AMERICAN ANTI-HUMOR AND 21ST CENTURY SPANISH TELEVISION COMEDY
AMERICAN ANTI-HUMOR AND 21ST CENTURY SPANISH TELEVISION COMEDY

Summary/Abstract: American Anti-Humor and 21st Century Spanish Television Comedy. This article studies the connections between American and Spanish comedy shows taking Muchachada Nui as a case study. I analyze their referentiality to contemporary American audiovisual culture in order to question the associative projections of this Spanish show as a humoristic manifestation—and interrogation—of a national identity. Muchachada Nui displays acid satirical performances of “Spanishness” using parody as a decontextualizing device to produce humor, mostly by impersonating American celebrities of the 70s and 80s in the context of contemporary Spain.Muchachada rewrites the power of anti- humor by applying the hyperbolic features of Spanishness to these characters from other countries (who are normally subject to be representative of a démodé aesthetics in Spain). The subsequent alienation that this practice confers to Spanish nationals from their own national identity becomes the container of the absurdity that is typical of the anti-humor performances of Muchachada Nui.

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