“A form of socially acceptable insanity”: Love, comedy and the digital in Her

Jack Black is a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. His research interests examine the interlinkages between culture and media studies, with particular attention to cultural representation and ideology. Drawing upon “traditional” media forms as well as television and film studies, Jack’s published research has appeared in a variety of international peer-reviewed journals, providing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of politics and power in both the media and popular culture. His forthcoming publication Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy – A Psychoanalytic Perspective (Routledge, forthcoming) critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism. By engaging with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, he argues that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to “PC debates,” free speech and “identity politics.”