Portal:Comedy

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Introduction

In a modern sense, comedy (from the Greek: κωμῳδία, kōmōidía) refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.

Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of their humor. Parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them.

Selected general articles

Charlotte Goodall as Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple
Sentimental comedy is an 18th-century dramatic genre which sprang up as a reaction to the immoral tone of English Restoration plays. In Sentimental comedies middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials. These plays aimed to produce tears rather than laughter and reflected contemporary philosophical conceptions of humans as inherently good but capable of being led astray by bad example. By appealing to his noble sentiments, a man could be reformed and set back on the path of virtue. While the plays contained characters whose natures seemed overly virtuous and whose problems were too easily resolved, they were accepted by audiences as truthful representations of the human predicament. Read more...
Mo lei tau (traditional Chinese: 無厘頭; simplified Chinese: 无厘头; pinyin: Wúlítóu; Jyutping: mou4 lei4 tau4; literally: 'nonsensical') is a type of slapstick humour associated with Hong Kong popular culture that developed during the late 20th century. It is a phenomenon which has grown largely from its presentation in modern film media. Its humour arises from the placement of surprising and incongruous elements, and the complex interplay of cultural subtleties. Typical constituents of this humour include nonsensical parodies, juxtaposition of contrasts, sudden surprises in spoken dialogue and action and improbable and deliberate anachronisms.

During an interview with Stephen Chow for his 2006 "Asian Invasion" season, the BBC's film critic Jonathan Ross referred to the genre as "Silly Talk", a label that Chow was happy to accept. Read more...
Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter. The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle, who borrowed it from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958. (Campton's subtitle Comedy of Menace is a jocular play-on-words derived from comedy of manners—menace being manners pronounced with somewhat of a Judeo-English accent.) Read more...
Comedy and Drama
When the two are combined, a comedy-drama is created.

Comedy-drama or dramedy (a portmanteau of drama and comedy), is a genre in film and in television works in which plot elements are a combination of comedy and drama. It is a subgenre of contemporary tragicomedy. Comedy-drama is especially found in television programs and is considered a "hybrid genre". Read more...
Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch (1955) trailer.

Romantic comedy (portmanteaus: romedy, romcom or lovecome) is a genre with light-hearted, humorous plotlines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily". Another definition suggests that its "primary distinguishing feature is a love plot in which two sympathetic and well-matched lovers are united or reconciled".

Romantic comedy films are a certain genre of comedy films as well as of romance films, and may also have elements of screwball comedies. However, a romantic comedy is classified as a film with two genres not a single new genre. Some television series can also be classified as romantic comedies. Read more...
The Christmas Pantomime colour lithograph book cover, 1890, showing the harlequinade characters

Pantomime (/ˈpæntəmaɪm/; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing. It employs gender-crossing actors and combines topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale. It is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers.

Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to classical theatre. It developed partly from the 16th century commedia dell'arte tradition of Italy and other European and British stage traditions, such as 17th-century masques and music hall. An important part of the pantomime, until the late 19th century, was the harlequinade. Read more...
Comédie larmoyante (French: tearful comedy) was a genre of French drama of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral triumph" had been earned for the suffering heroes and heroines.

Thomas Heywood's masterpiece, A Woman kilde with kindnesse (acted 1603; printed 1607), can be considered a forerunner of this genre. Read more...
Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton enjoying a joke, in spite of their language differences

A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is not meant to be taken seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line. It is in the punch line that the audience becomes aware that the story contains a second, conflicting meaning. This can be done using a pun or other word play such as irony, a logical incompatibility, nonsense, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition:

It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humor—the shaggy dog story is in a class of its own as an anti-joke; although presenting as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place and character, rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to deliver a punchline. Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is a joke. Some humorous forms which are not verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational humour, practical jokes, slapstick and anecdotes. Read more...
American comedy films are comedy films produced in the United States. The genre is one of the oldest in American cinema; some of the very first silent movies were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. With the advent of sound in the late 1920s and 1930s, comedic dialogue rose in prominence in the work of film comedians such as W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers. By the 1950s, the television industry had become serious competition for the movie industry. The 1960s saw an increasing number of broad, star-packed comedies. In the 1970s, black comedies were popular. Leading figures in the 1970s were Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. One of the major developments of the 1990s was the re-emergence of the romantic comedy film. Another development was the increasing use of "gross-out humour". Read more...
Character comedy is a method or genre in which a comedian performs as though they were a character created by the comedian themselves. A good deal of comedians have enjoyed fame from character comedy. Read more...
A stop sign ironically defaced with a plea not to deface stop signs.

Irony (from Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning 'dissimulation, feigned ignorance'), in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case.

Irony can be categorized into different types, including: verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony. Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection. Other forms, as identified by historian Connop Thirlwall, include dialectic and practical irony. Read more...
Laurel and Hardy, one of the most famous comedy duos during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema

A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might take many forms including jokes, satirical observations, amusing situations, acting foolish (as in slapstick) or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian. Other practises include the sitcom, sketch comedy and improv genres.

A popular saying, variously quoted but generally attributed to Ed Wynn, is, "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny", which draws a distinction between how much of the comedy can be attributed to verbal content and how much to acting and persona. Read more...
Models promoting the film Zombieland at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con

Comedy horror is a literary and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. Comedy horror has been described as able to be categorized under three types: "black comedy, parody and spoof." It often crosses over with the black comedy genre. Comedy horror can also parody or subtly spoof horror clichés as its main source of humour or use those elements to take a story in a different direction, for example in The Cabin in the Woods or Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.

Author Bruce G. Hallenbeck cites the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving as "the first great comedy horror story". The story made readers "laugh one moment and scream the next", and its premise was based on mischief typically found during the holiday Halloween. Read more...
Slapstick films are comedy films where physical comedy that includes pratfalls, tripping, falling, practical jokes, mistakes, are highlighted over dialogue, plot and character development. The physical comedy in these films contains a cartoonish style of violence that is predominantly harmless and goofy in tone.

Silent film had slapstick comedies that included the films starring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops and Harold Lloyd. These comedians often laced their slapstick with social commentary while comedians such as Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges did not contain these social messages. Slapstick is about uninhibited action and timing, which may include being made to look foolish or to act with tom foolery. Read more...
'The feast of reason, and the flow of soul,' - i.e. - the wits of the age, setting the table in a roar, by James Gillray (1797)

Wit is a form of intelligent humour, the ability to say or write things that are clever and usually funny. Witty means a person who is skilled at making clever and funny remarks. Forms of wit include the quip, repartee, and wisecrack. Read more...

Did you know...

... that Sharlene San Pedro and Nash Aguas, the lead actors of the 2018 thriller Class of 2018, worked together on a sketch comedy show when they were children?
... that the romantic comedy film 5 to 7, about a young man who falls in love with a married woman, was inspired by a couple who had a "terribly civilized" open marriage?
... that a Genie and three Beavers recognized Young People Fucking?
... that the drawing of Lucifer from the Divine Comedy illustrated by Botticelli depicts the whole story of canto XXXIV, and shows Lucifer's geographical location in Hell?
... that Marjan Šarec started his career as a comedian, but was later elected Mayor of Kamnik and recently announced his candidacy for President of Slovenia?
... that Wu Zhaonan, a comedian recognized by the government of Taiwan as a "national treasure", also created Mongolian barbecue?

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Selected images

Edward Lear, Aged 73 and a Half and His Cat Foss, Aged 16, an 1885 lithograph by Edward Lear
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (ca. 1950)
Roman-era mosaic depicting a scene from Menander's comedy Samia ("The Woman from Samos")
Stand-up comedian Margaret Cho
Jim Carrey mugs for the camera
Tragic Comic Masks of Ancient Greek Theatrerepresented in the Hadrian's Villa mosaic
Jordan Peele at the Peabody awards.
Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean
Popov the Clown in 2009
Jackie Chan at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
Barry Humphries in character in London as "Dame Edna Everage" on the day of 2011 Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton
Title page of the first quarto of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (1600)

In the news

31 March 2019 – 2019 Ukrainian presidential election: Voters in Ukraine go to the polls today in the first round of the presidential election. President Petro Poroshenko is seeking re-election, with comedian Volodymyr Zelensky and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko the primary challengers. All three have expressed largely pro-European views. Former Vice Prime Minister Yuriy Boyko is the front-runner among the pro-Russian candidates. A total of 39 candidates are on the ballot, increasing the probability no candidate will win more than 50 percent of the votes. If so, the top two will meet in a second round on 21 April. (BBC)