Abstract
Comedian Marc Maron spent decades under the radar, working the comedy club circuit, scoring gigs at fledgling network Comedy Central, doing spots on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and wrestling with drug addiction (before getting sober in 2004). On the verge of being fired (again) from liberal radio network, Air America, Maron conceived of and recorded the first episodes of his landmark podcast WTF with Marc Maron. This chapter explicates Maron’s philosophy through his work as a stand-up comedian and podcaster. Maron’s “what the fuck” comedic philosophy reflects the central tenets of Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification, and Maron’s work serves as compelling proof of the essential consubstantiality of comedy. Maron cracks open the common tropes of the “sad clown” and “comedy as therapy” and, through his stand-up routines and extensive catalog of interviews with comedians, proves the extent to which a philosophy grounded in collective, comedic catharsis provides an effective “equipment for living.”
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brodie, Ian. 2008. Stand-up comedy as a genre of intimacy. Ethnologies 30 (2): 153–180.
Burke, Kenneth. 1959. Attitudes toward history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 1969. A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Camus, Albert. 1991. The myth of Sisyphus and other essays. New York: Vintage International. First published 1955.
Carlin, George. 1992. “The little things we share.” Recorded April 24–25, 1992. Track 2 on Jammin’ in New York. Eardrum/Atlantic, compact disc.
Clark, Andrew. 2013. “Marc Maron does television too.” BU Today. http://www.bu.edu/articles/2013/marc-maron-does-television-too/.
Davis, D. Diane. 2000. Breaking up (at) totality: A rhetoric of laughter. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Gilbert, Joanne R. 2004. Performing marginality: Humor, gender, and cultural critique. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Gillota, David. 2015. Stand-up nation: Humor and American identity. Journal of American Culture 38 (2): 102–112.
Kapica, Steven S. 2019. Marc Maron. In American Political Humor: Masters of Satire, ed. Jody Baumgartner, 536–540. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
———. 2020. ‘I Kinda like it when a Lotta people die’: George Carlin’s comedic catharsis. In The dark side of stand-up comedy, ed. Patrice Oppliger and Eric Shouse, 51–70. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Krefting, Rebecca. 2014. All joking aside: American humor and its discontents. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Limon, John. 2000. Stand-up comedy in theory, or, abjection in America. Durham: Duke University Press.
Maron, Marc. 2002. “Introducing my cold sore/sobriety, disappointment and suicide/the bishop kid and John Walker.” Recorded Jan. 22, 2002. Track 1 on not sold out. Stand Up Records, compact disc.
———. 2009. “Jeff Ross.” WTF with Marc Maron (podcast). September 1, 2009. http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_1_jeff_ross?rq=jeff%20ross. Accessed 14 Oct 2020.
———. 2011. Gallagher. WTF with Marc Maron (podcast). January 31, 2011. http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_145_-_gallagher?rq=gallagher. Accessed 14 Oct 2020.
———. 2013. Attempting normal. New York: Spiegel & Grau.
———. 2019. “Episode 1000.” WTF with Marc Maron (podcast). March 11, 2019. http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-1000?rq=1000. Accessed 14 Oct 2020.
———. 2020. “Jerry Seinfeld.” WTF with Marc Maron (podcast). June 8, 2020. http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-1129-jerry-seinfeld?rq=jerry%20seinfeld. Accessed 14 Oct 2020.
Naessens, Edward David. 2020. Busting the sad clown myth: From Cliché to comic stage persona. In The dark side of stand-up comedy, ed. Patrice Oppliger and Eric Shouse, 223–246. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, Stephen A. 1993. Humor as rhetoric and cultural argument. Journal of American Culture 16 (2): 51–64.
Taylor, Richard. 2016. The meaning of life. In Life, death, and meaning: Key philosophical readings on the big questions, ed. David Benatar, 21–30. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. First published 1970.
Timberg, Scott. 2015. “Marc Maron won’t talk politics anymore.” Salon. https://www.salon.com/2015/05/05/marc_maron_wont_talk_politics_anymore_now_i%E2%80%99d_rather_deal_with_the_source_of_that_anger/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Kapica, S.S. (2023). Marc Maron as Philosopher: Comedy, Therapy, and Identification. In: Kowalski, D.A., Lay, C., S. Engels, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97134-6_52-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97134-6_52-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97134-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97134-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Marc Maron as Philosopher: Comedy, Therapy, and Identification- Published:
- 11 October 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97134-6_52-2
-
Original
Marc Maron as Philosopher: Comedy, Therapy, and Identification- Published:
- 31 March 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97134-6_52-1