Political candidates and citizens alike have been turning to nontraditional, “softer” sources of political information such as late-night comedy and daytime talk shows. This is particularly true during presidential elections, when candidates make guest appearances to reach audience members who may or may not be politically engaged, and when discussion of political affairs becomes more prominent...

Darwin (1872) and Hecker (1873) suggested that laughter induced by tickle and by humour share common underlying mechanisms. Seventy-two undergraduate students participated in a study designed to explore the relationship between the two phenomena. Subjects were tickled before and after viewing comedy and control videotapes. Subjects exhibiting more pronounced laughter to comedy also laughed more...

Elizabeth Bishop famously asserted in 1964 that poetry “can be cheerful AND profound! – or, how to grim without groaning,” delineating a form of tragicomic equilibrium which she found embodied by “any Buster Keaton’s films.” This article explores Keaton provided with model stoic comedy, one through could reimagine worldly tribulation as slapstick poetry. Examining the dramatic monologue “Keaton...

Velimir Bata Živojinović boasts a body of work which traverses 350 motion pictures from Classical Yugoslav Cinema over The New Film to Contemporary Serbian Cinema, historical epic film noir, family comedy radical avant-garde. A legendary actor and one the most significant personalities cinema, he is best remembered as archetypal hero Partisan film. This research examines ways in Živojinović’s p...

Humor is an important part of the human condition. A world without laughter would be a world without a soul. Indeed, comedy serves many key purposes in life – reducing stress, defusing social tensions, revealing the absurdity of human behavior, and generally increasing the quality of life (Martin, 2007). One main vehicle by which funny thoughts are conveyed is through creative writing, which ca...