Hyman, Timothy. Carnivalesque.

Hyman, Timothy. Carnivalesque. London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2000.

A historical account of the carnivalesque in art, mostly more concerned with the grotesque than the humourous per se. Addresses the historical role of the carnival, and its relation to art through a series of painters from the 16th century to the present day. Mostly concerned with carnivalesque themes such as crowds, masks, bodies and inversion. Lots of pictures of genetalia interpreted through Bahktin with a predominantly formal concern, though many of the paintings are argued to convey political messages (though not have political effects as it were).

A companion essay by Roger Malbert is more scpetical as regards the political function of the carnival in his treatment of contemporary art. Argues that the carnival loses something of its essence when it passes from lived exprience to text, but that it also gains the ability to capture the fleeting and thereby confront the viewer with the world. Anthony Howell and Paul McCarthy are perhaps the most interesting examples.

Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey Jones and Ethan Thompson. Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era

Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey Jones and Ethan Thompson. Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2009.

An account of contemporary satirical TV shows - including The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, South Park, SNL, Dave Chappelle, Sacha Baron Cohen and Chris Morris - which provides useful descriptive and historical content. Theoretically bound to Bahktin via Crichtley school of humour theory, however, which leads to unsophisticated celebrations of subversive and critical power of satire as political force. Useful categorisations of terminology, but reductive critical political analysis leads to premature conclusions.

Bakhtin, Mikail. Rabelais and his World.

Bakhtin, Mikail. Rabelais and his World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984.

For Bakhtin, the carnival, or the “carnivalesque,” was a comic state of being that functioned during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as a respite from official order and the everyday repression of the lower classes: a site of festivity and liberation wherein boundaries and hierarchies were inverted or overcome, rationalism and fear were revoked and seriousness was repealed, if only briefly (3-52). In the carnival there is no distinction between actors and spectators (7). The clowns are not actors playing a part, they inhabit the borderline between life and art (8).While it was not official, the festive aspect of life was tolerated, even legalised (9) because it could not be completely shut down. The carnival is liberation from the prevailing truth and established order and an entry into “truly human relations” (10).

Though not all interpretations of humour as subversion evoke the spirit of the carnival, insofar as the carnival represents the ability of (folk) humour to challenge authority and realise the contingent nature of existing structures of power, the notion of the carnival can serve as a useful metonym for the constellation of theoretical approaches that locate in humour an innate capacity for subversion.

Bhaktin argues that Carnival was so important in this earlier moment, because the official culture of the medieval was without laughter (73) therefore ‘vents’ needed to be created (75). Medieval laughter “was absolutely unofficial but nevertheless legalised” because the rite of the ‘fool’s cap’ was inviolable (89). For the brief time of the festival, life leaves it strictures (89) Carnival is freedom from class status and therefore fear (90). But humour was not just to escape repression, it being laughter in and of itself was crucial to liberate and enliven the people (94). However a love of laughter is not always resistance or opposition, laughter can respect what it parodies (95).