Laughing for the state: the amateur Rural Comedy Brigades in the Vaslui county of communist Romania in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

Although the phenomenon of the amateur comedy brigades was widespread after the 1960s in communist Romania, there is a lacuna in addressing this topic in academic publications. A few academic studies focus on the "clandestine" political humor while "official", statesupported humor during Romanian communist regime is much less addressed and explored. This paper aims to fill this gap. To this end, it addresses the topic of amateur rural comedy brigades in communist Romania, focusing on a rural comedy brigade from Vaslui County which performed at the comedy festivals organized by the state. The main purpose of the state-supported humor was to educate “the people” in light of the new man's ideology, and integrate them into artificial organizations. Although this project was never fully successful, the cultural hegemony of the moment regarded humor as a weapon of social amendment. Correspondingly, "laughing for the state" represented a form of euphemized submission to authority whose political dimensions have been many times overlooked in the studies dedicated to the communist culture. The paper concludes that humor’s power to intervene politically cannot be simplistically divided into collaboration with and resistance to the communist status quo.