In trying to get more organized here (and as I’ve started to get enough material up), the time has come to start creating sub-categories! There are now six sub-categories of Humor Theory:
- Theories About Audiences: These theories try to understand the audience’s role in humor.
- Theories About Comics: These are theories about the person telling the jokes.
- Theories About Funny: These theories try to tell us why something is funny.
- Theories About Jokes: These are theories that discuss the structure and other qualities of jokes.
- Theories About Laughter: These are theories about how and what happens when we laugh.
- Theories About Spaces: These are theories about where and when the humor takes place.
There are also two new sub-categories of Cases:
- Comics in the News: These are analyses of news reports on comics’ and the “controversies” that made them newsworthy. People are making statements about comedy by criticizing a comic’s act.
- Comics Talking Shop: These are my analyses of when comics talk about the craft: joke work. how to write and perform comedy, what is humorous, etc. Comics are explicitly saying something about comedy.
Of course, there’s quite a bit of overlap: spatial theories often include a concept of comic, jokes and audience, audience theories are really about the relationship between comic and audience, theories about laughter are really about audiences, etc. However, I try to avoid cross categorization if I can help it.
Hopefully, this will help and not confuse. Of course, the main page is still just a solid scroll anyway…
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