24. Gender and laughter: Comic affirmation and subversion in traditional and modern media.

Pailer, Gaby; Böhn, Andreas; Horlacher, Stefan; Scheck, Ulrich

doi:10.1515/9783484431225.44

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Ahmed (2008), for example, has drawn attention to how humor and laughter can be used by those in positions of power and privilege to reassert normative, oppressive, and inequitable social conditions. Pailer (2009) makes a similar point, noting how the laughter experienced through encounters with comedy can “smooth over differences” in certain instances but in others can keep “hierarchical distinctions” intact (Pailer, 2009, p. 8). These ideas notwithstanding, we suggest that the humor through which the utopianism of SC is distilled renders it a valuable resource for teacher educators, particularly in a context where queer issues, experiences, and priorities remain a challenge for some teacher educators to navigate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Up Schitt’s Creek? Comedy as a Slantwise Pedagogical Encounter with Queerness

Henry,

Bryan,

Neary

2023

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background: Pedagogical approaches to learning about LGBTQI+ themes and experiences remain a largely understudied topic in teacher education. This is partly due to anxieties around exploring these themes in nuanced and sensitive ways, with many teacher educators feeling ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of exploring so-called “difficult knowledge.” Purpose: In response to this, the purpose of this paper is to offer reflections on the pedagogical value of comedy for exploring such themes and experiences in teacher education, focusing especially on the situational comedy (sitcom) Schitt’s Creek. We turn to comedy given our interest in the capacity of comedic modalities to offer “slantwise” pedagogical encounters with LGBTQI+ themes and experiences, that is, nonaffronting encounters that resist damage-centered narratives of LGBTQI+ people and are open to multiple queer futures. Research design: In exploring how the sitcom offers teacher educators and student teachers these kinds of encounters, we provide a reading of three episodes of Schitt’s Creek through a “queer utopian” lens. We analyze a purposive sample of episodes from the series that speak directly to LGBTQI+ themes and experiences. We accompany this analysis with prompts for teacher educators to use in discussing these episodes in the teacher education classroom. Conclusions: We suggest that the sitcom offers teacher education an opportunity for student teachers and teacher educators to access a queer utopianism that can be encountered not only in the specifics of Schitt’s Creek’s plotlines, characters, and/or settings, but also, perhaps more primarily, through the affective dimensions of watching the sitcom itself. The piece comes to a close with some thoughts on the significance of comedy for exploring the relationship among affect, education, and social justice more generally.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%