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- Comedians make people laugh because they’re experts at giving their audience a seat at the table, at giving them something extra special, and at creating relatable personalities. They create meaningful connections through laughter.
www.tintup.com/blog/the-real-reason-comedians-make-us-laugh/
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Jun 21, 2024 · The TV funnyman reveals it's not just a punchline that comedians think about to make you laugh.
- How comedy makes us better people
After years spent in dark comedy clubs, Mary O’Hara knows...
- How comedy makes us better people
After years spent in dark comedy clubs, Mary O’Hara knows what makes her laugh. But what else can a good joke do? She meets the performers and researchers who say that comedy can change how...
- Exaggeration
- Timing
- Repetition
- Slapstick
- Malapropism
- Sarcasm
- Misunderstandings
- Misdirection
- Parody
- Impersonation
Taking things over the top can make for hilarious absurdity. In “A Night at the Opera,” Groucho Marx’s stateroom was crowded. How crowded? Take a look.
Speeding up or slowing down speech or actions can make them “funny strange” and “funny ha-ha.” Gilbert and Sullivan’s patter songs, like “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” from The Pirates of Penzance, set the bar for speed talking. When it comes to slow delivery, pauses are key. Listen to the notoriously stingy Jack Benny’s pause in “...
In Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, when the horses rear up and whinny the first time the forbidding Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman) gives her name, it’s ominous. Afterward, however, every time her name is mentioned, no matter how casually, the horses never miss their cue. Repetition makes what was once frightening ludicrous.
This form of buffoonery takes its name from the slap-stick, or pair of wooden slats fastened at one end, used by clowns since the days of commedia dell’arte to make a loud slapping noise without inflicting real injury. When the top-hatted banker is brought low by a pratfall or a pie in the face, you can believe the desire-to-feel-superior theory. B...
Malapropism means substituting a word that sounds like the one you want but means something completely different. The word derives from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in The Rivals, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play, who said things like “pineapple” when she meant “pinnacle.” Here’s comedian Norm Crosby slinging the malapropisms in a 1987 Red Lobst...
Like, I’m sure you have no clue what that means and I’m going to have to define it for you. Lewis Black yells and throws up his hands as he pours undiluted sarcasm over his political targets. According to Black, Iran is working on a nuclear bomb that they will eventually put into a missile “and 500 Iranians will throw it at us.” Brian Reganteases t...
When two people try repeatedly to communicate but keep talking at cross-purposes, hilarity results. The classic example of failed communication is Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First,” but Key and Peele are great as a man who takes a doctor’s concerns about his mother’s health as an insult competition in “Yo Mama Has Health Problems.”
In misdirection, or “garden path sentences,” the humorist leads listeners in one direction, then pivots, forcing them to rethink the beginning of the sentence. In the 1960s, in a discussion on the challenges of machine translation, someone brought up this sentence: “Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.” That wasn’t one of Grouch...
Parodists imitate the style of a certain writer, artist or genre but exaggerate for comic effect. The Onion is hysterical because of how precisely it mimics the language, graphics and tone of print and TV newswhile conveying outrageous “facts.”
Comic impressions or impersonations parody a particular person or type and have long been a staple of political satire. Increasingly in recent decades, women have come to the fore as impressionists. Tina Fey nailed Sarah Palin’s distinctive mannerisms, accent, and recursive sentence structure. In an exaggerated but authentic-sounding accent, Margar...
Nov 24, 2015 · The research team found that the funniest jokes are those that involve two characters and up to five back-and-forth levels of intentionality between the comedian and the audience. People easily lose the plot when jokes are more complex than that.
Apr 3, 2019 · From Richard Pryor to Amy Schumer, comedians are truth-tellers who not only make us laugh, but who frequently tackle taboo subjects (and not always tastefully). Yet by doing so, they launch often-difficult conversations on sensitive topics such as race and religion.
Nov 2, 2016 · Many comedians have tackled this topic as well, focusing on how language is used in interracial settings and using it as an example of how relief can be funny. A comedy clip focused on...
Apr 3, 2020 · The effects on mental and physical health. The mechanics of our brains are beyond intriguing but can watching comedies like Schitt's Creek, Workin' Moms or Kim's Convenience be that special...
