Abstract
In this seminar, I will present the main analytical ideas of my book ‘Comic at the Core’, which I am currently writing. The book and the ideas that I will present are based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork among stand-up comedians in New York City.
The overall idea is to consider stand-up comedy as a form of contemporary myth-making. In ‘Comic at the Core’ I thus try to promote an understanding of humor as a fundamental component of broader narrative structures, whose comedic force derives from an intensification of form, what will be defined as ‘mythic involution’.
The book borrows (steals!) its structure from ‘The Fire of the Jaguar’ by Terence Turner. In that book, Turner explores one Kayapo myth and, by doing so, he critically engages with Levi Strauss’s seminal work on myth. Inspired by Turner, my book is structured as an extended analysis of one main comedic ‘bit’: ‘The News’ by Norm MacDonald.