Humor and satire in W. Shakespeare's comedies contents

Chapter 1 Satirical and humorous genres in the press
1.1. Humor and Satire as phenomena.
The problem of the "comic" is one of the oldest. But rather the techniques and techniques of humor are controversial, while “in the main” everyone agrees. Anthropologists say that the baring of teeth, laughter is the first gesture of a predator over a defeated (and soon to be eaten) prey. Laughter elevates the subject (a provocation of subjectivity !), as it humiliates the other. We laugh at ridiculous, clumsy positions, at falls, at ineffective actions (see A. Bergson). We laugh at the past (“Humanity laughs parting with its past”, K. Marx), we laugh at the dying, we laugh at the “material and bodily bottom” (see M. Bakhtin), we laugh at the errors of speech and meaning (see Z. Freud). Humor and satire carry the most important political load, they perform a "critical function". Irony, cynicism are models that are imposed by the government demanding innovation on the vanguard of society, the intelligentsia. It is impossible to move forward without renouncing the old, without questioning it, without laughing at it. Therefore, laughter has always been an ideological sacred cow for the West (this is perfectly illustrated by W. Eco's novel The Name of the Rose). Totalitarian society in which there is no place for laughter. At the same time, laughter is not so much a tool of self-criticism as a weapon that breaks through the walls of traditional societies. All these satirists, comedians, KVN players - didn’t they make a huge contribution to the destruction of the USSR. A good joke, an anecdote, as Z. Freud noted, spreads in society instantly like a sensation, like news. These small portions of laughter, like small flasks of fuel, serve to replenish, tone, to restore wasted energy. And the harsher the reality, the more it stimulates a person to get hooked on the needle of humor. This is the difference between humor and satire. Stalin promoted the "new opium for the people" (comedies of the 30s and 40s), a kind of " ecstasy ", forcing you to give 200%. But Zhvanetsky and Shenderovich are satire, which, in the words of Marx, "should make a person horrified by himself." Humorous and satirical shows are always political (even if they do not contain a word about politics), political already because they involve subjects in action and cause a discharge of emotions. And today it is more important than what these emotions are and where they are directed.
Another function of laughter (especially today) is to mask the so-called dirt in politics, from which the layman is tired. A witty banter against politicians turns out to be much more effective than a bombastic accusation. Make the leader funny, and he will cease to be a leader (remember, for example, the jokes about Brezhnev). With a pathetic accusation, a person must identify with the subject of criticism, while with irony it is enough to distance himself from the object. Irony is the gap between what is said and what is meant. At the same time, cynicism, which "lowers" the values with which the subject identifies, is not a means to get the sympathy of the subject. Rather, on the contrary, a means to arouse his aggression. This will come in handy too. Enemies are usually depicted as cynics. The origins of cynicism, as a disease of modern society, more and more penetrating into all previously forbidden and holy places, is explored by P. Sloterdijk . However, cynicism will outlive itself. It holds on due to the fact that there is a "sacred" top and a " profane " bottom, it changes their places. But in the new world, where everything is horizontal and there is no up or down, a much more terrible disease is mild irony. Irony operates on the principle of a rheostat, it is programmed for a temperature range. Slightly higher energy overheating - irony is right there, she laughs at "excessive pathos", a little the temperature dropped below normal - irony again slightly cheers. This is the healthy state of the modern mass, cool , which does not rush anywhere else and does not listen to any calls, it slowly sways and flows in an unknown direction.