Comedies about cheerful deprivation train audiences to accept humiliation

Evidence

Not only is the central character supposed to be very charming, but she wisecracks constantly. In terms of a set pattern of identification, the script implies: ‘If you are as humorous, good-natured, quick-witted, and charming as she is, do not worry about being paid a starvation wage. You can cope with your frustration in a humorous way; and your superior wit and cleverness put you not only above material privations, but also above the rest of mankind’. In other words, the script is a shrewd method of promoting adjustment to humiliating conditions by presenting them as objectively comical and by giving a picture of a person who experiences even her own inadequate position as an object of fun apparently free of any resentment. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 227

Categorization

• SEED: This is a ready-made falsification test for the reader: run it against The Office, Fleabag, or any modern ‘witty sufferer’ comedy and see whether the adjustment-promotion mechanism still holds or breaks.
• XREF: Strongly foreshadows the reader’s implicit pool — the ‘humorous coping with privation’ figure recurs across modern sitcoms, notably workplace comedies that aestheticize exploitation. — connects to: Cartoons train audiences to accept punishment as the condition of life. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 108
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the reader’s broader culture-industry thesis: this is pseudo-individuation applied to character — the charming individualist whose rebellion is confinement.