Kan man skämta om det här? : En kulturanalytisk studie av svensk ståuppkomik

Sammanfattning: Stand-up comedy has become increasingly popular in Sweden in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The jokes of stand-up comedians are reflections of contemporary cultural notions and discourses. Stand-up comedy can also be seen as a form a cultural free zone where one is allowed to express oneself in ways that are not possible in other public contexts. In this study I am investigating how Swedish stand-up comedians relate to cultural notions about gender, sexuality, ethnicity/race, places, age, disabilities, social class and mental illness. By applying an intersectional perspective I am able to show how various power structures can interact and strengthen each other. The main empirical material consists of three observations at different stand-up comedy clubs and four interviews with stand-up comedians. By using cultural analysis as an analysis method I am showing how stand-up comedy both reflects and is affected by larger structural patterns and discourses in society. My analysis shows that stand-up comedians are both reproducing and challenging normative cultural notions. A variety of theoretical concepts are used to analyse how standup comedians are joking about prevailing cultural notions. For example am I using gender theories to analyse jokes about notions of gender and sexuality while postcolonial concepts as well as theories about racification are applied in the analysis of jokes connected to cultural notions about race and ethnicity. In some of the jokes different cultural notions are intertwined. Furthermore I am analysing how the stand-up comedians are reflecting over what they are allowed to joke about, depending on their own background and experiences as well as how they are relating to different discourses. Stand-up comedy is still dominated by a masculine discourse that has only recently been challenged by a feminist discourse, which stand-up comedians relate to in different ways. How stand-up comedians navigate between political correctness and the discourse that comedians should be able to joke about everything is also part of my investigation. Finally, I am analysing different comic strategies used by the stand-up comedians in their performances, which affect how they are joking about various cultural notions. Some comedians are joking about themselves in a self-deprecatory way while others invites the audience to join the perspective of an assumed normative community to make jokes about what makes other groups different.