Comedy, Theatre and Humor

Modern comedy is all about making people laugh; it can be a play, a book, a TV show or a movie that’s entertaining and fun. It originally referred to the comic theatre (coming from the Greek kōmōidía), whose origins trace back to Ancient Greece. The genre developed under Athenian democracy, as the political satire meant to influence the public opinion. Its main dramatic feature was to place two societies against each other in a hilarious competition or conflict.

The genre had a different meaning in the Elizabethan age, referring to a story with happy ending, involving marriages between characters and a more cheerful tone and style than the usual ones of Shakespeare’s plays.

The birth of cinema in the late 19th century, radio and television in the next century expanded the exposure of comedians to a broader public. The early silent movies featured one of the worldwide known artists, Charlie Chaplin. American and British televisions have been influential forces in comedy development, with the comedy TV series they produced and gained huge popularity and audience worldwide.

There have been developed many genres of modern comedy, based on engendering humor. Satire, political satire, uses irony to depict institutions or persons in a ridiculous manner to emphasize their flaws and corruption; parody is somehow adjacent to satire, using satiric or ironic imitation to trivialize or ridicule an original work, its author, style or subject. Black comedy is based on black humor, emphasizing the dark or negative parts of the human nature; the comedy of manners uses humor to ridicule or satirize the behavior and snobbery of a particular part of the society; romantic comedy is a popular genre making fun of the blooming romance, focusing on depicting the oddities of those falling in love. There is also the sexual humor, race humor or scatological humor, where taboo subjects or social conventions are violated in humorous ways, mostly displayed in stand-up comedy, movies and TV shows. In the area of unconventional, there is also screwball comedy which originates its comic from peculiar, surprising (and improbable) characters or situations.