Abstract
Despite our better angels, violence visited upon other bodies can be a source of laughter. Our affective experience, laughter for instance, has the potential to circumvent ethical regimes. While our discipline obliges us to condemn such laughter as well-intended progressives, such condemnations fail to speak to our lived experience. We experience the world through our bodies, not just our heads. In the face of a body writhing in pain, vomiting, bleeding, a body split open, that leaks or oozes, where there is a breach in social mores, an encounter with the abject invites the spectator to laugh.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
“8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter.” Greg Colton, Family Guy, season 4, episode 8, July 10, 2005.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Bertelsen, Lone and Murphie, Andrew. “An Ethics of Everyday Infinities and Powers: Félix Guattari and Affect and the Refrain.” In The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg, and Gregory J. Seigworth, 138–158. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Billig, Michael. Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2005.
Brian, Massumi. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Brinkema, Eugenie. “Laura Dern’s Vomit, or, Kant and Derrida in Oz.” Film-Philosophy 15, no. 2 (2011): 51–69.
Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Translated by DW Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Foucault, Michel. “Preface,” xiii–xvi. In Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1983.
Gantar, Jure. The Pleasure of Fools: Essays in the Ethics of Laughter. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.
Hester, Helen. Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex. New York: SUNY Press, 2014.
Kerner, Aaron and Knapp, Jonathan. Extreme Cinema: Affective Strategies in Transnational Media. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language. Translated by Margaret Waller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Laine, Tarja. “Imprisoned in Disgust: Roman Polanski’s Repulsion.” Film-Philosophy 15, no. 2 (2011): 36–50.
“Man Drinks Ipecac.” nikmueller12. YouTube video, 4 minutes, 39 seconds, January 28, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vS4UWZ0nQ.
“Man Sells Dignity to Asshole for $1000,” eBaum’s World, January 26, 2014. http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/man-sells-dignity-to-asshole-for-1000/83833293/.
Manning, Erin. Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Menninghaus, Winfried. Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation. Translated by Howard Eiland and Joel Golb. New York: State University of New York Press, 2003.
Moss, Joshua Louis. “Defining transcomedy: Humor, tricksterism, and postcolonial affect from Gerald Vizenor to Sacha Baron Cohen.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 5 (2016): 487-500.
Palumbo-Liu, David. “Rational and Irrational Choices: Form, Affect, and Ethics.” In Minor Transnationalism, eds. Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, 41-72. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kerner, A. (2022). Sadistic Laughter: A Case for “Non-ethical” Viewing. In: Choe, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05390-0_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05390-0_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-05389-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-05390-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)