Our comedies are not to be laughed at.

 

Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
--
Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 38-39.

 

Samuel Goldwyn

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The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

 

Carl Sagan

 

We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of Adam Sandler make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of Napoleon Dynamite, I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about.

 

Roger Ebert

 

This nervous chuckling and mocking of a guy who speaks the truth, the man who told you the truth more than any other in those debates, who wasn't afraid to make enemies and tell the truth, was Ron Paul. And they laughed at him: "he deserves to be laughed at". No Mitt Romney, you deserve to be laughed at, you elitist, oh I can't use the word.

 

Ron Paul

 

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round;
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.

 

Ira Gershwin

 

So they've laughed and then they've thought, should we have laughed at that? Well, too late now. You did. I imagine I get more than my fair share of that.

 

Jimmy Carr