6 sessions, 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
September 28 through November 2, 2017
Hanover Senior Center - Hanover, NH
Course Fee: $60

Comedy or humor is thought of as catharsis and relief; laughing makes us feel better, right? But one of the most insightful analysts of jokes, Sigmund Freud, stated that we do not know why we laugh. Jokes work with serious psycho-social material, yet we can’t pinpoint exactly why they make us laugh. Comedy has ALWAYS had a serious purpose. Plato knew how serious it could be when he banned comedians and all other artists from his Republic. We may think of comedy as disrupting the status quo, but if it has serious work to do, there must be more than just disruption. Freud certainly thought so, as he considered joking the social form of dreaming. French Philosopher Henry Bergson saw comedy as social correction, steering us through our cultural and social conflict towards enlightenment or élan.

This course is about how comedy works on social and cultural conflict to effect change. We’ll look at a few theoretical tools for understanding comedy, read some recent articles from journals, view clips of comic performance (from “Bugs Bunny” to Stephen Colbert), and analyze jokes to see how they work. We’ll read literary comedy by Woody Allen, and then consider the film Tickling Giants about the Arab Spring, showing how vital comedy is to a free society.

A recent edition of The Atlantic asks: “Can satire save the republic?” It’s time to talk about how to answer that question.