The Ritual of Comedy: Expressions from the Young Indian Middle Class

In this chapter, I explore the genre of live comedy outside of its traditionally Western setting in popular and academic understanding. Through ethnographic and analytic detail, I aim to show how its significance does not merely exist in the detail of the content that comedians divulge, but more simply in its form as an opportunity to divulge these personal reflections in an intimate, communal space. Although ritual and the ‘reversals of social and symbolic structures are a vast and classic topic in anthropology’, they have been largely confined to the ‘consideration of religious and magical procedures’ (Keisalo, 2016, p.62; Moore & Myerhoff, 1977, p.3 (First printing ed.). Van Gorcum Ltd., 1977, p. 3). Overall, this chapter therefore positions stand-up comedy as a ‘secular ritual’ which not only reflects but also shapes the production of socio-culturally mediated individual identities (Moore & Meyerhoff, 1977).