ABSTRACT
The cultural phenomenon of stand-up comedy has recently emerged as a powerful medium for socio-political commentary. This chapter has historically traced the comic traditions in the Indian context, by providing an overview of how humour has been disseminated through various mediums from print to television to digital spaces. With a special focus on political humour to counter the dominant ideologies of the ruling class, we pose the question: how does it give rise to a form of resistance? To illustrate this, we used cyber-ethnography to thematically analyse the narratives of six selected comedians, namely, Aditi Mittal, Kunal Kamra, Varun Grover, Vasu Primlani, Sanjay Rajoura and Neeti Palta. By exploring the audience’s reception to some of these comic performances, we have attempted to analyse the linkages between the performance of humour, gender and the spaces in which such performances flourish. In today’s post-modern context, social media becomes a volatile space where such performances are sometimes met with negative consequences through online abuses and threats. Hence, it becomes imperative to problematise the idea of resistance that these comic pieces might give rise to.
