Laughter - Part 3 - a podcast by Eli Sessions

Comedy's relationship with ugliness and beauty. ("Unsprightly vs unsightly" - nice one, Cloudesley!) The listener may wonder why Bergson's having this discussion at all. From what I can tell, this is a response to an 1853 essay by Karl Rosenkranz called The Aesthetics of Ugliness. In it, not only does the reader receive a finely argued discourse on why we laugh at farts - surely an important contribution - but a detailed attempt to situate ugliness on a continuum between the beautiful and... yes, the comic. Making beauty not the opposite of ugliness, but of FUNNINESS. Bergson doesn't try to refute this argument - instead he probes it for nutrients. And ultimately assimilates it.

Presented and produced by Eli Sessions. Music from The Underscore Orkestra.

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