Comic Distance and Proximity
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.142
Distance and Proximity > The Fortunate Fall
Theoretical move: Comedy's notorious subjectivity is explained not by arbitrary taste but by its structural requirement that the spectator occupy a precise position where excess and lack are seen to overlap in the comic object; too much identification collapses comedy into pathos, too little into disinvestment, making the comic position an unstable third term that simultaneously requires proximity and distance.
The laughing spectator brings together distance and proximity, and the compassionate spectator enters into a psychic bond with the object through identification. The disinvested spectator regards the object from a distance.