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Main Content => Writing => Topic started by: GaborBoth on January 17, 2010, 06:10:04 AM
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The author of SMBC, (http://www.smbc-comics.com (http://www.smbc-comics.com)) Zach Weiner wrote an all-around article ,,About Comedy".
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfpbs9rs_281md9644dj (http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfpbs9rs_281md9644dj)
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I don't know. Seems a little unfocused and a whole lot of rationalizing. I don't think he proved his premise.
Personally I think comedy exists to make life easier. Because life is cruel and violent and short and laughter is the good that helps us recognize the bad.
You can hope for more than that but you can't expect it and if you get less than that then you either aren't funny or haven't found your audience.
And comedy is a pretty black art. There really is no way to make anyone laugh without someone (even unknowingly) or something becoming the victim. That is the reason "why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side" isn't funny.This is also the reason "Why did the baby cross the road? Because it was stapled to the chicken," is.
While the idea of a real baby being stapled to an animal and dragged across a road is horrible and shocking. If it were done in reality the perpetrators would be scorned and imprisoned and rightly so.
But take a normally mundane statement without humor and juxtapose it with child maiming and danger and you get comedic gold. Not because we think the actuality of a baby being stapled to a chicken funny, but because the reality of it is, somewhere, at some point, life in general is so cruel that something similar has probably happened. And we want to be able to laugh at that horror. We need to. Otherwise we would spend all of our days weeping and decrying the evil that is mankind. Self destruction would most likely follow.
Comedy is complicated and its motivations are not easily understood or quantified. That's why it took both Heinlein's Valentine Micheal Smith and Roddenberry's Data a long time to grasp.
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I liked his article, but I liked it more especially knowing it was basically one big response to his mother's reactions to his site.
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Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.
Mel Brooks
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Apparently Sarah Silverman did a whole standup routine for TED (http://www.ted.com/) (I loooooove TED so much but after reading the Sarah Silverman article I love TED a little less, or maybe just the guy who runs is a lot less) and according to her she killed (did really well) but the guy who runs TED hated her set and refuses to post it and Tweeted something mean about her.
Apparently she did a shtick about adopting a retarded baby but making sure the baby had a terminal illness because she's worried about who will take care of it when she's gone. It sounds horrible but the way she does it... it's funny. Not everyone may think so... but I do.
Here's the article I got all this from. (http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/65351/)
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Well Sarah Silverman's whole schtick is that she's cute and wholesome-looking, but her stage persona is an amoral monster that says terrible things (yet still thinks it's cute and wholesome). I've always found her really funny myself, but her comedy really embodies 'your mileage may vary'. (Also I'm surprised she's nearly 40. I'd have guessed late-20s/early 30s)
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