Black Humor

Samuel Beckett in a vast metaphor of the vision of the world after the holocaust seen through the eyes of the cremated Jews or other victims whose ashes have been thrown over the plains of Poland as sung in The Peat Bog Soldiers by Pete Seeger:
“Far and wide as the eye can wander, / Heath and bog are everywhere, / Not a bird sings out to cheer us, / Oaks are standing, gaunt and bare. / [Chorus:] / We are the peat bog soldiers. / We're marching with our spades, / To the bog.”

That could not be a better description of the world in Corkadoragha, or the setting of Waiting for Godot, or the landscape seen at the beginning of Malloy with only one difference here, the cows. It is the same cosmic order of an obsessive compulsive universe in which we are nothing but prisoners of some fate from which we cannot evade or escape. In a way the very black and dark humor of Flann O’Brien is part of a phenomenal tragic vision shared by many writers, artists or simple human beings in the 20th century, let alone the 21st century. Is that novel still funny when we look at it in this perspective?

El artículo tiene por objetivo atender a una transformación de la sátira política en las redes sociales: su integración con lo cómico negro. Si bien, esa combinación ya estaba presente tempranamente en la imprenta, los grandes medios la censuraron al asumirse independientes de los partidos políticos en el siglo XX. Ahora, con la hipermediatización, la sátira con humor negro toma cualquier blanco sin límites morales. El estudio tiene por finalidad historizar esa conjugación y describir cómo se dio en un caso con gran repercusión en Argentina por su gravedad para la vida democrática: la desaparición forzada de Santiago Maldonado. Palabras Claves: Sátira-Humor negro-Redes sociales POLITICAL SATIRA AND BLACK HUMOR IN HYPERMEDIATIZATION. THE MALDONADO CASE. The objective of the paper is to attend to a transformation of the mediated satire when it is generated on social networks: its integration with the black comic. Although this combination was already present early in the printing press, the mainstream media censured it by assuming independence from political parties in the 20th century. Now, with hypermedia, black humor satire takes on any target without moral limits. The purpose of the study is to historicize this combination and describe how it occurred in a case with great repercussion in Argentina due to its seriousness for democratic life: the forced disappearance of

Milan Kundera, whose novel The Joke (1967) bears an ironical title, states in The Curtain (2005) that every joke is virtually blasphemous to some extent. He insists that what is particularly fascinating in Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet and in Kafka's The Trial is the authors' capacity to " go down into the dark bottom of a joke ". Thomas Hardy's " Ah, Are You Digging Up My Grave " is a poem with a structure similar to that of a joke: after building up the suspense, it turns the reader's assumptions on their heads with a final twist. The poem is remarkable for its oral quality, in the wake of the experiments led by Robert Browning in the field of the dramatic monologue. The speaker's post mortem voice engaged in a dialogue with a dog turns the poem into an anti-elegy. What is mocked in the end is the all-too human sense of vanity and feelings of self-importance.

В статье рассматривается коммуникативная стратегия детской поэзии Даниила Хармса, связанная с  явлением черного юмора как нетрадиционной – девиантной – формы комического. Вызывая расщепление катартической реакции и способствуя расслоению читательской аудитории, черный юмор проблематизирует границы между смешным и горестным, эстетическим и неэстетическим. В детской поэзии Хармса, наследующей традиции немецкого поэта Вильгельма Буша, черный юмор возникает на основе тематической агрессии, горестный смысл которой снимается с помощью таких художественных приемов, как инфантилизация письма, дефигурация, ко-мическая детализация, персеверация и др. Нагнетение внутритекстовой агрессии и снятие ее трагического содержания с помощью смеха способствует отказу от миметических свойств художественного текста, призванного быть не отражением первичной реальности, а продуктом авторского воображения.

The present article tries to study irony and humor (black humor) in Charles Bukowski"s Hollywood and Pulp in the light of Hutcheon"s theoretical framework on the idea of playfulness to see how they could be interpreted in terms of postmodern fiction. The previous researchers have considered Bukowski"s fictions; however, they did not regard them in respect of the concept of play. As a result, the aim of this study is to understand whether there is any relationship between Bukowski"s ironical humorous language and Hutcheon"s critical theories on irony and black humor as identifiable features of postmodern fiction or not? To achieve the end, the researcher is going to interpret these two novels" verbal ironies regarding Hutcheon"s proposed ironic markers as well as the structural ironies and black humors with regard to the doctrines of the mentioned postmodern critic. Therefore, the analysis seems convincing enough not only to indicate the significant importance Hutcheon"s critical theories on postmodernism, but also to claim that these two novels consist of the outstanding aspects of postmodern fiction including irony and black humor.

Bachelorpaper for Cultural Sciences/Studies. Written in English (as a speaker of Dutch) in 2004. 

"The last Monty Python film, the Meaning of Life, came out in 1983. I was three years old then. Thanks to extensive reruns of their movies and television shows, I grew up to become a great fan of those five weird Englishmen and one American: Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam. The special, crazy humour of Monty Python captured me and never let me go, and I still embarrass myself from time to time with friends, when I’m laughing my head off or quoting stuff and they cannot understand the humour in all the silliness shown on screen.
I immediately thought of Monty Python as a subject for this paper. I’d like to combine their humour with the theories of postmodernism, thus trying to find some sort of explanation of why their television shows were universally considered as a revolutionary new way of looking at the world. It’s also quite a thankful subject: in all the books that are written about the Pythons, I really miss this deeper exploration of how their humour might possibly work."

Featuring Derrida, Jameson, metafiction, intertextuality, stream of consciousness and a whole lot of stolen quotes and images.

With special thanks to Franca Jonquiere of the University of Amsterdam (UVA) and Katrina G. Boyd of Indiana University who helped me with their articles and lectures.

This work explores dark humor and absurdity in trauma through the works of Beckett’s Waiting for Godott, Melih Cevdet Anday’s Gizli Emir (Secret Command) and José Saramago’s Blindness to understand the function of black humor. Humor brings the intense suffering, violence and the element of laughter together as a response to atrocity. When one struggles to find meaning in devastation, comedy helps to distance one’s self from the traumatic event. All three of the works deal with life-in-death situation. The first work was published after one of the most destructive conflicts in history - World War II, the second work was published when a military coup was taking place in Turkey (1960) and the last work treats of an ultimate state of emergency in an unexplained mass epidemic. My essay will be divided into two themes: the first one is Absurdity and Grotesque and the second one is The Question of Resolution. In the first section of my essay (Introduction), I will be looking into the theories of trauma, dark humor and grotesque to capture the function of comedy to sustain or complicate the narrative perspective. In traumatic events, everything shatters, time, place, order and action become meaningless which can be observed in all three of the works clearly. In the second part of my essay, I aim to investigate the endings of the literary works which are completely empty of action. The mental and physical state of the characters while ‘waiting’ for a resolution evolves into a pure state of absurdity which questions the concept of resolution in trauma.

The article gives a detailed account of the emergence and relative popularity of black humor jokes that circulated in February and March 1986, shortly after the tragic loss of the NASA shuttle spacecraft Challenger, with the lives of the astronauts aboard.  It shows that the jokes appeared in distinct "waves," the first responding to the disaster with clever wordplay and the second playing with grim and troubling images associated with the event.  Males and females offered jokes in similar proportions, though females were more likely to refrain from joking completely and males were more likely to become "superinformants," collecting and relating strings of jokes on the topic.  The primary social function of disaster jokes appears to be to provide closure to an event that provoked communal grieving, by signaling that it was time to move on and pay attention to more immediate concerns.  Thus disaster jokes express a desire to "speak the last word" on a painful topic by transforming the most dissonant images of the event into creative wordplay.

In questo articolo tenterò di mostrare che in Superwoobinda Aldo Nove impiega la comicità surreale e l’umorismo nero per farci guardare alla mercificazione del mondo in un’ottica ambivalente. In particolare, l’autore dà voce all’ideologia consumistica in modo iperbolico, così da presentarcela in maniera insolita e straniata e da trarne le conclusioni più impensate e assurde. Ciò da un lato scredita il consumismo e dall’altro ci induce ad abbandonarci alla sua logica, lasciandoci intravedere quanto piacere vi sia – nello spazio protetto della finzione letteraria – a usarla per scandalizzare sia i fautori sia i detrattori della mercificazione di massa.

In this paper, I will try to show that Aldo Nove’s use of surreal comedy and black humour in Superwoobinda makes us look at mass commercialization from an ambiguous point of view. Particularly, the author gives voice to the consumerist ideology in an hyperbolical way, to present it in an unusual and alienated manner: thus, we are led to draw the most unpredictable and absurd conclusions. On one hand, this discredits consumerism, while on the other hand it induces us to give in to its logic: so that safely protected by literary fiction, we get a glimpse of how enjoyable it might be to use consumerist logic to shock both supporters and detractors of mass commercialization.

This paper examines Renaissance representations of failed masculinity in Ben Jonson’s two plays Epicoene and Volpone. Jonson employs dark comedy to mock society’s most austere and revered gendered subjects. He subverts aspects of the Renaissance ideal image of masculinity, which is shaped by a patriarchal society that constructs masculinity in relation to gender, sexual desire and social status. This paper explores how Jonson subtly utilizes two characteristics of black humor, namely amusement through repulsion and pleasure from wicked pranks, to ridicule falsely imagined ideals of Renaissance manhood.
Keywords: Dark Comedy, Ben Jonson, Masculinity, Gender, Renaissance

Este estudio explora las implicaciones ideológicas del humor negro en la
narrativa de David Toscana. El humor satírico y acérbico, la burla, la parodia y
la ironía tienen un papel crucial en la visión crítica que aporta el autor sobre la
sociedad mexicana actual. Señalaremos en su narrativa la aproximación satírica
a la modernidad y a la historia, pero sobre todo a la cultura del libro en México
para observar cómo esta visión se relaciona con el fracaso individual y colectivo
en el contexto del subdesarrollo. Destacamos en la obra de Toscana cierta crítica
a la razón instrumental promocionada en los libros de la “no-ficción” que
han saturado al mercado del libro. Asimismo, se discutirán el humor morboso y
la parodia en la obra de Toscana en relación con la tradición hispánica: sobre
todo con Miguel de Cervantes y la verdad quijotesca.
Palabras clave: David Toscana, humor, sátira, fracaso, modernidad, subdesarrollo,
globalización, neoliberalismo, razón instrumental, mercado de libro, narrativa
mexicana.

This essay argues that the literary materials grouped together in the early 1960s under the rubric of “black humor” frequently attended thematically to acts of interracial identification. In addition to examining critically the impulses motivating persons to engage in such imitative procedures, the prose fictions of Terry Southern, Richard Fariña, and Thomas Pynchon also explored the virtues of an alternate model of subjectivity, one not predicated on the notion of acquiring a stable self. In pursuing both topics, these authors repeatedly took recourse to certain forms of American popular culture, including superhero comic books and silent screen comedy.

English abstract: Previous scholars have focused thematically on each discipline tackled by Bataille in order to show that all of his works amount to various journeys ending at the moment when the author perceives the impossibility of reaching the sacred, because of its intrinsic incompatibility with discursive thought (he defines the sacred as the Other of rationality). Following the same scheme, his literary works would then consist of representing the threshold beyond which the sacred is hinted at without being explicitly formulated. However, I argued that rather than being a perpetual variation over the same theme, his oeuvre follows a chronological evolution in three phases, emphasizing more subtly that his conception of the sacred varied every time he changed his paradigm. This enabled me to discuss the normally contended idea that his literary works copy the strategy he endorsed in his philosophical, anthropological, economic and theological works. According to me, literary eroticism as he created it had the power to succeed where the other disciplines failed in reaching the sacred.
ISBN: 9782745325587

First used by the theatre critic Irving Wardle in a 1958 article, the expression comedy of menace has become a catch-all phrase systematically applied to Harold Pinter’s plays. Yet Wardle has offered a specific thematic and aesthetic definition of the genre based on the motif of the malevolent intrusion as well as on the paradoxical combination of comedy and menace. This paper will focus on the aesthetic definition of the genre, more precisely on the simultaneousness of nonsense and menace in The Birthday Party and of farce and menace in The Dumb Waiter. In these two plays, Pinter makes extensive use of nonsense and slapstick yet always endowing these comic devices with a sense of menace. Goldberg, McCann and Ben are indeed both clowns and oppressors and their use of physical comedy and whimsical language is as entertaining as it is unsettling, bringing to mind rather disquieting images of persecution and torture. This simultaneousness will however be qualified in terms of production and audience response since the comic might prevail over the menace and vice versa, leaving it to the reader-spectator to decide what genre the plays belong to.

La noticia, los titulares de prensa o la columna periodística son algunos de los precedentes de la minificción contemporánea y con los que esta categoría se ha relacionado intertextualmente. Estos géneros o discursos periodísticos han servido de patrones para la confección de no escasas microformas narrativas. En algunos casos estas contribuciones aparecieron originariamente en las páginas de los periódicos, como las escritas por Félix Fénéon entre mayo y noviembre de 1906. El anarquista y crítico literario y de arte francés se ocupa a lo largo de siete meses de una sección regular en el diario 'Le Matin'. En esa sección debía resumir en menos de 135 caracteres tipográficos acontecimientos de actualidad supuestamente ocurridos en ciudades y en pueblos de Francia. La fórmula que utiliza se basa en lo que se conoce como "fait divers". Escrita con mucha ironía y humor negro, la columna de Fénéon recibe el nombre de "Nouvelles en trois lignes". Partiendo de la caracterización que de esas notas de prensa han hecho diversos críticos, como Roland Barthes y otros, el presente artículo examina el tratamiento de algunos de esos "faits divers", al tiempo que reflexiona en torno a la condición ficcional de dichos microtextos.

Notes for Panel 16: Great Refusals: Refusing One Dimensionality Today

The Dialectics of Liberation in an Age of Neoliberal Capitalism
International Herbert Marcuse Society

Seventh Biennial Conference, 26-28 October 2017, York University

https://marcuseconference.wordpress.com/

Francesc Betriu ha sempre rifuggito con destrezza le sirene del cronachismo. I suoi affreschi sociali non hanno mai ceduto al becero sensazionalismo dei gazzettieri indignati. Betriu, che per José Luis García Sánchez e Rafael Azcona era il più «castizo», il più «hispano», dei registi catalani, amava sporcarsi le mani, affondare lo sguardo nella maleodorante palude sociale dell'«esperpento», sperimentare le soluzioni meno nobilitanti agli occhi degli esteti, senza per questo nutrire l'ambizione di oltrepassare i confini del cinema industriale, entro i quali rimase sempre ben radicato. Ogni sua inquadratura, spesso debordante, persino impetuosa nell'affastellare intuizioni dallo scatto mordace, sembrava essere guidata dalla sola bussola dell'istinto. Essendo poco propenso a dispiegare i preziosismi della forma, i bizantinismi dello stile, non si espresse con altrettanta scioltezza nell'affresco storico d'impronta accademica (negli anni Ottanta, durante il boom del cinema medio «di qualità», adattò due eminenti romanzi di Mercè Rodoreda e Ramón J. Sender, La plaça del Diamant e Réquiem por un campesino español, con esiti più che dignitosi, in particolare nel primo caso, ma certo non irresistibili). Era nella commedia, rivisitata dalle parti del callejón del Gato, e raccolto il testimone di Azcona, Ferreri, Berlanga, Zabalza, Fernán Gómez, che ritrovava se stesso: l'amore per la strada, per i perdenti, in ogni caso mai compatiti, semmai sottomessi con premurosa spietatezza alla livella della satira, che non riconosce alcuna disparità sociale (checché ne dicano le vestali della correttezza politica). La sua poetica affondava le radici nell'humus più autentico della cultura spagnola, cultura rivisitata però da una prospettiva eteroclita, dall'estremo lembo nord-orientale della penisola iberica, laddove le onde del mare si rifrangono ai piedi dei bassifondi portuali, il Raval, il Gotico, il Born, la Barceloneta, templi supremi della perdizione, patrie eccellenti della corruzione e del vizio. In quei vicoli, dove il sordido non sa esprimersi se non imboccando i sentieri dell'eccentricità, e gli aromi del caffè e dell'assenzio culminano nelle asprezze della più respingente cloaca, albergano tutt'oggi i fantasmi di Jean Genet e Jean Gabin, nonché di tutti gli anonimi avventurieri, gli irregolari, i loser, che li hanno attraversati nell'avvicendarsi dei decenni (una memorabile sequenza de La bandera, 1935, di Julien Duvivier fu girata all'interno del leggendario cabaret La Criolla, nell'allora Barrio Chino, calle Cid 10, dove negli stessi anni il poeta di Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs era solito concedersi ai migliori offerenti, fra istinti desideranti e pulsioni autodistruttive). Un patrimonio di storie e atmosfere che Betriu è andato costantemente aggiornando e reinventando, con dedizione pressoché certosina. La dedizione di chi fra quei vicoli si sente, ed è, di casa. RAVAL, AMORE MIO Al Raval, d'altronde, Betriu dedicò uno dei suoi film più divertenti e sentiti, di certo il più struggente, Sinatra (1988), tratto da un bel romanzo dell'argentino Raúl Núñez. Qui Alfredo Landa, attore di rara intensità troppo spesso riciclatosi nella farsa a buon mercato (e sia chiaro che chi scrive non disdegna la farsa, tutt'altro, ma solo quando questa sa attentare con viva arroganza al galateo propagandato dai sopracciò delle accademie), si perde nei vicoli che costeggiano la Rambla dels Flors, con la consapevolezza di non potersi né sapersi ritrovare. Ai tentacolari labirinti del Distrito Quinto il regista tornò solo vent'anni dopo per il suo penultimo lavoro, Mónica del Raval (2009), documentario stilisticamente dimesso, di un romanticismo spinto e affilato, su un'adorabile mercenaria del sesso: una donna-monumento,

Este artículo analiza el uso del humor negro del caricaturista Fontanarrosa en su serie Semblanzas Deportivas, definiendo, a la vez que deslindando, lo humorístico y lo cómico. Se aborda también el lugar que ocupa la obra de Fontanarrosa en la cultura popular, en donde destacan sobre todo temas deportivos como: fútbol, boxeo, atletismo y lucha libre. Se observa el uso de la literatura borgeana en Fontanarrosa y cómo, a partir de la exageración en imágenes de los rasgos de sus personajes, se consigue elaborar una crítica sin que sea necesario recurrir a la abierta oposición.

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran tutkija Ulla
Lipposen (1941–2015) tallettaman digitaalisen folkloreaineiston kuvaa 2000-luvun hulluudesta osana kansanhuumoria. Artikkelissa pohditaan, millaista kuvaa yhteiskunnasta ja hulluna pidetyn ilmentymistä nuorten aikuisten tallettamat esimerkit rakentavat. Mille niissä nauretaan tai millaiseen kulttuuriseen keskusteluun ne ottavat osaa huumorin keinoin? Artikkeli nostaa esille kaksi erilaista tulokulmaa hulluuteen: lääketieteelliseen diagnosointiin liittyvät näkökulmat sekä kulttuuriseen, pääosin normeja rikkovan käytöksen tuottamaan hulluuteen. Artikkeli osoittaa, että huumorin keinoin on mahdollista käsitellä arkoja yhteiskunnallisia kysymyksiä, tavallisuuden, normaaliuden ja
poikkeavuuden määritelmiä sekä kyseenalaistaa totuttuja ajatusmalleja.

This paper focuses on postmodern concepts of the narrator unreliability, intertextuality and humor. It describes the postmodern unreliable narrator according to postmodern views of theory in general, and more specifically according to Asgar Nünning’s list of textual signs of unreliability. It also explicates the inseparability of the postmodern intertextuality, or parody as described by Linda Hutcheon, and humor, precisely, irony in the service of creating a parody. Furthermore, the paper analyzes Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, concentrating on the novel’s unreliable narrator, intertextuality and humor. It is explicated that Lolita’s narrator shows signs of unreliability. In addition to that, it is discussed that the novel’s intertextuality in combination with irony parodies different genres, making intertextuality and humor inseparable in the novel. Lolita’s film adaptations by Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne are also analyzed according to their narrator, intertextuality and humor. The elements of the narrator unreliability, intertextuality and humor in film adaptations are compared to those elements in the novel. The paper identifies Kubrick’s Lolita as a postmodern film as it features these postmodern elements. It also shows that these elements cannot be found in Lyne’s Lolita, concluding that Nabokov’s and Kubrick’s Lolita are examples of postmodern art, while Lyne’s Lolita is not.

… somn, naturã moartã cu naturã. O treime din viaþã dormim. Sfîntã bucatã! ªi apoi, mai tot timpul cînd nu sîntem treji, dormim inconºtient. ªi nu ºtim sã vorbim despre somn, ºi somnul nu intrã în calendare. Dar pînã cînd ignorarea asta ce, izolîndu-l, îl nedreptãþeºte pe el de somn?

If Lincoln had not been assassinated in the third act of this play, would it have been able to survive the 19th century? It is pathetic how an invader from America imposes his own elitist vision that saves the local British aristocracy from bankruptcy and at the same time he provides himself with a wife that just inherited the fortune he should have gotten if he had not been honest enough and revealed the will of the patriarch from America. No empathy to be wasted on this charade. But funny plays on words. God damn it!

This paper focuses on postmodern concepts of the narrator unreliability, intertextuality and humor. It describes the postmodern unreliable narrator according to postmodern views of theory in general, and more specifically according to Asgar Nünning’s list of textual signs of unreliability. It also explicates the inseparability of the postmodern intertextuality, or parody as described by Linda Hutcheon, and humor, precisely, irony in the service of creating a parody. Furthermore, the paper analyzes Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, concentrating on the novel’s unreliable narrator, intertextuality and humor. It is explicated that Lolita’s narrator shows signs of unreliability. In addition to that, it is discussed that the novel’s intertextuality in combination with irony parodies different genres, making intertextuality and humor inseparable in the novel. Lolita’s film adaptations by Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne are also analyzed according to their narrator, intertextuality and humor. The...

В статье рассматривается вопрос, в какой мере шутки про COVID-2019 соотносятся с черным юмором. Проводится сравнение семантического поля понятия черного юмора в англоязычной и русскоязычной научной литературе. В русскоязычной литературе черный юмор чаще определяется его тематической направленностью, а в англоязычной – стилистическими особенностями. Шутки про COVID-2019 практически не имеют отношения к черному юмору, так как касаются в основном социального контекста пандемии и не соответствуют определению комедии энтропии.
ЧОМУ ЖАРТИ ПРО COVID-2019 – ЦЕ НЕ ЧОРНИЙ ГУМОР?
У статті розглядається питання, якою мірою жарти про COVID-2019 співвідносяться з чорним гумором. Проводиться порівняння семантичного поля чорного гумору в англомовній та російськомовній науковій літературі. В російськомовній літературі чорний гумор частіше визначається його тематичною спрямованістю, а в англомовній – стилістичними особливостями. Жарти про COVID-2019 практично не мають відношення до чорного гумору, адже стосуються переважно соціального контексту пандемії та не відповідають визначенню комедії ентропії.
Ключові слова: чорний гумор, COVID-2019, комедія ентропії, контент-аналіз.

WHY COVID-2019 JOKES ARE NOT A BLACK HUMOR?
The article addresses the question of the extent to which jokes about COVID-2019 relate to black humor. The discussion on the subject field of black humor is being updated. The semantic field of this phenomenon is compared in English-language and Russian-language scientific literature. It is concluded that in Russian-language literature, black humor is more often determined by its thematic focus, and in English-language – by stylistic features. Two types of humor that have death as their subject can be distinguished: humor, in which there will be normativity, and humor, in which there are no moral norms (comedy of entropy). We cannot attribute jokes about COVID-2019 to black humor, given that these jokes are not about illness or death, but about the social aspects of the pandemic, which are conceptualized in terms of a certain normative character. This could happen if the danger of a pandemic is not understood. It could also become part of the resistance of the media, in which the reality of the pandemic was constantly emphasized. Secondly, the almost complete absence of death and “entropy” in jokes about COVID-2019 could be caused, on the contrary, by an increased fear of a new threat. In this case, the humorous social aspects of the pandemic temporarily distracted the recipients from the anxiety state. At the same time, the quarantine topic has become a prism for a latent rethinking of this new threat, its rise above it.
Keywords: black humor, COVID-2019, comedy of entropy, content analysis.

This chapter makes the claim that 21st century Holocaust humor on TV, which is much more significant in terms of quantity than in the 1990s, follows in the footsteps of themes introduced in The Chamber Quintet’s skits, but also addresses topics that were not broached in the 1990s, thus expanding the scope of Holocaust humor on TV.  The focus of this chapter is mainly on examples taken from contemporary TV satires, to better highlight the trajectories Holocaust humor in TV satire has taken since the 1990s. The first three sections of the chapter show how current TV satires continue to critique the acting out of the trauma by collective memory agents, the politicization and instrumentalization of the Holocaust by Israeli politicians and public figures, and castigate organized trips to the former concentration camps in Poland, all of which are themes that appeared in The Chamber Quintet skits. Each of these sections begins with the description of a skit by The Chamber Quintet on the subject and then one example (out of many) of its more recent incarnations on TV. The subsequent sections deal with Holocaust humor, satire and parody that appear on contemporary TV but were not part of The Chamber Quintet’s repertoire, including using Holocaust associations to critique other topics like social issues, the shallowness of the Israeli public and popular culture; addressing the combination of Holocaust commemoration and the Israeli ethnic conflict; and introducing Holocaust jokes aimed at slaughtering the sacred cow of the trauma in Israeli culture.