The works of Vladimir Nabokov have traditionally functioned in a way that challenges its reader to question existing notions of normality. In his works, Nabokov has frequently utilized representations of disability as a means to comment or critique the human condition. Throughout this project I intend to demonstrate how the narratives in both Lolita and Laughter in the Dark function as a normative force which embodies the cultural attitudes regarding disability. This is accomplished through the enforcement of a normative reading by the narrative. It is clear then that Nabakov is attempting to subvert literary conventions by using nontraditional narrators to demonstrate the relativity of normality. Throughout this project, I will be focusing on Nabakov’s use of narrator to distort the cultural line between disability and ability. Ultimately, the goal of this project is to demonstrate that current societal notions of normality and disability are outdated and arbitrary. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:59:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Madalena Resina.pdf: 625606 bytes, checksum: 3ef35c5b04bfc05cd08fe7de812602b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-02-12 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / The present dissertation aimed at studying the laughter manifestation and the risible in Luís Fernando Veríssimo s chronicles, especially in Bobos I (1982) and Ri, Gervásio (1987) which, according to the humor theory, emphasizes both, the laughter ambivalence and ambiguity, principally its serious perspective. Firstly, it is briefly explained the main characteristics of the chronicle genre, in which Veríssimo s humor it is manifested. The objective is to observe a certain relationship between genre and the object of study. Secondly, inside the risible context, it is pointed out not only the differences between the humorous and humor, based on the Pirandello s work (1996), but also the imprecisions which involve the humorous, according to Propp (1992) arguments and other authors, and the most part of them it is mentioned by him. It is exposed some of the humoristic characteristics used in the present study manifesting a ludic laughter and, above all, a reflexive laughter, which is proper of humor. Apart from that, an overview of Veríssimo s biography was developed, pointing out his mainly works, his way of writing and peculiar style. The referred chronicles which composed this research corpus were analyzed employing the language resources related to the humorous and humor. In order to conclude, anguish is presented not only as a strategy and a language phenomenon, but mainly as a powerful tool that the author makes use to critically portray situations which brings to light the anguish, the weakness and the human addictions, and also to provoke into the reader s mind a reflexive analysis on such situation / A dissertação tem por objeto de estudo a manifestação do riso e do risível, em crônicas de Luís Fernando Veríssimo, sobretudo em Bobos I (1982) e Ri, Gervásio (1987), que, analisadas à luz da teoria da comicidade e do humor, põem em evidência a ambivalência e a ambigüidade do riso, principalmente, sua face séria. Num primeiro momento, são brevemente explanadas as principais características do gênero cronístico, texto em que se manifesta o humor de Veríssimo, a fim de que se faça notar uma afinidade entre gênero e objeto de estudo. Numa segunda etapa, adentrando no universo do risível, apontamos não só as diferenças entre o cômico e o humor, apoiando-nos na obra de Pirandello (1996), mas também as imprecisões que envolvem o cômico, segundo os apontamentos de Propp (1992) e de outros teóricos, sendo que a maioria é citada por ele; expusemos alguns dos artifícios da comicidade utilizados em nosso estudo, que acabam manifestando não só um riso lúdico, mas, sobretudo, um riso reflexivo, próprio do humor. Além disso, fizemos um panorama da carreira literária de Veríssimo, destacando suas principais obras, sua escritura e estilo peculiares; analisamos as duas crônicas tomadas como corpus de pesquisa, aplicando os recursos de linguagem referentes à comicidade e ao humor e, por fim, procuramos apresentar a ironia não só como estratégia e fenômeno de linguagem, mas, principalmente, como arma poderosa, de que se vale o cronista, para retratar criticamente situações que põem à luz as angústias, as fraquezas e os vícios humanos, e suscitar, no leitor, uma análise reflexiva em torno de tais situações

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-05-04T13:40:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Rachel Sant'ana Valdrighi.pdf: 6084627 bytes, checksum: c6e189957a277401362ec7f17d980c4f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-04T13:40:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rachel Sant'ana Valdrighi.pdf: 6084627 bytes, checksum: c6e189957a277401362ec7f17d980c4f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-20 / This work intends to study artifacts of textual construction in Martins Pena's play Os Dous ou o Inglês Maquinista, written probably in 1840 and published in 1843. The goal was to analyze the comic devices used by the playwright, with the specific objectives of not only to investigate which devices are, but also how they occur, what kind of laughter they may cause, and how they serve as a herald of comedy for the future staging. To that end, one wonders: What are the comic devices present in the play Os Dous ou o Inglês Maquinista? Can these be understood as indicators of comedy for a future staging? How do they work and what kind of laughter do they cause? The questioning was guided by the following hypotheses: the play Os Dous ou o Inglês Maquinista uses different devices of comedy, generators of different types of laughter that imply social and aesthetic tension; the comedy operationalized in the textual composition foresees effects that are intended in the staging, in other words, in the play as a spectacle. As a theoretic foundation, it relies on scholars of Comedy, such as Bergson, Propp, among others. Building a work within the traditional structures of comedy, Martins Pena use several elements that generate laughter, from satire and caricature, such as exaggeration, nonsense and misunderstandings / Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar artifícios da construção textual na obra Os Dous ou o Inglês Maquinista, de Martins Pena, escrita provavelmente em meados de 1840 e publicada em 1843. Buscou-se analisar os artifícios cômicos utilizados pelo dramaturgo, tendo como objetivos específicos não só investigar quais são tais artifícios, mas também como ocorrem, que tipo de riso geram e como servem de arauto da comicidade para uma futura encenação. Para tanto, pergunta-se: Quais são os artifícios de comicidade presentes na obra Os dous, ou o inglês maquinista? Esses artifícios podem ser compreendidos como indicadores de comicidade para futura encenação? Como atuam e que tipo de riso geram? O questionamento foi orientado pelas hipóteses: a obra Os Dous ou o Inglês Maquinista faz uso de diferentes artifícios de comicidade, geradores de diferentes tipos de riso que implicam tensão social e estética; a comicidade operacionalizada na composição textual antevê efeitos pretendidos na encenação, isto é, na obra como espetáculo. Como fundamentação teórica, apoia-se em estudiosos da Comédia como Bergson, Propp, entre outros. Construindo uma obra dentro das estruturas tradicionais da comédia, Martins Pena emprega vários elementos geradores do riso, a partir da sátira e da caricatura, como o exagero, o nonsense e os equívocos

Building on recent scholarship in the history of art which has started to reappraise the meaning of grotesque and scatological motifs, this thesis examines how digestion was conceived of as a model of creation, and how this was translated visually. Renaissance creativity was increasingly modelled on a series of natural processes like digestion, following a trend in favour of Aristotelian psychology. However, it has been largely overlooked in comparison to the bleeding, the pneumatic, and especially the procreative natural models, which have been extensively studied. The central argument of this thesis is that digestion constituted an alternative-albeit less 'decorous'-model of creation, denoting the intervention of a more 'earthbound' ingenium. I argue that this model was used by certain classes of artists as an acknowledgement of a strong engagement with materials and of the labour of a round-the-clock imagination. Goldsmithing and printmaking are artistic professions whereby the artistic process was often considered as an act of 'soiling' oneself, both in the sense of the body and the phantasia. This thesis focuses on a period spanning c. 1530 to 1675, from Rabelais' works to the facetious printer Jacques Lagniet. It mines a corpus of little-studied textual and visual sources from the north of the Alps, examining a continuity between France and the German lands: geographical areas which both had an especially pronounced 'culture of excretion'. From a broader perspective, this research responds to a widespread scholarly call for more attention to the organic soul and the lower body, nuancing the alleged hegemony of the brain and the higher senses throughout history. It seeks to modify the perception of early modern artists and viewers as cerebral intellectuals, presenting them as individuals who also 'thought with their guts'.

What can 15th century France and heavy metal have in common? In Heavy Metal Humor, Gary Powell explores metal culture through the work of Mikael Bakhtin‘s “carnivalesque theory.” Describing the practice of inverting commonly understood notions of respectability and the increasing attempts to normalize them, Bakhtin argues that carnivals in Francois Rabelais’ work illustrate a sacrilegious uprising by the peasant classes during carnival days against dogmatic aristocrats. Powell asserts that Rabelais’ work describes cartoonish carnivals that continue in as exaggerated themes and tropes into other literary styles, such as comedy and horror that ultimately inform modern-day metal culture. To highlight the similarities of Bakhtin’s interpretation of Rabelais’ work to modern-day metal culture, Powell draw parallels to between Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory and metal culture with two different, exemplary “humorous” metal performances, GWAR and Anal Cunt. Powell chooses “humorous” metal groups because, to achieve their humor, they exaggerate tropes, and behaviors in metal culture. To this end, Powell explores metal culture through GWAR, a costumed band who sprays their audience with fake body fluids as they decapitate effigies. He points out examples of Rabelais’ work which Bakhtin uses to describe carnivalesque tropes, and threads them to modern-day metal culture. Powell then indicates how carnivalesque performances amplify with Anal Cunt, a “satirical” hateful, grindcore group. In the band’s performance which is both serious and humorous at once, Anal Cunt draws on several carnivalesque behaviors. To dissect this band’s performance, Powell augments Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory with Richard Schechner’s theory of “dark play” and Johan Huizinga’s “play communities” to more describe and illustrate why some aspects of modern-day metal culture do not match Bakhtin’s theory based on medieval French literature. However, carnivalesque humor becomes ambiguous and social and political problems arise as it escalates. As disrespectability is promoted, social and political tensions surface. Countering Bakhtin’s utopian notion of carnivalesque uprising, Powell highlights how socio-political turmoil presents itself in carnivalesque performance by referring to examples of confusion and concern regarding racism and sexism, something left unexplored in Bakhtin’s work. Powell suggests expanding and modernizing Bakhtin’s carnival could open pathways toward solutions to carnival culture’s socio-political ills.

Cette étude se fixe un triple objectif. Il s’agira d’abord de décrire les représentations textuelles du rire dans Le Roman comique de Scarron, en établissant d’une part les conditions de possibilité du comique et, d’autre part, en montrant la dette qu’a contractée le genre de l’histoire comique du XVIIe siècle auprès de la poétique de la comédie classique. Nous préciserons ensuite la nature et le sens à donner aux stratégies dramaturgiques mises en œuvre par Scarron pour rendre compte de l’humanité comique, tantôt disqualifiée, toujours remise en question. Nous mettrons enfin en évidence l’originalité de la structure du roman de Scarron qui accueille contradictoirement des esthétiques ennemies. Expérience de l’insubordination et affirmation d’une conscience critique, le rire de Scarron, en même temps qu’il brouille les hiérarchies culturelles, littéraires et idéologiques de l’âge classique, induit une rhétorique de la lecture comique et délivre une vision sceptique du monde. Innervée par ce rire protéiforme et ambivalent, notre étude propose donc une interprétation globale du roman scarronien à partir de l’analyse détaillée de sa poétique. / The following study has three main goals. We will first describe the textual representations of laughter in Scarron’s Le Roman comique, establishing on the one hand the conditions of possibility of the comic and by showing, on the other hand, the debt that the seventeenth century’s comic novels have contracted towards the poetics of the comedy. We will then identify the nature and meaning of the dramaturgical strategies used by Scarron to represent his comical characters, sometimes disqualified but always questionned. Finally, we will highlight the originality of Scarron’s novel structure that hosts contradictory aesthetics. While it blurs the frontiers of cultural, literary and ideological hierarchies, Scarron’s laughter, an experience of insubordination and an affirmation of a critical consciousness, induces a certain way of reading comedy and delivers a skeptical view of classical age’s world. Animated by this protean and ambivalent laughter, our study proposes a global interpretation of Scarron’s novel based on a detailed analysis of his poetics.

The present study focusses on the theatre audience, and on its’ role in the maintenance of the theatrical situation. Using video-recorded performances of relatively naturalistic, modern dramas, the study examines the behaviour of the audience in relation to the unfolding of stage events. Such behaviour is described through close inspection of the sounds the audience produces, consisting primarily of coughing, throat-clearing, and laughter. The study contributes to the growing body of research surrounding ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA). CA methods are used to analyse not only an audience’s overt reactions to stage events, but also the actions occurring outside these relatively short-lived phenomena in the context of a theatre performance. It is demonstrated that members of the audience refrain from making « vocal noise » during the verbal interaction of actors, and some of the resources used to achieve this end are described. These include the interpretation of the emerging dialogue, of the relative positioning of actors and of the actors’ use of gesture. Members of the audience are observed making vocal noise around possible completions in the sequence of ongoing stage actions, a placing which seems to make it maximally unobtrusive. Furthermore, the audience’s laughter is described. It is argued that members of the audience negociate collective moments of laughter with each other and with the actors. In doing so, the audience displays a sensitive awareness of the other members of the audience and the performers on stage. It is finally suggested that vocal noise on one hand and laughter on the other are differently placed in relation to an emerging action. This relative placing seems to indicate their producers’ different orientations to these actions, according to which vocal noise is to be hidden and laughter to be taken as an overt reaction.

Grâce à sa vaste production littéraire, le judaïsme rabbinique, d’abord minoritaire, est devenu l’orthodoxie juive à la fin de l’antiquité. Les écrits rabbiniques ne cherchent pas à faire rire, mais nous avons constaté que les études académiques sur l’humour des rabbins de l’antiquité contribuent de manière significative à la compréhension des textes rabbiniques. Ces études ainsi que les théories modernes sur l’humour, les outils d’analyse littéraire et notre propre développement méthodologique, nous ont permis d’analyser les récits humoristiques dans les écrits tannaïtiques. Les résultats des travaux sur l’humour dans le Talmud Yerushalmi, le Talmud Babli et le midrash aggada, trouvent un écho dans les résultats de notre étude. Nous avons découvert dans la Mishna et la Tosefta une très grande variété de formes et de fonctions de l’humour. L’étude exhaustive des récits humoristiques dans ces deux corpus nous a permis de développer des nouvelles perspectives sur ces textes et leurs protagonistes, notamment concernant les polémiques internes et externes au mouvement rabbinique, les traits de caractère de certains sages et leur manière d’étudier, l’évolution de l’humour entre la Mishna, la Tosefta et les Talmudim. La grande majorité des récits que l’on trouve dans la Mishna et la Tosefta n’est pas humoristique, mais cette proportion est inversée dans certaines thématiques : dans les polémiques internes au mouvement tannaïtique nous avons noté un équilibre entre les textes humoristiques et sérieux, et de surcroît, dans les polémiques avec des groupes extérieurs au mouvement tannaïtique, les textes humoristiques sont majoritaires. L’humour des tanna’im s’avère être complexe et varié, il permet de faire remonter les origines de l’humour juif à l’époque tannaïtique, d’expliquer certains textes énigmatiques, et de mieux connaître la pensée des tanna’im. / Thanks to their extensive literature, the rabbinic movement which was a marginal minority during the early centuries CE became, by late antiquity, the Jewish mainstream, and the rabbinic practice of Judaism became Jewish orthodoxy. Rabbinic writings do not aim to make one laugh, but we have noticed that academic research into the ancient rabbis’ humor contribute significantly to the understanding of rabbinic writings.Our tools for analyzing the humor in tannitic texts are based on previous studies, modern theories about humor, literary analysis techniques and our own personally developed methodology. The research results about humor in the Talmud Yerushalmi, the Talmud Babli and in Midrash Aggada are echoed in the results of our work.We have found in the Mishna and the Tosefta humor in various forms and functions. A comprehensive study of humorous anecdotes in these two textual corpora lends a new perspective about the rabbis and their writings: it also sheds light on the rabbis’ personalities and the house of study atmosphere, struggles within the rabbinic movement as well as with outside opponents, and the evolution of humor between the Mishna, the Tosefta and the Talmudim. The large majority of the stories found in the Mishna and the Tosefta are not humorous, but this proportion is reversed in certain themes: in polemics within the tannaitic movement we find an equal number of humorous and serious texts, and in polemics with opponents to the tannaitic movement, humorous texts are predominant. The tannaitic humor is complex and diversified, it traces the origins of modern Jewish humor not only to the Talmud but back to the tannaitic period, it helps explain some enigmatic texts, and to better know the tannaitic ideology.

Ces travaux de thèse portent sur la détection audio-visuelle de marqueurs affectifs (rire et sourire) et attentionnels de personnes âgées en interaction sociale avec un robot. Pour comprendre efficacement et modéliser le comportement des personnes très âgées en présence d'un robot, des données pertinentes sont nécessaires. J'ai participé à la collection d'un corpus de personnes âgées notamment pour l'enregistrement des données visuelles. Le système utilisé pour contrôler le robot est un magicien d'Oz, plusieurs scénarios de conversation au quotidien ont été utilisés pour encourager les gens à coopérer avec le robot. Ces scénarios ont été élaborés dans le cadre du projet ROMEO2 avec l'association Approche.Nous avons décrit tout d'abord le corpus recueilli qui contient 27 sujets de 85 ans en moyenne pour une durée totale de 9 heures, les annotations et nous avons discuté des résultats obtenus à partir de l'analyse des annotations et de deux questionnaires. Ma recherche se focalise ensuite sur la détection de l'attention et la détection de rire et de sourire. Les motivations pour la détection de l'attention consistent à détecter quand le sujet ne s'adresse pas au robot et à adapter le comportement du robot à la situation. Après avoir considéré les difficultés liées aux personnes âgées et les résultats d'analyse obtenus par l'étude des annotations du corpus, nous nous intéressons à la rotation de la tête au niveau de l'indice visuel et à l'énergie et la qualité de voix pour la détection du destinataire de la parole. La détection de rire et sourire peut être utilisée pour l'étude sur le profil du locuteur et de ses émotions. Mes intérêts se concentrent sur la détection de rire et sourire dans la modalité visuelle et la fusion des informations audio-visuelles afin d'améliorer la performance du système automatique. Les expressions sont différentes des expressions actées ou posés à la fois en apparence et en temps de réaction. La conception d'un système qui marche sur les données réalistes des personnes âgées est encore plus difficile à cause de plusieurs difficultés à envisager telles que le manque de données pour l'entrainement du modèle statistique, l'influence de la texture faciale et de la façon de sourire pour la détection visuelle, l'influence de la qualité vocale pour la détection auditive, la variété du temps de réaction, le niveau de compréhension auditive, la perte de la vue des personnes âgées, etc. Les systèmes de détection de la rotation de la tête, de la détection de l'attention et de la détection de rire et sourire sont évalués sur le corpus ROMEO2 et partiellement évalués (détections visuelles) sur les corpus standard Pointing04 et GENKI-4K pour comparer avec les scores des méthodes de l'état de l'art. Nous avons également trouvé une corrélation négative entre la performance de détection de rire et sourire et le nombre d'évènement de rire et sourire pour le système visuel et le système audio-visuel. Ce phénomène peut être expliqué par le fait que les personnes âgées qui sont plus intéressées par l'expérimentation rient plus souvent et sont plus à l'aise donc avec des poses variées. La variété des poses et le manque de données correspondantes amènent des difficultés pour la reconnaissance de rire et de sourire pour les systèmes statistiques.Les expérimentations montrent que la rotation de la tête peut être efficacement utilisée pour détecter la perte de l'attention du sujet dans l'interaction avec le robot. Au niveau de la détection de l'attention, le potentiel d'une méthode en cascade qui utilise les modalités d'une manière complémentaire est montré. Cette méthode donne de meilleurs résultats que le système auditif seul. Pour la détection de rire et sourire, en suivant le même protocole « Leave-one-out », la fusion des deux systèmes monomodaux améliore aussi significativement la performance par rapport à un système monomodal au niveau de l'évaluation segmentale. / This thesis work focuses on audio-visual detection of emotional (laugh and smile) and attentional markers for elderly people in social interaction with a robot. To effectively understand and model the pattern of behavior of very old people in the presence of a robot, relevant data are needed. I participated in the collection of a corpus of elderly people in particular for recording visual data. The system used to control the robot is a Wizard of Oz, several daily conversation scenarios were used to encourage people to interact with the robot. These scenarios were developed as part of the ROMEO2 project with the Approche association. We described at first the corpus collected which contains 27 subjects of 85 years' old on average for a total of 9 hours, annotations and we discussed the results obtained from the analysis of annotations and two questionnaires.My research then focuses on the attention detection and the laughter and smile detection. The motivations for the attention detection are to detect when the subject is not addressing to the robot and adjust the robot's behavior to the situation. After considering the difficulties related to the elderly people and the analytical results obtained by the study of the corpus annotations, we focus on the rotation of the head at the visual index and energy and quality vote for the detection of the speech recipient. The laughter and smile detection can be used to study on the profile of the speaker and her emotions. My interests focus on laughter and smile detection in the visual modality and the fusion of audio-visual information to improve the performance of the automatic system. Spontaneous expressions are different from posed or acted expression in both appearance and timing. Designing a system that works on realistic data of the elderly is even more difficult because of several difficulties to consider such as the lack data for training the statistical model, the influence of the facial texture and the smiling pattern for visual detection, the influence of voice quality for auditory detection, the variety of reaction time, the level of listening comprehension, loss of sight for elderly people, etc. The systems of head-turning detection, attention detection and laughter and smile detection are evaluated on ROMEO2 corpus and partially evaluated (visual detections) on standard corpus Pointing04 and GENKI-4K to compare with the scores of the methods on the state of the art. We also found a negative correlation between laughter and smile detection performance and the number of laughter and smile events for the visual detection system and the audio-visual system. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that elderly people who are more interested in experimentation laugh more often and therefore perform more various poses. The variety of poses and the lack of corresponding data bring difficulties for the laughter and smile recognition for our statistical systems. The experiments show that the head-turning can be effectively used to detect the loss of the subject's attention in the interaction with the robot. For the attention detection, the potential of a cascade method using both methods in a complementary manner is shown. This method gives better results than the audio system. For the laughter and smile detection, under the same leave-one-out protocol, the fusion of the two monomodal systems significantly improves the performance of the system at the segmental evaluation.

Depuis la fin des années 1960 se sont développées différentes pratiques artistiques délibérément bêtes, assumant et parfois même revendiquant leur bêtise. Dans une approche ancrée à la fois dans l'histoire culturelle et la théorie esthétique, prenant en compte les paramètres que sont les modalités d'exposition, l'industrie du divertissement et le rôle des collectionneurs, il s'agit de comprendre comment un phénomène à l'origine excentré, marginal et parfois contestataire, est devenu une donnée centrale de la production artistique contemporaine. Le premier mouvement revient sur la tradition de la bêtise en histoire de l'art. Partant de l'expression « bête comme un peintre », y est proposé une relecture du « retour à la peinture» du début 1980 (Figuration Libre, Mülheimer Freiheit à Cologne, bad painting américaine). Le deuxième moment porte sur les mécanismes de diffusion, d'expansion, de légitimation et d'institutionnalisation de l'art bête dans les années 1990 et 2000, abordant notamment les pratiques Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Richard Jackson, Gelitin, Wim Delvoye ou encore Damien Hirst. Le troisième et dernier temps consiste en une généalogie alternative de cette histoire de la bêtise en prenant la Californie comme paradigme. On y développe l'hypothèse qu'à Los Angeles sont en germe, depuis le milieu des années 1960, les formes de bêtise artistique qui s'imposent à l'échelle internationale depuis les années 1990 : l'industrie du divertissement et le culte du succès, de la célébrité et de la richesse, et son contre-point dynamique, son envers dévoyé, le modèle du bad boy made in L.A. / Stupidity (bêtise) can be apprehended as bodily, vulgar, even regressive. Or it can simply be understood as foolish, silly or childish. I investigate all of these strains of "bêtise" in order to demonstrate the key role it has played in shaping aesthetic styles and debates about contemporary art from the late 1960s to the present day. The dissertation thus traces these fluctuations by looking at the shift from the 1960-l 970s, when dumbness, used as a critical tool, occupied a position at the margins of the art world, to the l 980-1990s when "bêtise" began to constitute an autonomous aesthetics mobilized by the art world's biggest stars. What used to be marginal then became preeminent, what used to be popular culture became high art, while lowbrow turned into highbrow. The first part takes a look back at the tradition of stupidity in art history. Viewed from the popular phrase "stupid as a painter", I propose a reevaluation of the so-called "return to painting" in the early 80s (Figuration libre, Bad Painting, Mülheimer Freiheit Grup in Koln) as an initial step. The second section analyses the mechanisms of diffusion, expansion, legitimation and institutionalization of "dumb art" in the 90s and 2000s, focusing on practices of artists like Martin Kippenberger, JeffKoons, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Gelitin, Wim Delvoye or Damien Hirst. The third and last part is an attempt to write an alternative narrative to this history of stupidity, in which I propose California as a paradigmatic model. The entertainment industry and the cult of success, fame and wealth, and its dynamic counterpoint, its dark side, the made-in-L.A.-bad-boy model played major roles in that process.