Flavors of Tamil Humor

Tamil movies have amazing sense of humor right from the early days. Every era has its chief comedian-actor like NSK, Nagesh, Thangabalu, Goundamani, Senthil, Crazy Mohan, Vivek, Vadivelu, Santhanam, and the list goes on.

The classification of comedy doesn't exist in the classical sense but from an individual perspective. For example various comedians and writers have used Slapstick (Vadivelu in particular), parodies, satire but the classification is not done in lines of genres.  Usually we call it Crazy Mohan comedy, Vadivel comedy, Goundamani-Senthil comedy.

Humor comes in many flavors, any of which may appeal to one person but not to another, and which may be enjoyed in alternation or in combination.  We have Anecdotal,Blue, Burlesque, Dark/Gallows/Morbid, Deadpan, Droll, Epigrammatic, Farcical, High/highbrow, Hyperbolic, Ironic, Juvenile/sophomoric, Mordant, Parodic, Satirical, Screwball, Self-deprecating, Situational:, Slapstick and many other unique varieties and overlapping varieties.

In the near future I am going to post some posts with well-known Tamil comedy scenes and their classification per Humor Theory.

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