Stand-up comedy as a hallmark of western culture

Abstract

The article examines stand-up comedy in view of the symptoms of Western culture that constitute the environment in which this artistic expression has matured. These systems of Western culture include: 1) the world of spectacles, 2) the dialectic and current domination of comedy over tragedy in Western culture, 3) the cathartic sources of performing arts genres, 4) the cult of art and the artist in Western culture, including the stand-up artist, and the Greek category of hubris, and 5) the function and value of stand-up comedy in Western culture and “comedy” in “dividual societies”. To expound this comparative cultural approach, which is rarely applied to stand-up comedy, I draw upon selected cultural examples, such as the rituals of some Native American tribes (Cochiti, USA; and Kamëntšá, Colombia) along with their stand on art and ethics and contrapose this with the performance “Koniec świata” (“The End of the World”) by the Polish comedy group Stand-up Polska (autumn 2019). By setting these examples in the historical context of the genesis of stand-up comedy and the cultural context of the development of communities unburdened by the individualistic and “progressive” ambitions of Western culture, I argue the position that stand-up comedy, like the initial comedy genre, abides by the goal of moral perfecting.

Keywords

• comedians
• spectacle
• comedy over tragedy
• cult of art
• dividual society