An Incongruous Blend of Tragedy and Comedy: How Maria Bamford Lightens the Dark Side of Mental Illness
Maria Bamford is a successful American comedian who was a staple in the alternative comedy scene in the 1990s and early 2000s. This chapter explains how her comic persona evolved over the past six years or so, enabling her to become a national spokesperson for the mentally ill. We argue Bamford's success in doing so poses a challenge to the ever popular expression "comedy is tragedy plus time" and the idea that humor is always the result of "benign violations." Bamford's stand up poses similar troubles for relief theories of humor by sometimes creating tension without offering a definitive release. Like the dark side of stand up comedy more generally, Maria Bamford's humor is a paradoxical and incongruous blend of tragedy and comedy that cannot be easily resolved.