Comedy

In a modern sense, comedy (from the Greek: κωμῳδία, kōmōidía) refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or to amuse by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film and stand-up comedy. 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.

Comedy!

Comedy! (French: Comédie !) is a 1987 French drama film written and directed by Jacques Doillon.

The film was entered into the main competition at the 44th edition of the Venice Film Festival.

Cast

References

External links

Comedy (Black album)

Comedy was the second official album by Black, released in 1988. It reached No.32 in the UK Albums Chart.

Track listing

All songs written by Colin Vearncombe

Personnel

Comedy (anime)

Comedy (喜劇, Kigeki) is a short anime film produced in 2002 by Studio 4°C animation studio. The film was directed by Kazuto Nakazawa and featured the music of Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria". The film is noted for drawing its inspiration from Schubert's piece titled "Erlkönig".

Plot

During the Irish War of Independence, a five-year-old girl went out in search of the mysterious Demon’s Castle. She hoped to recruit the services of the infamous Black Swordsman, who was portrayed as a dark, albeit skilled, swordsman. She wanted the swordsman to protect her village from an imminent attack by English soldiers; however, the Black Swordsman would only accept a particular genre of books as payment for his services. Upon receiving the book, the swordsman engulfed himself in reading the novel, the cover of which shows that its title is "Denny's comedy". The second night in the castle, while reading the book on top of a tree, was the only time that the girl saw him smiling. While she anxiously waited for the Black Swordsman to finish the novel, the English approached the Irish village. As an attack was imminent, the Black Swordsman finished the novel and rushed to intercept the skirmish, where he quickly finished off the English soldiers. The bodies disappeared; the girl knew where to, but the swordsman told her not to not tell anybody about it, nor the way he smiled while reading the novel, or he would kill her and "devour" her. Upon leaving the village and while standing in the field with his horse, the girl runs to him to thank him. When turning to her, it is shown that the Swordsman has red stains on the lower part of his face and his neck.

Comedy (drama)

A comedy is entertainment consisting of jokes and satire, intended to make an audience laugh. For ancient Greeks and Romans a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia.

The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it has been carefully investigated by psychologists and agreed upon the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the feeling of superiority is an essential factor: thus Thomas Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden glory." Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as well as the development of the "play instinct" and its emotional expression.

Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy used to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor.

Comedic genres

Comedy may be divided into multiple genres based on the source of humor, the method of delivery, and the context in which it is delivered.

These classifications overlap, and most comedians can fit into multiple genres. For example, deadpan comics often fall into observational boom comedy, or into black comedy or blue comedy to contrast the morbidity or offensiveness of the joke with a lack of emotion.