As a teenager, I cultivated a strong appreciation for stand-up comedy, which has grown into a full-blown love of comedy in all mediums. And as I've gotten older, my taste in comedy has evolved, causing me to wonder "what's funny?" and "why?" While there are several sources for stand-up comedy news - some quite good from a journalistic perspective - I could not find a single source that approached "comedy" at large from an analytic perspective, and that asked perhaps the more difficult question of what we laugh at says about our culture. *Great* comedy, like other art forms, is both a reflection of and a commentary on who we are. As the adage goes, behind every joke is a little truth (and equal parts bullshit, self-loathing, and confusion.)
I myself am not a comic, and so any critiques I offer are given with the utmost amount respect for the men and women who actually do comedy. (I am a sociologist-in-training, a Ph.D. student in Los Angeles studying a field completely unrelated to comedy or even the study of it as an institution. ) I wouldn't devote an obscene amount of my time to understanding them if I didn't I didn't think they were important, which implies a certain level of respect. I spend a lot of time watching comedy, discussing it with a close friend, and thinking about it in private, so I thought I could give these thoughts some life by floating them out on the web machine.
That said, I will occasionally use this venue as a chance to explore and develop some of my own jokes, although that will not be the focus of the blog. At the time of this writing (1/29/12), I expect to devote most of this space to stand-up comedy, since I believe it's the purest form of comedy, relatively free from the influence of production studios, but I will occasionally venture to take on sit-coms and movies. I do have a preference for "dark comedy" (for any international viewers, that's different from *black* comedy), ever since, at what now seems like an inappropriate play to show teenagers, I saw an on-stage actor punt a stillborn baby out of frustration. Still one of the darkest jokes I can recall.
Anyway, thanks for reading.
