Skip to main content

Humour Without Reason: The Nonsense of Absurd Humour

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Humour as Politics

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Comedy ((PSCOM))

  • 1047 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter focuses on absurd humour through an analysis of The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Absurd humour is a form of the comic premised upon the abandonment of everyday regimes of sense and meaning and does not therefore adhere to the expected system of rules and logics that structure any given system. This chapter presents the argument that the expanding logic of comic absurdity seen in these texts promotes a mode of reading that is extremely tolerant with regards to formal deviation, uncertainty and ambiguity and accepting of contradiction and inconsistency as sources of pleasure rather than anxiety.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Abrams, M.H. 1993. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich. 1997. The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyer, Richard. 2002. Only Entertainment. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Earnshaw, Steven. 2005. Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esslin, Martin. 2001. The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fallows, Randall. 2008. South Park Heretics: Confronting Orthodoxy through Theatre of the Absurd. In Taking South Park Seriously, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 165–172. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foy, Joseph J. 2010. Introduction: Tuning into Democratic Dissent: Oppositional Messaging in Popular Culture. In Homer Simpson Marches on Washington, ed. Timothy M. Dale and Joseph J. Foy, 1–17. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gournelos, Ted. 2008. Irony, Community, and the Intelligent Design Debate in South Park and The Simpsons. The Electronic Journal of Communication 18 (2–4): n. pag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gournelos, Ted. 2009. Popular Culture and the Future of Politics: Cultural Studies and the Tao of South Park. London: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray, Jonathan. 2006. Watching with the Simpsons. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Doyle. 2008. Politics and the American Television Comedy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Viveca. 2011. Critique Counternarratives, and Ironic Intervention in South Park and Stephen Colbert. In A Decade of Dark Humor, ed. Ted Gournelos, and Viveca Greene, 99–118. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halsall, Alison. 2008. ‘Bigger Longer & Uncut’: South Park and the Carnivalesque. In Taking South Park Seriously, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 23–37. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husserl, Edmund. 1970. Logical Investigations, vol. 2, trans. J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacques, Bob. 1999. Da Boom. Family Guy. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karimova, Gulnara. 2010. Interpretive Methodology from Literary Criticism: Carnivalesque Analysis of Popular Culture: Jackass, South Park, and ‘Everyday’ Culture. Studies in Popular Culture 33 (1): 37–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larsen, David. 2001. South Park’s Solar Anus, or, Rabelais Returns: Cultures of Consumption and the Contemporary Aesthetic of Obscenity. Theory, Culture & Society. 18 (4): 65–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mittell, Jason. 2001. Cartoon Realism: Genre Mixing and the Cultural Life of The Simpsons. Velvet Light Trap 47: 15–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mittell, Jason. 2003. The Great Saturday Morning Exile: Scheduling Cartoons on Television’s Periphery in the 1960s. Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture, ed. Carol Stabile, and Mark Harrison, 33–54. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker, Trey. 2004. Something Wall-Mart this Way Comes. South Park. Los Angeles: Braniff Productions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reardon, Jim. 1992. Homer at the Bat. The Simpsons. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salter, Mark B. 2008. Risk and Imagination in the War on Terror. In Risk and the War on Terror, ed. Louise Amoore, and Marieke de Goede, 233–250. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Teeman, Tim. 2011. South Park Duo Lift the Bar with New Musical. The Dominion Post 19 March 2011, Wellington ed.: A22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, Ethan. 2009. Good Demo, Bad Taste: South Park as Carnivalesque Satire. In Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era, ed. Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson, 213–232. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todd, Anne Marie. 2002. Prime Time Subversion: The Environmental Rhetoric of The Simpsons. In Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture, ed. Mark Meister, and Phyllis M. Japp, 63–80. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Chris. 2004. Planet Simpson. Toronto: Random House Canada.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wells, Paul. 2003. ‘Smarter than the Average Art Form’: Animation in the Television Era. In Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture, ed. Carol Stabile, and Mark Harrison, 15–32. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicholas Holm .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Holm, N. (2017). Humour Without Reason: The Nonsense of Absurd Humour. In: Humour as Politics. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50950-1_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics