Humour doesn’t often age well. But some comedy can adapt to changing social mores.
While improv comedy in the classroom might nurture your child’s stage talent, it’s also a highly effective way of teaching literacy. Pictured here, La Ligue d'Improvisation Montréalaise.
(Wikipedia Commons)
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.
Rachel Brosnahan in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.
Amazon
When does parody spill into insensitive cultural appropriation? While Chris LIlley is probably OK to appropriate the upper North Shore culture of Ja’mie (pictured), he’s on dodgier ground with Jonah from Tonga.
Princess Pictures, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Home Box Office (HBO)
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.
Laurel and Hardy.
Publicity photo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy from the 1930s
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.
Why does that one video crack you up?
Laughing image via www.shutterstock.com.