Academic literature on the topic 'Aunts – Humor'

The article is devoted to the visual and speech genres of Old Tiflis, which are revealed in the visual and verbal texts of famous artists N. Pirosmani, V. Elibekyan and Armenian writer A. Ayvazyan. The carnival spirit of Old Tiflis influenced the visual and verbal signs of the gastronomic infrastructure. The article is written by a semiotic, typological method, as well as an interdiscursive approach (painting, fiction). In addition, Bakhtin’s theory has become a metalanguage for identifying speech genres of urban space. An empirical analysis of the material showed that Pirosmani's paintings were a vivid example of visual advertising and, in fact, were multichannel creolized texts. Only later, when the symbolic capital of Pirosmani increased, his paint- ings began to be perceived as glowing examples of primitivism. In other words, they were “connected” to global discourse, and their primary function was for- gotten. In the main function of the signage, the paintings were the products of demand of the gastronomic infrastructure of Old Tiflis: they depicted the frames “food”, “feast”, they were also visual menus of Tiflis gastropubs (dukhans). The utilitarian demand for signs generated the brilliant paintings of Pirosmani, and at the same time, he became the author of urban space. This phenomenon is also affected in the literary discourse (A. Ayvazyan), in which two methods of modeling urban space are manifested. Firstly, the city is mod- eled in consciousness, expressed at the level of the signified (maps, sketches), and then embodied in life. That is how many cities of historical Armenia were built in diachronic point of view. Secondly, the painter (Pirosmani, Grigor – the hero of the story of Ayvazyan) painted and created in the city space (interior, exterior). The motives of his work were his own inner experiences. The multilingualism of urban space created a demand for advertising signs in different languages. Since the “social bottom” did not possess the linguistic norm of the Russian language, in the eyes of native speakers the urban texts seemed ridiculous, perceived with humor. Similar texts are found in various artists of Old Tiflis (Pirosmani, Gudiashvili, Elibekyan ect.). The same thing appears in the art discourse (Ayvazyan), which gives examples of playing with names, with language (toasts of fun and burial), etc. In addition, an analysis of such a speech genre as toast revealed that it incorporates proverbs, sayings, and in the thematic plan, the following manifestations can be called: spell-wish, wish-curse, wish-criticism, etc. The presence of a similar speech genre and the revealing of the functioning of the toast showed that eating was comprehended by different wishes, and the thematic and syntagmatic analysis of toasts can become a tool for reconstructing the axiological system of Old Tiflis society (homeland, city, parents, children, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, etc.).

This paper explores two novellas by Black Caribbean women writers: Crick Crack, Monkey by Trinidadian author Merle Hodge, and Harriet's Daughter by Tobagonian-born M. NourbeSe Philip. In Hodge's work, the protagonist, Tee, must negotiate between two worlds. The first is that of her early home with the rough working-class aunt (Tantie), seemingly chaotic but also full of warmth, humour, and familial love. This is juxtaposed against her new home with her haughty Aunt Beatrice, who advocates colonial values and demands conformity from her niece for Tee to gain acceptance and belonging. In contrast to Hodge's protagonist, Tee, Philip's Margaret keenly desires closer ties to her Caribbean identity. She creates a world of refuge against an environment that seeks to erase blackness and crafts a self in relation to her chosen identity, exercising agency with respect to her notions of selfhood and citizenship.

"Editor’s Note: The following article is extracted from a longer account, titled ‘Self under Siege: Identity, Memory and Story – an Alzheimer’s Journal’ (to be published as part of a book, The Long Goodbye, in preparation). Gordon Wheeler describes and reflects upon his Aunt Margaret’s changing mental state over an eight-year period up to her death in 2000. During this time, suffering from Alzheimer’s, Margaret loses the capacity for preserving a coherent self-story. However, she compensates for this with ever more ‘nimble skipping and creative covering’, as Wheeler describes it, confirming the Gestalt view of self as the ‘organiser of experience’. While much deteriorates, the fundamental nature of ‘who Margaret is’ remains mysteriously intact and whether Gestalt therapy theory can adequately portray this phenomenon is left as a question. The account is notable in three ways. First, it demonstrates a type of informative, observation-based, personal research of a kind that is too little explored and appreciated. Second, Wheeler raises significant questions about the Gestalt theory of the self. Third, it is a human story, told with affectionate understanding and wry humour – an inspiring synthesis of intellectual curiosity and compassion."

"The Burney family stood at the centre of cultural life of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, and excelled in several forms of artistic expression, especially in writing. Among the manuscripts preserved in the family archive are some collections of juvenilia produced by the children of Charles Rousseau and Esther Burney, Frances Burney’s elder sister. These literary projects helped the young authors to build confidence in their writing, refine their craft, and find a voice. This paper examines two: the first is an early example of a family-produced magazine that is patterned after one of the first-ever periodicals aimed at children. The second collection is a series of anthologies containing poems, plays, and stories written by Sophia Elizabeth Burney and dedicated to her novelist aunt. The plays seem designed to be performed in amateur theatricals; the stories contain images of female suffering, sharp satire on social pretentions, and a raucous (even violent) sense of humour that evoke the novels of Frances Burney. The newly discovered manuscripts reflect an environment that evidently encouraged creative play, self-expression, and artistic production. The study of these juvenile works yield insight into the creative world of the Burneys and, more generally, into the world of the child reader and writer in late eighteenth-century England.

The Mighty Walzer is the story of a boy who dreams of winning fame, fortune and the adoration of beautiful women, as a table tennis player. He wants to make his life grandiose like all of us. However, it is a pity that he fails. Oliver, the protagonist is not disheartened. Even though he has not struck his fortune, life gives him other riches- the riches of life and growing up itself. Thus, the novel can be seen as the celebration of the trivial processes of growing up. The more we read, the more we realise that the mediocre lives presented in the novel are grandiose in their own ways. Thus, the author is examining the grandiosities of our mediocre lives. The novel is the life story of each and every one of us. It is the celebration of the simple life of a commoner with its trivialities and mediocrities. However, there is an exuberant grandiosity in this existence. It is this grandiose process of life which is emphasised in this study. Set in the1950s England, The Mighty Walzer is semi-autobiographical. Howard Jacobson in the veil of the character Oliver,Walzer depicts his own self as a confused Jewish boy growing up in Manchester. When it comes to home, nothing is closer to heart than the childhood memories. Jacobson’s the Mighty Walzer is indeed a childhood memoir. The novel is a bildungs roman narrative. It is absolutely hilarious, comic and sublime. It has the grace and charm of a childhood dream. Jacobson’s wit was lauded from all quarters, when the novel was first published. Sunday Times observes: “Jacobson writes with agility that gives pleasure akin to humour even when it isn’t actually funny. It is the sheer charm of his intelligence that feels like wit.” The Independent in its review quotes: “This mature novel has the sustained exuberance and passion of his youthful writing but within an epic…. An achingly funny book….An amazing achievement….There is few novelists today who can imbue the trifles of life with such poetry.” Jacobson wrote this rollicking, loose limbed, semi-autobiographical novel in Australia at the end of 90s, having finally put enough distance between events to revisit the humiliation. He puts before us a number of childhood milieus in a straight forward and grandiose fashion. There is no holding back when it comes to a number of intimate sexual and mental give and takes. It is these truthful ejaculations that make the novel hilarious. One can really denominate the novel in Mario Vargas Illosa’s terms as a piece of ‘mental masturbation.’Howard Jacobson amuses his readers in The Mighty Walzer. The characters and milieus in the novel are regular, common and mediocre. We can connect ourselves with the various characters and their eccentricities. The more we go into the novel, the more we realize that the desires, anxieties, failures, successes, sufferings and frailties of the characters are in fact the mirror reflections of our own milieus. Thus, when we look at with disdain the ‘jacking off’ –of Oliver, Sheeney’s women hunting, Sabine’s promiscuity, Aunt Fay’s mid 30’s love affair etc., we are pitying our own repressed desires and inhibitions. Such is the psychological depth with which each of the characters are handled.

John Charles Burkill, born on 1 February 1900, was the only child of Hugh Roberson Burkill (1867-1951) and Bertha ( née Bourne, 1866-1937). His father came from a family which had farmed in Lincolnshire for generations, whereas his mother came from a background of prosperous farming and building. On neither side was there a strong academic tradition, but Charles was soon to show evidence of intellectual distinction by winning a scholarship to St Paul’s school at the age of 14. There he profited fully from the excellent teaching that the school offered and which was reflected not only by his mathematical prowess, which led to a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1918, but also in his ability in classical studies in which he maintained a life-long interest. He was also a formidable chess player and had a mischievous sense of humour which he retained, albeit in a more restrained mode, in later life. A striking example of his grasp of the essence of a practical joke is recorded in the story that, as a boy on a visit to a house-proud aunt, he saw the comic potential of a trail of corn from the chicken run through the front door and upstairs to the bedrooms. On leaving school in 1918 he joined the Royal Engineers (RE), but was demobilized soon after being commissioned as second lieutenant. However, this early military training was of service in 1939 when he joined the Cambridge University OTC as a second lieutenant and came to command the RE unit with the rank of major. He went up to Trinity in 1919 and stayed on successively as scholar, research student and Smith’s Prizeman and fellow until 1924 when he was appointed at an unusually early age to the chair of pure mathematics at Liverpool.

This article forwards a new way of thinking about pornography, based on the changing work practices of web-based and film/video amateur porn producers and their spectators. Their efforts are not to be confused with individuals who pose for porn sites and simulate sex as glossy “amateurs” – bored housewives, horny freshmen, nasty teen virgins, battered Russian migrants, pregnant mommies, crude aunts or rapist uncles, etc. In most types of commercial porn, amateur roles are scripted, filmed and edited by producers who direct and pay models to enter their stage setups and sex scenes. Different from those are sexually driven media practitioners who make sex scenes to explore personal desires and respond to those of others. They use a variety of recording devices to capture moments, screen scenes privately or in small groups, or upload them on the web through webcams, live journals and web logs. Looking at the website of “pornblogger” Carly, for instance, we can see how the sexual body is revealed through daily online writing modes and feedback from other web users. Moreover, Carly masters the discourses of eroticism and porn theory as overlapping knowledge regimes of sexual representation. In an entry uploaded on March 26, 2004, she writes about Internet porn debates and the plight of children and parents. Moreover, in the same entry, she shows pictures of her collection of dildos and how she uses them on her anal region. One could think of Carly’s body as inhabiting “performance strata” of porn cultures as they mediate real-life contexts. As explained by performance theorist Jon McKenzie in Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, strata are layers of forces and intensities that give form to matter by organizing small molecular entities into aggregations. The performance strata bundle a variety of cultural, organizational and technological performances as discursive and normative working methods. McKenzie explains that the agents of the performance strata harbor new forms of normativity, while they may also recognize cracks, fissures and “outside” discourses as agents in their force fields (176). The strata are solidified and disrupted by an attentiveness to the active-performative nature of language and bodily gestures, as we develop creativity in our dealings with art and technology, or new attitudes towards social-sexual networking and cultural vitality. Work ethics, the use of technological languages, social and intellectual curiosities, intermingle and intersect to become strata of power and knowledge. Whereas nation-state governments and capitalist porn industries are arguably organized by an older “discipline or punish” maxim (as consolidated empires decide to “push-down” content onto consumers, or punish consumers who access porn in surveilled places), amateur pornography thrives on a different type of exhibitionism and voyeurism. Pornographers and voyeurs communicate with each other and learn how to articulate fluctuating sexual scenarios and pornographic roles. This new trend towards mutual communication and bonding is currently developed in two types of pornography, in web-based platforms for alternative pornography, where the exchanges can be complex and partly private; and in community theaters where the exchange is raw and carried out in public. A good example of the first type would be web sites where individuals collaborate in scripting, shooting, and responding to pornographic portraits. www.spread.com (note: no longer available online) is a good example such of such a porn site. The site was set up by Barbara DeGenevieve, Professor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, in collaboration with Terry Pirtle, the web master and manager of the site. As the announcement read, the site is “… committed to the queer community, to serve a segment of that community that is under-represented in web pornography.” The ssspread.com site encourages queer and transgender people to submit porn scripts and organize film-shoots to act out scenarios. The outcome of this collaboration process is filmed and still-images are uploaded on the site on a weekly basis. For instance, in the “Road Side Service” slide-show, posted on October 30, 2003, Chicago-based singer Nomy Lamm acts out a macho-redneck scenario as a “male trucker” who receives a blowjob from a “transman” partner, then penetrates the partner anally with a dildo on the hood of the vehicle, only to finally reveal her cock to be in the form of an amputated leg. De Genevieve explains the collaboration process with participants in an interview: I usually collaborate with the people that I am filming, and I ask them ahead of time to carefully consider what they want to do in the session. Very often, I just leave the scene up them, or they come up with a scenario that we have discussed beforehand. I will add something to it or ask them to do something slightly different. But, of course, I myself could never come up with the variety of scenarios that they come up with. A lot of people I shoot are young and into punk aesthetics. The environments they live in are definitely not mainstream, and this becomes part of the ambience of a shoot. Yesterday, I shot in a model’s kitchen. It was a pretty chaotic environment with dishes in the sink, food remnants on the countertops and floors, and stuff all over the place. There was another shoot a couple months ago in a room where I literally couldn’t see the floor for the clothes, CDs, magazines, over-flowing ashtrays, sex toys, pillows… But I find these living spaces really fascinating because these are the places where people really have sex. ” (DeGenevieve, 2002) www.spread.com also encourages social activities between members. Moreover, the site contains links to pornographic stories in the “Story Lounge” area. The “Articles and Interviews” area has interviews with sex scholars and activists such as Shannon Bell and Annie Sprinkle. The members also give feedback to weekly still-images by writing messages on the messageboard. This is an important development in the history of pornography, as spectators may be increasingly interested in giving feedback to producers to complement their habits of voyeuristic specatorship and masturbation. The model of amateur porn is thus an important challenge for the commercial porn industries, which for the most part construct an imagined audience of quietly masturbating and orgasmic voyeurs. This is the normative impulse in commercial pornography, exemplified in the tendency to show extreme close-ups of human intercourse or sex with underage models. These normative elements are contested by the growing masses of alternative pornographers, who crack the system while marking symbolically varied porn movies and diverse body types as “ordinary”. A parallel development to web-based producers would be amateur pornographers screening their works in community centers or arthouse theaters, where voyeurs once again are invited to watch and share responses. This development has started to gain attention in the US mass media with TV and film critics expressing both revulsion and propulsion towards this trend (Dana 2002). In the Boston area, for instance, Kim Airs and the arthouse theater Coolidge Corner Cinema have started to organize annual screenings of amateur porn movies. The event, entitled You Oughta Be in Pictures, brings together home-made porn movies and low-budget movies made by artists and filmmakers. The appeal of the event lies exactly in the communication between makers and viewers, the untrained screen-performers and filmmakers, whose movies cause exhilarating responses in the audiences. Audiences in this screening are large and loud, at times shouting out their reactions, or laughing at how the filmmakers conceive of sexual positions and camera angles. In some movies, the scenes fail to be explicit or dynamic at all. For example, a female masturbation scene shows a moving hand on a hidden vagina, where the soundtrack consists of quiet and camera-shy moaning. This is amateur porn, a bundle of an “ordinary” person’s sexual efforts and their representation. As the above example demonstrates, amateur porn does not always cater to arousal or masturbation, but can nevertheless trigger fulfilling reactions in audiences, as screenings give producers an opportunity to interact with spectators and get immersed in changing feedback loops. One man in the audience of the 2002 screening of You Oughta Be in Pictures described his confused reaction: “I have seen pornography before. I’ve seen quite a bit of it. But this was unlike any of those experiences. I am not exactly sure what is different about it. But the response that it generated made me feel asexual” (Syme 2002). A female respondent emphasized the importance of humor in the implicit communication between the filmmakers and the viewers. She writes: “But I think it was the humor part that I really enjoyed. It allows you to step back from all the taboo-ness of sex. There is a give and take in the sense that some filmmakers will poke fun at audience response by deliberately putting extreme images on screen, while audience members will at points poke fun at the filmmaker’s attempt at ‘sexiness’ at certain intervals” (Yu, 2002). Amateur pornographers and their respondents are the everyday agents of mediated sex, exploring acts of media making and porn debates. Amateur pornographers assert their bodies as sexually active entities negotiating power structures through performative modes of awareness within media communities. Amateur pornographers live the era of Internet porn, indie media and globalization, inventing “peer-to-peer” languages of eroticism and small-scale economies as pockets of sexual health and experimentation. This is perhaps the long-awaited schooling of pornography, its rapid democratization, its turn to more diversified expressions of sexual-aesthetic lust. As was reported in a recent New York Times article, more women and queer producers are entering small-scale sex sites and industries, and making attempts to promote better working conditions for sex workers and media art” (Navarro, 2004). McKenzie predicts that there will be no “good schools” of performance to replace the “bad“ ones. There are only pockets of activism that assert a need to perform and be performed, as communication technologies are rapidly modifying the way we share knowledge and nurture the body. This article was first published as ‘the New Media Schooling of the Amateur Pornographer’ in Spectator 24:1 (Spring 2004). An excerpt was also published in Freecooperation (SUNY Buffalo, April 2004). References Bisbee, Dana. “Real Candid Camera” Boston Herald. October 24, 2002. DeGenevieve, Barbara. Personal interview with author. Unpublished Text. October 9, 2002. McKenzie, Jon. 2001. Perform or Else. From Discipline to Performance. New York: Routledge, p. 176. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/20/national/20FEM.htmlhttp://www.pornblography.com/daily_grind/ Syme, Ewen, Personal Interview with Author. Unpublished Text. January 7, 2002. Yu, Titi, Personal Interview with Author. Unpublished Text. January 7, 2002. http://www.ssspread.com MLA Style Jacobs, Katrien. "The Amateur Pornographer and the Glib Voyeur." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/06_amateur.php>. APA Style Jacobs, K. (2004 Oct 11). The Amateur Pornographer and the Glib Voyeur, M/C Journal 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/06_amateur.php>

Before we return to Mr Jones, we will take one more view of Sophia. Though that young lady had brought her aunt into great good humour by those soothing methods which we have before related, she had not brought her in the least to abate...

Jack Benny’s comedy frequently upended the idea of heterosexual white masculine domination. Jack was portrayed as a struggling employer and a failure as a patriarch whose radio cast constantly get the better of him. The long-lasting comic feud with fellow radio comic Fred Allen demonstrated a playful camaraderie through insult-throwing. As a second-generation immigrant, Benny’s Midwestern Jewish identity seemed much assimilated, although his humorous themes were deeply rooted in Jewish traditions. Benny greatly enjoyed blurring the sharp divides between masculine and feminine presentation, and his role in the cross-dressing farce Charley’s Aunt, the occasional risqué humor of his radio shows, and his uncannily close imitations of Gracie Allen, discomfited an American culture becoming increasingly anxious about rules of gender identity.

Chucky is the product of an interracial union; his mother is Navajo while his father is Black and Mexican. Along with his three siblings, he was placed in the custody of his maternal aunt, Isabelle, because of a very tragic incident. At the age of five, he witnessed his father murder his mother. Despite all the turmoil, Chucky is remarkably well adjusted and level-headed. Unlike many of his peers, he has managed to stay out of any serious trouble. He has chosen to respond to heartache with humor, and he has developed a reputation as a prankster. With his gregarious personality, it is no surprise that Chucky is among the most popular students in his high school, which is no doubt buttressed by his standing as a start basketball player. Along with rap music, basketball is his chief coping mechanism for dealing with his adolescent angst. This chapter introduces Chucky.

My son’s account was too long to be delivered at once, the first part of it was begun that night, and he was concluding the rest after dinner the next day, when the appearance of Mr. Thornhill’s equipage at the door seemed to make a pause in the general satisfaction. The butler, who was now become my friend in the family, informed me with a whisper, that the ‘Squire had already made some overtures to Miss Wilmot, and that her aunt and uncle seemed highly to approve the match. Upon Mr. Thornhill’s entering, he seemed, at seeing my son and me, to start back; but I readily imputed that to surprize, and not displeasure. However, upon our advancing to salute him, he returned our greeting with the most apparent candour; and after a short time, his presence served only to encrease the general good humour.