Published Paper Details:

Jerrod Carmichael is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He is most well known for co-creating and starring in the semi autobiographical NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show (2015-17) and for the three stand-up specials he has created for HBO - Love at the Store (2014), 8 (2017), and Rothaniel (2022). The Primetime Emmy Award winning Rothaniel serves as another entry into an era of stand-up comedy that acts as a vulnerable and brutally honest look into the comedian's psyche - with Bo Burnham's Inside (2021) and Hannah Gadsby's Nanette (2018) being other notable works of the said era. Rothaniel sees Carmichael drenched in the lights of an intimate setting in the legendary Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, as he lets the audience indulge in the many secrets of his being - including a revelation about his own sexuality. This paper attempts to analyse the employment of the medium of stand-up comedy in the vulnerable expression of one's own identity and gender, examining Carmichael's anecdotes as a black homosexual man in America with reference to other works from contemporary cinema, music and comedy that discusses a similar zeitgeist.