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Punjabi stage dramas are a popular form of entertainment in Punjab and share a close relationship with the Punjabi people as they represent the culture and values of this region. However, these Punjabi stage dramas have become a platform thriving on humiliation, body shaming, misogyny, and eroticism. The present research focuses on finding the major types of dark humor present in Punjabi stage dramas. Also, it focuses on analyzing how the use of dark humor challenges people’s self-esteem, and body image and how it humiliates the basic institution of marriage. This research made use of qualitative content analysis as a research design and carefully observed the episodes of stage dramas available on social media until reaching the point of saturation. After thematic analysis, the results of the study yielded five major themes that determined the major types of dark humor. The themes included prejudice based on caste, dark skin color, and appearance. Moreover urban supremacy and rural prejudice were also found to be present in the stage dramas. The present research, being the first-ever study to be conducted in this field, explains the phenomenon under study from a cultural lens and also aims to contribute to the literature by providing a base for future studies in the field of sociology of humor.
Siddique et al. (Wed,) studied this question.