Naughty Humans: Comedy and Satire in Film and Literature
Comedy and Satire Course Description
“One of the best ways to understand a people,” says Vine Deloria, “is to know what makes them laugh.” Yet what humans laugh at and why has for centuries evaded serious academic investigation partly because comedy, as a mode of creation and action, (pre)tends to appear unserious. But its form and function hide behind naughtiness or “just joking around” to make serious comments about human relationships. Indeed, human naughtiness reminds us of the social norms and customs with which comedians and satirists often break.
If X = LOL, then in this course we will be solving for X. We will consider a range of scholarly and creative texts to track a historical development of Comedy and Satire from its origins from orature to theatrical performance to literature to contemporary iterations. We will also track their thematic histories as comedians and satirists use jokes, ridicule, and wit to comment on human activities, relationships, bodies, and worldviews.
Assignments and Participation
As this is a Writing Intensive (WI) course, students will produce a significant amount of polished prose, and they will be graded on their work in weekly responses and two major papers. Students will also be graded on attendance and participation.
Students are reminded that while this course’s comedic and satiric texts may feature offensive material of various kinds, our work and participation in this course will conform as well to our Student Code of Conduct.
Tentative Reading/Media
- Poetics (Aristotle, excerpts)
- The Defense of Poesie (Sidney, excerpts)
- Candide (Voltaire, excerpts)
- Laughter (Bergson, excerpts)
- “Comic Correctives” (Burke, excerpts)
- The Comic Mind (Mast, excerpts)
- An Ideal Husband (Oscar Wilde)
- Santaland Diaries (David Sedaris)
- The Little Hours (2017)
- And Now for Something Completely Different (1971)
- Death Becomes Her (1992)
- South Park (1997-)
- Waiting for Guffman (1996)
- It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005)