Dust covering factor as a function of X-ray luminosity

Very generally this thesis argues that there is a form of humour which can be usefully described as postmodern humour, and that postmodern humour exhibits many of the same characteristics as postmodern art and postmodern thought. It is also argued that this is due to postmodern humour being a cultural construct of the popular culture of postmodernity. One of the characteristic features of postmodernity and its products is recycling, this manifests in postmodern humour’s use of historical quotation, self-reflexivity, intertextuality and irreverent combinations that have been established as conventionally separate.

Previous sections have identified that established theories of humour can only explain specific examples and instances of humour. Postmodern humour, in keeping with other postmodern cultural products appropriates, recycles and re-articulates instances and forms of humour from the past; using them, mocking them and drawing attention to their limits. Further to this postmodern humour as a media based phenomenon also recycles and comments on the media conventions and imagery that are increasingly shaping the popular consciousness of humanity.

Concept:

In the context of this thesis postmodern humour is, in the first instance, a form of carnivalesque social comment created for mass-consumption via the popular media. Postmodern humour is intertextual, irreverent and it expresses an explicit and critical awareness of the socio-cultural, political and

commercial environment in which it is produced and circulated. Therefore a broad definition of postmodern humour could be; produced-for-mass-consumption humour with emphatic links to contemporary events and an ironic self-awareness of the history and processes of its own production, circulation, and consumption both as a media-text and a cultural commodity.

Postmodern humour is the playfully self-reflexive humour of contemporary popular culture; it is both dependent on, and oppositional to, the “adult” world of politics, hierarchy and seriousness.

Postmodern humour provides the confined and alienated populations characteristic of postmodernity the opportunity of accessing a vicarious cultural experience of social and political resistance/subversion, whilst simultaneously maintaining their revolutionary impotence. This thesis maintains that if postmodern humour did pose an actual threat to authority, it would not be allowed to circulate through the popular mass-media with the ease and prevalence that it does. This is very clearly evidenced by the lack of television programming devoted to supporting terrorism or lessons on how to make bombs and overthrow governments. From this it can be reasonably deduced that authorities endorse the audio-visual attack that postmodern humour undertakes on their privileged position. And from this it can be further deduced that authorities consider that media based attacks from postmodern humour serve a purpose which furthers their interests of maintaining their position of authority. It is the contention of this thesis that postmodern humour is officially sanctioned and circulated as a deterrent to the truly revolutionary force of the carnival (as described by Bakhtin) with its

public gathering and unrestrained social interaction centred on the mocking of all authority and social distinction. Although this thesis has positioned postmodern humour as fundamentally carnivalesque, it has however also been shown to lack the freedom of social interaction of the carnival experience and as a result it lacks the revolutionary potency of the carnival. Postmodern humour has, despite its politically oppositional underpinnings been imbricated into the very systems of politics and control that it derides.

Flow

The recycling of images, personalities, narratives and forms of humour from the past that occurs in postmodern humour is also mirrored in its ‘flow’. The idea of the flow of humour has been dealt with in passing in previous sections but deserves some reiteration here. The most common direction that humour is seen to flow is downwards through the social hierarchy, and this flow is evidenced by the prevalence of laughing at others. This is the most basic premise of superiority theories of humour and Henri Bergson’s theory of the comic, and has also been corroborated by research conducted in the workplace [see section 4.1]. The second direction in which humour is seen to flow is upwards, as in political humour and satire. The fact that these forms of humour are, in general, mediated (via newspapers and television) and do not occur in the presence of the person being laughed at must be noted. In private it is commonplace to laugh at superiors and other people who (for whatever multitude of reasons) could not be laughed at in person. This is an interesting point to consider in relation to media circulated humour which is predominantly consumed privately. Laughing at people in private allows a

‘token expression of rebelliousness’ from the weaker party whilst at the same time maintaining ‘the terms of the relationship.’²⁵¹ This also fits in with the observation above that the consumption of mass-media humour acts as a deterrent to radical activity. A third and less common direction of humour can be identified in the writings of Bakhtin, who using the concept of grotesque realism suggests a form of humour which operates in a horizontal direction as it levels all social and political hierarchies using the principle that everyone eats, defecates and procreates. It is my contention that in the act of appropriating, recycling and inverting these historical forms and flows of humour, the flow of postmodern humour has become unavoidably cyclical, following the lines of a moebius strip, turning on itself and inverting; pursuing no definitive progress or end aside from celebrating itself through reference, quotation and allusion. Postmodern humour is in this sense very much the humour of the ‘cult of knowingness’ observed by Matheson[see section 4.6].

This practical ‘lack’ of direction also accounts for the reduced revolutionary potential of postmodern humour: A downward flow can be used to dominate inferiors; an upwards flow can be used to make authorities accountable for their actions; a horizontal flow can ease the burden of living under an authority; but a cyclical flow unavoidably becomes a parody of itself.

Therefore, it also would stand to reason that if humour has lost its revolutionary potency, the only avenue for future social change is through seriousness. This could be argued to be evidenced by the seriousness of the greatest challenge to contemporary authorities, terrorism. That is not to say that postmodern humour has entirely lost its subversive potential – but with

everybody accessing it privately at different times its subversive potential cannot be realised.