Ashley Bowen-Murphy AMCV2650: Lubar November 8, 2011

Final Paper Proposal: Comedy as Artifact, Presenting Humor in a Museum In the week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon various critics announced the end of irony and death of comedy.1 Yet on September 26, 2011, the satiric newspaper The Onion published an issue dedicated to gently poking fun at Americas response to 9/11.2 In another vein, the foul-mouthed fourth graders at the center of Comedy Centrals longrunning TV show South Park (in)famously declared that, its been 22.3 years, so AIDS is funny now.3 Both The Onion and South Park are wildly popular and have been part of American culture for over ten years. Although neither of these entertainment platforms can or should be used as a substitute for an in-depth cultural analysis, both South Park and The Onion illuminate an important aspect of the ways in which a culture processes and incorporates tragedy: laughter. By neglecting to include these artifacts in museums and archives curators perpetuate silence around a valid, popular reaction to tragedy. Other than political cartoons, very few museums display comedy or humorous artifacts. If they do, the objects are rarely displayed in the same area of a history museum as the main, serious exhibit. At Washington, DCs Newseum the cartoon section is located near the cafeteria and away from the serious content of the rest of their collection. The museums failure to present comedic pieces in the same room as other artifacts from their era separates them from the very fodder this comedy reacted to (e.g. politics, war, or society). While history museums sometimes reproduce political cartoons in information panels as a way to add context,
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David Beers, Irony is Dead! Long Live Irony! Salon.com. 25 September 2001 <http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2001/09/25/irony_lives/print.html> (6 November 2011). 2 Onion Staff Writers, The Onion 37 no. 34 (2001 September 26). Available online <http://www.theonion.com/issue/3734/> (3 November 2011). 3 Jared has Aides, 13 March 2002 episode of South Park (Comedy Central, 1997- today; available online <http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s06e02-jared-has-aides> (4 November 2011)).

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popular comedy and bawdy jokes remain almost completely absent from most major history museums. The tendency to not archive items like The Onion, coupled with the museums reluctance to display these items with other serious objects, substantially limits the history museums claim to explore or even preserve the spectrum of responses to an historical event. In deference to the significance of major events, museums exclude the kind of comedy that suggests the multiple, conflicting, and sometimes absurd elements in a cultures response to tragedy. In order to examine the museums relationship to comedy, my final project will include three major sections. First, drawing on the work of sociologists, historians, and comedians themselves, the paper will explore the relevance of comedy and satire to the history museums mission. Michel-Rolph Trouillots concept of silences, specifically in the archival and narrative moments, will form the core of this section.4 The ways in which comedy and irony can add nuance to an historical narrative will be highlighted using the example of the silenced outlets The Onion and South Park in contrast to the artist/activists the Yes Men. Building from this, the papers second section will discuss the Chicago History Museums recent collaboration with the famous Second City improvisational comedy group. As part of this section, I hope to interview staff at the Chicago History Museum and Second City. Turning to static museum exhibitions, the third section will evaluate two museum exhibits for which there is a great deal of comedic material to draw from, the Museum of American Historys small HIV and AIDS Thirty Years Ago case and the Newseums 9/11 Gallery. In both cases, the presence/absence of parody and political satire will be explored in relationship to the museums non-political position. The paper will consider if and how humor can remain funny when displayed in the museum context. Throughout the paper appropriateness, sensitivity, and the role of victims will be discussed.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) 26.

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Central Questions 1. What forms of humor do archives preserve? 2. What factors determine how and when a museum will display comedy? 3. In what ways does humor generate critical thought? Is that thought always political? 4. How can museums ensure that humor remains funny, even while viewed as an historical artifact? 5. How can museums ensure that they do not offend their visitors? Selection of Resources Primary Sources Chicago History Museum. The Second Citys History of Chicago. Chicago History Museum [website]. 6 November 2011 <http://www.chicagohistory.org/planavisit/upcomingevents/special-events/the-secondcitys-history-of-chicago/the-second-city2019s-history-of-chicago-live-and-underconstruction>. National Museum of American Historys website: http://americanhistory.si.edu/ The Newseums website: http://www.newseum.org/ The Yes Mens website: http://theyesmen.org/ Secondary Sources LambertBeatty, C. Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art/Activism. Signs 33, no. 2 (2008): 309-327. Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books, 2009. Gournelos, Ted, Greene, Viveca, eds. A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2011. Kuipers, Giselinde. Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke. Translated by Kate Simms. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Sturken, Marita. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.

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