Comic Observations: Stand-Up Comedy in Wartime Russia

• In Event: Humour and Censorship in Eastern Europe and Eurasia

Abstract

Stand-up comedy is a relatively recent yet highly popular form of stage comedy in Russia. Since its rapid development in the 2010s coincided with increasing domestic political repression and Russia’s aggressive foreign policy, from the very outset, this context shaped a key division within the Russian stand-up scene: between “approved” comedy, permitted on state-controlled media platforms, and independent comedy, free from state funding and direct control. I argue that, despite the variations in comedic style of their generally “safe” observational routines, topics such as daily life shortages, mental health, and gender roles’ expectations serve as vehicles for discussing and problematizing the socio-political reality. Through strategies that to a certain extent inherit the techniques of the late Soviet comedians (ironic distancing, Aesopian language, as well as didacticism and ridiculing the vices of the audience themselves), these comedians offer comedy that can both normalize and routinize the official discourses and the regime politics, as well as challenge them.

Author

• Daria Ganzenko, Central European U (Austria)