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Information about Dry Humor

Deadpan is a form of comedic delivery in which humour is presented without exhibiting a change in emotion or facial expression. Deadpan is a type of dry humour.

Etymology

The term "deadpan" first emerged as an adjective or adverb in the 1920s, as a compound word combining "dead" and "pan" (a slang term for the face). It was first recorded as a noun in Vanity Fair in 1927; a dead pan was thus 'a face or facial expression displaying no emotion, animation, or humor'. The Greek god Pan in mythology is another source of the term, having laughed himself to death due to a Non sequitur. Finally, the verb deadpan 'to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan' arose by the early 1940s, apparently as a journalistic coinage rather than a theatrical one. It must be noted that today its use is especially common in humour from the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is also very appreciated in France, by the influence of the "esprit" (dry-humour mostly). Many popular American sitcoms also used deadpan expressions, most notably Friends and Seinfeld. Dry humor is often confused for highbrow or egghead humor. Although these forms of humor are often dry, the term dry humor actually only refers to the method of delivery, not necessarily the content.

Notable deadpan comedians

Stand-up comedians

Film

  • Buster Keaton, known as "Great Stone Face," became famous for never cracking a smile in any of his films. Strictly speaking, his was not a deadpan approach, since his face was actually very expressive. He subtly portrayed bemusement, anger, fear, and other emotions, but never smiled in a single one of his classic silents. In Go West, a cowboy forces him to smile, which he does by using his fingers to pull up the sides of his mouth. The result is a ghastly parody of a smile. Keaton also mugged, cried, laughed, and otherwise carried on in several of his earliest silent two-reelers with Fatty Arbuckle. His first smile in sound movie occurred in San Diego, I Love You (1944).
  • Stan Laurel, of the double act Laurel and Hardy.
  • Bill Murray. Most of his work entails him delivering overtly humorous lines with a genuine look of disinterest or indifference on his face, particularly in later works such as Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers and The Lost City.
  • Leslie Nielsen progressed from being a dramatic actor in films such as The Poseidon Adventure to a comedic actor due in large part to his seriousness in delivering nonsensical lines in movies such as Airplane! ("Surely you can't be serious!" "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.") and The Naked Gun series.
  • Peter Sellers, most famously for his role as the United States President (as well as Dr. Strangelove, and Captain Mandrake) in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and his portrayal of bumbling French police inspector Jacques Clouseau.
  • Ben Stein, who was originally a university professor, found a new career as a comedy actor by exploiting the stereotype of the dull academic, often acting as a straight man.
  • Christopher Walken is best known for his deadpan affect and off-key pauses, which is most notable in films such as Pulp Fiction and True Romance.
  • Chevy Chase, known for his roles as Ty Webb in Caddyshack and Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Vacation

Television

Fictional characters

Other

See also

External links

In common, present day usage the word comedy almost always refers to the creation or presentation of humor with the intention of provoking laughter. Most comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations,
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Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the ability or quality of people, objects, or situations to evoke feelings of amusement in other people. The term encompasses a form of entertainment or human communication which evokes such feelings, or which makes people laugh
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facial expression results from one or more motions or positions of the muscles of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of the individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication.
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    In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjective's subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to.
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    adverb is a part of speech. It is any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives (including numbers), clauses, sentences and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives.
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    In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of more than one other lexeme.

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    Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. Slang is often highly regional, specific to a particular territory.
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    A proper or common noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives can't. As usual, a `*' in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical.
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    Vanity Fair is an American magazine of culture, fashion, and politics published by Condé Nast Publications.

    Condé Nast's Vanity Fair

    Condé Nast began his empire by purchasing the men's fashion magazine Dress in 1913.
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      Pan (Greek Πάν, genitive Πανός) is the Greek god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music: paein means to pasture.
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      Non sequitur (IPA: /nɒnˈsɛkwɪtər/) is Latin for "It does not follow," coming from the deponent verb sequor.
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      verb is a word belonging to the part of speech that usually denotes an action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand).
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      Friends is a US situation comedy about a group living in the New York City borough of Manhattan that was originally broadcast from 1994 to 2004. It was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and produced by Kevin S. Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane.
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      Seinfeld is an Emmy Award-winning, American sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, running a total of 9 seasons. Many of its catchphrases have entered into the pop culture lexicon.
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      highbrow is synonymous with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture. The word draws its metonymy from the pseudoscience of phrenology, and was originally simply a physical descriptor.
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      egghead was an anti-intellectual epithet, directed at people considered too out-of-touch with ordinary people and too lacking in realism, common sense, virility, etc. on account of their intellectual interests.
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      Deadpan is a form of comedic delivery in which humour is presented without exhibiting a change in emotion or facial expression. Deadpan is a type of dry humour.

      Etymology


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      David Tynan O'Mahoney (July 6, 1936–March 10, 2005), better known as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, popular in the United Kingdom and Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.
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      Ireland
      Éire
      Airlann       <nowiki />

      Northwest of continental Europe with Great Britain to the east.

      Geography <nowiki/>
      Location Western Europe <nowiki />
      Archipelago
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      Michael Ian Black

      Michael Ian Black
      Background information
      Date of birth: July 12 1971 (1971--) (age 36)
      Birth location: Chicago, Illinois


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      David Wain

      Birth name David Benjamin Wain
      Born July 01 1969 (1969--) (age 38)
      Shaker Heights, Ohio
      Died

      Official site DavidWain.
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      Michael Showalter

      Michael Showalter
      Background information
      Date of birth: May 17 1970 (1970--) (age 37)
      Birth location: Princeton, New Jersey


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      Todd Barry

      Born March 26 1964 (1964--) (age 43)
      The Bronx, New York
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      Garry Shandling
      Born November 29 1949 (1949--) (age 59)
      Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
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      The Larry Sanders Show is an Emmy Award- and Peabody Award-winning satirical television sitcom that originally aired from August 1992 to May 1998 on the HBO cable television network in the United States.
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      Jimmy Carr

      Born September 15 1972 (1972--) (age 35)
      Limerick, Ireland
      Nationality British and Irish
      Influences Steven Wright, Emo Philips
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      Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries predominantly comedy
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      The Colbert Report (IPA /kolˈbɛɹ rɪˈpɔɹ/) is an American satirical television program that airs from 11:30 p.m.
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