Personally, I believe comedy is excellent medicine. No! Stop laughing! I’m serious, and I’ll explain.

A few days ago, when our ancestors had to make a mad dash to safety from the Saber Tooth Tiger, it was the hormone Cortisol, that immediately prepared the human body for a “fight or flight” response.” And, as soon as my ancestors, and yours, reached the safety of a cave with a burning fire, we knew we were safe, and our Cortisol levels dropped, dropped, dramatically.

Fast forward a couple of days, and we can be found sitting in the corporate offices, with Big Wigs glaring at us at the fact we can’t do 127 things at once. Our Cortisol levels soar sky high…and, they stay there.

My cardiologist is concerned about my stress levels. I had open heart surgery less than a year and a half ago, so I think Id better pay attention.

Medical science already knows for a fact that stress kills.

When our Cortisol levels remain high, for lengthy periods of time, as happens when we are under stress, we sustain damage to our hearts, and our circulatory system. Well, guess what?

Medical science has also learned that laughter reduces stress. Laughter has been clinically proven to lower our Cortisol levels.

Well, how about that? A guy asks a question about comedy, and he gets a lecture in medicine. Still, not too many folks realize the importance of laughter as a means of stress reduction.

Besides. laughter is cheaper than blood pressure medication.

Comedy depends on us getting the joke and not missing the joke in the way presented to us. So if we memorise the telling of a joke that is told by an expert in such techniques, then we’ll be able to imitate the style, but sometimes it’s the person telling the joke that portrays it better than we ever could. So if we met a stranger and told a joke perfectly as intended, it doesn’t mean that everybody gets it.

We know that comedians have different styles, some are dead pan and others are larger than life. So what are we? Are we able to become someone else in that portrayal, or dress up in a clown’s costume, or wear silly glasses, or use some extra body language to convey what we mean? Some comedians have a fake laugh at the end of telling a joke, as if that creates a cue for the audience to laugh as well. The TA-DA on the drums was another cue for the audience. When writing comedy, the one-liner style is so precise that you couldn’t make things better. It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it…

The 5,000 one-liners I studied in a book helped me to see the way that phrasing was everything. It helped me to write in a similar way for a 30-day motto-writing project I began. I liked writing words on a page with a new calligraphy pen. I felt the words were so beautiful that I wanted to write in a profound way, so that’s how the motto idea began and led to about 3,000 quotations…

In Radio sketches, here in the UK, everything depended on the characters and the way each reacted. So we’d be able to understand as regular listeners to such shows and catchphrases were repeated because of this familiarity.

The early silent movies were slapstick adventures and tried to use any resource available at that time. So budgets were the prime force in creating drama as well as comedy. We also know of acrobatics being used in comedy scenes as well as dancing and stunt work. So these will be especially created for maximum use for short sequences. We also see songs being used to charm the audiences so they will warm to a character, even when he’s being really silly, or as thick as a brick.

As for writing, it isn’t just one guy every single time. There are TV shows like the Simpsons that rely on a team of writers that bombard us with one idea after another. So there must be a cohesive element at work between the writers themselves. It was the same way for the Comedy Store ad-libs and the improv-writing. Just let anything happen, write it down… Repeat the sequence, get more ideas and create a sequence that will work for whatever time length is required. Sketches may last 10 minutes, yet be crippled with severe editing, only to be replaced by other writers and their sketches, yet not at the same quality. So it’s not always what we get to see and hear that’s the best available.

The writing for the most amazing TV comedy series is transferred to typed-out TV episode scripts. So if we ever get access to these we will get some idea of any extra editing ideas that way. Another example, explained in a Benny Hill biography, was that Benny sent some sketch details and the person receiving these squiggles on scraps of paper finally figured out their true meanings. So writing isn’t always text, sometimes it’s squiggles and text.

For the Two Ronnies, Ronnie Barker contributed convoluted word play for the intended sketches and then performed these with Ronnie Corbett. So they got used to these dialogues and monologues and had to be on their toes at all times… especially Ronnie Corbett.

The TV characters in the US are decidedly different because insults are thrown about like confetti at a wedding. Characters go back and forth with these insults and create a tension in the audience, will this escalate and go too far? Such involvement leads to truces when characters say sorry to each other, but next week they’re back just like before.

The underdog character of Norman Wisdom and Frank Spenser fame is common and so is the class system or the better-off toffs. So there will be a time for characterisation to lay the ground for us to assess that person and that person’s preferences, only to shatter their hopes and dreams like Inspector Clouseau, as soon as he enters their house and breaks up the furniture and prize possessions.

The expert who appears to be a know-it-all is humbled by the guest star in the film or the TV show, the put-downs say everything and then the audience wants to see if the next step is a revenge prank or not… So it’s the setting up of a motive that leads to an action, perhaps a surprise ending…

Authority figures are challenged at every turn, but the characters still need something good about them in order to prolong the TV series. The opposite of this is the eternal rotter or rogue like the evil Alan Bstard who would cheat anybody he could… It’s the TV show that creates the best comedy because we revisit the character and know he can’t be trusted. The variation of this was seen in the film with Peter Cook as the Devil. In the film Bedazzled, Peter plays this so well. At times, the character seems petty and at other times aloof and at other times using meticulous planning. It’s the variety that changes the audience’s perception. It reminds me of Columbo, the TV detective with every trick in the book to catch the criminal. The bumbling buffoon, the celebrity fan, the calling back at their houses or places of work, or stopping and saying, Just one more question…

So while we see a character catch us out the first time, we can’t see the character again and still feel the same way. It was the same for me, as a TV wrestling fan, seeing comedy wrestlers like Les Kellett and Catweazle. At first, they come across as polite and willing to shake hands with everybody, later on, not so much… The comedy was in the put-downs of their opponents and even the referees didn’t escape their jokes.

So while writing is typing text on paper, the human mind visualises ideas and plays these out and embellishes them with wit and wiles, just to make us laugh. It’s a business for some and a pastime for others. Sometimes the comedians go home and can’t switch off being funny even there. They wisecrack all the time. It’s like they know the gift or talent is so strong that they must always be open to it. Pretty soon, another idea is developed and becomes a masterpiece shared with millions.

It’s the editing stage that is paramount. That’s where the real magic is going on!

Why do most people like comedy?Answer7FollowRequestMoreAd by SamsungGalaxy S21+ 5G.Made for the epic in everyday with 8K video snap. Upgrade now at ₹60999 & get Galaxy Buds Pro at ₹990.Shop Now8 AnswersAsked in 1 SpaceAsif Haque, Engineering, Technology, Computer and Video Game EnthusiastUpdated February 14, 2020Originally Answered: Why do people enjoy comedies?

For two reasons people enjoys comedies.

Reason 1: Human brains are chemically wired (as it is bound to the human DNA) to feel good or relaxed (thus enjoying) when they laugh and comedies or any humorous contents are thoughtfully made for causing the audience laugh.

Now, there might be questions, “How laughter causes the feeling of relaxation?” and “How humorous contents work to make people laugh?”.

Answer to the first question is, when a human brain laughs (brain! yes, actually the laughter happens in the brain, then we express that with our face and sounds), it releases Endorphins and Dopamine, two organic chemicals, which are neurohormones for Happiness and Pleasure respectively.

Answer to the second question is, you have to know how Humour works, humour is like a three-phase movie, where the first phase has to have a certain situation set-up, the second phase has to have an action or expectation set-up and the third phase has to have an Unexpected result or Opposite ending to the ending the audience would naturally expect.

So the comedy writer or material creator would plan the acts or the jokes as if the ending will not be commonly or scientifically obvious. Also, the comedy act or joke must be Sense-making at the end, not like an unrelated or non-understandable movie. The Relief Theory of Humor supports this concept.

When the brain tries to understand the total scenario, it suddenly realizes the ending was twisted and all of the psychological tension that it has accumulated for the expectation becomes useless, in other words, the spare mental energy is still available to use, it relieves its nervousness as a form of laughter. The Relief Theory of Laughter and Homeostatic mechanisms in humans support this idea.

Reason 2: Humans are born curious, in other words our brains are chemically wired to feel the urge to know about something they still don’t know. Which means, whenever a human finds a topic or information is not known to him/her, he/she tries to explore or investigate on that topic.

Curiosity is a function and emotion of brain to develop itself and as the Dopamine releases (again! yes curiosity initiates pleasure hormone to make you feel comfortable to know more), the brain tries more to know about the unknown. It becomes a habit of the brain and whenever we find another probably unknown topic, our brain releases dopamine and jumps into exploration.

Thus, curiosity requires homeostatic regulation, which means we can’t be mentally stable without knowing about the topic.

So, whenever we find a piece of comedy or humorous content, as we know it will make us laughing and bring pleasure, we watch it or hear it to find if it has anything to know that we didn’t know. Also, whenever we find a new piece of comedy, we want to know about the context and ending of that new movie(!), that we don’t (or may not) know. For the same reason, we watch or hear another piece of comedy soon after the first one and another one, until we become tired or thoughtful about any other subject of our daily lives.

The sense of humor can be different from human to human and the comedy structure or result can be different (may fail to make people laugh) but the common human behaviors (to laugh at a humorous content and to explore the unknown) will be always existing.

Aishwarya Says:

I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.

If you are interested in participating in the same, do let me know.

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