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Black comedy, also known as black humor or dark comedy, is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously (death, mass murder, regular amounts of murder, suicide, domestic violence, disease, insanity, fear, child abuse, drug abuse, rape, war, terrorism, line-cutting) are treated in a satirical manner while still being portrayed as the tragedies they are. Black Comedy doesn't necessarily have to involve death -- anything tragic can be fodder for Black Comedy. A Kafka Komedy is a subtrope of Black Comedy in which the object of humor is abject failure.

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  • Black Comedy
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  • Black comedy, also known as black humor or dark comedy, is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously (death, mass murder, regular amounts of murder, suicide, domestic violence, disease, insanity, fear, child abuse, drug abuse, rape, war, terrorism, line-cutting) are treated in a satirical manner while still being portrayed as the tragedies they are. Black Comedy doesn't necessarily have to involve death -- anything tragic can be fodder for Black Comedy. A Kafka Komedy is a subtrope of Black Comedy in which the object of humor is abject failure.
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  • Black comedy, also known as black humor or dark comedy, is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously (death, mass murder, regular amounts of murder, suicide, domestic violence, disease, insanity, fear, child abuse, drug abuse, rape, war, terrorism, line-cutting) are treated in a satirical manner while still being portrayed as the tragedies they are. It is not Toilet Humor, which is just gross. It is not Refuge in Vulgarity, which is just shocking. It usually does not actually crack jokes -- a Bond One-Liner, while it is a joke about death, is not black comedy. Movies that alternate between comedy and tragedy, like Full Metal Jacket, are not black comedy, since by definition Black Comedy draws humor from the tragic parts. The trick is not to shock or disgust, but to use irony and fatalism like a scalpel, portraying the tragic in an absurd, dryly humorous light. A joke might revolve around, for example, a homeless man committing a string of murders so that he will get sentenced to death, a state that, properly tied up in appeals, is better than his former life expectancy and quality. Delivered correctly, it can be very funny, and more than a little disturbing. If done wrong, however, the audience may cry "Dude, Not Funny". Black Comedy doesn't necessarily have to involve death -- anything tragic can be fodder for Black Comedy. A Kafka Komedy is a subtrope of Black Comedy in which the object of humor is abject failure. Related to, and often confused with, Dude, Not Funny. Crosses the Line Twice may apply. Often set in a Crapsack World. Subtropes include Gallows Humour (which affects the joke maker personally) and Kafka Komedy (in which anything the protagonist does is guaranteed to fail). As the perfect storm of fatalism and dry humor, it often overlaps with British Humour and Russian humour. This can be Refuge in Audacity. If Black Comedy shows up in a series that doesn't ordinarily deal with grim subject matter so cavalierly, it's a Black Comedy Burst. Not to be confused with Uncle Tomfoolery. Compare Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror. Examples of Black Comedy include:
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