
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


In one form or another, comedy often proceeds from a certain exaggeration of life — exaggerated bodily movements, or facial expressions, or scenarios, or reactions. These exaggerations have an unreality to them, but still maintain an uncanny relationship to more “normal” life. Put another way: sometimes comedy is just plain silly, the art of relishing the fun of suspending our expectations and upending our social conventions.
What is happening when performers give free reign to the silly? Does it cut the cords of empathy and invite the audience to become mere spectators — whose enjoyment is vicarious, but not really participatory? Or does silliness bind performer and spectator together, inviting them to see reality in a different light?
By ABC4.6
3434 ratings
In one form or another, comedy often proceeds from a certain exaggeration of life — exaggerated bodily movements, or facial expressions, or scenarios, or reactions. These exaggerations have an unreality to them, but still maintain an uncanny relationship to more “normal” life. Put another way: sometimes comedy is just plain silly, the art of relishing the fun of suspending our expectations and upending our social conventions.
What is happening when performers give free reign to the silly? Does it cut the cords of empathy and invite the audience to become mere spectators — whose enjoyment is vicarious, but not really participatory? Or does silliness bind performer and spectator together, inviting them to see reality in a different light?

206 Listeners

101 Listeners

72 Listeners

63 Listeners

86 Listeners

13 Listeners

45 Listeners

1,743 Listeners

815 Listeners

771 Listeners

126 Listeners

26 Listeners

88 Listeners

65 Listeners

459 Listeners

159 Listeners

312 Listeners

954 Listeners

12 Listeners

192 Listeners

119 Listeners

241 Listeners

1,004 Listeners

45 Listeners