ABSTRACT
The critic of a joke is constructing a narrative, rhetorically producing a story about the meaning/effect of the joke that has implications and limitations. Moment by moment, utterance by utterance, the tweeters are at the ready with commentary, witticisms, support and/or critique joke-by-joke, comment-by-comment. Jokes, as do tweets and critiques about jokes, constitute audience within the realm of social media. The unnamed writer frames Rebel Wilson’s comment with the title, “Rebel Wilson Courts Controversy with Transgender Joke,” which, through their word choice, already contextualizes and defines the utterance as controversial. The joke is reconstructed, and then immediately positioned by “Staff Writer” within a context by paralleling Wilson with Ricky Gervais and his “barrage of trans-related jokes”. The leap to Wilson being the “disgusting” person, and linking her joke to blackface, is a fairly significant leap.
