At the Women’s March in January 2018, many protest posters featured offensive jokes at the expense of Trump’s body and behavior. Such posters were shared widely online, much to the amusement of the movement’s supporters. Through a close analysis of posts on Instagram and Twitter, we explore the role of “vulgar” and “offensive” humor in mediated social protest. By highlighting its radical and conservative tendencies, we demonstrate how we can understand these practices of offensive humor as a contemporary expression of “the carnivalesque” that is complexly intertwined with social change.
DayA. (2011). Satire and dissent: Interventions in contemporary political debate.
Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
10.
DelucaK. M.PeeplesJ. (2002).
From the public sphere to the public screen: Democracy, activism and the “violence” of Seattle.Critical Studies of Media Communication,
19(2), 125–151.
11.
DeNoraT. (2000). Music in everyday life.
Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
12.
Du BoisJ. W. (2007). The stance triangle. In R.Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 139–182).
Amsterdam, the Netherlands:
John Benjamins.
13.
Enli, G.S., & Skogerbø, E. (2013). Personalized Campaigns in Party-Centred Politics. Information, Communication and Society 16: 757–774.
14.
FoxG. L. (1977).
“Nice girl”: Social control of women through a value construct.Signs: Journal of Women and Culture and Society,
2, 805–817.
15.
FreudS. (1960). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious mind.
New York, NY:
W. W. Norton & Company.
GilmoreD. D. (1998). Carnival and culture: Sex, symbol, and status in Spain.
New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
18.
Githens-MazerJ. (2008).
Locating agency in collective political behaviour: Nationalism, social movements and individual mobilization.Politics,
28(1), 41–49.
Graefer, A. (2014).
White stars and orange celebrities: The affective production of whiteness in humorous celebrity-gossip blogs.Celebrity Studies,
5(1-2), 107–122.
21.
Grant-SmithJ. (2010).
Constructing the shitting citizen: The promise of scatological art as environmental and social activism. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture,
10(3), 1–11.
22.
HabermasJ. (1974).
The public sphere: An encyclopedia article.New German Critique,
3, 49–55.
JamiesonK. H.CapellaJ. N. (2008). Echo chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative media establishment.
Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press.
25.
JenkinsH.FordS.GreenJ. (2013). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture.
New York:
New York University Press.
26.
KuipersG. (2011).
The politics of humour in the public sphere: Cartoons, power and modernity in the first transnational humour scandal.European Journal of Cultural Studies,
14(1), 63–80.
27.
LivingstoneS.HargraveA. M. (2009). Harm and offence in media content: A review of the Evidence (LSE Research Online).
Bristol, England:
Intellect.
28.
LockyerS.PickeringM. (2001).
Dear shit-shovellers: Humour, censure and the discourse of complaint.Discourse & Society,
12(5), 633–651.
29.
LockyerS.PickeringM. (2005). Beyond a joke: The limits of humour.
London, England:
Palgrave Macmillan.
MayerJ, D.CaiX.PatelA.KulkarniR.StanfordV, I.KoizumiN. (2016).
Reading tea leaves: What 1, 331 protest placards tell us about the Tea Party Movement.Visual Communication Quarterly,
22(4), 237–250.
MeyerD, S. (1995).
The challenge of cultural elites: Celebrities & social movements.Sociological Inquiry,
65(2), 181–206.
34.
MeyerJ. C. (2000).
Humor as a double‐edged sword: Four functions of humor in communication.Communication Theory,
10(3), 310–331.
35.
MizejewskiL. (2014). Pretty funny: Women comedians & body politics.
Austin:
University of Texas Press.
36.
MouffeC. (2005). On the political.
London, England:
Routledge.
37.
Newman, M.Z. (2014) Say “Pulp Fiction” one more goddamn time: quotationculture and an internet-age classic. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 12(2), 125–142.
38.
NgaiS. (2005). Ugly feelings.
Cambridge, England:
Harvard University Press.
39.
PariserE. (2012). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding.
London, England:
Penguin.
40.
Pedwell, C. (2017). Mediated Habits: Images, Networked Affect and Social Change. Subjectivity, 10(2), 147–163.
41.
PetersonA. H. (2017). Too fat, too slutty, too loud: The rise and reign of the unruly woman.
New York, NY:
Plume.
42.
Pickering, M., & Littlewood, J. (1998). Heard the one about the white middle class heterosexual father-in-law? Gender, ethnicity and political correctness in comedy. In S. Wagg (Ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Identity (pp. 291–312). London: Routledge.
43.
PujolarJ. (2000). Gender, heteroglossia and power: A sociolinguistic study of youth culture.
Berlin, Germany:
Mouton de Gruyter.
44.
ReillyI.BolerM. (2014).
The rally to restore sanity, pre-politicization and the future of politics.Communication, Culture & Critique,
7(2), 435–452.
RoweK. (1990).
Roseanne: Unruly woman as domestic goddess.Screen,
31, 408–419.
47.
RoweK. (1995). The unruly woman: Gender and the genres of laughter.
Austin:
University of Texas Press.
48.
RussoM. (1994). The female grotesque: Risk, excess, and modernity.
New York, NY:
Routledge.
49.
SegerbergA.BennettW. L. (2011).
Social media and the organization of collective action: Using Twitter to explore the ecologies of two climate change protests.The Communication Review,
14(3), 197–215.
ThomasJ. M. (2015). Working to laugh: Assembling difference in American stand-up comedy venues.
Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books.
58.
ThorogoodJ. (2016).
Satire and geopolitics: Vulgarity, ambiguity and the body grotesque in South Park. Geopolitics,
21(1), 215–235.
59.
TolmanD. L.ImpettE. A.TracyA. J.MichaelA. (2006).
Looking good, sounding good: Femininity, ideology and adolescent girls’ mental health.Psychology of Women Quarterly,
30(1), 85–95.
60.
TufekciZ.WilsonC. (2012).
Social media and the decision to participate in political protest: Observations from Tahrir Square.Journal of Communication,
62(2), 363–379.
61.
WaisanenD. J.BeckerA. B. (2015).
The problem with being Joe Biden: Political comedy and circulating personae.Critical Studies in Media Communication,
32(4), 256–271.
