Although humour is often considered light and entertaining, it can also irritate, expose and shake up political orders. Stand-up comedy, in particular, demonstrates the close intertwining of personal storytelling and social criticism. When queer comedians share their personal experiences on stage, for instance, they highlight social inequalities and challenge power dynamics. In this conversation, Christina Mattson explains why we are living in the 'age of comedians' and why ridicule can threaten political figures. Her doctoral project, 'The Personal is Political Comedy', is funded by a DOC scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW).

Mockery of the US regime

Influential stand-up comedians have been banned from US television. Their shows have been cancelled. Apparently, the US president felt threatened.

Christina Mattson: Absolutely. For people in positions of power, ridicule can be deeply threatening. When comedians expose or mock authority, it destabilizes the image of control. So the backlash we sometimes see actually reinforces the idea that comedy does have political force. I think of the old adage that “women are afraid that men will kill them, men are afraid that women will laugh at them” – there’s a real power in that, and it feels, sometimes, like ridicule is one of the few things that can puncture some very thick skins.

In your dissertation, you focus on 'The Personal is Political Comedy' in Anglophone cultures, i.e. the US, the UK, and Australia. How do stand-up comedy, political engagement and social awareness intersect in this context?

Mattson: Stand-up has long served as a vehicle for social criticism, and that role is only increasing. As Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett argue, we are living in the “age of the comedian”: audiences increasingly look to comedians to make sense of the world.

Traditionally, this has often taken the form of overt satire—challenging social norms, critiquing institutions, and confronting power. At the same time, stand-up can be deeply personal, built on performers’ own anecdotes. What interests me most is where the personal and the political intersect—a connection that has become especially visible in recent years. Since the early 2000s, especially around 2017/18, we see a wave of comedians using personal stories as social and political critique.

From queer life

And this is especially evident among comedians from marginalized backgrounds?

Mattson: I would argue yes. While many people claim they are “not interested in politics” because they see it as distant from their everyday lives, performances centering experiences of marginalized identities challenge that assumption, showing the ways their daily lives are affected by wider social contexts. This is visible for example in stories from members of the queer community: by sharing lived experiences shaped by homophobia or by the absence of legal protections in certain contexts, queer comedians demonstrate how deeply politics permeates daily life. Their personal anecdotes become a way of engaging with political realities.

Rather than directly attacking political systems, these comedians often reveal the political dimensions of their lives simply by showing their full, lived realities. Through personal storytelling, they create a powerful form of political engagement – one that makes social structures visible through intimate experience.

Would this be the difference between traditional stand-up and queered stand-up comedy?

Mattson: Rather than a clear-cut distinction, I see queered stand-up as a particular vein emerging within contemporary stand-up that deserves closer analysis. To me, queered stand-up “queers” the format of stand-up comedy – pushing at boundaries of the genre, challenging conventions, and responding to tensions.

Can you clarify what you mean by “queered stand-up”?

Mattson: I identify queered stand-up as drawing from a set of interrelated patterns. These performances are frequently formally innovative and self-reflexive, as the performer comments directly on their methods, personae, and audience expectations. They often resist the idea that laughter is the primary goal, foregrounding storytelling, vulnerability, and political engagement. They center marginalized identities, particularly queer experiences, and lean into sustained narratives, sometimes addressing trauma without humor: political arguments are often framed through and illuminated by political arguments. In my dissertation, I also focus in particular on “specials”—long-form recorded performances made for broadcast or digital release—that have the space to do the narrative work I see as central to queered stand-up.

Can you give an example?

Mattson: Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is, for me, one of the clearest and most prominent examples.  Gadsby begins their 2018 special by leaning into their established career of skilled but conventional stand-up, poking fun at social norms but overall creating an atmosphere of humor and amusement. Roughly halfway through the performance, however, they shift the atmosphere abruptly, as they announce that they must “quit comedy,” as it no longer serves their purposes. From that point, they revisit earlier jokes, restoring painful details previously cut for humor—for example, when recounting a homophobic attack that followed an experience they’d previously used as a basis for jokes. The performance foregrounds aims beyond audience laughter: personal testimony, empathy, and political engagement. In directly addressing the limitations of conventional stand-up in communicating their story, Gadsby offers a new performance form that better suits their needs; I see this as emblematic of queered stand-up. 

Political impact or trivialization?

Do you think humour can actually drive social change?

Mattson: I have to preface this by saying that answering that question is perhaps beyond the scope of my dissertation. I’m actually more focusing on the places in which humor falls short, and I’m not conducting audience reception research, so I’m not measuring whether people’s views change after watching a special.

But from my own experience, I can say that well-crafted comedy has made me reconsider my assumptions. Speaking more personally, and beyond my project, I do think humor has a real capacity to drive social change.

Humor can unsettle norms people take for granted. It can flip perspectives, challenge who gets to tell jokes and who becomes their target, and disrupt ideas about in-groups and out-groups. In that sense, it can genuinely shift how people think. In democratic contexts, that could translate into changes in political engagement – how people vote, whether they protest, how they participate in public debate. At the same time, I think there are real concerns about how resolving serious subjects into humor can lead to trivializing them, to people not taking things seriously. It is that tension, that balance, that I want to follow and unravel in my project.