{"product_id":"when-comedy-goes-wrong-9780253072528","title":"When Comedy Goes Wrong","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhile conventional wisdom has it that humor embodies a spirit of renewal and humility, a dispirited form of comedy thrives in a media-saturated and politically charged environment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhen Comedy Goes Wrong \u003c\/i\u003eexamines how, beginning in the late-twentieth and carrying into the early twenty-first century, a certain comic dispirit found various platforms for disheartening cultural politics. From the calculated follies on talk radio programs like the Rush Limbaugh Show through the charades of \"cancel culture\" and ultimately to so-called Alt-Right comedy, the transgressions, improprieties, and ego trips endemic to a newfangled comic freedom produced entirely unfunny ways of being. To understand these unfunny ways, Christopher J. Gilbert challenges the prevailing belief in humor's goodness, analyzing radio personalities, meme culture, films, civil unrest, and even the language of ordinary individuals and everyday speech, all to demonstrate what happens when humor becomes humorless. As such, Gilbert imagines a nuanced sense of humor for a tumultuous world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUltimately, \u003ci\u003eWhen Comedy Goes Wrong\u003c\/i\u003e transcends partisanship to explore the uglier parts of American culture, imagining the stakes of doing comedy--and being comical--as a means of survival.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eChristopher J. Gilbert is Associate Professor of English at Assumption University. He is author of \u003ci\u003eCaricature and National Character: The United States at War\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also author of numerous articles published in a wide variety of academic journals and several chapters in edited volumes, and coeditor (with John Louis Lucaites) of \u003ci\u003ePleasure and Pain in US Public Culture\u003c\/i\u003e. When he is not teaching and writing, Gilbert is a farmsteader and an avid cyclist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Indiana University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51181949976850,"sku":"9780253072528","price":93.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b335782d-7c8b-4339-a06c-a46b96b87a37.jpg?v=1744410446","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/when-comedy-goes-wrong-9780253072528","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}