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Apr 28, 2024 · The Scholar of Comedy. Jerry Seinfeld on how to write jokes, the ending of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and the world-historical struggle to invent the Pop-Tart. By David Remnick. April 28, 2024....
- I. Introduction
- II. How I Am Talking About Humor
- III. The Basics of Trust
- IV. Mapping Trust
- V. Trust, Intentions, and Examples from The Stage
- VI. Implications: Indeterminacy
- VII. Implications: Ethically Dubious Humor
- VIII. Implications: Clarity and Difficulty
- IX. Conclusion and Coda: Authenticity, But Not
Stand-up comedy involves, among other things, a relationship between the comedian and the audience. The comedian is often not just trying to get the audience to laugh but to laugh along with the comedian, or to laugh together at the comedian. This imbues stand-up comedy with a social dynamic where the personage of the comedian is important. Sometim...
In this article, I discuss humor as a social practice, which is different from how humor is usually discussed in analytic philosophy. Humor is standardly presented as an emotion or something emotion-like, where it is defined by a certain sort of cognitive reaction and attendant phenomenology.1Such an account is not useful for discussing trust and h...
If I am going to be talking about the role of trust in the success of stand-up comedy, then I must provide an account of trust. What follows is an attempt to give a basic account of trust, which is to say an account that is copacetic with the most prominent accounts of trust without forcing a choice between them. Trust is standardly understood as b...
Trust may affect how a humor act succeeds (or suffers) with respect to both that act's comprehensibility and its ability to bring about participation. I begin by focusing on trust and comprehension, where a humor act's comprehensibility may be affected by trust in two ways. The first way is that the audience must trust that what the would-be humori...
Focusing on intentions through the lens of trust brings forward an important fact about humor: what is important is not just what the humorist intends, but what the audience understands the humorist to intend. In turn, what the audience can understand the humorist to intend is limited by what they believe the humorist to be capable of intending. It...
I believe that looking at humor through the lens of trust has a number of implications. I begin with indeterminacy, which I believe is the most important result of this approach, before moving on to discuss ethically dubious humor and the importance of clarity. Two of the points I have presented in this article are that humor may succeed or fail ba...
One of the most prominent debates within the philosophy of humor is over the ethical evaluation of humor, where the question is usually taken to be something like the lines of “can the funniness of a joke be affected by the ethical dimensions of its content?” Authors such as Carroll (2014a, 2014b), Smuts (2007, 2009, 2010), and Gaut (1998) present ...
The persistent dubiety of ethically valanced humor points to a particular value of good comedy, which I call clarity. Clarity is not simply straightforwardly saying what one means, but rather constructing and executing a set in such a way that the comedian's intentions are as clear as they can be. As clear as can be with respect to what is the targ...
I have given an account of how humor and comedy depend on building a trusting relationship between comedian and audience, and I have elaborated on the account's implications. Comedy depends on building a relationship between comedian and audience, and the best comedians are the best at building this relationship. They demonstrate not only their com...
- Daniel Abrahams
- 2020
Aug 30, 2016 · “Definitely. It’s a communal thing; it’s a release.” Perhaps, she says, because audiences tend to be squeezed together in comedy clubs, acts get to be accidental anthropologists and...
Jun 11, 2018 · When comedians develop a new joke, they're uncertain about how well it's going to go over. But they start with a hypothesis that it will do well. And to test their hypotheses, they run their...
- Cody Kommers
Oct 8, 2024 · Discover the five key traits that make great comedians stand out, from storytelling and timing to creativity and audience engagement. Learn how to choose the right comedian for your corporate comedy event and explore unique entertainment options to ensure your event is a hit.
Mar 22, 2018 · Filmmaker Judd Apatow examines the major influences in Shandling's life — as well the ways the late comedian influenced others — in his two-part documentary, The Zen Diaries of Garry...
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May 6, 2014 · Stand up comedy is a special art. Despite the rise of flashy movies and processed music, a good comedian can still put on an entertaining show with words alone. Sometimes, between the laughs,...
