Funny How?
eBook - ePub

Funny How?

Sketch Comedy and the Art of Humor

  1. 162 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Funny How?

Sketch Comedy and the Art of Humor

About this book

Uses comedy skits, from Monty Python to Key and Peele, to probe how humor works.

What makes something funny? This book shows how humor can be analyzed without killing the joke. Alex Clayton argues that the brevity of a sketch or skit and its typical rejection of narrative development make it comedy-concentrate, providing a rich field for exploring how humor works. Focusing on a dozen or so skits and scenes, Clayton shows precisely how sketch comedy appeals to the funny bone and engages our philosophical imagination. He suggests that since humor is about persuading an audience to laugh, it can be understood as a form of rhetoric. Through vivid, highly readable analyses of individual sketches, Clayton illustrates that Aristotle's three forms of appeal-logos, the appeal to reason; ethos, the appeal to communality; and pathos, the appeal to emotion-can form the basis for illuminating the inner workings of humor. Drawing on both popular and lesser-known examples from the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere-Monty Python's Flying Circus, Key and Peele, Saturday Night Live, Airplane!, and Smack the Pony-Clayton reveals the techniques and resonances of humor.

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Yes, you can access Funny How? by Alex Clayton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Film & Video. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Preface
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction
  8. 1 The Trouble with Comic Theory
  9. 2 Takeoffs
  10. 3 Thought Experiments
  11. 4 Prime Numbers
  12. 5 Pitched Battles
  13. Conclusion: The Rhetoric of Humor
  14. Works Cited
  15. Index
  16. Back Cover