American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations
The Comedy Roast as American Ritual: Performing Race and Gender
Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
American Culture Studies
First Advisor
Cynthia Baron (Committee Chair)
Second Advisor
Angela Ahlgren (Committee Member)
Third Advisor
Susana Pena (Committee Member)
Fourth Advisor
Abby Braden (Other)
Abstract
This dissertation examines comedy roasts as an American form of cultural ritual. It focuses on selected televised comedy roasts from the mid-twentieth century to the present. A roast is an event when a panel honors a well-known public figure, usually an entertainer and sometimes a politician. Notably, the process of “honoring” the person involves ridicule, lampooning, and carefully crafted insults known as “roasting.” A roast’s overt content is significant, but it is also necessary to recognize that the structure and context of roasts provide insight into the positioning of power and the changing social hierarchies in America since 1900. The roast format may appear to perpetuate racist and bigoted comedic actions, but rather than dismiss the cultural ritual on that account, the dissertation’s research intervention explores how roast rituals reflect the tensions and contradictions in their evolving social contexts.
The project’s focus on performance rituals and culturally specific developments, rather than ahistorical aesthetic, philosophical, or psychological studies of comedy or humor in the abstract, places it within the interdisciplinary field of American Culture Studies. Applying a multidisciplinary approach to four case studies, The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast: Sammy Davis Jr (1975, ABC), The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast: Joan Collins (1985, ABC), The Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson (2005, Comedy Central), and The Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav (2007, Comedy Central), the dissertation shows how the changing dynamics in comedy roasts are closely intertwined with developments in American values, identity, and inequalities. The analysis of the participants and their performances reveals that roasts can be a useful site of analysis of shifting cultural developments.
This project traces the American form of ritual from its development from Vaudeville performance of the early 20th century to the Friars Club in the 1940s, and to the televised performance roasts of today. Framing the roast as a performance ritual allows for analyzing the ritual as a unique, heightened experience for participants. The case studies selected represent specific snapshots that bring focus to various tensions and contradictions of representing race and gender through television. Although the roast is defined by formal properties deviations and ritual rifts further the focus on contradictions among representation. The roast ritual will continue to serve as a unique and productive site to further understand race and gender through a televisual medium.
Recommended Citation
Hershkowitz, Robin, "The Comedy Roast as American Ritual: Performing Race and Gender" (2023). American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations. 139.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/acs_diss/139