Funny Peculiar

by Mikita Brottman

Why are jokes funny? Why do we laugh? In Funny Peculiar, Mikita Brottman demurs from recent scholarship that takes laughter-- and the broader domain of humor and the comical--as a liberating social force and an endearing aspect of self-expression. For Brottman, there is nothing funny about laughter, which is less connected to mirth and feelings of good will than to a nexus of darker fear, aggression, shame, anxiety.

Brottman rethinks not only the mechanisms of humor but also the relation of humor to the body and the senses. To this end, she provides an engrossing account of the life and work of Gershon Legman, exiled author, publisher, and sexologist, Alfred Kinsey's first bibliographer, and legendary compiler of the dirty joke. Like Freud, Legman was convinced of the impossibility of understanding humor apart from sex, and Brottman shows how his two massive works on the subject, Rationale of the Dirty Joke and No Laughing Matter, provide a framework for understanding the ambivalent and often hostile impulses that underlie the comic impulse in its various guises. In lively and enlivening chapters, she traverses dirty jokes, the figure of the "evil clown" in popular culture, the current popularity of "humor therapy," changing fashions in stand-up comedy, and the connection between humor and horror. Brottman's sparkling prose, laced with wit, does not obscure the seriousness of Funny Peculiar . It is a thoughtful and wide-ranging elaboration of the Freudian claim that joking, in point of fact, is no laughing matter.

Genres: Humor

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2004

About the author

Mikita Brottman (born 30 October 1966) is a British scholar, psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic known for her psychological readings of the dark and pathological elements of contemporary culture. She received a D.Phil in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, was a Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, and was Chair of the program in Engaged Humanities with an emphasis in Depth Psychology at the Pacifica Graduate Institute from 2008 to 2010. She currently teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Brottman's articles and case studies have appeared in Film Quarterly, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, New Literary History, and American Imago. She has written influentially on horror films, critical theory, reading, psychoanalysis, and the work of the American folklorist, Gershon Legman.

Brottman also writes for mainstream and counterculture journals and magazines. Her work has appeared in such diverse venues as The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bad Subjects, The Fortean Times, Headpress, and Popmatters, where her column, "Sub Rosa", ran from January 2007 to July 2009. Her essays have also appeared in a number of books and anthologies.

She is the author of the cult film books Meat is Murder and Hollywood Hex, as well as books on psychoanalysis, critical theory and contemporary popular culture. Her most recent book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 2008) was selected as one of the Best Books of 2008 by Publishers Weekly, who said: "Sharp, whimsical and impassioned, Brottman's look at the pleasures and perils of compulsive reading is itself compulsively readable and will connect with any book lover."

Brottman's partner is the film critic David Sterritt.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Johnny Trash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, she makes a strong case that all humor is based on anger and fear and that there's nothing really funny about jokes. Also she stressed the difference between laughter and humor by discussing at length pathological laughter, rictus and the like.

She gave a nice portrait of author:G. Legman, on whose books she based her writing.

It won't stop me from making jokes but it gives me a lot to think about