Photo by Lee Pellegrini
In 2020, 而其他美国人则忙于隔离活动，比如烤酸面包和刷网飞, 传播与国际太阳城官网副教授Matt Sienkiewicz以太阳城官网的名义观看了数百小时的右翼喜剧.
这一题材吸引了他好几年，主要是因为它相对默默无闻. 而像乔恩·斯图尔特和斯蒂芬·科尔伯特这样的自由派深夜喜剧演员则稳步上升，成为家喻户晓的名字, 奇怪的是，他们的保守派同行几乎没有引起学术界的关注.
As a result, “有一种哲学观点认为，自由主义与讽刺和喜剧有着内在的联系，而保守主义却无法做到这一点,” said Sienkiewicz, who chairs the communication department at Boston College. “这不是一个普遍的观点，但它是相当广泛的.”
This past spring, Sienkiewicz and co-author Nick Marx, 科罗拉多州立大学电影与媒体太阳城官网副教授, published the results of their pandemic research: That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them，让读者一窥对话喜剧的风貌及其日益增长的政治影响. The book was named one of the best comedy books of 2022 by Vulture, and has garnered coverage in mainstream outlets like POLITICO, Fast Company, and The Guardian.
Below, Sienkiewicz解释了为什么人们认真对待保守派喜剧很重要, even (and perhaps especially) if they don’t think it’s funny.
You began working on That’s Not Funny in earnest in 2020. 是什么促使你和(合著者)尼克·马克思(Nick Marx)接手这个项目的?
其中一部分来自于人们如何讨论喜剧在学术界的作用，以及它是如何开始在美国文化和政治中出现的. 很多人都在谈论喜剧在美国自由政治中的重要性. Especially in the early 2000s, 学者和权威人士对喜剧给予了很多关注，认为喜剧是自由主义者获取新闻和理解政治运作的重要途径.
But we’re not in the early 2000s anymore. 尼克和我在想这和现在的情况有什么关系, 我们突然意识到媒体世界和政治世界都发生了很大的变化. 所有这些东西都出现在保守派媒体和保守派喜剧的世界里，而没有在任何学术文献或流行报道中得到反映.
So we looked at that media environment, 观察了特朗普时代和新冠时代的政治变化, and found that there were a number of important voices, whether you liked them or not, that were not being addressed. We chalked that up to a certain historical bias, political bias perhaps, on the part of people who write about comedy, but also just the newness of it all. We started looking at it and ended up going pretty deep.
What will people find most surprising when they read your book?
第一个基本层面的惊喜是，这些事情在人们没有注意到的情况下发生, 很大程度上是因为社交媒体的盛行和为你策划内容的算法. 有很多保守的喜剧演员，他们在经济上非常成功，有很多观众, 但如果你不在那个世界里运作，你的社交媒体算法也不建议这样做, you probably don’t know they exist at all.
For example, 人们常常惊讶地发现，福克斯新闻的格雷格·古特菲尔德(Greg Gutfeld)的收视率一直超过更“知名”的自由派声音，比如斯蒂芬·科尔伯特(Stephen Colbert)或《太阳城官网》(the Daily Show)的特雷弗·诺亚(Trevor Noah). That fact often gets people interested.
Where are conservative comedians sharing their content?
It's the same media but different channels, 一般来说，通过或多或少完全保守的媒体领域, with some exceptions. 福克斯新闻曾多次尝试在节目中引入喜剧，尽管他们有过一些众所周知的失败, they've kept at it and broke through in the Trump era. That’s now where you'll find Greg Gutfeld, but you’ll also find people doing ostensibly lighthearted, playful, and sometimes ironic bits throughout the daily schedule.
其他空间是保守品牌的在线平台:Blaze TV, Glenn Beck’s media outlet has Steven Crowder on it; The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro’s conservative branded online space, has content that either is comedy or is about comedy at least; and then there’s the world of podcasts. Joe Rogan, who's a complicated character (as we say in the book), doesn't really have clear politics, he has demographics: he goes after young people, largely men. 很多时候，这意味着要招惹大声攻击的自由意志主义者，有时甚至是右翼阴谋论者. Then there's Twitter, there's Instagram, there's YouTube. There are all these uncurated spaces.
Why is it important for liberals to be aware of this?
部分原因是要理解美国的政治运作方式, 不要陷入这样的陷阱:人们从根本上是不同的，以至于有一群人想笑，而另一群人不想笑. 尽管这听起来很荒谬，但很多自由主义者认为‘我不觉得这有趣，所以这不是喜剧.’
There’s also a strategic element. 如果你对自由政治事业的成功感兴趣, 我认为理解保守派的声音在做什么是很有价值的. In this case, they’re appealing to new demographics by emphasizing comedy, and they're not shying away from edgier content. I think it's a strategic point that could be valuable, 这是对自由派的一个很好的警告，不要想当然地认为他们被认为是更有趣的人, which can make it seem okay not to cultivate humor, or to maybe police humor or push back against edgier content.
最后，总会有一个问题，政治联盟是如何走到一起的? If you look at the American right, you see everything from a free market libertarian, to a Christian values conservative, to a Trumpian ‘America first’ nationalist. 你可能会认为这些人没有太多共同点，那么是什么把他们拉到一起的呢? 我们认为，喜剧就是其中之一——抛开这些分歧，嘲笑自由派反对派的能力，是美国右翼真正强大的团结力量.
How does this project compare to your previous books?
我写过各种各样的主题，我过去的很多太阳城官网都是非常国际化的，是基于实地太阳城官网的. 大流行使这成为不可能，所以从这个意义上说，这是一个很好的项目. 发现新的人和新的喜剧领域是很有趣的，尽管我并不喜欢所有的人, or maybe most, of what I was engaging with. We include the full range of right wing elements in this book, 从格雷格·古特菲尔德这样的“主流”人士一直到极右翼人士, including fascists and Nazis, 所以我花了很多时间听一些很不愉快的事情.
But at the end of the day, I would argue that even if you find it terribly unfunny, all the stuff we’re pointing to in this book, you might be interested to know about it nonetheless.
Alix Hackett | University Communications | December 2022