Summary of Tuesday's Class (Week Two)

To help jog your memory, and to keep track of our class discussions, here's a short summary of some of the ideas we discussed based on Chapters 1-2 of Bevis. Granted, we didn't discuss all of these, but they're good things to keep in mind for future readings and papers. Remember to read Chapters 3-4 for next week, with a video to follow tomorrow. 

ALSO: here's a clip of the comedy duo The Flight of the Conchords performing their comedic song, "Business Time," which I showed you in class (this is a live performance, and not the show itself, but it's just as funny). It's all about making fun of taboo subjects like sex and how absurd our bodies are when it comes to sex, love, and relationships. 

COMEDY IS SEX! AND SEX IS TABOO!

• Page 7: Comedy from “komos”—the village, drunken songs about Dionysis; sexual abandon and flaunting of taboos:
• Page 11: “a joke implies that anything is possible”
• Page 23: Comedy makes fun of the body and its desires: lampoon means “let us drink” and satire means “full dish.”
• Page 24: Animality is objectionable AND funny: we don't like to be reminded of what we 'really' look like to others. It's funny to see other people as they are (to us), but not us (to them). 

 THE BODY ON-STAGE: WATCHING OTHERS ‘DO IT’

• Page 25: Comedy is an oral genre; we need bodies on-stage. Why Shakespeare always had cross-dessing; and why later ages added women (another taboo). Comedy is bodies ACTING, not just people talking. 
• Page 32: The body is the most imaginary of all objects; it’s hard to imagine ourselves as bodies, a collection of parts
• It’s humorous to think about the things we do—fart, burp, get erections, etc. But it’s funny when OTHER people do it! (as always)
• Page 18: ALSO, a mistake is often something you secretly want to make. We don't want bad things to happen to us, but then again, do we ? Sometimes, you want to break a taboo or do the wrong thing. And comedy is about a lot of wrong things happening at once! 

 WIT AND HUMOR

• Page 9: Tragedy is a cushy art...originally, tragedy had to be based on myth. Comedy came from drunken festivals of revelry; it had no set plot. So it had to make its own--by looking at the audience! 
• Breaking the 4^th wall, incorporating real people and situations. “It’s funny because it’s true”
• Page 11: Comedy is a search for the golden age; so much comedy about people trying to be young again, or to find love, or to find something ‘ideal.’
• Page 26: Wit = witan, “to know”; wit is logical comedy, whereas humor is more physical, sensual comedy (ex: page 27 from Byron)
• Page 26: Being in love it itself a comic double act (Elizabeth and Darcy from Austen's Pride and Prejudice); you want to deny the physicality of it, you use wit to deflect it, reason it away

Comedy is about things OUT OF OUR CONTROL. That's why it's funny. We can only laugh--or cry. But comedy chooses to laugh (since it's not happening to us). But note that it's always tragic to them!