Portal:Comedy

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The Comedy Portal

Comedy is a genre that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: In Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, 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 posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which engender dramatic irony, which provokes laughter.

Satire and political satire use comedy to portray people 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.

Other forms of comedy include screwball comedy, which derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or characters, and black comedy, which is characterized by a form of humor that includes darker aspects of human behavior or human nature. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways, which can often be taken as offensive by the subjects of the joke. A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper-class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms and focuses on the foibles of those who are falling in love. (Full article...)

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Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American comedy-drama, and the film directorial debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The screenplay was written by first-time writer Michael Arndt. It stars Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, and was produced by Big Beach Films on a budget of US$8 million. The film is a road movie about a family's trip to a children's beauty pageant, with a large portion focusing on events related to the family vehicle, a Volkswagen T2 Microbus. Filming began on June 6, 2005 and took place over 30 days in Arizona and Southern California. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2006, and its distribution rights were bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures for one of the biggest deals made in the history of the festival. The film had its limited release in the United States on July 26, 2006 and later expanded to a wider release starting on August 18, 2006. Little Miss Sunshine received generally positive reviews and had an international box office gross of $100.3 million. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two: Best Original Screenplay for Michael Arndt and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin. It also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature, and received multiple other awards and nominations.

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Credit: ReignMan

A church sign stating, "Truthiness and Consequences", taken March 10, 2007, in Cape Coral, Florida. Truthiness is a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. American television comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word in this meaning as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd" during the pilot episode of his political satire program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005. By using this as part of his routine, Colbert satirized the misuse of appeal to emotion and "gut feeling" as a rhetorical device in contemporaneous socio-political discourse.

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...that Maturinus was the patron saint of jesters, comic actors, and clowns during the Middle Ages?

... that Entertainment Weekly reported comedian Ellie Kemper is set to take on the role of Dunder Mifflin receptionist in NBC's U.S. version of The Office?
... that the top prize on Al Murray's Compete for the Meat is a frozen chicken?

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Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

— Will Rogers

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Matthew Abram Groening (born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist and television producer and writer from Portland, Oregon. Groening is best known as the creator of The Simpsons. He is also the creator of the comic Life in Hell and co-creator of Futurama. Life in Hell caught the attention of James L. Brooks. In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening with the proposition of working in animation for the FOX variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening decided to create something new and came up with a cartoon family, the Simpsons and named the members after his own family, except Bart, which was an anagram of the word brat. The shorts would be spun off into their own series: The Simpsons, which has since aired over 400 episodes in 19 seasons. In 1997, Groening got together with David X. Cohen and developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000. After four years on the air, the show was cancelled by Fox, but Comedy Central commissioned 16 new episodes to be aired in 2008. Groening has won 10 Primetime Emmy Awards, nine for The Simpsons and one for Futurama as well as a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell.

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... that a 1955 satirical comedy play by Kasymaly Jantöshev was one of the first signs of the relaxation of Soviet literary restrictions after the death of Joseph Stalin?
... that the live-action comedy series Community had a stop motion animated Christmas special?
... that a revival of the comedy series Lizzie McGuire was ordered in 2019, but canceled mid-production after Disney deemed it not family-friendly enough?
... that in Loriot's comedy sketch "Englische Ansage", a German TV announcer played by Evelyn Hamann despairs of pronouncing complicated English names?
... that the proposed third season of teen sitcom Sonny with a Chance was reworked into the sketch comedy series So Random! after the departure of its lead actor Demi Lovato?
... that an Irish comedy group wrote the film Apocalypse Clown?

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Main topics

Comedy

Terms: Black comedy • Comedian • Comedy club • Comedy of manners • Convention (norm) • Irony • Komos • Parody • Political satire • Race humor • Restoration comedy • Satire • Screwball comedy • Surreal humour • Taboo • Toilet humor

Comedy genres: Bouffon • Comedy film • Anarchic comedy film • Gross-out film • Parody film • Romantic comedy film • Screwball comedy film • Slapstick film • Comic novel • Dramedy • Improvisational comedy • Musical comedy • Stand-up comedy • Alternative comedy • Impressionist (entertainment) • One-liner joke • Comedy genres • Sketch comedy • Television comedy • Radio comedy • Situation comedy • Tragicomedy

History of theatre: Ancient Greek comedy • Ancient Roman comedy • Burlesque • Citizen comedy • Clown • Comedy of humours • Comedy of manners • Comedy of menace • Comédie larmoyante • Commedia dell'arte • Face • Jester • Restoration comedy • Shakespearean comedy • Dadaist/Surrealist • Theatre of the absurd

Comedy events and awards: British Comedy Awards • Canadian Comedy Awards • Cat Laughs Comedy Festival • Edinburgh Festival Fringe • Just for laughs • Halloween Howls Comedy Festival • Melbourne International Comedy Festival • New York Underground Comedy Festival

Lists: List of comedians • List of British comedians • List of Canadian comedians • List of Finnish comedians • List of German language comedians • List of Italian comedians • List of Mexican comedians • List of Puerto Rican comedians • List of Indian comedians • List of British TV shows remade for the American market • List of comedies • List of New York Improv comedians

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A Date To Skate (1938)
Bon-Ton Burlesquers2
Busterkeaton edit
Escape from Camp Campbell - Camp Camp S1-E1
George Grossmith as Reginald Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881)
George Romney - William Shakespeare - The Tempest Act I, Scene 1
John Opie - Winter's Tale, Act II. Scene III
Lonesome (1928)
Magistrate 1885 - Weir Collection - Restoration
Midsummer Night's Dream Henry Fuseli2
Phyllis Diller by Allan Warren
Safety Last (1923)
Steamboat Willie (1928) by Walt Disney
Taming of the Shrew
The Bank (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)
The Cocoanuts (1929)
The Freshman
The General (1926)
The High Rollers Extravaganza Co. - Bend Her - c.1900
The Skeleton Dance (1929)
Utah Desert Monolith
W. S. Gilbert - Alice B. Woodward - The Pinafore Picture Book - Frontispiece
Webcomic xkcd - Wikipedian protester