Introduction

What is Comedy? Comedy is one of two basic literary modes, tragedy being the other, that have come down to us from Ancient Greek culture. The Greeks understood that life events and even life itself could be such as to make us either laugh or weep. These two ways of viewing life—as either comical or tragic—have informed ways of thinking and writing ever since. One has only to think of Shakespeare, for instance, who wrote both comedic and tragic plays. Comedy in the modern sense is a way of humorously interacting with an audience. Stand up comedy is a recent development in the history of entertainment that traces its own roots back to vaudeville in early 20th century America.

Vaudeville

The roots of standup comedy are in vaudeville. Vaudeville is a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance. In the early 1900s, a network of vaudeville theatres emerged across the United States. The vaudeville industry was owned almost entirely by two people: Benjamin Keith and Edward Albee. Numbering perhaps 5000 clubs across the …show more content…
The stand up industry has grown so big that it now has its own dedicated television and radio channels. Stand up comedy has become nearly impossible to censor because of the amount of comedy that is being uploaded to the internet. In a world with many different religions and ethnicities, stand up comedy will often take advantage of the opportunity to target a specific group. The likelihood of creating offence is high. At the same time, the influence of modern politics and commerce through mass media make stand up comedy all the more important. Currently comedians seem to be the best source of resistance to the policies of president Trump. Mellisa Mcarthy's appearances on Saturday Night Live are another example of this. Comedians make politicians look not only wrong, but stupid as well. This is what makes comedy so