ABSTRACT
Comedy is rarely seen in terms of art. Commonly, it is associated with lower forms of culture, alternatively referred to as a part of 'mass culture' or 'popular culture', and often positioned on the bottom rung of taste hierarchies. Sociological, cultural studies, and academic disciplines generally have 'ignored comedy', despite the promise that studies of comedy and humour show for understanding significant forms of cultural 'currency' and production, and for analysing taste and social stratification. Dominant concepts of seriousness serve to create a binary between the trivial baseness of comedy and the important/significant, cultured, and respectable world/sophisticated sphere of formal knowledge and the approved 'gravity' of 'high' topics and discourses. Perhaps the seriousness of humour in all of our lives is exemplified in the way it is often imbricated within bullying, humiliation, intimidation, and even 'hate crimes'. The links between abuse, agency, and disability in comedy has caused considerable debate.
