Informative Essay: Is Comedy Cultural Or Universal

Moreover, comedians/authors may change up their act when trying to appeal to a new audience and possibly while using their knowledge of the theories of humor to spice up their comedy. Furthermore, the article "Made You Laugh" contains a chart which lays out the usual comedic preferences for different ages (equivalent to the different audiences an author may try to appeal to). Essentially the chart says that young children favor slapstick comedy (physical humor), elementary school children prefer puns (I didn't "sea" that coming), teens prefer humor that their authorities may find rebellious ("you not my dad!"), and well-educated adults prefer satire (spending money for a toy for a child only to have it broken and bought again, it’s a cycle). An example of an author's writing(s) appealing

Anybody that ever wants to be known for being funny has to also be cultured so that they know enough information to make connections or metaphors, and know when a joke

Saturday Night Live celebrated its 40th anniversary in style last season. Sure, the three-and-a-half-hour special welcoming back alums and esteemed guests was entertaining, but the real celebration should be because of its talented cast. SNL often gets a bad rap because people are partial to "their" version of the show. If we look at the 2014-2015 cast ten or fifteen years from now, we might consider them one of the best ensembles the NBC institution has ever produced. Here's a look at the top 10 cast members from last season.

One of the main things people worry about the most is political correctness. Humor has not changed at all, the people who are listening to the jokes have changed, in other words the audience has changed their perspective on the genre of humor. For example, as mentioned in "The Funny thing about humor is that it is really really important," by Catherine Cucinella she demonstrates that relying on stereotyping in humor causes racism, sexism and classism(Cucinella, 1). Also how the uses of social media has changed the culture and society values of people(Cucinella, 2). That can explain the reason some people find ethnic humor funny and some do not. Kevin Hart states that Chris Rock told him "We might all be different when it comes to race, gender, and faith but we all have one thing in common and that is laughter"(Cucinella, 3). There are a number of comedians that use ethnic humor in their performances, and some can get away with using it depending on the background. For example, Kevin Hart is one of the most racial and ethnic based comedian out there today. Harts

Comedies have always been intended to bring laughter out of the audience. They are well articulated and the humor is meant to be delivered by the actors through their acting skills. Most modern day comedies are meant for general audiences and thats what makes them special. David Zucker’s 1988 comedy classic ,“The Naked Gun: Files from Police Squad”, is a good example of a humor filled film.

Some jokes do take it far and they do tend to offend populations, but that is not the point of comedy. Comedy is not comedy if it does not make people laugh, its purpose is not to cause harm. The dictionary states the definition of comedy as, “the humorous or amusing aspects of something, sometimes in a satirical way.” Explaining that satire is exposed in comedy and it is dark, ironic and critical. Comedians could take a step back about topics that are a soft spot for majority, such as sexual abuse, terrorism, or religion. There is a solution to every problem and that would be for people to not attend such comedies that they think will offend them. It would be like comparing to a haunted house, people get a laugh out of peoples fears, and people are aware of what is in front of them so there is no point in getting offended that someone laughed at your scream. Each comedy has a description of what it will be about before entering the show, each person should read it and make a choice, to stay or leave. Even though there have been a lot of debates regarding this, my opinion stays strong and firm that there should be no such censoring or filtration in

Rutgers University did an experiment that found that many different people found different comedies to their liking( Lynch, 2007). While this study found different people had a different sense of humour, demographics shared the same likings. This held true not only in the genders, men and women, but also between the different races watching the stand-up shows. This is because, “ humour is often linked to shared experience.”(Burnham, 2010). For people to find a joke funny they must first understand the background to it. Sometimes this is backed up during an anecdote, but other times it is focused on past knowledge many people might share. This is why people in the same demographic find the same things funny. Jokes understood in the Catholic community may not be found funny by the Mormon society as their beliefs differ slightly. Another strategy is to give the audience a common enemy. Normally this is done by the comedian to make himself an enemy so the audience can laugh at him. The ability to combine as a group gives people the common experience and puts them at ease to laugh. Other than audience the major part of a joke that a comedian must watch for is the offensiveness of their

Christopher Hitchens famously argued in a 2007 Vanity Fair that women aren't funny – or haven't developed their comedy skills – because they don't have to. Comedy, he said, was a mating tool and women don't need that particular arrow in their quiver because they are pretty and make babies. But men, Hitchens said, get fat and bald so to attract women they either need wit or wealth. Ergo, men have evolved their comedic skills to a greater level. Women are socialized out

Besides, a good comedy is not just designed to make audience laugh, it also should has a profound revelation that reveals a truth or a topic that is rarely mentioned about, in the form of a joke.

For instance conventional jokes can include physical comedy. Famous comedian Kevin Hart for example does this in most of his standup acts. During his act when he was talking about his first time cursing he included physical humor twice. First when he got an attitude with his mom and said how she slapped him, he slapped himself to give effect to what he was saying. The second was when his mom gave him permission to curse at school but he took it to fare. So as Kevin Hart state “I got an ass whooping and my mom beat the shit out of me.” Now some people might not find this funny that a mother is beating her child. Although the crowd that night did, this is a well-known Kevin Hart piece.

Finally, i showed you scientifically and psychologically that women are not as funny as men. So we have made it our duty to amuse you and make you laugh! The final reason is a social reason. "The entertainment industry seems to agree with the idea that women are not or can’t be funny, or at least can’t be as funny as men" (logicalmisery). There are only 10% of comedians that are women (logicalmisery). Therefore even when we look at society, there are not as much funny women as men, so it is right to say that you are less funny than us because we make up 90% of the comedy industry. The article goes even further to say that "t’s relatively rare to see more than one woman on one of the ubiquitous comedy panel shows" (logicalmisery). I am not saying

One of them brought the book and starts to read it in Chinese, audience all hear “A Chu Sun Hzi….”and so on, the other two actors have the “what the hell” face, which makes everyone laugh so hard. Then they told the one who read in Chinese to stop reading in Chinese, and read in English. I think the reason why audience thinks it’s funny is the way he tried to speak Chinese and the “qing qing qiang qiang” sound he made was clearly not English. However, as a non-English speaking audience, my experience at that moment is I heard the English word “Chinese” so I got they are talking about something related to us maybe, I also hear the “A Chu Sun Hzi qing qing qiang qiang” sound and feeling the audience are all laughing about it. So I got really confused, I didn’t know if the audience are laughing about how funny the situation is on stage or they just think the sound of Chinese is so funny, or maybe both, or maybe those racist jokes are claim at me but just I don’t understand. It feels like people are making fun of you but you don’t know, like a fool, just like the three actors on stage, but they are intentionally makeing fun of themself, which we called comedian. So for the rest of ACT 1 I didn’t know when to laugh and what’s going on. From that I can already see that their “get in, get laugh and get out” has a limitation for audience, maybe American audience can get laugh as much as hard as they want, but as a audience who can’t fully understand every single word, I didn’t feel I can “get laugh” as free as I can. It just like what Dave has said in his review, “Stereotypes and racist humour have origins in fear of other

With the use of humor it is important to consider what type of language is being used. Language that is considered racist or sexist comes up all the time when comedy is involved. The two main things to consider is how ethnic humor is being used, weather it's punching up or down. For example, in the past the n word has been associated with the depression on African American slaves. Yet some people in comedy use the word and get easily offended if the humor is targeting them. If the joke is used in good content, and not in a racial direct manner it is okay, why is that so? As Explained in "Lessons taught and Lessons learned," by Neal A. Lester, racial language such as the use of the n-word has a dark background in history, that is why people

For example, I love watching Steve Harvey and Kevin Hart. As long as I’m watching, I just cant stop laughing. While I can relate to what the joke is about say for instance, “the look mama gives you in church when you talking through service”. Without having to mimic the look on her face, I already know because I can relate to that. A person who cannot relate to this would probably not find it funny because they don’t realize what so funny about it. Even if the person could relate, they may think that the joke is disrespectful especially if they were the subject being joked about. In this case it would be the mothers. The thing I love about my two favorite comedians is the way the tell the joke. They don’t just tell jokes, they put on a whole show by the way they talk, act and laugh.

Stand-up comedy is an art that needs people in the audience. The job of a comedian is to tell jokes about how society views certain topics like religion, gay rights, political views, and rape. Now, some comedians like Eddie Murphy, Louis CK, and George Carlin have been using sensitive topics and hammering them until they sound funny. So why are people complaining about these comedians using these jokes? The reason being, some people don’t like being remembered of a dark memory or feel that comedians intent is to hurt them.