1. TECNICHE DI COMICITA'
Carlo Turati 2012
“In every wit there is something of a poet”
(H.Bergson)

2. SINTESI
A joke is best when it expresses the maximum level of humour
with a minimal number of words. An example from George
Carlin: “I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have
as many people who believe it”.
...e ANTISINTESI
Though, the familiarity of the pattern of "brevity" has led to
numerous examples of jokes where the very length is itself the
pattern-breaking "punchline". Certain versions of the popular
vaudevillian joke The Aristocrats can go on for several minutes,
and it is considered an anti-joke, as the humour is more in the
set-up than the punchline

3. RITMO
The joke's content (meaning) is not what provokes the laugh, it
just makes the salience of the joke and provokes a smile. What
makes us laugh is the joke mechanism. Milton Berle
demonstrated this with a classic theatre experiment in the 1950s:
if during a series of jokes you insert phrases that are not jokes,
but with the same rhythm, the audience laughs anyway. A classic
is the ternary rhythm, with three beats: Introduction, premise,
antithesis (with the antithesis being the punch line).
In regards to the Milton Berle experiment, they can be taken to
demonstrate the concept of "breaking context" or "breaking the
pattern". It is not necessarily the rhythm that caused the audience
to laugh, but the disparity between the expectation of a "joke" and
being instead given a non-sequitur "normal phrase." This normal
phrase is, itself, unexpected, and a type of punchline—the anti-
climax.

4. COMICO
In the comic field plays the 'economy of ideative expenditure':
excessive energy is wasted or action-essential energy is
saved. The profound meaning of a comic gag or a comic joke
is "I'm a child"; the comic deals with the clumsy body of the
child. Laurel and Hardy are a classic example. An individual
laughs because he recognises the child that is in himself. In
clowns stumbling is a childish tempo. In the comic, the visual
gags may be translated into a joke. For example in Side Effects
(By Destiny Denied story) by Woody Allen:
"My father used to wear loafers," she confessed. "Both on the
same foot".
The typical comic technique is the disproportion.

5. WIT
In the wit field plays the "economy of censorship expenditure";
usually censorship prevents some 'dangerous ideas' from reaching
the conscious mind, or helps us avoid saying everything that
comes to mind; adversely, the wit circumvents the censorship and
brings up those ideas. Different wit techniques allow one to express
them in a funny way. The profound meaning behind a wit joke is
"I have dangerous ideas". An example from Woody Allen:
I contemplated suicide again - this time by inhaling next to an
insurance salesman.
Or, when a bagpipe player was asked "How do you play that
thing?" his answer was "Well." Wit is a branch of rhetoric, and there
are about 200 techniques (technically they are called tropes, a
particular kind of figure of speech) that can be used to make jokes.
Irony can be seen as belonging to this field..

6. HUMOR
TIn the comedy field, humour induces an "economised expenditure
of emotion". In other words, the joke erases an emotion that should
be felt about an event, making us insensitive to it.e.g.: "yo momma"
jokes. The profound meaning of the void feeling of a humour joke is
"I'm a cynic". An example from Woody Allen:
Three times I've been mistaken for Robert Redford. Each time by a
blind person.
This field of jokes is still a grey area, being mostly unexplored.
Extensive use of this kind of humour can be found in the work of
British satirist Chris Morris, like the sketches of the Jam television
program. Black humour and sarcasm belong to this field. Another
kind of joke is the ever popular "Yo Mamma" joke.

7. HUMOR
TIn the comedy field, humour induces an "economised expenditure
of emotion". In other words, the joke erases an emotion that should
be felt about an event, making us insensitive to it.e.g.: "yo momma"
jokes. The profound meaning of the void feeling of a humour joke is
"I'm a cynic". An example from Woody Allen:
Three times I've been mistaken for Robert Redford. Each time by a
blind person.
This field of jokes is still a grey area, being mostly unexplored.
Extensive use of this kind of humour can be found in the work of
British satirist Chris Morris, like the sketches of the Jam television
program. Black humour and sarcasm belong to this field. Another
kind of joke is the ever popular "Yo Mamma" joke.