze upon life and interpret it to probe at it through humour but, of late, they are mainstream celebrities in a booming culture industry. Instead of this starting point, our starting point is the sociological imagination that one comedian in particular has developed. This is Russell Kane. In his novel The Humourist (2012), Kane critiques British society?s comedy boom through the use of a fictional comedian named Jay Conway. One notices that Conway is, in fact, Kane himself as he references Conway?s ?historic double in the comedy awards world? for a show which is ?trite autobiography? (Kane, 2012:32). Kane has won both the Edinburg Foster?s Comedy Award and Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2010 for his auto-biographical show about the relationship he had with his father growing up in Essex, Smokescreens and Castles (Kane, 2011a). But his novel remains a polemical slight to British society?s recent celebrification of comedy: ?This pathetic attempt to make jesters into rock stars? and ?the paranoid attempts of middle-brow comedians such as Jay Conway to elevate their pedestrian ejaculations to art or iconic status? (Kane, 2012:48). In the novels plot-line his protagonist, a comedy-savant, is forced to come to accept from an academic who turns into a shaman of comedy, that comedy will never be art, iconic or anything more than laughter.
Kane?s novel is a critique of British society?s comedy boom as much as it is a critique of himself, or what he quips in act as a ?self-heckle!? The argument of this article shall be that Kane?s comedy should be problematized for more sociological reasons and not merely his status as a celebrity in a condemned culture industry ? by both professional sociologists and politicians (Sanjeev, 2012). A self-heckle is a critical self-interpretation. It is putting eyes on oneself and one?s life world. Sociologists and comedians have this in common. A sociology that interprets life is one that rests upon comprehension of the ideas and ideals that define it (King, 2004:165ff). To adequately critique life is to adequately understand it and its central ideas and principles of legitimacy (King, 2004:213). To adequately make fun is, as I shall argue, to have adequately understood and find the ideas lacking. The Self-Heckle of this paper is therefore the sociological value of comedy as cultural criticism as it provides sociological insight into the lives of people: the critique of society is a self-heckle of society upon itself and its own failings. Comedians may well be able to act as ?comic relief? but they also are cultural mediators (Mintz, 1985), as well as having their origin in shamanic rites of community and revelation of esoteric secrets (Kirby, 1974). With this I shall also argue they contribute to the enterprise of sociology and sociological critique with their material, which itself has a recursive value for sociologists as well an aspect of what Bakhtin called ?folk consciousness? (1984:6). This extends the ?Stand-up comedian as anthropologist? thesis (Koziski, 1997) as I explore the ?stand-up comedian as sociologist?: Using Kane?s comedy as a case study I wish to outline how comedians and sociologists can be seen to be engaged in similar yet distinct aspects of commentary and critique of their society and both having a complimentary element to each other. Mary Douglas? (1975) claim that jokes only arise if the social structure established allows for it through its inner contradictions is extended to suggest that, as it is through this contradiction that both sociologists seek their enquiries and comedians garner their material, jokes elaborate sociological observations as much as sociological observation is affirmed through jokes. The complimentary aspect is recursive and in the first section I shall explore this as part of sociological as well comedic ?methodology?. Having theoretically outlined the position of the comedian and the sociologist, dwelling especially on the special social position of the comedian, I document how Kane?s Smokescreens and Castles (2011a) is indebted to and complimented by (as well as being an extension to) Young & Wilmott?s classic in British sociology, Family & Kinship in East London (1957).
My thesis is that Kane?s comedy can be described as ?comedic sociology? with implications for how ?humour? directed toward the ?social world? is of operative use to the ?sociological imagination? (Mills, 1959). Koziski? (1997) thesis on comedian as anthropologist focused upon the cultural pivot of comedians as they draw strands of culture together in their routines. I shall do the same here but additionally I wish to put at the heart of this analysis the fault line between comedian and sociologist. As the ?paradox? of the ?fool as a social type? is their valoration as well as being the deprecated scapegoats of the social order (Klapp, 1949:160), I argue for the ?social position of? and the ?hypostasis of the jester? as ?magicians?, as found in Marcel Mauss? (2001) general theory where magic is situated as a ?marginal rite?. Following others who position drama as the offspring of religious and magical rites (Kirby, 1974; Schecher, 1976; Alexander, 2004), I will illustrate this by arguing that observational comedians could be called ?magician of propositional fallacies,? utilising the theories of Mary Douglas (1975) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) on comedy, carnival and social structure. I shall conclude by suggesting that value of Kane?s material for British society in the era of celebrification and defamation of comedians is in fact democratic and aided by sociological insight.
Recursive truths and methodology: ?material? as comedic sociology?
British stand up since the 1980s has transformed many ?acts? into social commentators by making use of the intellectual resources of high-culture to prefigure social and political mandates (Scott, 2005:103ff). This spans from the ?alternative comedy? of Ben Elton to contemporary stand ups, e.g. Mark Thomas (Quirk, 2010). Sociological observations and arguments figure in their material as much as it informs their material. This is the crux of of Kane?s stand up: a mixture of social observation with autobiography, a concise definition of what Mill?s dubbed as the ?sociological imagination?. The legacy of the ?alt comedy? movement, as Freidman (2011:348) observes, is that ?the culturally privileged are, to some extent, creating new forms of ?objectified? cultural capital via the careful consumption of ?legitimate? items of British comedy.? Freidman points out ? in a similar vein to this article ? that comedy has been ?consecrated by academics? in scholarly analysis of their material (Freidman, 2011:354). Sociologists and comedians since the 1980s seem to be engaged in a common project as both become what Karl Mannheim (1936:10) dubbed the ?intelligentsia?: ?social groups whose special task is to provide an interpretation of the world for that society.? And they both observe what Anthony Giddens called the double hermeneutic of sociological knowledge (1976:162): Comedy routines as well as sociological tropes become commentaries and stock resources in understanding the world one inhabits. But a crucial difference between comedians and sociologists should be pointed out if my argument is to be clear for a thesis of comedy routines as ?comedic sociology?.
David Robb?s (2010) study on GDR political ?clowns? Wenzel & Mensching pin-points this distinction. With Wenzel & Mensching?s use of Bakhtin?s (1984; 1981) philosophy of the carnivalesque space to critique of ?official? ideology as well as the chronotope of the clown (as a socially demarcated, ?timeless? persons) to remain unscathed in their politically contentious acts informing their work, Wenzel himself remarks to Robbs: ?The political doesn?t interest me in the first instance as clown. For me the problem becomes political only after I?ve solved it aesthetically?? (Wenzel in Robb, 2010:91, emphasis added). A distinction is being made with sociological conclusions steeped and made in reference to philosophical traditions and clown?s acts steeped and inspired by the same traditions. Wenzel?s point is that for the clown the aesthetics comes prior to philosophy and with this we observe that for sociologists it?s the contribution to social debate and knowledge that comes prior to anything they produce being used as ?material? for the comic. As such, Robb cogently argues that clown?s ?carnivalesque, therefore, while containing a symbolic revolutionary component, should not merely reduced to political subversion. It is rather an aesthetic abstraction of something larger ? the historic, collective will for utopian renewal.? (2010:91) Such distinctions between clown knowledge and sociological knowledge does not seek to privilege one over the other. Rather it refers to how human societies invent their cultural practices, roles and what knowledge these role-complex espouse.
One may venture that ?becoming a comedian? or ?becoming a sociologist? are two very different careers paths and, as such, have their concomitant biographical nuisances, e.g. ?I became a stand up because of ? the love of performing, the thrill of making people laugh, watching Ben Elton on TV? or ?I became a sociologist because ? reading Marx inspired me, I felt a need to research and contribute to social debate, I care little about money or happiness?? Yet they do have similar outlooks in that both are continually observing and pointing out contradictions, looking for the inner logic to social situations, phenomena, patterns of change or continuity. But in deeper sense they share a similar consciousness, which Berger (1963:37ff) states comes from sociologist?s tendency to debunk, unmask or unveil the ?official? prevailing mode of thoughts or point to the unintended outcomes of social actions: e.g. Protestantism leading a capitalist outlook in Weber?s classic or suicide being the result of impersonal social logic in Durkheim?s Suicide (Berger, 1963:51-53). Comedians do this, also, and it can arise from how Berger (1963:68ff) suggests that this ?sociological consciousness? arises, namely through what he calls ?alternation? in one?s personal biography, i.e. how the move between differing ?systems of meaning? and Wektanscgauung. Such ?aleternation? ?is precisely the perception of oneself in front of an infinite series of mirrors, each one transforming one?s image in a different potential conversion? (Berger, 1963:77) as one no longer takes ?official reality? as ?given? or doxa (cf. Bourdieu, 1977).
Both sociologists and comedians are ?marginal? social actors. Mary Douglas arguing that the joker ?appears to be a privileged person who can say certain things in a certain way which confers immunity? (1975:107) is equally applicable to the sociologist in terms of how they look at society but not in terms of the immunity. Sociologists contribute to social knowledge and truths, acting in roles in government and research bodies, providing public services to their employers. The jester, as Jobb argues, wears a mask as a satirical response to the masks that are social conventions, manners and etiquette. But, unlike the sociologist who reveals the ?masks? of social performances (e.g. Goffman, 1959), the jester has the immunity of his position as a marginal performer of contrived fictions; people don?t take them seriously. I will develop this in the next section, but for now what we should point toward is that despite their ?not taken seriously? (?it?s just a joke!?) status they do engage in sociological observations in a similar vein. Both comedians and sociologists are granted special status to ?speak? on behalf of their society. In blunt economic terms, only comedians and sociologists are paid to observe and critique society, critique being the limitations of social conventions and modalities of social knowledge. In the dramaturgical tradition of Goffman?s sociology, where it is argued that performative competence is the essence of successful social lives (1959), Russell Kane?s 2009 Edinburg Fringe show Hunan Dressage makes similar observations regarding manners or conventions and their artifice performance by peoples. More than this it has similar effects upon the public receiving this as ?knowledge?: as the reviewer of Kane?s Human Dressage writes
it?s the codified, subtly coerced ?dressage?? the way we perform dances ? ?social, biological, physical? ? to attain approval and acceptance.
One?s initial reaction to being bombarded with a catch-all theory that sounds like it?s been made up on the hoof ? The more you listen to him, though, the more you?re forced to concede that he might well have a valid point.
He reduces British behaviour ? with its repressions and sudden violent outbursts ? to a simple formula: ?the passion and the pause?. Hence all that drunken Friday-night bother we get on the streets ? it?s the flipside of the rest of the week?s restraint. Kane rams his abstract ideas home with clusters of research and concrete examples from his working-class upbringing. His uptight, BNP-supporting dad, his own tortured, autodidactic adolescent self ? at once diffident and defiant ? and his free-thinking cockney Nan are all trotted out as supporting evidence for his arguments. (Cavendish, 2009)
What is being implied in Cavendish?s review is something like sociological observations becoming the well-spring of comic material as much as comedic routines on British ?drink culture? becomes a site of attempted social aetiology. The fetishisation of national character (as the central facet of nationhood), here ?British repression?, is used to explain drink culture. In making this claim to knowledge, one has to keep in mind Wagner?s social ontology: ?Behind every phenomenal event, be it part of human sociality or of the surrounding living and non-living environment, lurks the enigmatic possibility of an anthropomorphic or sociomorphic explanation.? (1981:87) The innate and conventional idea that people have of ?the British? becomes an anthropomorphic invention for comedic routines as much as sociological observation upon working class lifestyle. Such sociological content is a sociological exegesis of wit; to laugh at the social world by way of its own jokes immanently within it is not dissimilar to Douglas? claim that ?a joke is seen and allowed when it offers a symbolic pattern of a social pattern occurring at the same time.? (1975:98) And as such we see ?not a great leap from attributing to the joke rite a subtle image of society to attributing also to it an image of the conditions of human knowledge.? (1975:111) Social structure ? or what Wagner calls ?culture? (as an ?innate? environment) ? provides the possibility for jokes and the limitations of human thought on the social.
The observational material found in Kane?s routine is, therefore, adept sociological observation in that it is able to resonate as ?knowledge? on society. This points to the partial homology between jokes and rites that Mary Douglas observes, in the sense that ?a joke has it in common with a rite in that both connect widely differing concepts? (1975:102) ? here it is Kane?s connecting ?British repression? with ?British binge drinking? so as to create a notion of ?being British? as a unitary and totalised identity as theories of nationalism have argued (e.g. Anderson, 1991). Yet the nature of these connections has a widely different purpose to that of sociology. As Jobb?s pointed out above, the comedic abstraction is sourced from wider socio-cultural ideals. The status of comedic observations as a ?comedic sociology? (as if it were a way of ?doing? sociology like Goffman?s ?dramaturgical? sociology) are meta-sociological in that while seeking the same truths as sociologists the knowledge they produce is not, like sociology, a sober and serious reflection upon ?the state of society? which may be appropriated for policy or social change. Rather comedic sociology has the status of Bakhtin?s ?folk consciousness? (1984:6). When a sociologist starts their research project on, say, working class fashion choices and styles (the ?chav? look), they do so from pre-established social facts. The cultural prominence and demonization of ?the chav? (Jones, 2011), as such, will reveal Bourdieuian truths on notions of ?lack of cultural capital? or ?dispositions? in the working class habitus which reveal this social fate (e.g. Archer et. al. 2007). Comedic sociology will do nothing of the sort. It?ll create a comic abstraction of wider sociological facts in jest: where ?carnival is the people?s second life, organised on the basis of laughter.? (Bakhtin, 1984:8)
Bakhtin?s (1984) notion of carnival incorporated what he called ?ritual laughter?, how in mythic scripture there were ?comic and abusive ones? (1984:6) as official truths mingled with unofficial truths. The unofficial truths were the result of the official world experienced in carnival, where the second world is an abstraction from officialdom and suspended of consequences. The impunity granted by jest in a suspended timescape of festive spaces, what Bakhtin called the chronotope of the clown as ?their own special little world? (1981:159), allows knowledge to become folk consciousness (Bakhtin, 1984:6). Comedic sociology ? in the form of Kane?s ?bits? and ?material? on the phlegmatic British so as to joke about actual sociological problems such as binge drinking ? is folk consciousness. Unlike the ESRC grant on ?binge-drinking and what to do about it? which finds its way into public sphere debate (e.g. Fox, 2011), Kane?s comedic skit has its value in becoming freedom from prevailing conventions as well an comedic-opiate of liberation. It becomes meta-sociology and meta-critique: the joke shows the limitations of social thought in showing its own form in theatrical exaggeration. Comedic sociology, then, is sociological knowledge devoid of the power of change for its observations ?produces no real alternative, only an exhilarating sense of freedom from the form in general.? (Douglas, 1975:96)
Sociologists and comedians share a similar outlook on the world, a ?things could be different? mentality. As such they share what Roy Wagner has dubbed the ?ecology? of the social scientist, they?re an ?individual who is able to penetrate the workings of invention and ?belief?? and ?will be able to deal with meanings without being ?used? by them.? (1981:145) They?re suited to their surroundings in that they don?t heed or become a vehicle for official ?dogmas? but rather use dogma to change, sociology through social engineering under the purview of what Giddens called the ?double hermeneutic of sociological concepts? (1976) and the comic through freedom of socially imposed categories of thought and ?culture?.
The hypostasis of the jester: society?s magician of propositional fallacies
Despite the contention that many fools old and new seek, sought and have ?changed? their social world through their comic musings (Otto, 2001; Quirk, 2010; Jobbs, 2010), in a climactic scene in The Humourist, Kane?s comedy-savant is forced to accept Woody Allen?s dictum that ?there is no such thing as substance or material, only pure ?ineffable funniness?? (2012:252) by a comedic shaman. Additionally, Kane has argued against the motion of ?does comedy need to have a point?? on BBC Radio4xtra podcast What?s so Funny? Kane explains:
Absolutely not. Not at all. I write shows that have a point but I will cry with laughter at Tim Vine [?] I?m what I call socio bi-lingual. I can speak and write in this mode I?m speaking in now, full of self-insight, but I can also can go home and laugh because my mates? farted. [?] This is something I want to explore in the novel I?m writing. Some things are just funny. (Kane, 2011b)
Kane?s position on ?whether comedy needs a point? in the comedy world?s own discourse shall be our starting point into the academic question of what the social position of the jester (comic) is in society so as to account for Kane?s comedic sociology in his own shows which, by his own admission, ?have a point?.
Ineffable funniness is not an epistemological argument in the usual ?philosophical sense? but rather can be seen to arise from the truth-seeking practice of comedians to prove their ?funniness?. Ineffable funniness is an ontological operation sought in comedic practice. With the comedians? sole purpose being to ?make people laugh?, and to fail in this is akin to death (?to die on stage?), laughter is the result of this comic act and one attributes the comic with the powers to produce what they illicit. One does not ponder Woody Allen?s classic ?I shot a moose? routine for its intricate formula or stock movement but rather says ?that?s funny? or better, purely laughs. This power of attribution reveals, from an anthropological perspective, the status of the comedian as a magician. The magician is attributed a funniness as if it were intrinsic to their very person, something ?inside? (?funny bones?) them as they become, like Yorick, ?men of infinite jest.? Taussig (2003) has argued that this notion of magical powers ?internal? to the magician results from the curious mixture of ?faith and scepticism? that is attributed to a magicians? public. Among the comedy cognoscenti people may often say ?I could do better than him?, or adopt a ?how hard can it be? attitude only to realise the perils of dying on stage. Kane?s (2012) protagonist suffers the same plight. The mixture of faith and scepticism comedians acquire is the continuum of ?will he be funny?? when they walk onstage coupled with the expectation that they will be and the ever present knowledge that they might ?die? in the process. Such a scepticism-faith complex can therefore give rise to a notion of ?intrinsic funniness? as the comedian becomes a magician, a person ?gifted? to make people laugh. Their magic is to illicit laughter and, as Mauss points out, magic is the domain of ?pure production, ex nihilo? (Mauss, 2001:175). So while the common retort among Friedman?s (2011:356-358) culturally privileged comedy connoisseurs is ?I hate Michael McIntyre,? they cannot deny the raucous laughter from his shows. While the comedy elite in Freidman?s study disparage McIntyre?s act, something of an intrinsic funniness can be granted to his foppish buffoonery on proof of laughter.
Intrinsic funniness is an ontological operation undertaken in comedy routines. It is not the starting point but rather the result of a mixture of faith and scepticism accorded to the comedic practice. Acknowledging this requires recourse to the more familiar claims made in comedy scholarship, the marginal position of the jester being the providence for ?getting away? with their jibes (Douglas, 1975:107; Bakhtin, 1984:267-268; Klapp, 1949). This marginal status of the comedian should be seen in light of Mauss? definition of magic as
any rite that which does not play a part in an organised cult ? it is private, secret, mysterious and approaches the limits of a prohibited rites. (Mauss, 2001:30, original emphasis)
Crucial for us is not merely the homologies one may point to with magical rites and comedic rites: such as the privacy of a joke (?getting it?, ?in jokes?); notions of comedic ?tricks? as secret mysteries revealed to the initiates; or the notion of prohibition with the examples of satirists put to death in Bakhtin?s Rabelais and his world (1984:268) when the lack of acquiescence to the dictates of carnival masquerade becomes outright heresy. Rather what is central to Mauss? definition is that magic is defined
not ?in terms of the structure of its rites, but by the circumstances in which these rites occur, which in turn determine the place they occupy in the totality of customs. (Mauss, 2001:30)
That this is central is because not only does Mauss? definition support the claims of the jesters marginal social position but rather Mary Douglas? apposite observation that one should investigate ?joking as one mode of expression ?in its total relation to other modes of expression.? I have already pointed out that the marginal position of the comedian (as well as the sociologists) is what has allowed them to take on an ?intelligentsia? role so the joke rite is able to act as a ?subtle image of society?. But what is more is that the joker?s relation to other modes of expression is also what grants them mysterious status or mystical powers. As Douglas points out, it is their inarticulate place in the social structure (1975:91; cf. Douglas, 2002 [1966]:122) which grants them special status to critique society but to not to be heeded in their observations. We should follow Douglas? claims that when mystical powers are seen as ?internal? to the person (such as intrinsic funniness) they are deemed ?uncontrollable? spiritual power and tend to be non-officially sanctioned (Douglas, 2002:123-124): hence the ontological operation in granting them a specialness, ?intrinsic funniness?.
In addition to the comedic magician as a marginal actor, this magical status is further elaborated in the homology between clown and magician in their ?total social identity?, ?they are life?s maskers; their being coincides with their role, and outside this role they simply do not exist.? (Bahktin, 1981:159) This is their hypostasis and, as such, accounts for the associations of comics with the mythological personage of the ?trickster? (Williams, 1979; Scott, 2005:51-55; Carr & Graves, 2006): tricksters mediate contradictions by being the middle-term between two oppositions (L?vi-Strauss, 1963:224). While it?s not wrong to say that comedy is dialectics, we need to acknowledge that their status is not a mediation to bring about harmonious social solidarity. Rather, as Douglas puts it: jokes ?do not affirm the dominant values, but denigrate and devalue. Essentially a joke is an anti-rite.? (1975:102) Not so much an anti-rite but, rather, a magical rite ? a rite that is on the limits of the prohibited. In Rites de passage (Van Gennep, 1960) there are three phases: separation, liminality and reintegration. These passages work from going to the everyday, profane world to a sacred world where celebration is celebration of society?s own-image and way of life (Durkheim, 2001). The jester is an iconoclast and does the opposite by denigrating and devaluing but yet is elevated into cultural heroes ? today, foppish millionaires. The rationale for this paradoxical result of the iconoclast being elevated into officialdom can be found in what jesters do in their jests; they follow the pattern separation, liminality, reintegration but by not resolving the contradiction for celebration of the social order but rather leaving the contradiction open they question the social order. While the ritual moves from A (separation from social order) to B (liminality) to C (integration into social order), the jester will move from A to B to A: they do not reintegrate but leave contradictions open. As such their material is able to be a propositional fallacy in what Freud called the ?tendency to economy? found in wit. Jokes exemplify ?the manifold application of the same words in addressing and answering?? (Freud, 1916:51). A rite is comedic when its synthesis is not a synthesis at all; it addresses and answers in the same terms.
This tautological operation (of A to B to A) undertaken in observational material on sociological cases is of operative use in critiquing the social world so as to show its inadequacies and limitations. Such jibes on sociological realities use propositional fallacies to critique the existing order. Kane uses this when he critiques what he takes to be negative aspects of social life, for instance his father?s racism. In a bit concerning recycling he asks, ?Why is it that someone who is right wing and racist, like my Dad is, naturally disbelieves climate change? There is no link whatsoever between hating brown and black people and not being into recycling ? If anything you?d think that recycling would appeal to the racist mind: tin in one bag, paper in another bag, cardboard in a separate bag. Everything in its different groups ? off to the incinerator.? (Kane, 2011a) Following Quirk (2010:121) we notice that ?by building on the easily-accepted premise? of the racist, Kane?s material seeks to appease the racist into that which they ?naturally? disparage in order to support his (Kane?s) conclusions. It says, ?you can discriminate all you want with recycling and, just like race riots, you can incinerate them at the end.? This works as a propositional fallacy of the type ?P therefore Q?:
If you are a racist you like to discriminate ([P therefore Q])
Recycling discriminates (& Q)
Racists like recycling. (- P)
Of course this is fallacious logical reasoning. Its premises are true but conclusion false ? its? what philosophers call a ?modus morons?: it can be written, [(P therefore Q) & Q] |= P (Teichman & Evans, 1995:221). This fallacy in the comic routine is thus able to act as a comedic rite. A joke is a rite which connects symbols of social life (here racism and recycling) where the ?the kind of connection of pattern A with pattern B ?is such that B disparages or supplants A? (Douglas, 1975:102) as opposed to official ritual which triumphs existing ideologies. By using the connection of two symbols, racism and recycling, it sociologically translates them into ?right-wing persons? and ?left-wing person? as well as ?working class, right wing father? and ?embourgeoised, left wing son?, so that B (recycling, left wing son) disparages A (racist, right wing father). In doing so, the propositional fallacy comes to stand for social structure and its contradictions. By way of jest, it celebrates anti-structure ? communitas and separation from the world (Douglas, 1975:103-104), a freedom from its categories by disparaging them through false but ingenious logic.
Smokescreens and Castles: the comedy of embourgeoisement
Its jokes standing for social structure which I shall now turn to as I outline how Kane?s ?shows with a point? are apposite for a comedic sociology having recursive value for sociological knowledge. As jokes stand for social structure in the sense that they offer a symbolic commentary upon a social pattern (Douglas, 1975), I would argue further that jokes are therefore not merely a symbolic commentary but, given their dialectical qualities, it is only when there is a contradiction immanent in the social structure that they are afforded and have effervescent value. Mills? statement that ?men do not usually define the troubles they have in terms of terms of historical change and institutional contradiction? (1959:3) is able to be exposed where comedy shows which define personal problems on wider sociological transformations gives them precisely the effervescent and ingenious value of a comedic rites. To celebrate the possibility of a life lived without contradictions, as Kane examines his biography with ingenious use of sociological concepts, is where comedic sociology and sociology writ large meet. This is the case with Kane?s historic double award-winning Smokescreens and Castles (2011a).
Peter Young & Michael Wilmott?s Family and Kinship in East London (1957) is a sociological classic. It tracks the transformation of novel institutions with old institutions: the impact of the suburban housing estate on the working classes, specifically documenting this through a focus upon residents of Bethnal Green to Essex, Leigh-on-Sea. This transformation is where Kane fits, his father being ? as puts it ? ?18 stone of cockney, shaven headed, racist Bethnal Green, Dad? (2008) and his growing up in Essex, Leigh-on-Sea. Smokescreens and Castles is a comedic sociology: it takes as its premise what Young & Wilmott sociologically explored in their ethnography and expands its inner contradictions so as to illicit humour at these contradictions. The joke in the social structure becomes the source of the inner tensions of Kane?s own biography, i.e. coming to terms with his fraught relationship with his father through his sociological imagination.
Family and Kinship (Young & Wilmott, 1957) stands as a sociological document which vividly depicts the experience of post-war ?embourgeoisement? in Britain. The working-class, extended family and neighbour relations with strong social ties of community and social capital was exchanged for ?suburbia? where houses are dotted around the countryside, neighbours are strangers and there is an absence of extended-kinship. This life in Bethnal Green was traded, Young & Wimott (1957:128-129) point out from interviews, for the promise it brought to the children ? it was ?better for the kiddies? in the form of housing, health benefits and opportunity. This embourgeoisement, symbolically expressed in the move to Greenleigh, bought the Bethnal Green migrants to a comparatively ?unfriendly? environment. Whereas Bethnal Green privileged community and open-ended exchanges between families, Essex offered a polite yet ever present hostility between neighbours. It gave rises to a mentality of ?keeping ourselves to ourselves? as keeping up with the Joneses crept in: ?Just because they?ve got a couple of ha?pence more than you they don?t want to know you? as one Mrs Morrow put it (in Young & Wilmott, 1959:149).
Kane?s Smokescreens and Castles is metaphor for this mentality of ?keeping ourselves to ourselves? and embourgoisment producing a ?being better? than others hostility. Kane expresses this by taking as his starting point his father building an extension on their council home and installing a swimming pool in the garden. A ?Castle? of a council house reveals how owners of the house ?vest it with a kind of personality: up to a point it then decrees what they shall do within its walls.? (Young & Wilmott, 1957:156) Kane?s narrative concerns what the 1980s Thatcher policy which allowed those same ex-Bethnal Greeners to buy their council house in Essex and how it impacted upon his upbringing. The ?keeping themselves to themselves? sociality of the housing estate in comparison to Bethnal Greeners becomes a metaphor for his father?s inability to express love and affection while also offering symbolic expression to his racism, homophobia and hyper-masculinity: ?build a wall around it, keep everything out, boy!? say Kane impersonating his Dad (2011a).
As Kane explains, buying the council house is a metaphor for the personality of his father but also embourgoisement. After the council house extension was finished, he says, his parents Julie and Dave become ?Juliet and David overnight? so as to entrench their movement between classes described by Young & Wilmott (1957:170ff) with elocution: ?their [Kane?s parents] accents changing from the broad London accent to the pinched Leigh-on-Sea slightly try hard Essex accent, which ironically slightly sounds more moronic than the original because the vowels aren?t fixed but the end of the words are making the effort.? (Kane, 2011a) The joke in the social structure is of social mobility being a contradiction in how Britons classify their world (Cannadine, 2000) through speech patterns of open-vowels means working class, closed vowels means upper class (Fox, 2004:73-75): the Essex embourgoisement of cockney vowels with pinched upper-class ends of words offers a symbolic commentary upon the social contradiction.
Embourgoisement becomes the joke in the social structure as it follows the propositional fallacy that social mobility therefore means enjoying the lifestyle of the class they economically now occupy, which Young & Wilmott explicitly noted is in fact not the case: with ?the possession of a new house having sharpened the desire for other material goods, the striving becomes a competitive affair. The house is a major part of the explanation.? (Young & Wilmott, 1957:161) Young & Wilmott make the observation that the house is, much like Kane?s material, a source of promise and frustration:
The house is also a challenge, demanding that their style of life shall accord with the standard it sets. ? They need carpets for the lounge, lino for the stairs, and mats for the front door. They need curtains. They need another bed. They need a kitchen table. They need new lampshades, pots and pans, grass seed and spades, clothes lines and bath mats, Airwick and Jeyes, mops and pails ? all the paraphernalia of modern life for a house two or three times larger and a hundred times grander than the one they left behind ? The first essential is money for material possession. ? A nice house and shabby clothes? (Young & Wilmott, 1957:156-157)
The challenge of embourgoisement sets the tone for Kane?s comedic sociology, observing the many aspects on Young & Wilmott?s ?paraphernalia of modern life?: a mother who desires Glade (?Airwick?) air fresheners and an obsessive desire to clean; a father who works tirelessly for a Mahogany dining table, a Mercedes car and because of the demand it makes on his money is expressed emotionally in resentment. ?It boke me!? says Kane impersonating his father?s hatred for his Mercedes.
A climatic routine brings together the ?better for the kiddies? and embourgoisment which material possessions signify during a Christmas memory:
Why work? Because of love and some primal drive for material wealth for the offspring. Brilliant. Then why, as you hand over that plasticy bit tat I?ve been begging for since October ?, why do you have to provide that cancerous bit of sadness at the same time, constantly reminding us of how shit it was you at an equivalent stage? ?Here you go boy, take your toys but remember I rocked back and forth WITH NOTHING and in some way you can?t understand, ITS YOUR FAULT!!? ?Coming in my room one Christmas ? he?d always find me at Christmas, ?the sixth Stella [beer] is in the chamber, time to find the son and give him a tragic image of my childhood?. I?m surrounded by piles and piles of spoilt bastard plastic? I?m in bliss but? I can?t stand to think of that little blonde boy in pain, I hate to think of my Dad as boy, sad. He came into my room, ?you got all the toys you want, boy? Good. I?m glad you?re happy?. ? He went out diagonally and ? said: ?I?m glad you?re happy, boy, but I want you to know one thing ? I was seven the first time I tried an egg!? ? This was another one of his: ?The first time I tried a fizzy drink I fucking cried!?(Kane, 2011a)
The ?better for the kiddies? ethos mixed with the pragmatic strain on income of embourgoisement is jokingly expressed in the private experience of a Christmas memory. The biography of Kane is steeped in the transformation of British society: gifts are tarnished with the brush of the sociological change of a class on the move both geographically and symbolically. Kane?s depiction of his parent?s embourgoisement becomes anthropomorphic, expressed in voice, material possessions and emotional guilt.
One also notices the propositional fallacies at work: ?if you experience embourgoisement for the good of the children, the children will be better off and happy.? Kane goes to prove this to be the opposite as his emotional guilt is expressed in sociological guise of ?alternation? ? competing systems of meaning (Berger, 1963). It is a rite which connects generations of ?working class father? with ?embourgoised son? so as to disparage the sociological realities of a presumed merit to class mobility. It is as much a critique of classed society as it is a critique of child-parent relations.
Yet we remember a joking rite expresses the contradictions and inadequacies of the social structure but nothing more. The ritual value of Kane?s material is that it resonates with the audience in laughter as one recognises themselves within it or allows people insight into experience of a social world they are not part of. It resolves none of the contradictions with which the material is a symbolic commentary upon but instead leaves them purely at the level of the imagination. In this way it becomes knowledge which is not sociological in the sense of Young & Whilmott?s conclusions in Family and Kinship but rather mythic knowledge as it remains purely at the level of the imagination. L?vi-Strauss (1963) pointed out that the trickster figure in North American mythology is an imaginative device utilised in myth which mediates real life contradictions through resolving them in the imagination. The real life contradictions Kane deals with are sociologically borne out in Young & Wilmott?s classic text on the personal experience of ex-Londoner experiencing embourgoisement but he offers no solution in practical terms, only stories whose comedic value allows the imaginative possibility, within himself and audience, that ?life doesn?t have to be like this?.
Conclusion
Having begun arguing that comedians and sociologists adopt the same outlook on life in that they decipher culture as the prism through which to understand man and society (and this accounts for the status of ?stand-up comedian as sociologist? or anthropologist (cf. Koziski, 1997:88-89)), it does not however account for the sheer celebrification they have garnered themselves in the past as well as the present. Our era is one of celebrity as sociologists often posit (e.g. Rojek, 2001; Alexander, 2010) and stand-up comedians are part and parcel of this. To conclude this article I wish to suggest why this is and what value it implies for sociological insight from Kane?s material. If we make the observation that if comedians are ?doing a type of sociology? (comedic sociology) we should ask: why are sociologists not quasi-rock star millionaires? While some vice-chancellors and elite tenured professors are on high salaries and some garner ?intellectual? idol status (e.g. Zizek for the Left), they don?t perform in quite the same way (despite their rehearsed quips and aphorisms being just as stylised as a punch line). They don?t perform in the same way for despite sharing ?intelligentsia? status, the socio-historical origins of the sociologist are not that of the comedian. The sociologist has his or her role-ancestry among the contemplative branch of society, the philosophers of ancient Greece as well as the priestly class of theologians in Medieval Christendom. The comedian, as I argued with their magician status, has their origin in shamanic ritual:
popular entertainments are associated with trance and derive from the practices of trance ? They do not seek to imitate, reproduce, or record the forms of existent social reality. Rather, the performing arts that develop from the shamanist trance ? seeks to break the surface of reality, as it were, to cause the appearance of a super-reality that is ?more real? than the ordinary. The illusionism is directly associated with delusionary experience, which is inherently surreal and intense, more ?real? than ordinary experience. (Kirby, 1974:14)
Laughter is enchantment and can be considered a type of ?trance? while these illusionisms in relation to Kane?s stand up are dramatic characterisations of his parents and class personages. Every working class male is either called ?Gary? or ?Dave?; every Essex girl is called ?Kelly? or ?Donna?. His father becomes a pigeon as he impersonates his walk, calling it ?Cockney head?, as he describes his persona: ?He?s got cockney head so severe he actually sprained it once when he was being racist? (Kane, 2008). Middle class people become their food preferences: ?He?s a chav, heckle him with a Quale?s Egg ?? Kane?s dramatic personae fill his sociological narrations and observations as they create an illusory reality, a reality that is ?more real? than the existing sociological categories of class, gender and tastes for instance.
Despite its origins and retention of shamanic illusionism, the place and importance of stand-up comedy ? notably Kane?s ? is not confined to this enclave of social life. Rather Alexander?s (2004:542-543) observation that as theatre supplanted ritual as the communication of social values, it also demonstrates it did not do so unchanged by socio-historical changes. Theatrical ritual became the space for an emerging public sphere, a symbolic space ?in which actors have increasing freedom to create and to project performances of their reasons, dramas tailored to audiences whose voices have become more legitimate references in political and social conflict.? (Alexander, 2004:544) The performance, Alexander stresses, is a key component in transmitting social values and ideals. Kane?s performance of illusory and one could say grotesque visions of British society, in his personal story that evokes sociological insight, becomes a space for a critical, democratic act. The stage becomes a place to question existing realities of class and embourgoisement through jokes as the dramatic illustration of inner contradictions in the social structure. In doing so, Kane?s stand-up comedy brings together the defuse symbols of his own personal life in order to develop a social polemic in the drama of his routines. Comedy retains the shamanic revelations but does so in the public sphere of Alexander?s ?social dramas?. As such, British society, with its elevation of the comic to level of cultural hero, celebrates a democratic and laudable achievement given the recursive value it is able to have: it gives people a ?second life? in jest. The problem with comedy celebrities can be summed up by what happens with overexposure: it misses the point of the drama they depict.
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Source: http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/smith_on_theory_and_culture/blog/2013/01/23/self-heckle-the-recursive-sociological-value-of-russell-kanes-stand-up/
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