Theories of Comedy: Review
* items with an asterisk are covered on the July 15 exam

*Plato:
- comedy blends pain with pleasure
- the comical: ignorance of self
- “foolish false conceit”: a man fancies himself more virtuous than he is
- comic figures combine delusion with weakness and inability to be revenged on scoffers
- comedy has an element of malice: a kind of mental pain, but "the man who feels it is pleased by his neighbor's misfortune"


*Aristotle:
- imitates “lower types” (people below the level of our world)
- "not vituperative but ludicrous"
- the ridiculous: errors and deformities that cause laughter but do not pain or injure us
- writing a comedy starts with plot


*Evanthius:
- comedy is a “mirror of everyday life”
- treats of various habits and customs of public and private affairs, “from which one may learn what is of use . . . and what must be avoided”


*Dante Alighieri:
- comedy differs from tragedy in its matter
- comedy moves from adversity to prosperity
- uses an unstudied and low style


*Elder Olson:
- Comedy resides not in events but in the view taken of them.
- Comedy minimizes the claim of a thing to be taken seriously; it is "an imitation of a valueless action".
- katastasis: the equivalent in comedy of catharsis in tragedy. Katastasis is restoration of the mind to a pleasant, or euphoric, condition of freedom from desires and emotions; conversion of the grounds of concern into nothing.
- Many jokes are forms of aggression. Some audiences of comedy are pleased that the object of their hatred is utterly valueless--though the fact that they hate it shows that they do attribute some value to it.


*Suzanne Langer:
- The "vital rhythm" of comedy belongs to the comic work, not to actual life. It comes out of the gestalt (total action) presented onstage. Our laugh belongs to "theathrical exhilaration, which is universally human and impersonal."
- Comedy is a temporary triumph over the surrounding world.
- Comedy trivializes the human battle; its dangers are not real dangers, but rather embarrassment and loss of face.
- The comic character is amoral. It is the nature of comedy to be erotic, risque, sensuous, impious and even wicked.


*Mikhail Bakhtin:
- carnival rituals and the concept of carnivalization
- carnival in relation to official feasts: the “two-world condition”
- peculiar traits of carnival
- - carnival’s parody of official rituals, while nevertheless belonging to an entirely different sphere
- - carnival as borderline between life and art: “life itself, but shaped according to a certain pattern of play”
- - carnival’s universal spirit: hierarchical rank and social precedence is suspended; all are considered equal in the carnival
clowns and fools as representatives of carnival spirit
- the “peculiar logic of the ‘inside out’”
- carnival laughter vs. satiric laughter


Northrop Frye:
- - four “causes” (factors) in comedy:
- - 1. sexual desire (material cause)
- - 2. the social order (formal cause)
- - 3. natural course of events (efficient cause)
- - 4. the audience’s reaction (final cause)
- comedy moves toward realism
- basic 'New Comedy' comic plot: maneuvers a young man toward a young woman, ending in marriage
- the 'senex': an older man (typically the woman's father) who must be overcome or won over. By extension, the senex is any representative of the established social order
- basic comic conclusion: new social unit based on reconciliation and inclusiveness
- comedy ridicules lack of self-knowledge
- “humorous” characters
- comedy is related to ritual patterns:
- - death & resurrection
- - the yearly cycle (winter to spring)
- the “green world” (movement there and back)
- comedy is close to tragedy


Andrew Horton ("Keaton & the American Tradition of Film Comedy")
- Ludwig Wittgenstein: comedy an important form of games or play
- comedy involves an understanding of limits, boundaries, rules, and therefore of distance.
- two categories of American film comedy:
- - anarchistic comedy: characters do not compromise
- - romantic comedy: emphasizes romantic & social compromise


Geoff King:
Comedy in film is best understood as a mode ("manner of presentation") rather than a genre (type or category).
- The word 'comedy' comes from the Greek words for 'revel' and 'song': comedy started as a kind of presentation rather than a separate category of theater.

Bisociation (ability to perceive something in two incompatible contexts) is a characteristic of comedy:
- "Comedy has the potential to be both subversive, questioning the norms from which is departs, and affirmative."
- Audience of comedy can experience both distance (superiority over the comic characters) and empathy (identification with them.)
- We believe in comedy in a "logically illogical way"


*T.G.A. Nelson:
Theories of laughter:

1. Superiority theory (Thomas Hobbes): “sudden exaltation at a triumph of our own or an indignity suffered by someone else: we laugh when we feel superior to others.” Schadenfreude.

2. Incongruity theory (Schopenhauer):

3. Psychic release theory: We laugh with relief when disaster is averted, or we laugh when we realize that our fears were unfounded.


* Gerald Mast's categories and other considerations on comedy.