You Gotta Make People Laugh. Competence and Performance in the Cultural Industry of Stand-Up Comedy

• In Event: 382 - Regular Session. Jobs, Occupations, and Professions

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a 2-year study of standards and practices of evaluation in the cultural industry of stand-up comedy in the United States. Combining qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, a survey and archival research, I identify five competences that employers in this particular cultural market routinely look for when hiring comedians. Further, I find that there is considerable variation in how these five competences are valued across different stages of comedians’ careers such that newcomer comedians, experienced performers, and star comedians are held to different standards. These findings challenge established sociological conceptions of valuation in cultural markets in three ways. First, the findings suggest that skills and ability are not intangible in all fields of cultural production. Second, the findings suggest that the extent to which different skills are valued varies across different levels of a labor market has been underestimated by previous research. Third and finally, the findings suggest that the theory of typecasting developed by Faulkner (1983) and Zuckerman et al. (2003) is in need of reconsideration, as it does not appear to hold across all artistic labor markets.

Author

• Stefan Beljean, Harvard University