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Stand-Up Nation: Humor and

American Identity
David Gillota
Americans have long had an affinity for the figure of the outsider. American culture is full of
romanticized heroes who live on the margins of
civilization or who manage to recognize and reject
the superficial trappings of a restrictive and hypocritical culture. Examples can be found in real-life
American heroes and outlaws like Henry David
Thoreau and Jesse James or in fictional creations
ranging from Natty Bumpo to Tony Soprano. In
light of these real and fictional American heroes,
it has become a commonplaceperhaps even a
clich
eto read American culture as an ongoing
battle between the individual and society.
Americas heroic individuals, however, are rarely
just individuals: rather, they tend to embody a key
feature of the traditional American ideology.
Richard Rodriguez discusses this idea in relation
to one of our most famous American outlaws:
Huckleberry Finn. Calling Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn our greatest book
about ourselves, Rodriguez asserts that as
Americans, we must root for Huck in his struggle to resist the sanitizing effects of education and
civilization (22526). Indeed, if Huck were to
become civilized, it seems, he would also become
deindividualized. All of the things that make
Huck Huck (his language, his internal moral compass, his refusal to wear shoes) would be wiped
away by the civilizing effects of society. Somewhat paradoxically, however, in his individuality
Huck also represents all Americans. Rodriguez,
again, makes the point well: The belief we share

in common as Americans is the belief that we are

separate from one another (223).
It is no coincidence that Hucks creator, Mark
Twain, is today viewed as Americas preeminent
humorist (the John F. Kennedy Center annually
awards the Mark Twain Prize for American
Humor) and is often cited as Americas first
stand-up comedian.1 The image of the stand-up
comicalone and often speaking in a language
that is inappropriate or uncivilizedshares
quite a bit with Huck. In particular, our most
iconic stand-upsfigures like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, or George Carlincan be seen as
twentieth-century avatars of Huck Finn, challenging social norms and refusing to succumb to the
sanitizing effects of civilization. This vision of the
stand-up comedian has prompted David Marc to
assert that in an age of assembly-line cultural productions like the television sitcom, stand-up comedy is a surviving bastion of individual
expression (10). But like Huck, the stand-up is
not simply a lone individual but is also often a
stand-in for his or her community. As Lawrence
Mintz states, the stand-up comedian can become
our comic spokesman. . . he serves as a shaman,
leading us in a celebration of a community of
shared culture, of homogenous understanding and
expectation (19697).
This seeming contradiction reveals the role that
stand-up comedyas both an art form and a
mass-mediated commodityplays in contemporary America. American stand-up resonates not

David Gillota is an assistant professor in the Humanities Department at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He is also the author
of Ethnic Humor in Multiethnic America (Rutgers UP, 2013).
The Journal of American Culture, 38:2
2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Stand-Up Nation  David Gillota

only with the classic model of the individual vs.

society but also with more contemporary conversations about identity politics. The stand-up
performance, which always entails an individual
performer speaking directly to a group, dramatizes an ongoing struggle between individuality
and collectivity. While some stand-ups may position themselves as spokespersons for everybody
or for the entire nation (even as they claim individuality), most stand-ups also represent the
point-of-view of a particular demographic defined
by race, gender, class, or sexual orientation. The
best comedians also challenge or subvert subcultural norms and expectations. The art of American
stand-up is thus a constant negotiation between
individual expression and group interest. The
stand-up comedian continuously vacillates
between the role of community spokesperson,
reinforcing values that are already taken for
granted by a culture or subculture, and that of the
outsider, critiquing and challenging dominant ideology. A consideration of American stand-up can
thus provide useful insights into the contradictory
ways in which Americans simultaneously define
themselves as individuals, as members of one or
more particular groups, and as national citizens.

Locating an American
Identity
As a negotiation of American identity formation, stand-up comedy can be viewed as a realworld counterpart to an ongoing discussion on
what it means to be an American. Defining American identity has never been easy, but there was a
time when Americanat least for those Americans, mostly white and male, who controlled the
discoursecould be defined by a belief in natural
rights, a strong work ethic, and a celebration of
the capacity for the individual to overcome hardships. There have always been critics who have
pointed out that these celebrated freedoms for the
individual inevitably entailedmaybe even
requireda denial of those same freedoms and
opportunities for countless others. These criti-

103

cisms, however, did not really become central to

the conversation until the Civil Rights Movements and the subsequent rise of identity politics,
with its emphasis on group identification and
solidarity. In the wake of these movements, the
American celebration of the individual was, in
part, supplanted by a celebration of collectivities.
As Tim Parrish points out, [t]he cultural uniqueness that earlier generations of scholars found in
exemplary Americans such as Franklin, Emerson,
and Douglass is now attributed not to individuals
themselves but to discrete ethnic or cultural
groups (6). Indeed, the ideas of diversity and
multiculturalism, which dominate contemporary discussions of difference, are fundamentally
not about differences between individual people
but rather about differences between groups of
people.
This emphasis on collectivity, while making
possible many civil rights victories, has also muddied the water of what American means today.
What is the position of the individual in a culture
emphasizing collectivity? David Hollinger suggests that group affiliations designed to increase
individual freedom can actually inhibit it:
Welcome as is the cultivation of difference
against the conformist imperative for sameness too
often felt in American society, that very imperative for sameness can all too easily be reinscribed,
in yet more restrictive terms, within the cultures
of smaller, particular communities. Hollinger
goes on to suggest that rather than creating more
openness, American identity politics runs the risk
of increasing barriers between people by creating
a multiplicity of ethnocentrisms (107).
Another important question raised in the wake
of identity politics is whether or not the category
American can still have real meaning in a culture
in which many individuals construct their identity
primarily in relation to smaller groups. For Hollinger, the answer is yes: Being an American
amid a multiplicity of affiliations need not be dangerously threatening to diversity. Nor need it be
too shallow to constitute an important solidarity
of its own (163). Along similar lines, Parrish
argues that we should think about American
identity in ways that account for our cultural

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diversity and its consequences without either

insisting that we are all the same or denying that
we share crucial ties that unite us as Americans
(7). Parrish goes on to assert that we should
understand American culture as an ongoing collective creation (9) and see American identity as
a kind of practice (12). Parrishs formulation
serves as a useful entry point into exploring the
role of stand-up comedy in the United States.
Stand-up remains a relatively unexplored vehicle
for the consideration of American identity, but its
structure and themes are quintessentially American.2

Toward a Theory of Stand-Up

The earliest origins of stand-up have been
debated by a number of critics, but it is clear that
in the 1950s and 1960sprecisely during the same
era that saw the rise of American identity politics
the art began to resemble what we think of
today.3 Performing in coffee shops and folkmusic clubs, humorists like Mort Sahl, Shelley
Berman, Dick Gregory, and Lenny Bruce, among
others, were the first well-known stand-ups to
talk explicitly about politics, sex, current events,
and their own personal lives. Since then, the significance of stand-up has only continued to grow.
The 1970s saw the rise of stand-up superstars like
Steve Martin and Richard Pryor, who used their
fame to launch careers in movies and television. In
the 1980s, there was an explosion of both standup clubs across the country and recorded standup specials on cable television. Today, the countrys leading comedians frequently sell-out large
concert auditoriums, and every major American
city has at least one comedy club. Cable networks
regularly air stand-up specials, which are also
readily available on DVD and through online
streaming services. Most importantly, stand-up
comedy today also reflects the contours of contemporary identity politics. Regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, or political
affiliation, consumers can find stand-up geared
toward them.

Given the widespread popularity of stand-up

comedy, it is surprising that very few scholars
have explored its role in our culture. Most critics who do explore the form see the stand-up
comedian as a cultural critic and/or outsider.
John Limon, for example, argues that stand-up
comics speak from a position of otherness and
abjection (4). In her study of female comedians, Joanne Gilbert argues that by drawing on
their shared history of oppression, marginal
comics serve as licensed social critics, using
rhetorical strategies such as self-deprecation to
critique and sometimes subvert the status quo
(17). And Rebecca Krefting sees the stand-up
stage as a site for political activism and chooses
to focus only on a strain of stand-up comedy
(what she calls charged humor) that relies on
identification with struggles and issues associated with being a second-class citizen (5).
Other critics place less emphasis on the role of
marginalization but similarly see the stand-up
comic chiefly working as a cultural critic, using
his or her humor to defamiliarize accepted cultural norms. Stephanie Koziski, for example,
compares stand-up comics to anthropologists:
They break down social life into its basic
elementssearching for categories, isolating
domains and identifying rules (58). This
approach allows audiences to see their culture
from a new, often cynical, vantage point.
The definition of the stand-up as cultural critic
and/or cultural outsider is undeniably useful in its
treatment of a great number of comedians. It fails
to take into account, however, the manner in
which stand-up comics also serve, in Mintzs
words, as our comic spokesman. . . leading us in
a celebration of a community of shared culture, of
homogenous understanding and expectation
(19697). Significantly, the cultural critic/outsider
approach relies on a willful turning away from or
ignoring of the countless routines and performers
that use humor to reinforce a conservative, dominant, or regressive ideology. And most significantly, this approach does not allow for the
manner in which a great number of stand-up
comedians (the majority, most likely) occupy
both the center and the margins.

Stand-Up Nation  David Gillota

Stand-up is therefore an essentially fluid art

form that will not adhere to any single or totalizing definition. The selves that stand-ups construct
onstage are neither stable nor complete, and in a
single performance, a comedian may align himself
or herself both with and against multiple group
affiliations.4 This plasticity can be viewed as a
mass-mediated dramatization of the ways that
American identity itself is constructed out of a
series of overlapping and competing allegiances.
The flip side of that coin is the fluidity of group
affiliations themselves. In addition to dramatizing
the process through which American identity is
created, the stand-up performance also highlights
the ways in which groups and collectivities are, to
borrow from Benedict Anderson, largely imagined. When we use terms like the black community or the gay and lesbian community, we are
constructing fictions or, at the very least, homogenizing groups that are actually multifaceted. In a
stand-up performance, though, these imagined
communities often become temporarily visible
and real, as the live audience (and by extension the
audience consuming the performance via mass
media) agrees, through shared laughter, to be part
of a singular group. As Alice Rayner explains, [l]
aughter creates the community, however temporary, but that community does not inevitably exist
prior to the event that creates the laughter. The
fluidity, even the loss, of community marks the
connection of humor to a more radical sense of
how community itself is a temporal process and
not a stable entity (34). The stand-up comedian
can either celebrate and reinforce this temporary
community or she/he can use the stand-up stage
to challenge group norms and celebrate individuality.

Stand-Up Comedy and

American Identity
While it is common to view the stand-up comedian as either a cultural critic or, more romantically, as a lone individual who is unhampered by
restrictive social guidelines, these definitions only

105

hold up when we focus on a handful of mostly

white and mostly male comedians who explicitly
use their humor to challenge bourgeois sensibilities. Lenny Bruce and George Carlin serve as prototypical examples. Bruce famously challenged
obscenity laws and pushed the boundaries of what
could be spoken in live performances. His
critiques of social institutions and explicit discussions of ethnicity and sexuality placed him firmly
in the tradition of American protesters and outlaws. Carlin followed in Bruces footsteps and
brought a higher level of craftsmanship to much
of the same sort of material. Carlin proved particularly adept at breaking down and critiquing the
way we use language in our culture. In a routine
from his 1992 special Doin It Again, for example,
Carlin traces, from World War I through Vietnam, the language used to describe veterans who
have been psychologically damaged by war, suggesting that the transition from the label shell
shock to post-traumatic stress disorder has
served only to disguise the actual pain felt by soldiers. In a routine like this, Carlin emerges as a
heroic social critic who, like Twain before him,
challenges hypocrisy and oppression.
Today, there are numerous comedians, with
various degrees of talent, who continue this tradition. Similar cultural critiques can be found in the
work of Bill Maher, Lewis Black, and Louis C. K.
Other figures, like Jim Norton, Daniel Tosh, or
Carlos Mencia, rely more on shock value than on
social commentary to drive their humor. All of
these comedians, though, overtly develop an individualistic and often adversarial persona that reinforces the sense that they are cultural outsiders.
Following in the footsteps of Andy Kaufmann,
Albert Brooks, or Steve Martin, so-called alternative comedianslike Zach Galifianakis, Demetri Martin, and Maria Bamfordsimilarly
develop an outsider status through their cultivation of eccentric and quirky personae. Taken en
masse, these comedians reinforce the commonly
held idea that stand-up comedy is primarily the
realm of the outsider or the outlaw, and that,
in David Marcs words, the form remains a surviving bastion of individual expression (10).
Skeptics will rightly point out, however, the

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conservative or regressive strains in much of this

humor. The majority of these individuals are
white and male, and white masculinity, in a traditionally racist and patriarchal culture, often serves
to rhetorically universalize a subject. Like Huck
Finn and any other number of real or fictional
American heroes, these universal subjects are thus
in the paradoxical position of speaking simultaneously for everyone and only for themselves.
Their performances work as a communal celebration of rebellion and individualism, reinforcing
Rodriguezs claim that the belief we share in
common as Americans is the belief that we are
separate from one another (2).
Not all stand-up comedy works this way. In
fact, some of the cultures most visible stand-up
(such as the opening monologues of late-night
talk show hosts) primarily reinforces mainstream
values. More significantly, over the last several
decades we have also seen an enormous rise in
comedians who eschew the rhetoric of individualism in order to generate a brand of humor that
speaks directly to and on behalf of a particular
group of people. Rather than cultivating rebellious or idiosyncratic personae, these comedians
deliberately construct themselves as being part of
a subculture, and they mostly adhere to a predetermined brand of humor that supposedly represents the interests and the point-of-view of the
said group. Early mass-mediated examples can be
found in the work of African-American stand-ups
during the 1980s and 1990s. Comics, of civilrights era, like Pryor and Gregory emerged from
a long tradition of subversive African-American
folk humor and used the stand-up stage to collapse the barriers for what could be said about
race in a public forum. In their wake, AfricanAmerican stand-up became mainstreamed and
profitable and also coalesced into a fairly recognizable collection of tropes and comic devices,
such as comic impersonations of uptight white
people. Television series such as HBOs Def
Comedy Jam (19922008) and BETs Comic View
(1992) were created to capitalize off of the success of African-American stand-up. Rather
than focusing on and celebrating an individual
performer, these shows featured a large and

ever-changing roster of black comics who would

perform relatively short sets in front of a mostly
African-American studio audience. The individual
comedians themselves were less important than
the community they were there to represent.5
Spike Lees concert film The Original Kings of
Comedy (2000), featuring live performances by
four well-known African-American stand-ups,
demonstrated that this formula could be successful on a larger scale. Nearly fifteen years later,
group-based comedy specials have multiplied
exponentially and include titles such as The
Queens of Comedy (2001), The Original Latin
Kings of Comedy (2002), Blue Collar Comedy
Tour (2003), The Kims of Comedy (2005), The
Latin Divas of Comedy (2007), The Axis of Evil
Comedy Tour (2008), and Women Who Kill
(2013). As the titles suggest, these specials represent distinct cultural groups defined by race, class,
gender, or some combination thereof. Rather than
promoting an individual persona, the comedians
on these specials are part of an ensemble cast and
representatives of a cultural subgroup. When individual performers from these group-based specials
break out and star in their own comedy films,
they tend to bring with them the persona of a
group spokesperson. For example, George Lopez
explicitly identifies himself as a representative of
Mexican-American interests in stand-up specials
with titles like Americas Mexican (2007) or Tall,
Dark, and Chicano (2009).
The editing and visual aspects of group-based
comedy specials also tend to reinforce the idea of
collectivity. Lees The Original Kings of Comedy
contains many long and frequent cuts away from
the comedian performing and to the primarily
black audience watching. The device reinforces
the idea that the special is an African-American
community event. Other stand-up specials have
followed suit and even expanded on the premise.
For example, Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The
Movie, which is designed to appeal to southern,
white, working class audiences, begins with a
montage that cuts back and forth between the
comedians getting ready in the dressing room and
audience members in the lobby relating their
favorite redneck jokes. Once again, the editing

Stand-Up Nation  David Gillota

rhetorically serves to give primacy to a particular

community over an individual performer.
These specials undermine the idea that standup comedy is primarily a vehicle for individual
expression. Rather, looked at together, they
resemble something closer to what Hollinger has
called a multiplicity of ethnocentrisms (107).
On the one hand, group-based stand-up serves as
evidence that in the contemporary media marketplace, nearly everyoneeven those who have
been historically marginalized and under-representedmay have a voice. Audiences no longer
have to consume materials created for a white,
middle-class majority, and viewers can see
performers who represent their own cultural
backgrounds or affiliations. On the other hand,
however, this sort of stand-up may serve to reinforce rigid and stifling boundaries for individuals
within marginalized groups. Mainstream AfricanAmerican humor, for example, is well-known for
its tendency to delineate differences between
black and white Americans, suggesting that there
are certain viewpoints, behaviors, or activities that
are unacceptable for real African Americans.
Here we see a corollary to some of the key
questions for American identity theorists: What is
the role of the individual in a cultural setting that
tends to define identity primarily in relation to
group affiliations? Can an individual from a marginalized community speak on behalf of his or her
group and also participate in broader cultural
conversations? How do individuals navigate multiple group affiliations? Does the label American
have real meaning for individuals from historically marginalized groups? There is of course no
single way to answer these questions, but the figure of the stand-up comedian, speaking as both
individual and as group spokesperson, dramatizes
the continuous process of negotiation that individuals perform as they position themselves in
relation to various interests. We see this, to a certain extent, in the works of nearly every stand-up
comedian: the adversarial individuals mentioned
above, for example, still provide routines that
reinforce the status quo rather than challenge it.
Likewise, there are occasional moments within
the work of group-based comedians, in which a

107

comic subverts or challenges group interests.

Many of the most interesting stand-ups, however,
spend their time straddling the poles of the individual and community representative. The work
of these comedians (two of whom are discussed in
more detail below) can be viewed as an ongoing
process of American identity formation, consistent with Tim Parrishs view that American identity should be viewed not as a stable entity, but
rather as a fluid practice.

Negotiating Identity: Ellen

DeGeneres and Chris Rock
This fluidity can be seen very clearly in the
work of Ellen DeGeneres, a wholly mainstream
comic personality who nevertheless finds herself
as a spokesperson for LGBTQ interests. Viewed
strictly as a humorist, DeGeneres is highly skilled
yet completely unremarkable. Her material is
largely comprised of wry, Seinfeldian observations about the mundane details of the white middle-to-upper class consumer culture. She talks
about airplane food, pickle jars that are too tight,
and the instructions on shampoo bottles. She
complains about annoying department store
dressing room attendants and people who talk
during the movie. She criticizes herself for forgetting her car keys and drifting off during conversations. She usually generates laughter but rarely
provides the sort of routines that audiences will
remember the next day. But of course it is impossible to view DeGeneres strictly as a humorist. She
is an important media personality and with her
long-running daytime talk show, she has achieved
something close to an Oprah-like level of fame
and cultural influence. For example, she has
hosted both the Oscars and the Emmys, and she
has been a judge on American Idol. Of course, in
addition to all of this, she is also the countrys
most famous openly gay celebrity. DeGeneress
observational brand of humor is not necessarily at
odds with her position as a de facto gay and lesbian leader, but there is an undeniable disconnect
between the mostly apolitical nature of the jokes

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she tells and the political impact of her presence as

an openly gay major cultural figure. Thus, while
DeGeneress actual jokes may be unremarkable,
her career as a comedian is an illustrative example
of the American stand-ups ongoing negotiation
between individual expression and group interest.
While DeGeneres is often seen as a public representative of the LGBTQ community, the most
pointed critiques of both her and her various television series have come from LGBTQ critics who
accuse DeGeneres of sidestepping genuine issues
of heterosexism and of placing homosexuality in a
desexualized and depoliticized package that can
be marketed and sold to heterosexual audiences.
Bonnie Dow, for example, argues that Ellen was
a sitcom about a lesbian that was largely geared
toward the comfort of heterosexuals. . . it differs
little from the history of representations of gays
and lesbians on television (129). Jennifer Reed
provides a more generous reading, asserting that
DeGeneress very presence on mainstream American television offers moments of challenge to
the dominant, and opens spaces for the marginalized to occupy (25). Reed goes on to argue,
though, that [f]rom a queer, or more radical perspective, what is missing from DeGeneres lesbian
persona. . . is the performance of explicit desire
(35).
DeGeneres herself, in classical American fashion, wants to be defined and to define herself
through the lenses of both individualism and universalism. She embraces individualism, saying
plainly that I dont want to become some gay
activist. . . Its just about my personal story (qtd.
in Yescavage and Alexander 28). This personal
story includes her successful rise as an entertainer and resonates with classic American narratives of hard work and economic mobility.
DeGeneres also embraces universalism because
she wants to create a brand of humor that speaks
neither to nor for the so-called gay community
but that rather speaks for everybody. As she
asserts, DeGeneres does not want her humor to
be gay, gay, gay all the time (qtd. in Reed 31).
Her critics, on the other hand, tend to focus on a
group-based identity politics in which solidarity
trumps individualism and systemic inequalities

both overshadow and largely determine personal

narratives. It is a familiar debate throughout
American culture, and many other exceptional
Americans from marginalized groups have found
themselves at the center of similar conversations.
DeGeneress precarious position in relation to
gay and lesbian communities thus resonates with
that even the older Americans struggledramatized in the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Twain,
and othersbetween the community and the
individual. In this case, however, the community can alternately be defined as either the imagined LGBTQ community (which is diverse and
multifaceted itself) or as the even more unwieldy
concept of society in general, which is usually
imagined in terms of white, middle class interests.
While the most critical attention has been paid to
DeGeneress work in television, her hour-long
stand-up specialsreleased between her career as
a sitcom star and that as a talk show hostactually provide DeGeneress most explicit negotiation between her position as an individual and as a
community leader. She uses the stand-up stage as
a forum through which she can carve out a space
for herself in relation to both her heterosexual and
homosexual audiences. In these performances,
DeGeneres asserts her individualism even as she
acknowledges, and with some ambivalence,
accepts her position as a gay leader.
In her stand-up special Ellen DeGeneres: The
Beginning (2000), DeGeneres playfully alludes to
yet rarely addresses her position as an LGBTQ
spokesperson. In the opening, she literalizes the
metaphor of dancing around a topic by actually
performing a comic interpretive dance of her
coming-out story. Because DeGeneres is a skilled
physical comedian, the dance, which is really a
parody of an interpretive dance, works to generate
humor. It does little, however, to address issues of
the LGBTQ community. DeGeneress reluctance
to confront these issuesas well as her awareness
of audience expectationsis made clear when she
transitions from introductory material into the
main body of her act. I cannot worry about what
people think about me, DeGeneres asserts. I
think things need to change. Here, of course,
audiences interpret the need for change in

Stand-Up Nation  David Gillota

political or social terms. After a brief pause, however, she shows that she has actually been playing
with these expectations and quickly reverts to her
typical brand of observational humor by asking,
Do we still need directions on the back of a
shampoo bottle? And these are the sorts of jokes
that dominate the rest of the special.
After the main act, however, DeGeneres holds
an informal Q & A session with the live audience,
which brings gay and lesbian issues back to the
forefront. A college student tells DeGeneres that
she is featured as a role model in her textbook
and even holds up a copy, entitled Gender Roles.
Another woman tearfully relates how DeGeneress bravery in coming-out has served as an
inspiration in her own life. The special officially
ends, in fact, with DeGeneres calling that woman
up onto the stage and hugging her. These
moments allow DeGeneres to embrace the role of
community leader or role model without significantly altering her act or her every girl persona.
They also suggest, however, the undercurrent of a
struggle between the audience and DeGeneres.
The preceding performance made clear that,
despite being a public gay figure, DeGeneres
intends to maintain her apolitical brand of humor.
When the audience has the opportunity to direct
the discourse, however, the only issues that seem
to matter are those related to LGBTQ concerns.
No audience members stand up to comment on
DeGeneress observations about annoying dressing-room attendants or our irrational attitudes
about spiders. DeGeneress willingness to entertain this Q & A sessionas well as the decision to
include it on the television specialonce again
signals her process of negotiation between individual expression and group interest.
In her next special, Ellen DeGeneres: Here and
Now, the negotiation is even more explicit, as
DeGeneres makes a point of acknowledgingand
gently teasingher multifaceted audience. She
begins with some opening remarks about the different types of people in the audience: With all
of our differences, we all have one thing in common. Were all gay. The comment garners quite
a bit of audience laughter and, based on the weness of the statementhowever layered with

109

irony it might beDeGeneres and the audience

appear to be part of a single community. A
moment later, however, DeGeneres speaks on
behalf of potential heterosexual audience members: Now there are people out there going, Do
they think were gay because were here? Do we
look gay? I told you this would happen. Were
not going to understand a word of this. While
impersonating heterosexual audience members,
DeGeneres adopts an uptight, anxious voice. The
moment very lightly mocks heterosexual anxiety,
suggesting that heterosexuals, despite good intentions, are perhaps mystified by homosexuality.
There is also the implication of homophobia: even
if heterosexuals are open-minded enough to
attend a DeGeneres performance, they still dont
want to look gay. Like many African-American
comedians, DeGeneres rhetorically places the
social majority into a minority position and highlights larger cultural insecurities. In most facets of
public life, heterosexuality is treated as normal.
DeGeneres uses her opening to establish her performance as a queer space wherein heterosexuality
is the anomaly.
Moments later, though, she shifts modes and
makes her homosexual base the butt of her
jokes. Thats my one obligatory gay reference,
she says. I have to say something gay; otherwise
some people might leave here tonight going she
didnt do anything gay. Shes not our leader. What
happened to our leader? The impersonation of a
dissatisfied homosexual audience member serves
to balance her earlier impersonation of insecure
heterosexuals. Taken together, DeGeneres has,
within minutes, split her audience and identified
different viewpoints and concerns. Rather than
explicitly reassuring her audiences, though, DeGeneres mocks their expectations and insecurities.
This is especially true in her portrayal of homosexual audience members who choose to view DeGeneres as a gay leader, a role that, as we know,
DeGeneres has explicitly resisted.
In the transition to the main body of her act
(which is unsurprisingly observational and apolitical) DeGeneres collapses all of this and embraces
universalism: I think the one thing we all have in
common is we all want to laugh, and that is a

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beautiful thing. The audience is thus returned to

a single community, and DeGeneres can move
forward with her chosen brand of nonthreatening
humor. Overall, DeGeneress stand-up specials
anticipate the role that she would ultimately play
as a daytime talk-show host, wherein her mainstream every girl persona is only occasionally
disrupted by brief overtures to LGBTQ issues.
More significantly, her live performances illustrate
the ways in which the stand-up stage can be used
as a forum through which to navigate the contradictory terrain of American identity politics.
Perhaps even more explicitly than DeGeneres,
the work of Chris Rock exemplifies the fluidity of
identity formation. Like DeGeneres, Rock is a
mainstream media personality who also speaks to
and on behalf of a particular community. Rock
has hosted the Oscars and provided voiceovers for
popular childrens films, but he also regularly
addresses American race relations and serves as a
spokesperson for the black community. He
refuses, however, to view race in a simplistic manner and is well known for critiquing aspects of
African-American culture and undermining black
leaders. In Bring the Pain (1996), for example,
Rock discusses former Washington, DC mayor
Marion Barrys participation in the Million Man
March, asserting that even in our finest hour, we
had a crack-head onstage. In moments like this,
Rock speaks as an insider in the black communityevinced by his use of webut he makes
no attempt to represent all black people, nor does
he adhere to the rigid black/white binaries that
embody the work of so many contemporary black
comics. As Bambi Haggins asserts, Rock critique
[s] the kind of unconditional [black] solidarity
that seemingly defies the logic of self-preservation (81).
Rocks most infamous and scathing routine to
this end can be found in a set entitled Black People vs. Niggas. Here, Rock asserts that there are
two types of black people: black people and niggas (Bring the Pain). For Rock, niggas are
those elements of the black population who steal,
live on welfare, or act violently. Here, Rock
speaks as a black man, but he also alienates and
potentially offends many other members of the

black community. His description of niggas,

furthermore, can be seen to align itself with conservative whites who already hold stereotypical
ideas about black criminals. In some ways, Rock
is doubly marginalized here, speaking from a marginal position within an already marginalized ethnic group. At the same time, and somewhat
paradoxically, Rocks position is in keeping with
the dominant American ideology that celebrates
personal responsibility and individualism, and
which is reluctant to see criminal behavior
explained away by systemic social forces. In short,
Rocks routine is too complex to be encapsulated
by either a comic spokesperson or a cultural
outsider vision of the stand-up comedian.
At other moments in his oeuvre, though, Rock
attacks institutional racism with a vehemence
that is rarely seen in American media. In Never
Scared (2004), for example, Rock delineates
between rich and wealthy, asserting that in
America black people can only become rich but
they can never earn the sort of wealth that will
enable them to raise up communities. Along
similar lines, in his 2008 special Kill the Messenger, Rock describes Alpine, New Jersey, where
he lives. Rock asserts that houses here cost millions of dollars and that only four black people
live in his neighborhood: himself, Mary J. Blige,
Jay-Z, and Eddie Murphy. After driving home
the point that all four are exceptionally talented
entertainers, Rock asks, Do you know what the
white man who lives next door to me does for a
living? Hes a fucking dentist! He aint the best
dentist in the world. . . Hes just a yank your
tooth out dentist. As Rock continues, he uses
this situation to elucidate systemic racial inequality: You see the black man got to fly to get
something that the white man can walk to. I had
to make miracles happen to get that house. I had
to host the Oscars to get that house! In stark
contrast to Black People vs. Niggas, in which
Rock antagonized and chastised his black audience, in this routine, Rock is both spokesperson
and educator, using his humor to undermine systemic racism.
While Rock is most well-known for his
racial humor, the actual content of his stand-

Stand-Up Nation  David Gillota

up is equally concerned with gender. As a racial

commentator Rock can be said to vacillate
between the role of group spokesperson and
group antagonist; his attitudes toward gender,
however, are less complex. As Haggins explains,
Rocks gender politics fall within the realm of
the regressive, at worst, and the traditional, at
best (89). Indeed, the most ideologically consistent aspect of Rocks stand-up is his tendency to
essentialize gender roles. For Rock, women are
irrational when they argue, and men need to
make sense (Never Scared); women should care
for the children, and men should provide financial
support (Bigger and Blacker), and so forth.
However, the point here is not to prove Rocks
problematic gender politics (Haggins has
already done that) but rather to elucidate the
manner in which Rock uses the stand-up stage as
a forum through which to assert modes of
affiliation and different aspects of identity. Rock
speaks as an African American in a traditionally
racist culture, but he also speaks as a man in a traditionally patriarchal culture. Rock continuously
shifts modes depending on which aspect of his
identity he chooses to emphasize in a given
routine.
Finally, it should be noted that in addition to
his interrogations of race and gender, that Rock
also engages in the sort of broad cultural critiques
that more closely resemble the humor of heroic
individual comics, such as Bruce or Carlin. In
particular, Rock regularly satirizes American
wealth and materialism without specifying race,
gender, or political affiliation. In Never Scared,
for example, Rock argues that the number one
reason people hate America is our religion. Americans worship money. . . and we all go the same
church: the church of ATM. In his next special,
Kill the Messenger, Rock continues this line of
thought in a discussion of how we spend our
money:
We spend money on things we used to get for free. . .
like water. Do you know how many people on earth
right now are dying of thirst, how many people walk
ten and twenty miles to get some fresh water? And we
so fucking spoiled, we buy bottled water. You know
what it means when you buy bottled water? It means
you only use tap water on your ass! And you wonder
why people want to blow us the fuck up.

111

In both of the above routines, Rock uses inclusive terms like us and we to refer not to a particular subgroup defined by race but rather to
refer to all Americans. Working in a tradition of
American comic social critique that we can trace
back at least to the work of Twain, Rock, in these
moments, is simultaneously and paradoxically a
universal spokesperson for the entire nation
and a lone, heroic individual who recognizes and
critiques his cultures hypocrisy and materialism.
At an initial glance, there could not be two
comedians who are more different than Rock and
DeGeneres. DeGeneres seems to avoid the political at all costs, but Rock revels in it. In the work
of both comics, however, the stand-up stage
becomes a place for negotiation between self and
audience. Bothin admittedly different waysat
times embrace the role of group spokesperson and
at others wholly reject it. They both find ways to
speak for themselves, for everybody, and for the
particular subgroup for which they have been
appointed a leadership role. Rock and DeGeneres,
though, are only two of the most visible examples
of the ways in which stand-up comedians in the
United States use their medium as an avenue
through which to explore different and often
competing aspects of their identity. While the art
of stand-up is most often conceptualized as a
forum through which marginalized outsiders and
heroic individuals can challenge the status quo, a
close analysis of particular comedians reveals the
genre to actually be much more nuanced and
complex. Ultimately, the genre reflects the contradictory and often confused nature of American
identity itself. Rather than viewing American
identity as any single or stable thing, the art of
stand-up allows a venue through which to understand it as an ongoing, fluid negotiation between
various groups and individuals.

Notes
1. A number of scholars have pointed out how Twains lecture
tours in the 1860s prefigure todays stand-up comedy. Judith Yaross
Lee, for example, argues that we should view Twains live comedy

112

The Journal of American Culture  Volume 38, Number 2  June 2015

not as the apotheosis of nineteenth-century comic traditions but as

a starting point for a number of twentieth-century comic practices,
most notably the creation of a comic persona that can be marketed
and sold (3).
2. While stand-up comedy is not an exclusively American genre
(it is practiced all over the world), it was in the United States during
the 1950s and 1960s that it became what we recognize today.
3. A complete history of stand-up has yet to be written, but
researchers can piece one together through Phil Bergers The Last
Laugh, Oliver Doubles Getting the Joke, Gerald Nachmans Seriously Funny, Richard Zoglins Comedy at the Edge, and William
Knoedelseders Im Dying up Here.
4. While this essay is concerned primarily with the finished product of mass-mediated stand-up, it should be noted that when performed in comedy clubswhere comics rely more heavily on
improvisationthe negotiation between comedian and audience can
be even more pronounced.
5. This can be seen as a mass-mediated version of live comedy in
the first half of the twentieth-century, such as Jewish-American
comedians performing for an all-Jewish audience in the Catskills or
African-American comedians performing in mostly black clubs on
the chitlin circuit.

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