There are many variations – not least because the definition of the genre is quite broad. In its original concept, which emerged in Classic Antiquity, comedy is any plot that ends well. Unlike tragedy, its purpose is to amuse – which does not necessarily mean to make the audience laugh. “By that definition, even a Shakespearean play that has a dark tone can be seen as a comedy,” says Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
mood swings
Meet some of the most famous comic subgenres
Laugh not to cry
O humor black treats serious topics like death, illness and violence in a funny way. This mixture of elements is often used to highlight the lack of meaning in life, as in The Addams Family and in the musical Sweeney Todd. The term was coined by the French André Breton, one of the founders of surrealism, in the work Anthologie de l’Humor Noirfrom 1940
pie in the face
The trademarks of slapstick are the scrawled text and the absurd situations. Physical violence is common, so much so that, in English, the genre is called slapstick, a mixture of “slap” and “stick”. In Portuguese, it refers to the scenes in which a character hit another with a pie. Classic examples are the films by the group The three Stooges and the duo The fat and the thin
Follow me the good ones
Catchphrases repeated so often that they fall into the mouths of the people. This is the basic tool of catchphrase comedy. Unlike other types of humor, the great asset in this style is not surprise, but predictability. creator of Chapolin It is KeysRoberto Bolaños was a genius in this art, also widely used in soap operas and programs like total Zorra It is The square is ours, Besides the Professor Raimundo’s School
Water with sugar
A couple meets in a different way, ends up separating and, after many twists and turns, reunites in a happy ending. Who knows the formula of a romantic comedy knows that the genre tries to find laughter in the comings and goings of the heart. Want to please your girlfriend? watch A beautiful woman and understand why it’s one of the highest-grossing sitcoms in history
funny but serious
A satire it is a smart and elegant form of criticism: it shows the ridicule of certain institutions, such as capitalism, the Church, the film industry. But the most common target tends to be politics, like some videos from Porta dos Fundos and programs starring Marcelo Adnet, as well as Saturday Night Live and Charles Chaplin’s masterpiece The great dictatorwho mocked Nazism
Parody looks like satire but makes fun of other art forms such as music, novels and films. The Brazilian masters in the subject are the members of Hermes and Renato.
shame on others
If, so distressed by the situation, you can’t even look at the screen, you can be sure: you’re watching a good awkward moodlike the series The Office. The goal is to show the human being in the most humiliating (and even offensive) way possible. Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen used a documentary tone in the film Borat to enhance this effect
Bazinga!
Have you ever wondered where the term sitcom comes from, which describes half-hour series, with recurring characters in a common environment, such as Friends orThe Big Bang Theory? It’s the fusion of situation comedy, which extracts humor from everyday problems. She is a close relative of observational comedyoften used by stand-up artists, who laugh at their own lives
READ TOO:
– When it comes to making a joke, is anything goes?
– What are the funniest jokes in the world?
– Why is it easier to remember a bad joke?
– What makes a joke funny?
From the bottom of the trunk
Styles popular in the past that have fallen out of favor
comedy of manners
Famous between the 17th and 20th centuries, it criticized the customs of society at the time. Oscar Wilde was one of its main names
character comedy
A character represented a characteristic of the human being, like Tartuffe’s hypocrite, from Molière’s play
Burlesque
In the 19th century, it used exaggerated parodies to ridicule groups. In the US, the show also featured slapstick, dirty jokes and naked women.
Vaudeville
Popular entertainment between 1890 and 1930, in the USA, which mixed characters, music, magic, dance, jokes, circus arts…
Commedia Dell’Arte
Italian improvisational theater from the 16th to the 18th century, in which characters were dressed in masks, such as the harlequin
farce
Typical of the theater, it mixes improbable situations, such as characters with mistaken identity or mismatched information
Source Websites British, DePaul University, PBS, Recanto das Letras It is The Independent
Consultancy Adam Roberts, Professor in the Department of English at the University of London