Serious Comedy Quotes

It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.

You think I'm deranged! How refreshing. Everyone here takes me so seriously, it's a wonderful change to be thought mentally deficient.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures.

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without even your asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people.

Nonie chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. She'd told Fezzo so much already yet there wasn't a speck of incredulity in his eyes. His expression was serious, and she had his full attention. "I'm not quite sure about what to do with Helen, the ghost that followed me home.

Human life is a comedy-one must play it seriously.

How comes when a man likes an attractive female, is he helping to exploit women around the world, yet the moment he doesn't fancy the female in question, he only hates on her because she's empowering women? Seriously, I don't get it - Rihanna and Nicki do exactly the same thing as far as I can see. They both sing, dance and gyrate their sexy stuff on stage, yet one empowers women, the other is being exploited, depending on which one I fancy the most at the point of being asked the sodding question. How the fuck does any of this make sense?

If you cannot find an element of Humour in something, your not taking it seriously enough.

What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious.

...I supplied in a tone so saccharine that it should have tipped him off that his testicular health was in serious peril.

Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.

Our seriousness prevents us from enjoying the circus of life.

For a woman to be taken as seriously as a man she must be three times as effective. Happily, this is not difficult.--Simone de Beauvoir

I glance around the room. What a comedy! All these people sitting there, looking serious, eating. No, they aren't eating: they are recuperating in order to successfully finish their tasks. Each one of them has his little personal difficulty which keeps him from noticing that he exists; there isn't one of them who doesn't believe himself indispensable to something or someone. Didn't the Self-Taught Man tell me the other day: "No one better qualified than Noucapie to undertake this vast synthesis?" Each one of them does one small thing and no one is better qualified than he to do it. No one is better qualified than the commercial traveler over there to sell Swan Toothpaste. No one better qualified than that interesting young man to put his hand under his girl friend's skirts. And I am among them and if they look at me they must think that no one is better qualified than I to do what I'm doing. But I know. I don't look like much, but I know I exist and that they exist. And if I knew how to convince people I'd go and sit down next to that handsome white-haired gentleman and explain to him just what existence means. I burst out laughing at the thought of the face he would make. The Self-Taught Man looks at me with surprise. I'd like to stop but I can't; I laugh until I cry.

Begging your pardon, but I'm not just a secretary. I seriously, seriously despised it when people called secretaries and administrative professionals just a secretary. Being a secretary was a multitasking marathon, a daily gauntlet of making everyone happy all the time.

The immature think maturity is mutually exclusive with playfulness.

To believers, the bible is a holy book, to unbelievers, it is a story book.

The worst thing about our cultures, education systems, and religions is that they make us take life seriously.

You won’t hear a character’s friend say this in a romantic comedy. Taylor Swift won’t sing this, Eminem won’t rap it, and Suzanne Collins won’t write it, but it’s true: just because you’re “in love” with someone doesn’t mean you should seriously consider marrying them.

Shadowhunters get very set on things,” said Lily. “Very set. Do you enjoy intensely serious romantic commitment?” “I don’t know his name,” Juliette pointed out.

If I were serious I would never have become a wizard, would I?

If life is a movie most people would consider themselves the star of their own feature. Guys might imagine they're living some action adventure epic. Chicks maybe are in a rose-colored fantasy romance. And homosexuals are living la vida loca in a fabulous musical. Still others may take the indie approach and think of themselves as an anti-hero in a coming of age flick. Or a retro badass in an exploitation B movie. Or the cable man in a very steamy adult picture. Some people's lives are experimental student art films that don't make any sense. Some are screwball comedies. Others resemble a documentary, all serious and educational. A few lives achieve blockbuster status and are hailed as a tribute to the human spirit. Some gain a small following and enjoy cult status. And some never got off the ground due to insufficient funding. I don't know what my life is but I do know that I'm constantly squabbling with the director over creative control, throwing prima donna tantrums and pouting in my personal trailor when things don't go my way. Much of our lives is spent on marketing. Make-up, exercise, dieting, clothes, hair, money, charm, attitude, the strut, the pose, the Blue Steel look. We're like walking billboards advertising ourselves. A sneak peek of upcoming attractions. Meanwhile our actual production is in disarray--we're over budget, doing poorly at private test screenings and focus groups, creatively stagnant, morale low. So we're endlessly tinkering, touching up, editing, rewriting, tailoring ourselves to best suit a mass audience. There's like this studio executive in our heads telling us to cut certain things out, make it "lighter," give it a happy ending, and put some explosions in there too. Kids love explosions. And the uncompromising artist within protests: "But that's not life!" Thus the inner conflict of our movie life: To be a palatable crowd-pleaser catering to the mainstream... or something true to life no matter what they say?

As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid down the main lines of Comedy, by dramatising the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire.

The Comedy Equation: An ordinary guy or gal struggling against insurmountable odds without many of the required skills and tools with which to win yet never giving up hope.

Either you are all asses, or I am an ass,” he would declare seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: “You are an ass. We can tell by your voice.

We are permitted to discuss in jest what we may not discuss in earnest. A serious comedy about sex is taboo: a farcical comedy is privileged.

Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to 'serious' drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.

You know, typically a nickname is shorter than the given name.” “Is it?” he asked in mock seriousness. “Oh. Well, tell you what, you can call me…” She waited several beats, thinking of more than a few unkind examples. “I can call you what?” she finally asked. “That’s it.” He shot her his bone-melting smile. “You can just call me. Anytime.” She rolled her eyes, refusing to give in to the smile that threatened. “That sounds like a line from one of your movies.” He shot her a triumphant look. “Ah, ha! I knew you were a fan.

Modern-Day Parenting is no joke. For starters, no one takes you seriously unless you have a fancy parenting style. Tiger Mom, Helicopter Mom, Organic Mom and on and on. I've decided to go with L-Board Mom. I may look like I don't know what I'm doing but you want to keep safe distance 'cause you know I can hurt you and get away with it.

here’s why I take comedies seriously: they present and celebrate the world in which we survive our own and others’ mistakes, follies, transgressions, and deep sins. However lightly, dimly, or bleakly, comedies revel in our survival—in the delaying of death and the staying of the curse. Comedies tell the story of ruined folk somehow avoiding ruin.

[Excerpt from Kenneth Brown testimony] Great comics throughout literature have always disguised by comedy, through laughter, through jokes, an underlying theme which is very serious, and perhaps needs laughter because it is also painful...

If I was going to be a woman, I would want to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me, ‘Uh, that’s as beautiful as we can get you.’ And I went home and started crying to my wife, and I said, ‘I have to make this picture.’ And she said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen, and I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out.’ She says, ‘What are you saying?’ and I said, ‘There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.’ It was not what it felt like to be a woman. It was what it felt like to be someone that people didn’t respect, for the wrong reasons. I know it’s a comedy. But comedy’s a serious business.

Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, a total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin. According to his heritage, he sees it not as a sickness or an accident of the environment, but as a responsible choice of offense against God which involves his eternal future. Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe. One reason a great deal of our contemporary fictions is humorless is because so many of these writers are relativists and have to be continually justifying the actions of their characters on a sliding scale of values.

I was on the point of explaining to Gerald that the world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. And that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.

For this reason poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements. The universal truths concern what befits a person of a certain kind to say or do in accordance with probability and necessity—and that is the aim of poetry, even if it makes use of proper names.* A particular statement tells us what (for example) Alcibiades* did or what happened to him. In the case of comedy this is already manifest: the poets make up the story on the basis of probability and then attach names to the characters at random;

Ulrich replied by asking him whether he really believed that anything would come of this campaign. "No doubt about it," Arnheim said, "great events are always the expression of a general situation." The mere fact that a meeting such as this had been possible anywhere was proof of its profound necessity. And yet discrimination in such matters seems difficult, Ulrich said. Suppose, for instance, that the composer of the latest worldwide musical hit happened to be a political schemer and managed to become president of the world--which was certainly conceivable, given his enormous popularity--would this be a leap forward in history or an expression of the cultural situation? "That's quite impossible!" Arnheim said seriously. "Such a composer couldn't possibly be either a schemer or a politician--otherwise, his genius for musical comedy would be inexplicable, and nothing absurd happens in world history." "But so much that's absurd happens in the world, surely?" "In world history, never!

I, for example, quiet plainly and simply insist upon annihilation for myself. “No,” they say, “you must go on living, for without you there would be nothing. If everything on earth were reasonable, nothing would ever happen. Without you there would be no events, and it is necessary that there should be events.” Well, and so on I drudge with unwilling heart so that there be events, and bring about unreason by command. People think toute cette comedie is something serious, all there unquestionable intelligence notwithstanding. There lies there tragedy. Well, and they suffer, of course, but … al the same they live, they live in reality, not in fantasy; for suffering is also life. Without suffering what pleasure would there be in it? Everything would turn into one single, endless church service: much holy soaring, but rather boring. Well, and I? I suffer, but even so I do not live. I am the “x” in an indeterminate equation. I am one of life’s ghosts, who has lost all the ends and the beginnings, and even at last forgotten what to call myself. You are laughing . . . No, you are not laughing, you are angry again. You are eternally angry, you would like there to be nothing but intelligence, but I will tell you again that I would renounce all this empyrean existence, all these honours and ranks just in order to be able to take fleshy form in the person of a seven-pood merchant’s wife and set up candles to God in church. ‘So, you don’t believe in God either?’ Ivan said, smiling with hatred. ‘Well, how can I explain it to you, if you are serious, that is . . . ‘ ‘Does God exist or not?’ Ivan barked, again with ferocious insistence. ‘Ah, so you are serious? My dear little dove, I swear to God I do not know, pour vous dire le grand mot.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

If one starts a serious cgange, the beginning has to be with comedy.

Sometimes what’s funny is that someone is actually not joking.

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, ‘Does this taste funny to you?

You need to understand that some comedy can have consequences.

There are only two kinds of people in this world who want to be miserable: poets and method actors.

The freshest, most interesting comedy is not based on mother-in-law jokes or Jack Nicholson impressions,*4 but on exposing our own personalities

Something can be important without being serious.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else.

enlighten people about subjects that might otherwise be taboo. Robin Williams’ comedy genius among others did it so eloquently and in doing so also taught not to take life so seriously.

I glance around the room. What a comedy! All these people sitting there, looking serious, eating. No, they aren't eating: they are recuperating in order to successfully finish their tasks. Each one of them has his little personal difficulty which keeps him from noticing that he exists; there isn't one of them who doesn't believe himself indispensable to something or someone.

Cary hasn’t told me anything—he’s a gentleman. He won’t ever talk about you. But you’re no gentleman, Shiloh. Give me the goods.” She shook her head. “There are no goods.” Mikey tipped his head, squinting one eye. “Uhhh, maybe I’d believe that if I hadn’t seen you filming a romantic comedy at my own wedding reception. Like, seriously. It was my wedding, but you guys got voted Cutest Couple.

Thus the esthetically sensitive man stands in the same relation to the reality of dreams as the philosopher does to the reality of existence; he is a close and willing observer, for these pictures afford him an interpretation of life, and it is by these processes that he trains himself for life. And it is not only the agreeable and friendly picture that he experiences in himself with such perfect understanding: but the serious, the troubled, the sad, the gloomy, the sudden restraints, the tricks of fate, the uneasy presentiments, in short, the whole DIVINE COMEDY of life, and the inferno, also pass before him, not like mere shadows in the wall - for in these scenes he lives and suffers - and yet without that fleeting sensation of appearance.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I spin to leave. “No fucking way.” It clicks in his mind. “Little Vee?” Here he is. “You’re that girl Finn and I used to…” He doesn’t complete his sentence, but I know all too well what he was going to say. “Annoy? Tease? Torture? Why, yes, that would be me. Did you seriously just figure that out? A bit slow, are we?” I snark. My outburst only seems to amuse him. “Look, in my defense, your mom only ever called you ‘Vee.’ I thought it was short for Vicky or Vivian or something. And it was ten years ago. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night.” “Whatever.” I shrug. “Shit, I’ve got to say, Vee.” He gives me a once-over. “Puberty did you a solid.” My cheeks combust. “Wish I could say the same about you,” I lie through my teeth. Xavier smiles at my failed attempt to deny the undeniable. Let’s not pretend like puberty didn’t do every female on earth a solid when Xavier Emery went from “cute” to “sinfully hot” in the span of a summer. “I think you mispronounced thank you.” He flashes a smug grin that makes me want to knee him where it hurts.

Now give me some advice about how to take full advantage of this city. I’m always looking to improve my odds.” “Just what I’d expect from a horny actuary.” “I’m serious.” Carlos reflected for a moment on the problem at hand. He actually had never needed or tried to take full advantage of the city in order to meet women, but he thought about all of his friends who regularly did. His face lit up as he thought of some helpful advice: “Get into the arts.” “The arts?” “Yeah.” “But I’m not artistic.” “It doesn’t matter. Many women are into the arts. Theater. Painting. Dance. They love that stuff.” “You want me to get into dance? Earthquakes have better rhythm than me…And can you really picture me in those tights?” “Take an art history class. Learn photography. Get involved in a play or an independent film production. Get artsy, Sammy. I’m telling you, the senoritas dig that stuff.” “Really?” “Yeah. You need to sign up for a bunch of artistic activities. But you can’t let on that it’s all just a pretext to meet women. You have to take a real interest in the subject or they’ll quickly sniff out your game.” “I don’t know…It’s all so foreign to me…I don’t know the first thing about being artistic.” “Heeb, this is the time to expand your horizons. And you’re in the perfect city to do it. New York is all about reinventing yourself. Get out of your comfort zones. Become more of a Renaissance man. That’s much more interesting to women.

Dor. So you think, Lysidas, that all the wit and beauty are to be found in serious poems, and that comic pieces are trifles which deserve no praise? Ur. I certainly do not think so. Tragedy no doubt is very fine when it is well written; but comedy has also its charms, and I believe that one is no less difficult than the other.

BECAUSE OF PIETY’S PENCHANT for taking itself too seriously, theology does well to nurture a modest, unguarded sense of comedy. Some droll sensibility is required to keep in due proportion the pompous pretensions of the study of divinity. I invite the kind of laughter that wells up not from cynicism about reflection on God but from the ironic contradictions accompanying such reflection. Theology is intrinsically funny. This comes from glimpsing the incongruity of humans thinking about God. I have often laughed at myself as these sentences went through their tortuous stages of formation. I invite you to look for the comic dimension of divinity that stalks every page.

The casting of the brash United States Army Air Force officer Colonel Robert E. Hogan and the pompous German Luftwaffe officer Colonel Wilhelm Klink was inspired. For this series—a comedy with the serious backdrop of war—to succeed, the lead players had to be the perfect fit. The dynamic portrayal of this military odd couple had to be articulate, accurate, and precise. For the show to work, for the concept to be accepted, for one of the most outlandish premises in television history to be believed, the actors signed to play the two leading characters not only had to bring these extreme individuals to life with broad, fictional strokes, they had to make them real in the details.

Why didn't you talk about whether women are funny or not? I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn't. It would be the same as addressing the issue of 'Should dogs and cats be able to care for our children? They're in the house anyway.' I try not to make it a habit to seriously discuss nonsensical hot-button issues.

On the contrary, as Miller also notes, “Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and . . . its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal.” For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously man’s freedom and his need to realize himself; it demonstrates our belief in the “indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

I’ll tell you this, if he gives me one more order with that W word again, I’m going to divorce him before we can even finish the wedding.” “The W . . . Okay, Bella, as usual you have lost me. W word?” “Yeah. W, . . . as in Wife. Ugh! He’s always saying or thinking things in this high and mighty way and tacking the word ‘wife’ onto the end like it’s some kind of password that lets him order me around.” Bella noted her friend’s still perplexed expression, so she screwed up her face, attitude, and voice into an uncanny approximation of Jacob. “‘I do not want you hunting in your condition, wife. It is too dangerous for you and the babe to accompany me, wife. I have told Elijah that there are to be no more training lessons until after the birth, and do not argue with me about this, wife, because my mind is set.” Isabella sagged back with a frustrated sigh. “Oy! It’s just so obnoxious and so . . . high-handed! You know the honeymoon is over when you go from ‘my love,’ ‘my little flower,’ and ‘my heart’ and become simply ‘wife.’” Legna smothered the urge to chuckle. Her little friend’s famous sarcasm always tickled her, and it was meant to tickle. Bella had a way of hiding behind her wit and humor. She was stating things that clearly disturbed her, but she mocked them in such a way that anyone who did not know her would treat it as little more than a comedy routine. Legna knew better. “Now, Bella, you know Jacob adores you. He naturally wants to protect you. He literally worships the ground you walk on.” “Ha ha,” Bella said dryly. “Earth Demon. Worship the ground. Cute. Really cute.” “Well, come on now. Seriously. As a Demon of the Earth, Jacob has an affinity with nature.

Now for positivity. The Greatest Generation freed our Jewish brothers and sisters from horrors we can not even imagine. All we are asked to do is stay home. Kinda put things into prospective. Now for me to be blunt. This is a pandemic. It's going to get a lot worse. BUT know this. It does get better. SO do you part. Stay in. Order take away. DO TIP!!! Do you! Listen a great song, watch some comedy, listen to a podcast. Just take this seriously and you likely will live!

Fretting makes us important. Say you're an adult male and you're skipping down the street whistling "Last Train to Clarksville." People will call you a fool. But lean over to the person next to you on a subway and say, "How can you smile when innocents are dying in Tibet?" You'll acquire a reputation for great seriousness and also more room to sit down. ...Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?

Why did people fall in love?he wondered as he watched Rock and Doris pretend to do just that. Obviously, it made people ridiculous and not just in movies from the sixties. There had to be some basis in real life or no one would ever have made a silly comedy about love. Yeah, there were also movies about love that weren't comedies, but in those movies people acted ridiculous for a while and then someone announced the were going to die, or they had to go off to war, or oops I forgot to mention my wife. People stopped acting ridiculous and starting acting really serious and sad, sad because the ridiculous part was over. How could people want this foolishness in their lives?

Nuggsy continued on. ‘Seriously, legend. A bloke might have a six-figure salary at a job he truly loves, but it all means nothing if he has a shit rig and a poor grasp of Anchorman quotes. It probably doesn’t even matter if he averages in the mid-30s and does a lot at the club, because he’ll never go anywhere.’ I briefly wondered as to the relevance of Will Ferrell movie quotes, but then remembered back to my first training session. I had overheard a crew of second graders reciting dialogue from the movie Step Brothers while mucking around on the slips cradle. Obviously this broad style of comedy had particular resonance within grade cricket circles. The humour was absurd, male-skewed, anti-intellectual, and highly quotable. Suddenly, I was beginning to understand the things that made grade cricketers tick. Meanwhile, Nuggsy continued to bluster on, flecks of spit now hissing out from his animated mouth. The next piece of advice he had for me revolved around women: a subject I knew little about.

1595, Richard Field, fellow-alumnus of the King Edward grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, printed The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that grave learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chaeronea: translated out of Greeke into French by James Amiot, abbot of Bellozane, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the Kings privie counsell, and great Amner of France, and out of French into English, by Thomas North. This was the book that got Shakespeare thinking seriously about politics: monarchy versus republicanism versus empire; the choices we make and their tragic consequences; the conflict between public duty and private desire. He absorbed classical thought, but was not enslaved to it. Shakespeare was a thinker who always made it new, adapted his source materials, and put his own spin on them. In the case of Plutarch, he feminized the very masculine Roman world. Brutus and Caesar are seen through the prism of their wives, Portia and Calpurnia; Coriolanus through his mother, Volumnia; Mark Antony through his lover, Cleopatra. Roman women were traditionally silent, confined to the domestic sphere. Cleopatra is the very antithesis of such a woman, while Volumnia is given the full force of that supreme Ciceronian skill, a persuasive rhetorical voice.40 Timon of Athens is alone and unhappy precisely because his obsession with money has cut him off from the love of, and for, women (the only females in Timon’s strange play are two prostitutes). Paradoxically, the very masculinity of Plutarch’s version of ancient history stimulated Shakespeare into demonstrating that women are more than the equal of men. Where most thinkers among his contemporaries took the traditional view of female inferiority, he again and again wrote comedies in which the girls are smarter than the boys—Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, Rosalind in As You Like It, Portia in The Merchant of Venice—and tragedies in which women exercise forceful authority for good or ill (Tamora, Cleopatra, Volumnia, and Cymbeline’s Queen in his imagined antiquity, but also Queen Margaret in his rendition of the Wars of the Roses).41

But interviews with [Margaret Dumont] reveal her to have been a perceptive and talented comic actress. “Many a comedian’s lines have been lost on the screen because the laughter overlapped,” she said in the 1940s. “Script writers build up to a laugh, but they don’t allow any pause for it. That’s where I come in. I ad lib—it doesn’t matter what I say—just to kill a few seconds so you can enjoy the gag. I have to sense when the big laughs will come and fill in, or the audience will drown out the next gag with its own laughter.” A much harder job, it must be stressed, onscreen than onstage. Margaret Dumont objected to the term “stooge,” with her usual dignity. “I’m a straight lady,” she insisted, “the best straight woman in Hollywood. There’s an art to playing straight. You must build up your man, but never top him, never steal the laughs from him.” She showed great insight into the Marx Brothers’ brand of humor: “The comedy method which [they] employ is carefully worked out and concrete. They never laugh during a story conference. Like most other expert comedians, they involve themselves so seriously in the study of how jokes can be converted to their own style that they don’t ever titter while approaching their material.

I’m sure I’ve never heard of this one. You?” Eve shook her head. “I’m not much of a follower of the bard.” Shrugging, Rose settled back in her seat and waited. This was either going to be very good or very bad. It ended up being the latter. The play seemed disjointed, although the blame for that couldn’t be put totally on Lord Battenfield. His acting abilities were next to nonexistent, but he made up for it in sheer drama. Rose recognized some of his lordships “company” as various children of titled families. They seemed to be having a good time. But the play! In this case the play was not the thing. Neither it nor the people acting it out could seem to decide if it was a tragedy or a comedy and so the audience never knew whether or not they should laugh. Rose was amongst them. Timon began the play as a posturing, wealthy character like many modern aristos, caring about nothing but money. Lord Battenfield played this with a naïve bravado that made it highly amusing. But then Timon lost his fortune and none of his former friends would help him. This should have been a serious moment in the production, but it wasn’t. Finally, when Timon realizes the servant Flavius is his only friend and then seems to commit suicide in the wilderness, what could have been a poignant commentary on society became a joke when Lord Battenfield’s death scene revealed that he was completely naked beneath the toga. It was just a glimpse, but Rose was certain she would be scarred for life. She and Eve were trying to control their giggles when the curtains fell.

Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others. The result is the encroachment of one group upon the territory of another, the rivalry of groups for the resources of the soil, and then war. Trade and finance develop, and bring new class-divisions. "Any ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, each at war with the other; and in either division there are smaller ones - you would make a great mistake if you treated them as single states". A mercantile bourgeoisie arises, whose members seek social position through wealth and conspicuous consumption: "they will spend large sums of money on their wives". These changes in the distribution of wealth produce political changes: as the wealth of the merchant over-reaches that of the land-owner, aristocracy gives way to a plutocratic oligarchy - wealthy traders and bankers rule the state. Then statesmanship, which is the coordination of social forces and the adjustment of policy to growth, is replaced by politics, which is the strategy of parts and the lust of the spoils of office. Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth. In rather case the end is revolution. When revolution comes it may seem to arise from little causes and petty whims, but though it may spring from slight occasions it is the precipitate result of grave and accumulated wrongs; when a body is weakened by neglected ills, the merest exposure may bring serious disease. Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power. But even democracy ruins itself by excess – of democracy. Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the wisest courses. As to the people they have no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them; to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea). Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so “hungry for honey” that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the “protected of the people” rises to supreme power. (Consider the history of Rome). The more Plato thinks of it, the more astounded he is at the folly of leaving to mob caprice and gullibility the selection of political officials – not to speak of leaving it to those shady and wealth-serving strategists who pull the oligarchic wires behind the democratic stage. Plato complains that whereas in simpler matters – like shoe-making – we think only a specially-trained person will server our purpose, in politics we presume that every one who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

Human life is a comedy-one must play it seriously--Alexandre Kojeve

How can she take my 'no' seriously when my dick is saying, 'yes?

The man who’d saved her wasn’t just a pair of sexy lips and a rugged jaw with big, yummy eyes. He was the whole package. Seriously? What Earth woman would prefer downloading offspring when she could ravage this instead?

Looking with his eyes? Seriously? What else would he look around with?” Trish nonchalantly uses her middle finger to scratch her temple. “Toddlers learn by making connections between the body part and the action.” Vince blinks. “Oh, so talking to a kid like that’s normal?” “Someday I hope to have a conversation where I don’t sound like a character from Star Wars.” “I can see how you’d look forward to that.

Since this time yesterday she had made the pleasing discovery that she was fast falling in love violently, and as it now appeared unrequitedly, with a man her superior in station, and in every respect unlikely to prove a satisfactory object for that passion which forms the main plot of a woman’s life, and is only a small secondary byplay in a man’s. Yes, the play of her life had begun, and whether it was to be a tragedy or a comedy who could tell?[99] Probably, neither; most people’s are neither the one nor the other,—too prosaically free from any great emotions or grand situations for tragedy, too triste[100] and serious for comedy. To me most people’s lives seem like melodramas without a dénouement. The first three or four acts are played, and while we are waiting for the fifth, which is to be the key to all the others, which is to explain all that is unaccountable, and reconcile all incongruities, lo, the curtain drops! The fifth is played in some other world, and we must suspend our curiosity till we get there. A

Amy: I’m taking this responsibility seriously. I’m looking at it as an opportunity. What do I want to say? What have I really learned? Where am I, really? I’m not interested in just saying something for shock value anymore. I do feel more of a weight about the message that I’m sending because I know what it’s like to be on the other end of that and I don’t want to be in denial about what success means—and like how many people I’m reaching now. I want to make people feel better.

This show was not going to be about reading scripts, telling jokes and doing hastily-penned comedy sketches. It was going to be about the way in which Georgina and I viewed the world, the fact that we didn’t take life too seriously, and about the things that happened to us every day in our relationship. But most importantly, it was going to be about connecting with the audience and making friends.

The tragedy of many people’s lives is that, given a choice between being ‘right’ and having the opportunity to be happy, they invariably choose being ‘right.’ That is the one ultimate satisfaction they allow themselves.” — Nathaniel Branden

When I started, I used to think that comedy was watching someone do something silly. We later came to realize that comedy was watching someone watch someone do something silly.” — John Cleese

Hammerstein’s transformation of Kim from serious actress to musical comedy star would foil Ferber’s critique entirely, leading to a totally different conclusion as to how the past and present related to each other.

And then there are people – and these don’t unsettle but enrage me – who think comedy is trivial. They believe that serious, intelligent people should focus on worthy, momentous things and that jokes, levity, piss-taking, subverting and satirising are the pastimes of the second-rate. Words cannot express how second-rate I consider such people. In my experience the properly intelligent, whether they’re astrophysicists, politicians, poets, lawyers, entrepreneurs, comedians, taxi drivers, plumbers or doctors, however serious or trivial their career aims, all adore jokes. And they have that in common with a lot of idiots. For as long as I can remember, I have always thought that being funny is the cleverest thing you can do, that taking the piss out of something – parodying it, puncturing it – is at least as clever as making that thing in the first place. This view, which, I’m happy to say, will be most offensive to the people I want most to offend, was probably formed watching my cold grandfather, with all his financial acumen and preference for fish over humans, cry with laughter at a van being repeatedly driven into a swimming pool.

Life is not more kind, or less cruel, towards those who take it seriously.

When people say they laugh often together, it could indicate an easy feeling between the connection of their energies. Or it could simply indicate that there are no serious issues to discuss.

All classifications, all attempts at typification break down in the face of a work like The Magic Flute. It is neither one thing nor the other, neither light nor serious, neither tragedy nor comedy, it is—so to speak—all these things at once, all these things in one. Our urge to classify might have tried to recognize a new ‘type’ here, if the work had not remained on its own entirely sui generis as a type and work of art in the history of the opera. The Magic Flute is life itself; all classification breaks down here. Notebooks, 1950,

But for some reason, during our run, the Academy had a less than favorable view of shows with a live audience. Multicamera comedy somehow got considered a genre that was less-than. Shows like Modern Family were shot like little movies, and I think we were never going to be taken terribly seriously because the culture changed. That’s OK. Bill Prady always used to say, “The audience isn’t counting how many cameras you use. They’re responding to the characters and if they’re laughing.

TOAST IS BRILLIANT. Whoever thought, "This bread we've already cooked, yeah? I reckon we should try cooking it again." was a genius,

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I’m essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous—not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slapstick comedy, but rather in the sense of a ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and most ordinary gestures. For example, I can never shave without starting to laugh; it seems so idiotic.

Group of Decidedly Un-Serious People

I've only ever had one truly serious relationship, and I would rather set him on fire than speak to him ever again.

For the time being, however, his bent was literary and religious rather than balletic. He loved, and what seventh grader doesn’t, the abstracter foxtrots and more metaphysical twists of a Dostoevsky, a Gide, a Mailer. He longed for the experience of some vivider pain than the mere daily hollowness knotted into his tight young belly, and no weekly stomp-and-holler of group therapy with other jejune eleven-year-olds was going to get him his stripes in the major leagues of suffering, crime, and resurrection. Only a bona-fide crime would do that, and of all the crimes available murder certainly carried the most prestige, as no less an authority than Loretta Couplard was ready to attest, Loretta Couplard being not only the director and co-owner of the Lowen School but the author, as well, of two nationally televised scripts, both about famous murders of the 20th Century. They’d even done a unit in social studies on the topic: A History of Crime in Urban America. The first of Loretta’s murders was a comedy involving Pauline Campbell, R.N., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1951, whose skull had been smashed by three drunken teenagers. They had meant to knock her unconscious so they could screw her, which was 1951 in a nutshell. The eighteen-year-olds, Bill Morey and Max Pell, got life; Dave Royal (Loretta’s hero) was a year younger and got off with twenty-two years. Her second murder was tragic in tone and consequently inspired more respect, though not among the critics, unfortunately. Possibly because her heroine, also a Pauline (Pauline Wichura), though more interesting and complicated had also been more famous in her own day and ever since. Which made the competition, one best-selling novel and a serious film biography, considerably stiffen Miss Wichura had been a welfare worker in Atlanta, Georgia, very much into environment and the population problem, this being the immediate pre-Regents period when anyone and everyone was legitimately starting to fret. Pauline decided to do something, viz., reduce the population herself and in the fairest way possible. So whenever any of the families she visited produced one child above the three she’d fixed, rather generously, as the upward limit, she found some unobtrusive way of thinning that family back to the preferred maximal size. Between 1989 and 1993 Pauline’s journals (Random House, 1994) record twenty-six murders, plus an additional fourteen failed attempts. In addition she had the highest welfare department record in the U.S. for abortions and sterilizations among the families whom she advised. “Which proves, I think,” Little Mister Kissy Lips had explained one day after school to his friend Jack, “that a murder doesn’t have to be of someone famous to be a form of idealism.” But of course idealism was only half the story: the other half was curiosity. And beyond idealism and curiosity there was probably even another half, the basic childhood need to grow up and kill someone.

Because that I familiarly sometimes / Do use you for my fool and chat with you, / Your sauciness will jest upon my love / And make a common of my serious hours.

However, sometimes I feel that those who fight to protect it do so less like warriors and more like helicopter parents so worried about comedy getting hurt and comedy moving beyond them that they stunt its development. To openly allow for critique is to take comedy seriously, and taking it seriously will allow it to evolve and mature.

A few moments ago, he'd had her up against a wall, skirt shoved up to her belly button, hands in her panties, his fingers driving her straight to oblivion, and now... now he was this intense, cool, calm, and collected man. With a gun. "Breanne. Are you ok?" She stared at him. He had his shirt loose and draped over the bulge of his gun. He looked rough-and-tumble. Baddass. Damn it, she had a serious weakness for badass.

No one is interested with your past, non-professional relationship with Agent Harris, Detective Garner.” I cut them off. Seriously, nobody wants to hear it (I know I do not), since it is probably a perfect fairy tale of a prodigy guy and prodigy girl, and together they catch bad guys while looking excessively beautiful at doing it. They look so majestic side by side, like prom king and queen from some cheesy coming-of-age movie where they dance flawlessly and sing like pro despite that it’s their first gig. Also, their eyes sparkle. It takes a long, sort-of out-of-sense explanation why eyes can figuratively sparkle, but it just does. You know in romantic comedy movie where the guy stares far away and then he is smiling when he finally makes a decision involving the only girl he wants to spend eternity with? And girl when she meets a boy band member? Yeah, that’s how they look at each other. Jemma looks at this guy like how girl looks at boy (ah, it even sounds sexist in my head), but not at me. She looks like me like I am a special case that she wants to solve. She looks at me like she's trying to find my eyes (which is, always there, I don't know why it is so hard for her to see a pair of black dots above my nose), and maybe I am a little bit irritated because this Harris guy breathes and just like that, you can see the grace in Garner--how big, mushy twinkie, of a person she really is. Also, I am definitely irritated because Jemma's ex is terrifyingly perfect, it's alarming, but then there's me. She's settling down with me. I feel insecure and I do not like that feeling. So, like a literal five years old child, I stroll between them, ruining their unexpected reunion (hey, doesn't anyone want to talk about how Harris tracked down all cases at JCPD so he can jump into whatever his ex is currently working on? This is not reunion, it's stalking) and offer him a handshake. At the time like this, I wish I had electricity running through my palm. I probably couldn’t end this Harris guy’s life, but at least I could give his perfect blond hair a ‘struck by lightning’ makeover. “Hi, Detective Irving. Homicide Unit. Strategic Expert. By the way, I’m good at combining them, you know.” I introduce myself. Which is true, I can be writing a mental note on how to eliminate this threat in my head for all he knows. “Strategy, and murder. I can mix them up.

Although NBC took a one-year option on the show, and Danny Thomas’s production company agreed to finance the pilot, the network decided not to air what appeared to be a poor prospect. When ABC finally broadcast the show, it seemed doomed from the start, since it was in the same time slot as two popular dramatic programs, Climax! and Dragnet. The first review, in Variety (October 7, 1957), seemed to confirm Brennan’s original misgivings: “‘The Real McCoys’ is a cornball, folksy-wolksy situation comedy series destined to find the going tough.” The Variety critic called the humor “forced,” the pacing “sluggish,” and the characters’ adventures “only lightly amusing.” And too many lovable characters! Brennan received due praise as a “fine actor,” but the rest of the cast was just “okay.” And yet, by the third week the show was number one in its time slot, compelling the Variety skeptic to allow, “It’s all so hokey that it can’t be taken seriously, and for that reason this quarter can’t see any really strong reason why cityfolk shouldn’t appreciate and enjoy it for what it is. The show is already big in the hinterlands.” By December 2, 1957, the critic was obliged to report that the “laughs come freely.” And then, for season after season, the praise escalated. The show began with an audience of ten million, but within a year the

John Cleese once said that when they started Monty Python, they thought that comedy was the silly bits: “We used to think that comedy was watching someone do something silly . . . we came to realize that comedy was watching somebody watch somebody do something silly.” That’s the basis of the tool of Straight Line/Wavy Line.

comedy has to tell the truth.

While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously.

What mental hospital have you escaped from?” She wanted to laugh, but he looked so serious. “Prove you’re an alien. Rip off your disguise. Show me your antennae. Where’s your union card?

Well, I’m heading home,” Ibaraki announced as they were leaving the restaurant. “Oh, yeah? About time,” Yuichi commented. Ibaraki: “Man, you’re so cold. Aren’t you picking up my love beams?” “Sorry, Yu, but I’m not into BL! I hope you’ll consider a pure and true hetero relationship!” Mutsuko said cheerfully. Yuichi took a conspicuous step back. Ibaraki: "Huh? Hey, don’t take that seriously!

It is for this reason that the anxiety about the boundaries between people and machines has taken on new urgency today, when we constantly rely on and interact with machines—indeed, interact with each other by means of machines and their programs: computers, smartphones, social media platforms, social and dating apps. This urgency has been reflected in a number of recent films about troubled relationships between people and their human-seeming devices. The most provocative of these is Her , Spike Jonze’s gentle 2013 comedy about a man who falls in love with the seductive voice of an operating system, and, more recently, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina , about a young man who is seduced by a devious, soft-spoken female robot called Ava whom he has been invited to interview as part of the “Turing Test”: a protocol designed to determine the extent to which a robot is capable of simulating a human. Although the robot in Garland’s sleek and subtle film is a direct descendant of Hesiod’s Pandora—beautiful, intelligent, wily, ultimately dangerous—the movie, as the Eve-like name Ava suggests, shares with its distinguished literary predecessors some serious biblical concerns.

But it isn’t the fun of DIY invention, urban exploration, physical danger, and civil disorder that the Z-Boys enjoyed in 1976. It is fun within serious limits, and for all of its thrills it is (by contrast) scripted. And rather obedient. The fact that there are public skateparks and high-performance skateboards signals progress: America has embraced this sport, as it did bicycles in the nineteenth century. Towns want to make skating safe and acceptable. The economy has more opportunity to grow. America is better off for all of this. Yet such government and commercial intervention in a sport that was born of radical liberty means that the fun itself has changed; it has become mediated. For the skaters who take pride in their flashy store-bought equipment have already missed the Z-Boys’ joke: Skating is a guerrilla activity. It’s the fun of beating, not supporting, the system. P. T. Barnum said it himself: all of business is humbug. How else could business turn a profit, if it didn’t trick you with advertising? If it didn’t hook you with its product? This particular brand of humbug was perfected in the late 1960s, when merchandise was developed and marketed and sold to make Americans feel like rebels. Now, as then, customers always pay for this privilege, and purveyors keep it safe (and generally clean) to curb their liability. They can’t afford customers taking real risks. Plus it’s bad for business to encourage real rebellion. And yet, marketers know Americans love fun—they have known this for centuries. And they know that Americans, especially kids, crave autonomy and participation, so they simulate the DIY experience at franchises like the Build-A-Bear “workshops,” where kids construct teddy bears from limited options, or “DIY” restaurants, where customers pay to grill their own steaks, fry their own pancakes, make their own Bloody Marys. These pay-to-play stores and restaurants are, in a sense, more active, more “fun,” than their traditional competition: that’s their big selling point. But in both cases (as Barnum knew) the joke is still on you: the personalized bear is a standardized mishmash, the personalized food is often inedible. As Las Vegas knows, the house always wins. In the history of radical American fun, pleasure comes from resistance, risk, and participation—the same virtues celebrated in the “Port Huron Statement” and the Digger Papers, in the flapper’s slang and the Pinkster Ode. In the history of commercial amusement, most pleasures for sale are by necessity passive. They curtail creativity and they limit participation (as they do, say, in a laser-tag arena) to a narrow range of calculated surprises, often amplified by dazzling technology. To this extent, TV and computer screens, from the tiny to the colossal, have become the scourge of American fun. The ubiquity of TV screens in public spaces (even in taxicabs and elevators) shows that such viewing isn’t amusement at all but rather an aggressive, ubiquitous distraction. Although a punky insurgency of heedless satire has stung the airwaves in recent decades—from equal-opportunity offenders like The Simpsons and South Park to Comedy Central’s rabble-rousing pundits, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—the prevailing “fun” of commercial amusement puts minimal demands on citizens, besides their time and money. TV’s inherent ease seems to be its appeal, but it also sends a sobering, Jumbotron-sized message about the health of the public sphere.