Degree

BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Department

Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts

Date of Award

Fall 2019

Date of Submission

2021-08-03

Advisor

Dr. Melissa Beattie, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts

Committee

Dr. Naveen Minai, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences

Project Type

SSLA Culminating Experience

Access Type

Restricted Access

Abstract

In 2015, an Indian YouTube comedy channel, All India Bakchod (AIB) organized a roast event AIB Knockout, for which they were heavily criticized by the Indian politicians for being sexist. As a result, AIB received widespread criticisms, FIRs, and death threats. However, several Indian YouTubers pointed out that many Indian shows, such as The Kapil Sharma Show, have never been censored despite being more sexists. According to them, this showcases that offense has been used as a tool to restrict Indian YouTube comedians. To examine the relationship between comedy and offense in contemporary Indian society, this study conducts a textual analysis of each video of AIB and The Kapil Sharma Show to understand which content is more sexists and also examines AIB’s comedy in its socio-political context to investigate whether the offense towards AIB was because of their content or was it used as a political tool to censor the Indian YouTube comedians. This study finds that satire plays a fundamental role in questioning the authority and in creating a community of people to interact and express their grievances. Furthermore, instead of being intrinsic, the notion of offense is used as a tool for silencing.

Pages

68

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