Charlie Chaplin changed the worlds of film and comedy forever. He deserves a lasting tribute and London’s Cinema Museum – the UK’s only Chaplin museum – must be rescued.
In our pursuit of a world that is safely and entirely OK, must humour be cleansed of its original sin of cultural appropriation and insensitivity? It depends whether we are ‘laughing up’ or ‘laughing down’.
Rape jokes are among the most controversial that comedians can tell, but a Concordia professor says laughing at the absurdity of a world that silences survivors is also an act of support and solidarity.
Aboriginal stand-up comedy is thriving and no topic, it seems, is off limits. As the Melbourne International Comedy Festival opens, here’s the lowdown on Indigenous humour.
Enough with the charming, naughty funny-guy rants. There are too many in a new anthology of Australian comedy writing – and women display a superior comic imagination.
From Alfonso the Wise’s bawdy songs of slander to Ronald Reagan’s sunny smile, politics and humor have gone hand-in-hand for centuries. But no one seems to be laughing anymore.
Stand-up comedians die two to three years younger than comedic and dramatic actors. And the funnier they are judged to be, the greater their risk of dying.
For the comic protagonist, the literary critic Northrop Frye once observed, life is something you get through. While tragic characters die in plangent splendour, and Marvel superheroes vanquish tech-spangled…