The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781501354885)

The Comic Event approaches comedy as dynamic phenomenon that involves the gathering of elements of performance, signifiers, timings, tones, gestures, previous comic bits, and other self-conscious structures into an "event? that triggers, by virtue of a "cut, ? an expected/unexpected resolution.

Using examples from mainstream comedy, The Comic Event progresses from the smallest comic moment-jokes, bits-to the more complex-caricatures, sketches, sit-coms, parody films, and stand-up routines. Judith Roof builds on side comments from Henri Bergson's short treatise "Laughter, ? Sigmund Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, and various observations from Aristotle to establish comedy as a complex, multifaceted practice. In seeing comedy as a gathering event that resolves with a "cut, ? Roof characterizes comedy not only by a predictable unpredictability occasioned by a sudden expected/unexpected insight, but also by repetition, seriality, self-consciousness, self-referentiality, and an ourobouric return to a previous cut. This theory of comedy offers a way to understand the operation of a broad array of distinct comic occasions and aspects of performance in multiple contexts.

Author: Judith Roof
ISBN-10: 1501354884
ISBN-13: 9781501354885
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 07/25/2019
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.51d