Dissertation in Which There Appear Lost Punchlines, Dreadful Puns, Low Resolution, etc.: On the Failure of Humour in Avant-garde Film and Video

This dissertation explores the overlooked functions that humour has served in American avant-garde film and video, arguing that humour is involved consistently in many of the key operations and philosophies that have energized these moving image practices. Taking humour as an alternative historical and interpretive lens, this dissertation conducts new readings of three major formations or moments in the discourse of the American avant-gardes. These are: underground film, structural film, and early feminist video art.

A branching theme of these readings is failure, seen to carry complex meanings and humorous pleasures in various cases of avant-garde activity. The introductory chapter details the propagandization of failure in the 1960s underground cinema, and argues that a divisive brand of humour highlights the sense of the avant-garde in this cinema. Chapter 1 re-conceptualizes the humourless structural film movement of the 60s and 70s, arguing that, for filmmakers like Michael Snow, the idea of structure is not a dogmatic working principle but something of a ruse, one whose limits are meant to be teased, pushed, and exceeded. Moving to early feminist video art, Chapter 2 emphasizes the importance of humour in the project of articulating feminist political horizons. In videotapes by Susan Mogul and Martha Rosler, performative nonchalance and lack of preciousness about low-grade equipment can be seen as forms of humorous delivery, which stay utopically open to future re-articulations. Circling back to underground film, Chapter 3 locates humour in the failure to distinguish sharply between the avant-garde and popular culture. Through readings of humour in queer underground film, and then in more recent pop appropriation videos, this chapter illustrates the hilarity, critique, and utopian feeling that can result when the effects of pop and of the avant-garde are brought excessively close.

This dissertation assembles conceptual scaffolding for understanding humorous failure as a variable avant-garde theme, drawing upon such scholars as Matei Calinescu, Jack Halberstam, and Jose Esteban Munoz. With failure in mind, this dissertation further reflects on the instability of humour itself as an object of study, and as a device, attitude, or value that might be put to work for us.