The Punk Turn in Comedy

255 Pages·2018·3.232 MB·English

by  Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone

PALGRAVE
STUDIES IN
COMEDY
THE PUNK
TURN IN
COMEDY
MASKS OF ANARCHY
KRISTA BONELLO RUTTER GIAPPONE
Palgrave Studies in Comedy
Series Editors
Roger Sabin
University of the Arts London
London, UK
Sharon Lockyer
Brunel University
London, UK
“Punk scholarship and comedy studies offer a wide range of routes into academic
enquiry. The relationship between punk, humour and comedy is a largely unex-
plored area, with rich and exciting potential for research and critical analysis. This
fascinating study of the shared influences that informed the evolution of both
punk and alternative comedy in the late 1970s and early 1980s is a timely and
important contribution to an evolving and expanding field.”
—Dr. Russ Bestley, London College of Communication, UK
Comedy is part of the cultural landscape as never before, as older mani-
festations such as performance (stand-up, plays, etc.), film and TV have
been joined by an online industry, pioneered by YouTube and social
media. This innovative new book series will help define the emerging
comedy studies field, offering fresh perspectives on the comedy studies
phenomenon, and opening up new avenues for discussion. The focus is
‘pop cultural’, and will emphasize vaudeville, stand-up, variety, comedy
film, TV sit-coms, and digital comedy. It will welcome studies of poli-
tics, history, aesthetics, production, distribution, and reception, as well
as work that explores international perspectives and the digital realm.
Above all it will be pioneering – there is no competition in the publish-
ing world at this point in time.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14644
Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone
The Punk Turn
in Comedy
Masks of Anarchy
Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone
University of Kent
Canterbury, UK
and
University of Malta
Msida, Malta
Palgrave Studies in Comedy
ISBN 978-3-319-72840-7 ISBN 978-3-319-72841-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72841-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938335
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
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Cover credit: no_limit_pictures/Getty Images
Printed on acid-free paper
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International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To My Parents:
Anna, Mum, In Loving Memory,
and
Mario, Dad, for his Unflagging Support
A
cknowledgements
First thanks go to Oliver Double for being a generous, supportive, and all-
round excellent Ph.D. supervisor; to Ivan Callus for being an indispensable
mentor every step of the way on the academic journey; and to the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for funding this project, and mak-
ing it possible. Thanks too to Duška Radosavljević, Michael Mangan, and
Peter Boenisch, and to the peer reviewers whose suggestions helped make
this book stronger. Thanks also go out to Sharon Lockyer and Roger Sabin,
editors of this series. I would like to thank John Marchant (John Marchant
Gallery), Mark Perry, and Russ Bestley for their help with obtaining images.
I would also like to extend thanks to Guillaume Collett, Wissia Fiorucci,
Kurt Borg, Sean Fenech, Emma Nugent, and Lara Schembri for their
much-appreciated encouragement and advice; and to all those performers
who agreed to talk to me, and who inspired this project through their work.
Thanks too to the Palgrave Macmillan and Springer team for their careful
attention throughout the publication process. A heartfelt thank you to my
parents for their support, which got me through.
I would also like to thank Taylor and Francis for their kind permission
to reprint some of the argument published in ‘Laughing Otherwise:
Comic-critical approaches in alternative comedy’, The Journal for
Cultural Research 21.4 (2017), 394–413.
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Peter Cook: Missing Links 13
3 The ‘Alternative’ 33
4 Attitudes Towards the Past 67
5 Styling the Amateur 99
6 The Role of the Audience 111
7 Modes of Dis-/Engagement 123
8 Power Play 153
9 ‘Style Without Affectation’: Honesty and Performance 175
10 Boundaries of the (Un)Said 195
11 Conclusion 241
Index 251
ix
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 ‘God Save the Queen’ (1977), collage on paper. Image
Jamie Reid, courtesy John Marchant Gallery. Copyright
Sex Pistols Residuals 47
Fig. 4.1 Jamie Reid’s design for ‘Pretty Vacant’ (1977), collage
on paper. Image Jamie Reid, courtesy John Marchant Gallery.
Copyright Sex Pistols Residuals 80
Fig. 5.1 Sniffin’ Glue cover, Issue 3 1/2, 28th September, 1976.
Copyright Mark Perry 105
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Comedy is prey to an elusiveness that seems to defy framing. Critchley
(2002, p. 2) notes that ‘humour is a nicely impossible object for a philos-
opher’; Bergson (1980, p. 61) describes it as ‘this little problem, which
has a knack of baffling every effort, of slipping away and escaping only to
bob up again’. Nancy (1993, p. 368) writes, ‘Laughter always bursts—
and loses itself in its peals. As soon as it bursts out, it is lost to all appro-
priation, to all presentation.’ Lewis (1989, p. 156) outlines humour
by refusing to define it: ‘humour is not one but many things’, among
which ‘humour marks the boundaries of the real’; ‘serving as a weapon,
an embrace, an evasion, a lesson, a puzzle and a game’. That most infa-
mous of ‘lost’ texts, Aristotle’s Poetics of Comedy, continues to fascinate
and elude, both structuring and escaping the literary labyrinth designed
for its concealment in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1998). The
implications are that we can detect it at its play and interplay; but the
following reservation qualifies our quest: there is something that escapes
our attempts to theorise humour. That, perhaps, is its very essence: this
is not simply to imply that it is its essence which escapes; but—rather, or
additionally—that this very elusion, this missing link, is its essence, not
merely of its essence (or a property thereof).1
Punk is similarly riddled with internal contradictions;2 it seems to spin
its own origin myth(s), and subsequently refuses to be pinned down to
it. In rejecting an origin in the past, punk is, paradoxically, both creator
of its own myths and reference points on the one hand, and iconoclastic
© The Author(s) 2018 1
K. Bonello Rutter Giappone, The Punk Turn
in Comedy, Palgrave Studies in Comedy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72841-4_1