In times of confusion and danger, exclude when describing comedy by discussing it. Still, it’s rarely interesting. The laughter at such moments looks like ock laughter or denial. It may sound absurd to suggest that the truth itself is a form of comedy. But truth and comedy belong together in one or more ways.
Aristo fans are often called Comedy’s fatherwrote plays in ancient Athens, which satirized real people and events. His Old comedy The style mixes fantasy mixed with dull criticism. The setting has been made into a public forum. The chorus spoke directly to the crowd, and the ridiculous costumes and witty songs made the leaders and God laugh.
Aristo fans were often misunderstood. His outrageous scenes and crude jokes dismiss his play as a clown. However, critics of his time felt a deeper influence on them. Plato was later chosen cloud As a slanderous caricature that will help change public opinion against Socrates. In that play, Socrates was criticized as the “thinker” Charlatan. Plato believed that he poisoned the views of the real philosophers of Athens.
Comedy’s father They lifted the mirror so sharply that some people believed it was of blood. A joke can undermine a lie by showing how ridiculous it is, without conflict. Satire has long exposed hypocrisy and challenged falsehood. The court clowns were able to tell dangerous truths that others could not. I was caught up in laughter.
Today, the clown-turned-president uses humor as a weapon of war. Ukrainian leader Voldymi Zelensky rose from the comedy and gathered his people under fire. His deadpan’s wit and irony reconstructed the conflict. The Ukraine crisis was fatal and serious, but its spirit remained intact.
Satire news and comedy show the leader in comic contradictions. What is dismissed as a joke often reveals more than permits for official languages. Stephen Colbert once laughed and praised the president, who sat with the same breath, exposed his media political comfort. John Stewart and others have turned parody into public insights, saying things that simple speeches avoid.
Comedy is more than just laughing. The comedy father knew that. I knew that the same was true of the Father of Western Philosophy. Aristophanes once wrote that “comedy sometimes identifies the right thing.” Plato’s Socrates asked him the question of having tied the experts to the knot, claiming that he knew nothing of himself. “I don’t think I know anything I don’t know.”
Dante God’s Comedy Starting in hell, climbing through suffering, climbing into the final vision of solemn joy, not laughing. The comedy is not the denial of the tragedy that continues as Easter is a denial of Good Friday.
Comedy, in its truest sense, has the weight of what it survives. Shakespeare knew this. in King Learfools say things no one else dares to do. He disappears before the worst, but his absence deepens silence. Fools do not undo the tragedy. He prepares us for it.
In our time, The Simpsons– At first glance – Long exposed American contradictions: family values ​​and dysfunction, political slogans and civic indifference, religion and commercial transactions, often in the same frame. When Homer kneels to pray and buys beer for tithes, it is not a parody. It is a mirror, stable by comedy, reflecting the strange consistency of everyday life.
At the end of his life, after the world does the worst, Leah turns to his daughter:
“…come and leave prison.
We are two… so we live,
And pray, sing, tell old stories, laugh…” (5.3.8–12)
At that moment, laughter never cancels the tragedy and arrives anyway. Something that has never been promised will survive. The play is not over. The comedy is applauding.
Notes and reading
“Comedies can also identify correctness.”
-Aristophane’s gloss towards the moral and political power of comedy, expressed in his two plays; Acharnian and Knight.
Aristo Fan: Complete Theatre – New translation Paul Roche (2005).
Comedy and Aristofan Platon: Symposium, apologies.
“Plato treats Aristo fans both as foresight and cultural dangers in the comics. His laughter not only reveals hidden truths, but also misunderstands the soul from philosophy.”
– Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early ChristianityCambridge University Press, 2008, p. 278.-Harriwell is an English classicist and professor emeritus at St Andrews University in Scotland.
Aristofantic humor: theory and practice – Edited by Edith Hall and Peter Swallow (2021). Hall is a fellow at the British Academy and previously served as consultant director for archives of Greek and Roman drama performances at Oxford University. Swallow is a British classicist, academic and politician who has served as a member of Parliament since 2024.
Tip #200 – Drift towards Iliberalism
Tip #199 – Amazing
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
