Wednesday, July 26, 2006
athenic yuks
There's no comedy scene in Athens because there's a strong disconnect between the senses of humor of those who would make the comedy and those who would consume it. I'd think a comedy scene would need to interest the general student body to really thrive, but that would probably require well-meaning folks to go more low-brow than they'd like. Frat guys and drunken college kids think comedy means dick jokes and physical degradation. The people I've known in Athens who care enough about comedy to want to create and perform generally have too much self-respect (pretension?) to resort to that stuff. That's why the almost comically awful DAMN show is the only comedy project of note to ever come out of Athens.
"“I’ve always been struck by a kind of weird lack of a comedy scene here; I suspect because our music scene is so lush, it kind of darkens out other things.”
There's no comedy scene in Athens because there's a strong disconnect between the senses of humor of those who would make the comedy and those who would consume it. I'd think a comedy scene would need to interest the general student body to really thrive, but that would probably require well-meaning folks to go more low-brow than they'd like. Frat guys and drunken college kids think comedy means dick jokes and physical degradation. The people I've known in Athens who care enough about comedy to want to create and perform generally have too much self-respect (pretension?) to resort to that stuff. That's why the almost comically awful DAMN show is the only comedy project of note to ever come out of Athens.
