Comedy!

I preface this article with a disclaimer: I’m a peculiar person, with a peculiar sense of humor. So, most likely, this writing about comedy will not fully relate to you. Now that we’re past that, I can get to the fun stuff.

Comedy is one of the greatest things that humanity has ever created, and yes, I am counting medicine and pornography. Comedy makes the worst situations into the best situations. If I’m having a bad day, I watch Eddie Izzard’s giraffe sketch or Kevin Hart’s Shaq falling sketch, and I literally cannot stop laughing. In fact, I’m writing this as I watch Kevin Hart. Oh Jesus, this man is funny.

While comedy may be arguably the most enjoyable genre of film, its also potentially the most difficult to create. I have tried many a time to write a comedy routine, script, or what-have-you, and they have never come out funny. I’ve always considered myself a pretty funny guy. I mean, shit, I don’t have many other redeemable qualities. I’ve always played that particular quality up, to a fault. But writing comedy has beaten me down pretty savagely ever since I began trying writing it... But I came to the conclusion that writing comedy is hard, and that made me feel better.

When a person can write comedy, it really is a testament to their skill within the manipulation human language and culture. It is so difficult to find what is truly funny to a large group of people. Do you use pop culture references and risk alienating the older audience, or do you risk trying to find a common ground between the two? Personally, nearly all of my family found The Hangover to be hilarious, which in my opinion is a good sign of its quality. However, my father finds Red Skeleton hilarious, while I find him mildly funny. Does that mean he isn’t funny or a great comedian? No, it just means the references and such are of an older generation. As I said above, its difficult to find common ground, but when it happens, its a work of art.

I don’t really have much else to say, except that the research for this article was a hell of a lot more fun than the ones prior. However, I also see a disturbing trend emerging with the American public: indifference. Comedy has had to get raunchier and raunchier in order to make audiences laugh. Actually, let me rephrase: comedians have become raunchier and raunchier, without becoming any funnier. Laughter is a response to fear in some cases, and when we hear something radical and out of control, we laugh. Unfortunately, that is far too often mistaken for actual comedic talent. I can already see some people saying that I’m obviously a hypocrite, because I just said that not everyone finds the same things funny. Trust me on this, those people are not funny. They’re shock jocks, and they are shit.

So, in conclusion, comedy is a varied genre with different opinions on the subsets within it.

Shocker.