http://tf-comedy-ss11.wikispaces.com/3.+Definition+of+Comedy

This text that I have chose to study is a wiki page about the comedy genre, written by Bernhard Ohlinger and Simone Aiglstorfer. This text talks about the definition of comedy and the history of screen comedy.

The definition of comedy is mentioned first with the text suggesting that comedy has no conventions therefore the only way to define a film in the comedy genre is by it making people laugh, the text says:

"According to Brunovska Karnick and Jeniks (69) comedy has “no elements of setting and iconography that distinguish [it] as a genre. There is no plot structure that encompasses all comedies. Nor is there shared subject matter.”"

However, this article also shows how some critics have the opposite opinion:

"Roy Stafford argues that each genre uses “familiar ‘narrative devices’” – and as opposed to other critics he even defines those devices for comedy sufficiently. Stafford (2) explains that in comedy the audience responds to two different comic elements: 

• “The Gag – visual, arual, verbal jokes, carefully timed and delivered for maximum impact;
• Comic situations – ‘narrative comedy’ in which it is the developing relationships between characters and the social environment that causes us to laugh

These two elements make a volatile combination since the performance of gags is often highly disruptive of the progression of the narrative.” "

The text concludes that "the most convincing definition of comedy is probably what we've suggested at the beginning: it makes people laugh." - I would agree with this conclusion as from personal experience with comedy films, I found it hard to notice similar conventions between each film in the comedy genre.