Audiences can ponder the issue of fate when presented with Oedipus, afterlife when thinking of Antigone, and motherhood and marriage when confronted with Medea. Further, modern plays often offer this type of ending as well. For instance, Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie allows audience members to consider the theme of love and romance, superimposed with family. At the end of the story, audience members must contemplate whether Tom should have ever brought Jim home for Laura. This forces them to ask the general question -- is it better to leave someone in apparent misery or risk the chance of giving them false hope? In addition, audiences can ask the even more general question -- is it wrong to hope? Finally, Arp's claim can be true because of art. Even a terribly sad ending, if done beautifully, can leave the reader with a feeling of satisfaction rather than depression. This…...

This echoes life. To others we present as a simple person, perhaps even shallow and one-dimensional. Yet inside we are a mass of interminable twists and turns of plots and subplots. The story must reflect positive morality or, as Aristotle warned, when storytelling goes bad, the result is decadence. As stories become more extravagant and violent, and all the areas of storytelling - acting, stage settings or environments, music, sound effects and dialogue - become more riotous and tumultuous, the world of the stage and screen become grotesque and out of context. hen a culture experiences unmanageable difficulties it is time to return to the classical comedic theme, that of good triumphing over evil (McKee 15).
The play is the thing, it is said; and an inspired drama may bring one individual's explanation of that thing called life to an intrigued mind. The playwright must know himself first. Self-knowledge, plus…...

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Works Cited

Bradbrook, Murel Clara, the Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy. University of California Press, 1956.

Burkert, W. Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966): 87-121.

Englert, Walter. Ancient Greek Theater. Reed Library. Retrieved May 18, 2007 at  http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110tech/Theater.html .

McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York, NY: Harper. 1997.

EFEENCES

Brown, G. Movie Time: A Chronology of Hollywod. New York: McMillan, 1995.

Byrge, D. The Screwball Comedy Films. New York: McFarland, 1991.

"Censored Films and Television." January 2000. University of Virginia. September 2010 .

Dale, A. Comedy is a Man in Trouble. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Ebert, . "Some Like It Hot." 9 January 2000. oger Ebert.com. 12 September 2010 .

Engleking, A. "A Barbed But Generous Comedy of Manners." 17 June 2010. Memphis Flyer. 12 September 2010 .

Greig, J. The Psychology of Laughter and Comedy. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2010.

Henderson, J. "Comic Hero vs. Political Elite." al, Sommerstein et. Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis. Bari, Italy: Levanti Editori, 1993. 307-19.

King, G. Film Comedy. London: Wallflower Press, 2002.

Mast, G. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Metz, W. Engaging Film Criticism: Film History and Contemporary American Cinema. Peter Lang: Peter Lang, 2004.

usso, V. The Celluloid Closet. New York:…...

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REFERENCES

Brown, G. Movie Time: A Chronology of Hollywod. New York: McMillan, 1995.

Byrge, D. The Screwball Comedy Films. New York: McFarland, 1991.

"Censored Films and Television." January 2000. University of Virginia. September 2010 .

Dale, A. Comedy is a Man in Trouble. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

comedy films "His Girl Friday," directed by Howard Hawks, and "Bedazzled," directed by Harold Ramis. Specifically, it will discuss these two comedies made at least 45 years apart, and comment on their similarities, their differences, and the societal changes that make films obsolete, or keep them classic.
COMEDIES IN TIME

Comedies are some of the most popular film genres of all times. They entertain, they make the audience laugh, and they all contain certain formulas that make them successful. Most comedies have a happy ending, likeable characters, and some ridiculous situations, and these two films are no exception. Even though they were made over 50 years apart, they contain some of the same compelling and humorous features, and some major differences.

Selling your soul to the devil for good fortune or a group of wishes is a topic written about numerous times. Goethe did it in "Faust," and it comes up again…...

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Works Cited

Bedazzled. Dir. Harold Ramis. Perf. Elizabeth Hurley, Brandon Fraser, and Francis O'Conner. 20th Century Fox, 2000.

His Girl Friday. Dir. Howard Hawkes. Perf. Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and Ralph Bellamy. DVD: Ventura Distribution, 2000.

Divine Comedy vs. The Odyssey
Both Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy and Homer's The Odyssey begin in media res, or in the middle of the protagonists' respective stories. Dante, the narrator, has reached middle age and is confronted with the specter of Virgil, his favorite pagan poet. Virgil leads Dante on a journey through hell, purgatory, and ultimately heaven. Virgil instructs the living, Italian Renaissance poet in the ways of personal and universal spiritual truths. Odysseus is similarly led by Athena through his journey. At the beginning of The Odyssey, the hero is trapped on the island of the nymph Calypso, after many years of trying to find his way home. However, while Odysseus is literally in the middle of his physical quest to come home, Dante is in the middle of a lifelong spiritual quest to understand Christian salvation. This underlines the fundamental difference between the two tales:…...

All the while he is never in any danger because there is no risk of falling: he is simply playing at spoofing. But this is not Airplane -- a classic spoof comedy where every character, setting, and action in the film is designed to spoof airport genre thrillers popular at the time.
Ace is not exactly a derelict but he is outside the conventional social order: he is an outcast as far as the police are concerned. They are the ones with "real" authority -- yet, Ace does their job better than they do. He is under the suspicion of his landlord, who thinks he is housing animals in his apartment (he is). His wardrobe and hair are clownish representations of the Don Johnson Miami Vice type detective: coolness taken to a bizarre and exaggerated extreme (for example, the Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned coupled with combat boots, clown pants and an…...

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Works Cited

Bergson, Henri. Laughter. NY: Macmillan & Co., Limited, 1914. Print.

Ebert, Roger. "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." 1994. Rogerebert.com. 14 May 2013.

Web.

Griggs, Deborah. "Coming to Terms with Comedy." UMUC. 14 May 2013. Web.

Physical Comedy on Film
Sophisticated, Funny and Physical: The Romances of Astaire and Rogers

Physical comedy brings to mind Moe, Larry and Curly bopping each other over the head. Or it might suggest Lucille Ball stuffing chocolates into her mouth, her blouse or anyplace except on the conveyor belt in the neat little rows the candy-making supervisor intended. (Or better, her boozy bout with VitaMeataVegamin, the Peppy Picker-Upper.) A thousand reruns of a thousand theatrical shorts, like "The Three Stooges" films, and a hundred thousand reruns of sitcoms from "I Love Lucy" to "Seinfeld" (even that cerebral show had people climbing in and out of windows on occasion) pretty much give us our concept of what theatrical physical comedy is all about.

In short, we think of slapstick, defined by the TheatreCrafts.com glossary as:

Two pieces of wood loosely joined at one end, which make a loud "slap" sound when used to hit something…...

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Works Cited

Bright Lights Film Journal. 2003.   June 2003.http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/32/followthefleet.html.1 

Columbia World of Quotations. 2001. Bartleby.com. June 2003.http://www.bartleby.com.3

Elizabeth." May 30, 2003.   June 2003.http://www.reelclassics.com/Teams/Fred&Ginger/fred&ginger10.htm.3 

Fred and Ginger: America's Greatest Swing Dancers." 2003. June 2003.http://www.usaswingnet.com/fred&ginger.htm.2

Tragedy & Comedy
One popular method of distinguishing between a comedy and a tragedy has always been by virtue of whether a play or film has a happy or tragic ending. Today, however, it is largely considered that a tragedy can be comic in parts, and need not necessarily result in an unhappy ending or death (Thorndike, p.2-3) Similarly, although comedies are widely defined as humorous entertainment, evoking a great deal of laughter and amusement, it does not necessarily follow that there are no serious, underlying messages. Thus, it is evident that types or genres of drama are intended to be categories that are not firm and that many plays may fit into a number of categories simultaneously. Indeed, the preceding observation is certainly true of many of Shakespeare's plays: "Shakespeare -- uses comedy in tragedy and tragedy in comedy...difficult to categorize." (Trumbull, 2002) It is the purpose of this paper…...

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Works Cited

Berlin, N. "The Secret Cause: A Discussion of Tragedy." Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981.

Ebert, R. "Pretty Woman." Chicago Sun-Times Web site. March 23, 1990. Accessed Sept.

15, 2004:  http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1990/03/537944.html 

Hibbard, G.R. "Hamlet." Oxford: Oxford University, 1998.

Dark Humor and Satirical Comedy in "Divine Comedy" by Dante and "King Lear" by William Shakespeare
One of the most important functions that literature play in human society is that it does not only expresses and individual's (particularly the author's) thoughts about and interpretation of life, but it also reflects the state of society that the author lives in. Indeed, the function of literature as a reflection of the human society is illustrated in the works of Dante Alighieri and William Shakespeare, renowned authors of "Divine Comedy" and "King Lear," respectively.

In these literary works, a notable characteristic is the authors' ability to weave in the aspect of dark humor, aptly using satirical comedy in order to criticize the rulers and leaders of their societies during their time. Dante Alighieri wrote the "Divine Comedy" during the Italian Renaissance period from 12th-13th centuries. During this period, art as a form of criticism…...

Prowriter))
Comedy in Television and Theater

There are many forms of comedy, but two of the largest distinctions are high comedy and low comedy. "High comedy[…]evokes "intellectual laughter" -- thoughtful laughter from spectators who remain emotionally detached from the action" (Abrams, Harpham 51). A television show which incorporates high comedy is Monty Python's Flying Circus. "The Dead Parrot Sketch" is one such example of satire and witty banter which requires the audience, or spectators, to not only have a sizeable vocabulary (as John Cleese and Michael Palin exchange a myriad of terms for describing the parrot's state) but must be aware of the satirical value of some of Cleese's lines. "If you want to get anything done in this country, you've got to complain until you're blue in the mouth," Cleese says after being exasperated in his efforts to prove that the parrot he purchased is, in fact, dead. Later in…...

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Works Cited

Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th ed. Boston:

Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009.

Tattoo. By Jane Martin. 2000.

Shakespearean Social Comedy -- Saturnalian inversion or soulful exploration of social outsiders?
Barber's book, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy argues for a socially harmonious interpretation of Shakespeare's comedic plays. In contrast, the scholar Richard A. Levine's Love and Society in Shakespeare's Comedy proposes a socially subversive reading of the Shakespearean comedy, as kind of hidden tragedies of 'outsider' figures, rather than Saturnalian revelry. This contrast between the two authors may orginate in the fact that Barber focuses on the major characters of the dramatic texts, while Levine's thesis is detrived from his focus on comedy's outsider figures, such as Shylock and Malvolio. Levine argues that Shakespeare's comedic structure is really one of social critique rather than social affirmation because of the presence of such outsider figures, often excluded from romantic coupling.

Barber begins his book by stating that Shakespeare modeled his early comedies on traditional, pagan holiday entertainments. These were traditional dramatic games of…...

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Works Cited

Barber, C.L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom. New York: The World Publishing Co., 1963.

Levin, Richard A. Love and Society in Shakespearean Comedy. New York: University of Delaware Press, 1993.

Each film allows characters to break down first impression characteristics of self and other and build hopefully strong relationships as a result.
In order of the age of each film surface differences begin with the age group being characterized, with Breakfast Club discussing relationships between relatively immature, high school aged individuals seeking to build self-awareness and identity, through unlikely relationships, as all the characters are from different social clicks. hen Harry Met Sally comparatively discuses the personal relationship, as it evolves through early college age to the present, when the individuals are in their late 30s early 40s having built careers and had serious relationships. Finally, You've Got Mail details the lives of people who are late 20s early 30s and seeking romance after beginning careers as a central focus to life. Though all the works develop these themes in a single cultural perspective i.e. that of majority community members…...

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Works Cited

Ephron, Nora. Writer-Director You've Got Mail (Motion Picture) Warner Brothers Pictures. 1998.

Gehring, Wes D. Parody as Film Genre: Never Give a Saga an Even Break. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Hughes, John. Writer-Director the Breakfast Club (Motion Picture) a & M. Films. 1985.

Reiner, Rob. Director, Ephron, Nora. Writer When Harry Met Sally (Motion Picture) Castle Rock Entertainment. 1989.

"The course of true love never did run smooth" (Lysander, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act , Scene ). Shakespeare's practically promotes this concept throughout the play, further reinforcing it by using the tension that emerges from the unusual relationships between some of the characters. It is not necessarily love that creates this tension, as it is actually the difficulty related to it that appeals to individuals watching the play. When love initially experiences progress in the play, fantasy prevents characters from being happy because of it, as it is asymmetrical, with two men loving the same woman while another woman is left with no one to love her. Titania's passion for Bottom makes matters even more confusing, considering that it seems very improbable for her to really want to put across any feelings toward the unsuccessful actor. Bottom contrasts Titania through his physical ugliness and through the fact that…...

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1. Meader, William G. Its Relation to the Tradition of Courtly Love (New York: King's Crown Press, 1954)

2. Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Retrieved June 22, 2011, from the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Website:  http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/midsummer.1.1.html 

3. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Dir Michael Hoffman. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 1999.

[2: "Margaret Cho: Profiles," Finding Your Roots, PS, 2013 Available: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/profiles/margaret-cho/]
Such a claim would seem to ignore the extremely sexualized nature of both comedians' acts. They are aggressively, openly sexual in their use of language when discussing their relationships with men -- but once again, it could be argued that they are aggressive 'as a man,' and thus their humor functions at least in part as male impersonation. The question of whether a woman who is also considered desirable can be funny is a more vexing one, and perhaps the question should be rephrased if a beautiful woman can be considered funny. The cast of Friends featured many beautiful women who were funny, as did more recently the cast of ridesmaids. Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live fame and 30 Rock is a conventionally tall, beautiful brunette and has made a career as a writer of humor as well…...

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Bibliography

Brand, Katy. "So can a woman be beautiful and funny?" The Telegraph. 1 Oct 2012.

  [19 Apr 2013]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9571880/So-can-a-woman-be-beautiful-and-funny.html 

Hitchens, Christopher. "Why women aren't funny." Vanity Fair. January 2007.

Available:   [19 Apr 2013]http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701 

comedy in the film "Life if eautiful" (Roberto enigni)
It may seem strange to discus comedy in a film which essentially deals with the most devastating atrocity of the Twentieth Century -- the Holocaust. The film is also based on the love, anxiety and suffering of a father for his child in the most deadly of circumstances. However the film is a comedy in the larger sense of the word. It is essentially a celebration of life and a shout of defiance against the forces of darkness and evil that would consume the wonder of life. Critics have praised the film but also raised concerns about its subject matter and its proximity to the sensitive issue of the holocaust. One description of the film is: " ... A truly powerful film that manages to entertain, educate, and inspire with its potent combination of humor, poignancy, and dignity."

The film has been…...

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Bibliography

Life is Beautiful, Robert Benigni Film ( 2005) [Internet] Available from [Accessed march 10, 2005].http://www.*****/essay.php?t=26279

La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful) (1998) BBC. [Internet] Available from   [Accessed march 10, 2005].http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/06/06/la_vita_e_bella_1997_review.shtml 

Leong, A. (1998) Life is Beautiful Movie Review. [Internet] Available from htp://www.mediacircus.net/lifeisbeautiful.html [Accessed march 10, 2005].

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Deep Focus. [Internet] Available from   [Accessed march 10, 2005].http://www.deep-focus.com/flicker/lifeisbe.html 

Genre theory refers to the use of familiar themes and ideas as a way of signaling to the audience what to expect from a work of fiction. Genre theory can be used in various types of fiction and is often discussed when talking about both literature and movies. Genre theory can provide a good springboard for analysis of a particular work, because works can exemplify genres, deviate from genres, or even flip genres completely upside down.  As fictional works have developed, genres have become more specific.  Genres were initially very broad, both....

1. The Timeless Appeal of "I Love Lucy"

2. "I Love Lucy": A Revolutionary Sitcom

3. The Enduring Legacy of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo

4. The Comedy Genius of Lucille Ball in "I Love Lucy"

5. Exploring the Cultural Impact of "I Love Lucy"

6. How "I Love Lucy" Changed Television Forever

7. A Tribute to the Hilarity of "I Love Lucy"

8. Lucy Ricardo: A Feminist Icon Ahead of Her Time

9. Remembering the Laughter: A Look Back at "I Love Lucy"

10. The Iconic Duo of Lucy and Ethel in "I Love Lucy"
11. Celebrating 70 Years of Laughs with "I Love Lucy"

12. From Black and White to....

1. The Enduring Power of Myth: Chaucer's Retelling of Ancient Tales in "The Canterbury Tales"

Thesis: Chaucer's adaptation of classical myths in "The Canterbury Tales" demonstrates the enduring power of storytelling and the timeless relevance of archetypal narratives.

Points of Discussion:
Chaucer's use of myths such as Orpheus and Eurydice, Pyramus and Thisbe, and the Trojan War
The transformative role of myth in shaping human experience and social values
The universality of mythological themes and their resonance with audiences across time

2. The Female Gaze in Chaucer's "The Legend of Good Women": Reclaiming Feminine Perspectives

Thesis: Through the lens of the female narrator in....

1. The prevalence of gender stereotypes in society
2. How stereotypes impact minority groups
3. The influence of media in perpetuating stereotypes
4. The psychological effects of stereotypes on individuals
5. Stereotypes in the workplace and their impact on career advancement
6. How stereotypes can lead to discrimination and prejudice
7. The role of education in challenging and changing stereotypes
8. Stereotypes in the entertainment industry and their impact on representation
9. The intersectionality of stereotypes and how they intersect with race, gender, sexuality, and other identities
10. Ways to combat and challenge stereotypes in daily life and society.
11. The impact of stereotypes on mental health and well-being
12. Stereotypes....