Awfully Funny

Mankind has endured no greater tragedy than the Holocaust, but that hasn’t stopped comedians from joking about it over the years, nor audiences from laughing. Take a classic 2004 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the comedy series by Larry David, that centers on a Holocaust survivor named Solly. One night Solly comes to a dinner party expecting to meet a fellow survivor. There’s been a mix-up, though, and the person who arrives is Colby Donaldson — a contestant from the Survivor reality show. One thing leads to another, and Solly and Colby get into a heated debate over who is the tougher survivor.

“You never even suffered one minute in your life compared to what I went through,” says Solly.

“I couldn’t even work out when I was over there,” says Colby. “They certainly didn’t have a gym.”

The fact that people can find some humor in a tragedy of genocidal proportions suggests there’s nothing we can’t find a little funny — at least when it’s presented right. Great thinkers throughout history have recognized this unusual tendency to poke light at dark times. Plato felt humor was the mixture of pleasure and pain; Mark Twain once said, “Humor is tragedy plus time.” What’s become... ( for more please follow th following link:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/awfully-funny

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