Should satire make us laugh? Is satire always funny? Why do we laugh at things anyway? Adam and Jo are joined by Dr Kate Davison (University of Sheffield) to talk about the social history of laughter, and the various satires of the eighteenth-century tavern keeper Ned Ward.
In this episode Jo and Adam and Kate talk about:
Adam’s Funny Game
Adam Smith (from the eighteenth century)
Appropriate/Inappropriate laughter
Brexit
Charles Dickens
Disapprobation
Disease
Doctor, Doctor Jokes
Edward (Ned) Ward
Francisco Garcia
Francis Hutchinson
Friday Night Dinner
Graphic satire from the eighteenth century
Grub street
John Dryden
Incongruity (theory of laughter)
Laughter
Laughter as entertainment
Laughing with/Laughing at
Long eighteenth century
Memes
Print culture
Puns
Nish Kumar
Social communication
Stewart Lee
Superiority (theory of laughter)
Thomas Hobbes
Vice (dir. by Adam McKay)
2EN606: Sick Novels (York St John University, Literature module)The Index of Laughter used in ‘Adam’s Funny Game’:
No reaction
Sympathetic smile
Polite titter
Genuine titter
Gaffuw
Sustained laughing out loud
Roll on the floor laughing
Laughing in your mind but no physical laughter
Your smiling for no reason because you’re working hard to suppress a laugh
Uncontrollable and inappropriate laughter you are unable to sustainJoin Adam and Jo again for their big finale:
Has satire ever really been a “man’s game”? Does satire work differently when written by women? Or when women are the targets? How is sexuality treated by satire? Adam and Jo are joined by Professor Karen Harvey (University of Birmingham) to talk about satire, sex and gender.