Class Notes-(2/21-3/4)

What is comedy?

• The comic is the product of a perceived incongruity between subject-matter/issue/situation/topic and its treatment/expression



Types of Comedy

• Low Comedy : little intellectual appeal, boisterous conduct in general, lacks seriousness of purpse of subtlety
• High Comedy: serious, appeals to intellect, arouses thoughtful laughter, follies of social nature
• Burlesque: ridiculous exaggeration and distortion, subline may be absured, honest emotions turned to sentimentality, seriopus matters treated frivolously, or frivously subject seriously
• Farce: light dramatic, highly improbable plot, exaggerated characers, slapstick elements
• Lampoon: broad satirical piece, uses ridicule to attack a person or group
• Parody: imiation of another serious piece of work, ridicules in nonsensical fashion an original piece of work
• Satire: ridicules follies and vices of a people or time
• Slapstick: Boisterous form of comedt marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes
• Travesty : presents a serious, often religous, subject frivolously

The Comedic Ladder

• Comedy of Ideas: char. argue about politics, religion, sex, marriage. Char. use wit and clever langague to mock opponent. Suble way to satirize people and institutions
• Comedy of Manners: love affairs amoung upper clases, focus on witty langague, clever speech, insults,'putdowns'. Society often made up of cliques
• Farce: : plot full of coincidences, mistimings, mistaken identities. Characters=puppets of fate

Techniques



• Caricature
• colloquialism
• deflation
• disparagement
• euphemism
• hyperbole
• incongruity
• invective
• irony
• knaves and fools
• litotes
• malapropisms
• non-sequitur
• oxymoron
• paradox
• parody
• pun
• sarcasm
• stereotyping
• understatement
• wit

Six Elements for Humor

1. appeal to intellect
2. be mechanical
3. be inherently human and remind us of humanity
4. set of established societal norms
5. situation is inconsistent with societal norms
6. is harmless or painless to participants