Talk:Comedy

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Contents 1 Suggestion 2 Funny characters 3 Etymology of "Comedy" 4 Forms or Styles of Delivery 5 Vandalism 6 American Humor 7 External links 8 Suggested Merge with Humour 9 Suggestion not to merge with humor 10 Split proposal 11 Comedy in Literature 12 Wikipedia:Notability (comedy)

[edit] Suggestion

The comedy articles - ALL OF THEM - could do with input from:

france, germany, spain, italy, pakistan, africa, south africa (sorry for not naming individual African states), south america, brazil, peru, russia, china, afghanistan the middle east, japan, australia, india and anywhere that isn't the UK or the US.

I typed those countries off the top of my head, hoping that using links would help gravitate people to this page, don't be offended if you are left off!

--bodnotbod 16:05, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Funny characters

The funny characters in this comedy are those which I suppose are meant to be displayed in Greek. However, they're not displayed in Greek on my (FireFox) Browser. What has been done wrong?

 The word "comedy" is derived from the Greek */cw/iCjiSia, which is a compound either of *kùi/jos
 (revel) and *ôoiôós (singer; *àüôeiv, áôav, to sing), or of */oójurç (village) and *óoiáós: it
 is possible that *kû.uos itself is derived from *kóijutj, a"

Can someone technical explain what is wrong with the page and/or fix it? Brequinda 14:16, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm seeing the Greek characters as question marks in IE and Firefox. For example, I see:

"The word 'comedy' is derived from the Greek ????????, which is a compound either of ????? (revel) and ????? (singer), or of ???? (village) and ?????: it is possible that ????? itself is derived from ????, and originally meant a village revel"

tyrone-wright-]] 05:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

one 'u' removed from spanish to correct it at 14:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology of "Comedy"

I haven't the time or inclination to post a scholarly suggestion/edit, but some attention needs to be paid to the classical (Greek) definition of comedy. I may be slightly off the mark, but I have been schooled in this parcel of discourse, and I think I have it close to the prevailing outlook of contemporary American academia. For ancient Greece, the term "comedy" did not simply refer to a "play with a happy ending," but rather subject matter that dealt with the urbane, or ordinary versus the lofty, or heroic. The basic idea here is that while tragedy elevates heroic values through the audience's identification with the hero (despite the "fatal flaw"), comedy rather deflates by focusing on that flaw, which we assume to be just the tip of a flaw-ridden iceberg. The fact that comedies traditionally had happy endings or derived humorous reactions were incidental to the essence of the form (athough those factors likely contributed to its popularity). Plato wrote extensively (and eloquently) about this, and perhaps should be consulted in forming a proper presentation of this subject. After all, his writings about these distinctions (though mainly consisting of arguments lauding the social benefits of tragedy versus the ills of comedy) form the foundation of our canon of literary criticism.

[edit] Forms or Styles of Delivery

The article should not also list the styles of the comtemporary delivery; such as, the "deadpan duck" approach, which Steven Locky is known for. There QUACKLY!!!!!!! are many different styles, maybe even just MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sarcasm, which could also be away from this list.

[edit] Vandalism

Some weird person wrote "I WORSHIP PETER T HIS THE DEVIL" (sic) on the page; I deleted it.

Removed adolescent b*llsh*t from my original entry, which, in honesty, was silly, at any rate. Drogue 11:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American Humor

American humor redirects here. I just don't know what to say about that. I'm starting to get fed up with how everything American is trivialized on Wikipedia. American people redirects to Demographics of the United States (which isn't even our country's name). Someone should start an American Humor article. R'son-W 19:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

That's interesting: some also say that the opposite is true, and that many Wikipedia articles have a bias towards the United States. Or is that the wrong name for the country? Enlighten us.

[edit] External links

Does anybody else have a problem with the external links for this article? The comedy archive is okay, but the wikicomedy page has almost no content, the British Theatrical Schlockomedy seems to be just some theater company (I am unaware if this company has any particular importance), wikihumor is just a list of about 200 random jokes, and the origin of comedy article is four paragraphs long. I am going to see if I can come up with some better pages to link to and I might delete the others unless someone else has a reason to keep them.

[edit] Suggested Merge with Humour

I have proposed this article be merged with Humour since they overlap extensively. In my vision, Humour would be merged into this article as Comedy is the older of the two pages. 203.199.50.16 10:03, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Humor and Comedy are two distinct things. The important distinction I think is that Humorism regards the tecniques that provoke a laugh; comedy is insted one of the possible uses of humor (to just have fun); another use being satire (to have fun to make people think and provoke social change).--BMF81 10:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Entirely against. The originaly form of Comedy was not at all to make people laugh; it was a certain type of story with a predictable plotline. Actually, this article should talk about humor less than it does. --Masamage 06:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion not to merge with humor

As contrast to what he said, not all comedies can provoke laughter.

MW dictionary Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin comoedia, from Latin, drama with a happy ending, from Greek kOmOidia, from kOmos revel + aeidein to sing

Comedy is a word that has been disputed from it's original meaning. Comedy isn't a laugh trip only. If you merge Comedy and Humor then you would make it look like the story of Jesus Christ's resurrection something to laugh about (If you were a devoted christian, you would be offended).

Since humor and comedy are not the same thing, I am removing the merge tags. This article does need a lot more information about the classical usage of the term, however, as exemplified by the Greeks and by Shakespeare. --Masamage 17:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

There's that idea that: "comedy is when someone falls down an open manhole - tragedy is when it happens to me", that I feel is somehow relevant here somewhere.

[edit] Split proposal

I think is preferable to split this article in its two diverse meanings: comedy (theatre) and comedy (laughter). --BMF81 18:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

That's a great idea. I would actuall suggest leaving Comedy as the article about the theatre type, and create a new article called Comedy (humour). --Masamage 20:06, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comedy in Literature

Although one can argue that "comedy" almost always connotes something humorous, in literature "comedy" does not mean that at all.

Note that the word “comedy,” in Dante's Divine Comedy, does not mean that it is funny. In literature, the word “comedy” applies to a work with a happy ending (and to a work which, at least usually, has a less exalted style). In this example, the Divine Comedy ends happily (in heaven), and was written in Italian (Dante’s native language) rather than Latin (see “Comedy” in A Handbook to Literature, ed. William Harmon).

Dr. Davidson

[edit] Wikipedia:Notability (comedy)

I've created Wikipedia:Notability (comedy) to help editors in deciding the notability of comedy- and humor-related articles. Please help hammer it into shape. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 09:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)