A Spoonful of Obscenity Helps The Hard Truth Go Down: How Outsider Comedians rose from the Fringe to the Main Stage of American Culture

The goal of this paper is to explain the historical and cultural significance of popular stand-up comedians emerging from the late 1960's to 1980's in America. Figures like George Carlin, Andy Kaufman, or Lenny Bruce were more than mere entertainers, but became powerful speakers able to shift the public's opinion on controversial issues. The radicalism of these performers made it possible and even expected for comics to address taboo, critique authority, and use profane and perverse language and behavior. What is significant is some performers do not use offensive language just for shock value, but to challenge the status quo. Like Rock musicians of that time, comedians also went from simple entertainers to public figures able to critique the hypocritical inefficacy of social authorities. These comedians started out in small venues in inner cities to mainstream stardom. Because these comics did not the follow the traditional methods and language of the then established comedians, they are classified as “outsider comedians.” This new form of comedian was a product in part to the anti-authority, radical movement of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s and continued to evolve and change until outsider comedy became widely accepted in the late 1980’s. This time frame will be put the outsider comedian into a historical context.  The comedian’s physical movements, speech, and writing will be analyzed by multiple levels of textual analysis to reveal their most effective techniques.  Interviews with local comics today, will provide a retrospective on the outsider comedian’s contributions to American culture

Word Count: 250