Laughing matters: Stand-up comedy and enjoyment in the age of late capitalism

Abstract

Stand-up comedy has emerged as an immensely resonant youth-oriented pop-cultural form within the Indian landscape. This article studies the form and content of stand-up comedy to foreground its implicit banality. By analysing the subtleties of this banality, we argue that contemporary stand-up comedy has the capacity to produce a peculiar kind of enjoyment. The moment of laughter and the consequent enjoyment instills a sense of fleeting thought. This unintended contemplation, coupled with banality, has the potential to produce an enjoyment and a cultural form that can possibly resist complete appropriation.