The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power

We are currently sitting at the nexus of overlapping and worsening global crises, and in her new book The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power, Cady Borum argues that comedy is an often overlooked key ingredient in fueling the kind of social change required to tackle such crises. She describes her efforts as executive director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University to use comedy research to launch initiatives like the center's Yes, and . . . Laughter Lab and Comedy ThinkTanks, both of which are cosponsored by major media industry and social justice organizations (21). Both a theorist and practitioner with decades of experience combining laughter and civic engagement, Borum lays out a blueprint for creating infrastructure for projects that bring comedians, activists, and entertainment industry professionals together in service of social justice.Before offering a series of case studies that illustrate how her comedy initiatives function, Borum lays out the two key arguments that ground them. The first is that comedy is necessary for building the kind of cultural power required to create civic power. Rather than holding open a space for play and laughter, which are crucial in establishing resilient change-making coalitions, activists, social justice groups, and nonprofits tend, she maintains, to rely on pedantry and appeals to negative emotions. Specifically, comedy is unique in its "deviant thinking that offers new or unexpected entry into contemplating realities and problems and injustice" (15). Comedy is also a powerful tool in creating connections, amplifying messages, and garnering attention because it is intrinsically shareable. These traits make it uniquely suited for activism in the age of what Henry Jenkins calls "participatory culture," wherein consumers are also citizens who actively engage in cultural production, a concept that is critical to Borum's account.The second argument builds on the first. While many social justice organizations led by millennials and gen zers are partnering with comics and the entertainment industry to create coalitions that can tackle social change, the voices of the marginalized communities most affected by the issues these organizations tackle remain unheard owing to the elitist nature of comedy's industrial pipeline (7). Comedy is a crucial storytelling tool in building narrative power, but those with the most potential to revise conventional narratives are denied access because Hollywood privileges those with the most social capital (12). But Borum is optimistic, arguably too optimistic; marginalized artists are, she suggests, "increasingly invited into the evolving entertainment industry to share their realities and truths" (14) as a result of the distributive power of platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and the growing number of Hollywood industry producers and executives who "understand that the economics of their business require diverse stories and storytellers" (15). It is true that the rise of streaming outlets has increased outlets for diverse storytelling. Still, we have also just witnessed a Hollywood writers' strike that starkly illustrated that streaming is a house of cards built on the backs of diverse storytellers who are often abandoned when they stop fitting with the brand. At the same time, we are losing social media sites to reckless leaders and risky profiteering. Not that change isn't possible, but it isn't usually linear.The first three chapters lay the historical, theoretical, and industrial groundwork for the case studies in the second half of the book. Chapter 1, "'Desperate Cheeto': How Comedy Functions as Deviant Creative Resistance," provides an overview of scholarship on the subversive power of comedy. Chapter 2, "'It's All About Who You Know': Pitching and Producing Comedy in the Transforming Entertainment Industry," gives a quick lesson about how to get a project made within the current streaming-centric era of entertainment in the US. This chapter is especially useful for anyone who wants to better understand how projects get made, how to pitch them, and how production and distribution processes work. Chapter 3, "'Hollywood Won't Change Unless It's Forced to Change': How Activism and Entertainment Collide and Collaborate," focuses on the "narrative and cultural" strategists who try to shift Hollywood portrayals of marginalized groups by launching pipelines, collaborating with the industry, and mobilizing public pressure. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 illustrate how collaboration between social activist groups and comedians works in the Comedy ThinkTanks program that Borum spearheads. Each chapter serves as an enlightening case study illustrating how comedy can break down barriers between entertainers and activists, create more robust discussion around difficult topics, and better attract audiences who can then be turned into allies. Drawing on the writers' room model, Borum argues that thinking more expansively about solutions and outreach demands engaging with comedy and play. The last three chapters, then, truly are cases in point.In chapter 4, "'You Learn to Be Racist from People You Love': Co-creating Comedy for Antiracism Public Engagement," Borum looks at a campaign undertaken in collaboration with racial equity organization E Pluribus Unum to try to encourage people in the deep South to mobilize against racism. Chapter 5, "'Invisibility Is Not a Superpower': Asserting Native American Identity Through Humor," centers on the production of IllumiNative's You're Welcome, America, a short-form comedy talk show that uses biting satire to illustrate the often-forgotten contributions Black and Native people have made to American culture. Chapter 6, "'Maybe They Think Beauty Can't Come from Here': Resilience and Power in the Climate Crisis," describes how Comedy ThinkTanks worked with the Hip Hop Caucus to create the live comedy show Ain't Your Mama's Heat Wave in Norfolk, Virginia, to call attention to the disproportionate effect of climate change on Black communities. Chapter 7, "'I've Always Been a Syringe Half-Full Kind of Guy': Changing the Environment Comedy Pipeline," shifts gears (but only slightly) by highlighting the work of the other major comedy initiative in the center. The newer Yes, and . . . Laughter Lab is attempting to create a "new entertainment pipeline and philanthropic sector to support social-justice-infused comedy" by hosting twice-yearly events on both coasts at which invited comics pitch their ideas to Hollywood decision makers and social justice organizations (25).Borum introduces and concludes the book imploring us to take comedy seriously as an art form uniquely suited to fighting our toughest and most complex challenges, but the book is stronger as a practical intervention than a theoretical one. The participatory cultural framework, as Borum concedes, doesn't fully take into account how deeply racism, misogyny, privilege, and greed are built into the foundations of Hollywood, technology, and the comedy industry. It also doesn't acknowledge that marginalized comics and their comedy can also do harm. She mentions Hasan Minhaj as an example of a changemaker who combines social justice with his comedy. But Minhaj also has come under fire regarding the truth of some of his most impactful stories and also is facing allegations of misogyny against and mismanagement of members of his writing staff during his tenure on Comedy Central's Patriot Act. Not that this discounts the importance of the light his work shines on Islamophobia, but it reminds us that neither social justice organizations nor marginalized comedians are immune from perpetuating injustice. The strength of this book is its optimism and pragmatism in showing how to build coalitions that can create change working within existing systems, but for initiatives to make real change they must wrestle realistically with the darker sides of those institutions as well.