On Second Thought

In her response to my article “Cutting to the Punch: Graphic Stunt Comedy and the Emergence of Crisis Slapstick” (StAH 7, no. 1 [2021]: 11–38), Maggie Hennefeld raises a number of important questions about fraught humor and body crisis, particularly as they relate to the radical alterity of risk taking and violence in different historical eras, which I agree are underexplored in my essay.1 Hennefeld’s observation that earlier examples of radical crisis slapstick comedic disruptions can be found in theater, pornography, and avant-garde performance spaces (Ahwesh, Wishman, Waters, etc.) is particularly insightful, and I intend to address those disruptions in my forthcoming book. However, Hennefeld’s main critique, as far as I can decipher it, is that I am drawing a distinction between slapstick and crisis slapstick that does not exist because slapstick has always had a power for “destabilizing the known world, especially during moments of intense...