Excess and Lack in Comedy
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.139
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.
Comedy requires spectators to be located in just the right position, where they can view excess and lack intersect in the comic object. Comedy fails so often not because comedians aren't funny but because spectators don't view them from the proper place.