MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

American Humor represents a difficult area of collecting for archives and collectors. Cultural properties belong to the time of their creation; but as values and tastes change, humorous and popular appeal loses the impact, becomes unacceptable, diminishes in interest, and the material is discarded. This presentation focuses on historiography and the issues involved in the collecting of American humor materials, especially recordings from 1900 to the present, and the access and use in archives. This presenter brings the perspective of a historian whose research has focused on changes over time for cultural stereotypes, and decades of experience as a record collector and dealer. There are unintended consequences from digitized and web availability. Humor can be controversial. Some of the specific genres include: Coon Songs, Minstrel Shows, Rube humor, Ethnic humor, Race and racist humor, Party Records and sexist and sexual double entendre humor. Very few of these recordings could be played for a general audience without detailed explanatory commentary. Contemporary issues of relitigating the past have made American humor recordings even more problematic. This is an era of reexamination and condemnation of past behaviors, attitudes, cultural symbols and memorialization. What had been common and widely recognized is now judged by current standards and is considered offensive and unacceptable. Humor is edgy and threatens the established order, people make fun of themselves and their own culture as well as the other. Context and nuances matter for understanding, insight and use.