A Start to Comic Relief?

Today in class my group of 4 looked into Sir Philip Sidney's idea on comedy. I have to say we were  lucky to have gotten a pro-comedy man than one of the bible. I find the idea that laughter caused death in the biblical times very disturbing. Maybe this is where the phrase "I almost died laughing" or "I died from laughter" comes from? Personally I enjoy laughter like many others and would not want to see death be the result from it.

 

Anyways to the point, I like a part of Sir Philip Sidney's idea. He says that comedy is a social corrective or a imitation of common errors in life so that normal people will not want to make the error again. I agree that some of humor is to point out common errors and to make people correct them. For example, today in my education class my professor did just that. I started answering a question with, "this is stupid but".. not a good way to start a sentence. He immediately stopped me, took my words and threw them back at me. Of course he did this to make an example use of words to the class. He was showing the error of southern girls putting themselves down for something they have said. My professor was trying to get us stop this. He was using this idea of Sir Philip Sidney to show the class the error of my sentence and error of this southern "tradition".

 

I don't agree with Sir Philip Sidney in part because I know that comedy is not just a social corrective. From the other theories we will study and have started to talk about I have gathered he doesn't quite understand the depth of comedy.

 

Making that connection to our book Comic Relief brings the book alive a little bit more. I heard in class and read a few blogs making points about the books slow pace. I have to agree with them about the pace but also with you about the important information. I can see with these small connections the book has to my life that already, well, as hard as it is to admit about a assigned reading book, this book will come in handy outside of class too. I am sure if you asked former students if they look at comedy a little different now they would say yes. I see how they would be able to say that.