COMEDY AND FREE SPEECH AS PEDAGOGIES OF THE PRESENT TIME

Abstract

This article analyzes how the meteoric emergence of stand up comedians reinterprets free speech in the last decade. Which begin to move through different media spaces such as stages, theaters, television programs, social networks, streaming subscription services, associating themselves with uncritical humor and associated with the marketing of products and services indicated on their virtual platforms. By highlighting individual stardom and consumption, these comedians assume what Camozzato (2014) defined as pedagogy of the present time, by teaching specific ways of constituting subjects, which prioritize entrepreneurship in comedy and consumption as forms of life desirable. The research adopts as its methodology the screen ethnography described by Balestrin and Soares (2017), which adds techniques used by classical anthropology to the analysis of images produced in audio and video in the field of culture and education. And it uses as empirical material the episode “Chelsea and Racism”, which is part of the North American series Chelsea Does, available since its launch in 2016 on the Netflix platform. The results point to the use of free speech comedy as a field for the production of subjectivities of the present time.