Marcuse's Legacy and Foucault's Challenge: A Critical Inquiry into the Relationship between Comedic Pleasure and the Popular Media

Abstract

The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the theoretical and methodological applicability of the relevant theories of Marcuse and Foucault to analyzing the relationship between comedic pleasure and the popular media. The researchers investigate the similarities of and the differences between the respective positions of Marcuse and Foucault as they relate to power relations, subjectivity, and practice. Likewise, the methodological applicability of these theorists' work to a discourse analysis of how media content constructs comedic pleasure is considered. Overall, the present study explored the arrangement and deployment of discourses of comedic pleasure as exploited by the power/knowledge mechanism of the media and the entertainment industry. And, through this discussion, the current study argued that three key statements constitute a discursive framework for the analysis of comedic pleasure in the popular media.