Abstract
This chapter explains why despite breaking social taboos and even directly insulting audience members, stand-up comics are rarely physically attacked. That context is important for understanding the much rarer, but obviously significant, moments when stand-up comedians are verbally or physically assailed. Drawing upon over ten years of personal experience as a stand-up comic, as well as multiple in-depth interviews with professional and semi-professional comedians, Shouse attempts to understand why audience members sometimes threaten and even physically attack stand-up comics. He ultimately suggests that while a pattern of interaction precipitates violence in some instances, the life of an itinerant performer—working in unfamiliar places where alcohol is often consumed—creates risks above and beyond what is said from the stage.
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- 1.
Although mobsters no longer run most of the comedy clubs in the United States, cash intensive businesses like comedy clubs and strip clubs continue to be attractive to the Mob. For example, Jon Ferraro, owner of several strip clubs and a comedy club in Milwaukee was recently indicted as part of a federal money laundering case investigators dubbed “Russian Laundry” (Diedrich & Spicuzza, 2016).
- 2.
A brief note about my sample: Although approximately 20% of the interviews I’ve conducted have been with women, all the stories in this chapter come from men because I have yet to meet a female comic who has been physically attacked on stage. I believe two issues are at play here: (1) physical violence is rare in stand-up, and there are fewer women performers: the number is often put at between 20% and 25% (see Feeney, 2013). And (2), as Wells, Tremblay, and Graham (2013) note, “consistent evidence suggests that barroom violence occurs primarily among young men (Graham & Wells, 2003; Graham et al., 2002; Leonard et al., 2002)” (p. 260). Anecdotal evidence, including the many interviews I’ve conducted with stand-up comedians over the past ten years, suggests to me that female stand-ups are more likely to be sexually assaulted and male stand-ups are more likely to be physically assaulted because they perform comedy, but I don’t believe there is any hard data on the subject.
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Shouse, E. (2020). Shit Talking and Ass Kicking: Heckling, Physical Violence and Realistic Death Threats in Stand-Up Comedy. In: Oppliger, P.A., Shouse, E. (eds) The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37214-9_12
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