David Chappelle's 'Space Jews'

2016

Although the political situation in Palestine is more serious than ever, contemporary Palestinian art and film are, paradoxically, becoming more humorous in their responses. Laughter in Occupied Palestine looks deeply into this trend, and is the first book to provide an overview of Palestinian art and film, showing the ways in which both art forms have developed in reaction to critical moments in Palestinian history over the last century. Chrisoula Lionis analyzes both the impetus behind this shift toward humour and its consequences, arguing that it has flourished amid political uncertainty and the decline in nationalist hope. Revealing the crucial role of jokes in responding to the failure of the peace process and ongoing occupation, she unearths the potential of laughter to facilitate understanding and empathy in a time of conflict and division.

Teaching Artist Journal

Holocaust Humor, Satire, and Parody on Israeli Television

Arie Sover (ed), The Languages of Humor: Verbal, Visual and Physical Humor, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 70-85., 2018

Film director Jonathan Kesselman’s 2003 comedy The Hebrew Hammer introduced a new Jewish superhero on cable television: a tough, hip, jive-talking “biblical brother” who battles anti-Semites on the streets of New York under the gaze of adoring children, desirous women, and admiring African-Americans. Although the Hebrew Hammer is a cool Jewish thug who transcends the exilic condition of the proverbially submissive diaspora Jew through his brawn and swagger, he is also funny; he is a gangster who exhibits the neuroses, complaints, and schlemiel-like stereotypes that lie at the heart of modern Jewish humour. The Hebrew Hammer represents the culmination of a trend in American popular culture that began in the 1950s with Lenny Bruce. An unapologetically proud Jew, Bruce deployed his comedy and his cool persona to demolish Gentile propriety. Proclaiming an affinity to other minorities who had also suffered at the hands of Anglo- Saxon Christendom, Bruce and his successors publicly mocked their history of exclusion and the legacy of racism. A narrative of shared affliction has allowed Jewish humourists to appropriate the stereotypes and cultural practices of African-Americans and other ethnic groups, and to embed them into their comedy, fusing them with familiar Jewish tropes. This is the foundation of a new Jewish humour, one that remains anchored in the past, even as it has been refashioned to suit a multi-cultural immigrant society.

The chapter is part of a book edited by Gayatri Devi and Najat Rahman titled Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (Wayne University Press, 2014) «Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema explores what humor theorists have identified as an "emancipatory," "liberatory," even "revolutionary" function to humor. Among the questions contributors ask are: How does Middle Eastern cinema and media highlight the stakes and place of humor in art and in life? What is its relation to the political? Can humor in cinematic art be emancipatory? What are its limits for its intervention or transformation? Contributors examine the region’s masterful auteurs, such as Abbas Kiarostami, Youssef Chahine, and Elia Suleiman and cover a range of cinematic settings, including Egypt, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. They also trace diasporic issues in the distinctive cinema of India and Pakistan.» See http://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/humor-middle-eastern-cinema

The critical geopolitics literature has engaged popular culture and media in many forms, usually focused on mass media or elite-produced niche media. The issue of humor as a form of popular culture with geopolitical content has been explored only recently by geographers. This paper utilizes disposition theory, with its emphasis on social context, to link humor and geopolitical analyses of humor. The analysis of two Jeff Dunham comedy skits centering on the character Achmed the Dead Terrorist demonstrates the utility of disposition theory as a construct to situate humor in the context of its original production and as a fluid, global phenomenon that is shared through various social networks via the Internet. Key Words: critical geopolitics, disposition theory, humor, popular culture, popular geopolitics.

Ivanova Alyona, “Book Review: Is It OK to Laugh about It?”, European Journal of Humour Research 6 (4), pp. 145–150, 2018

The book discusses the phenomenon of Holocaust humour in contemporary Israel . For many years, Israeli culture recoiled from dealing with the Holocaust from a humorous or satirical perspective. A humorous approach has been seen as a threat to the sanctity of its memory, a dangerous process that normalises Nazism and Hitler. Official agents of Holocaust memory continue following this approach, but from the 1990s onward, an alternative, unofficial path of commemoration has been taking shape. The book may be of interest for humour scholars from different disciplines as it contains many analytical angles and involves a rich collection of films, TV shows, books, poetry, songs, and skits based on Holocaust humour, satire, and parody.