Modern Japan History Workshop on Kinchan's Laughter, 4/27

[Inqualia]

Please join us for the next meeting of the Modern Japan History Workshop on Friday, April 27, 2012 from 18:00 to 20:00 at Waseda University.

The workshop is open to all, and directions to the venue can be found on our website:

http://sites.google.com/site/modernjapanhistoryworkshop/

Best regards,
Paul Roquet
PhD Candidate in Japanese/Film Studies
UC Berkeley

April 27, 2012

“Kinchan’s Queer Family?
Laughter as intimacy in the variety shows of Hagimoto Kin’ichi”

David Humphrey
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of California, Berkeley
 
This paper examines the 1970s and 1980s television variety shows of the comedian Hagimoto Kin’ichi (a.k.a. Kinchan), investigating their mobilization of laughter in the creation of affective intimacy between television viewers and performers. Acclaimed for creating ‘warm’ and ‘healthy’ laughter, Hagimoto’s self-titled shows ‘Kinchan no don to yatte miyo!’ (hereafter, ‘Kindon’) and ‘Kinchan no doko made yaru no!?’ (hereafter, ‘Kindoko’) reduced the affective distance between television viewers and performers through techniques considered novel at the time. Featuring viewer written sketches, ‘Kindon’ provided viewers the opportunity both to participate in the production of television, and to have their jokes ‘gotten’ by Hagimoto, his celebrity guests and other viewers. Likewise, although a variety show, ‘Kindoko’ borrowed from the television drama format, casting Hagimoto with an on-set family, whose largely unscripted interactions created, for viewers, a sense of familial intimacy with the performers both on-screen and off.
 
Through his variety shows, Hagimoto established himself as the paternal figure in a television family that extended beyond the frame of the television, but he did so as the object of the feminine laughter that structured that family. Namely, the ‘warm’ laughter of Hagimoto’s shows was most often an audibly female one―a consequence of Hagimoto and his co-producers having actively targeted female homemakers. Focusing on this role played by gender in the shows’ creation of viewer-performer intimacy, this paper draws on the contemporary media discourse that framed ‘Kindon’ and ‘Kindoko’s production and reception, in order to illuminate both the discursive construction of that intimacy as well as its consequences.
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