Art v craft

A group of not-so-prominent players on the UK comedy scene are agitating for comedy to be classed as 'art' so as to attract Arts Council (ie government) funding. Andrew Watts cogently outlines the core arguments against this idea and I agree with pretty much everything he writes.

My own observation is that the people stridently maintaining that comedy is art are usually the ones paying the least attention to its craft. Comedy is all about making people laugh and what they laugh at are well-crafted gags.

Laughter is a necessary condition for comedy to function as a craft although perhaps it isn't sufficient for it to be seen as art, which should require the audience to then think about why they're laughing.

The danger in public funding is that because no one believes you if you just say "This will be really, really funny!" the pitch becomes all about what the audience will supposedly be thinking. This puts the cart waaaaaay before the horse. All too often the end result is a performer blaming his unamused audience for not 'getting it' before diagnosing this response as the punters being too stupid and / or bourgeois for his Art. Why not start with the brutal possibility that the gags weren't good enough?

Good comedy makes people laugh. Great comedy makes people laugh then think. In that order.