The Art of Humor: Intro to Surreal Comedy

Time to get weird, normie.

Joe Garza
Published in
5 min readMay 11, 2020

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Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

In this installment of “The Art of Humor”, I grab your mind’s pinky toe and forcefully dip it into the weird waters of surreal comedy. If you want to learn how to funk up your craft with some insanity, this is a delicious place to start.

So what the damn hell is surreal comedy?

Surreal comedy, or absurdist comedy, is a style of humor that’s built on intentionally violating logic to produce a humorous result that’s bizarre, fantastical, and sometimes even frightening.

Because most, if not all, humor emerges from surprise, surreal comedy exaggerates the effect into even more outlandish territory.

Surreal comedy takes such forms as far-out juxtapositions, incongruity, non-sequiturs, irrational or absurd situations, and nonsensical expressions, and can be found in stand-up comedy, TV shows, movies, literature, and other art forms.

Really, pretty much every medium is a great victim to shove some humorous surrealism into.

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The Reckless Muse
The Reckless Muse

Published in The Reckless Muse

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Joe Garza
Joe Garza

Written by Joe Garza

I cover art, culture, film, comedy, creativity, books, and more at https://medium.com/the-reckless-muse

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