chapter 46

The biggest comparison I see between Aristotle's theory of art as imitation and our current society is comedians' use of impressions. By doing in impersonation- or imitation- of someone, you find humor in something they just do naturally. In addition, there is humor in shared experiences. Something people have in common allows a comedian to replicate- or imitate- a situation where everyone is involved and understands the framework of the joke. Of course commercials do this as well, to get everyone paying attention to something they're all familiar with. It's interesting though, that one would so drastically separate comedy from tragedy. It seems to me that more and more in today's society we have what could almost be considered tragic comedy, and comedic tragedy for that matter. Consider the play Carthage recently did called "Dead Man's Cell Phone." The entire play was tragic and dark but yet I laughed (along with the rest of the audience) the entire way through. They made things like loneliness, death, not feeling loved and even black market sale of organs- FUNNY! And then comedians like Bo Burnham, Katt Williams and many others thrive on basing their comedy off of tragic events such as gay hate crimes, the KKK, the holocaust and in Katt's case- someone being attacked by a tiger. These are all not happily ending comedy events. They're hilarious in their presentation but unlike a comedy movie, they're not exactly happily ever after stories.