Who doesn’t love comedy, right? Comedy is more than being amusing, more than spending a heart filled evening with your friends on some old jokes. It is intertwined and forms the basis of our daily life. Whether you’re sharing an interesting story at a bar, a complacent joke after someone praises you or dedicating a hidden joke at a funeral, there’s humor everywhere.

Indeed, laughter can conceal a heavy heart, reduces stress and can be a perfect therapy. Intuitively, we consider comedy to be one of the things that can help us meet our life’s challenges. At first glance, this hint sounds surprising, but the truth is that we don’t laugh unless it hits a nerve in us. This can be categories into different types of comedy related to relationships, family, gender, money, sex and epic experiences. 

Comedy is an art, not a science. Comedy evokes laughter, it’s pure art that is amusing, sardonic and entertaining in nature. But what one finds funny and humorous may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Humor has multiple flavors, and each flavor can attract one person but not the other and can be used alternatively or in combination. Each type indicates a different transmission method or humorous reason. Let’s get to know the most popular types of comedy genres circling the comedy industry.

Lowbrow Comedy

Lowbrow humor can be understood with little to no effort. It aims to attract the most common denominators and make the biggest laughs roar in the room. This type of humor has various subdivisions, such as bathroom jokes. Unsurprisingly, people with no knowledge can still have a better understanding and prefer lowbrow comedy – since it is as easy as falling off a log. While highly educated people know more about and value complex comedies like middle and highbrow.

In terminology, lowbrow comedy is a bit skeptical. It indicates a puerile approach of humor and considers a certain height of immaturity. However, like everything else, it reflects forms and methods. In many cases, its use has a rather blurred intent but is still a way of expressing ideas.

However, lowbrow humor addresses common concepts that do not require an understanding of any specific background knowledge. This type of comedy is universal and does not require complex references. Physical banter, fart jokes, humiliating sarcasm, and sexual witticism are of low significance and are great examples of lowbrow comedy – because they are ubiquitous in all cultures and can be understood by anyone. Lowbrow comedy is light in nature and aims to attract the least common denominator.

Highbrow Comedy

Highbrow humor is characterized by somewhat vague and advanced knowledge and reflects on the deliberate subject of humor. Highbrow comedy makes people think of jokes at a certain degree of higher level than the humor of low-brow comedy – which might involve Intelligence, personality attributes, sense of humor, and humorous style. As a result, highbrow humor is often layered, which provides multiple levels of comedies and double meaning jokes. 

This sort of knowledge is needed to express, understand and evaluate classical literature, politics, history and more. Highbrow banter might have derived from Shakespeare – one of the famous British writers, or it could be a chemist making a joke about chemistry that can only be understood by the people having some knowledge about it. Highbrow humor is similar to high art and appreciated by the elites and intellectuals of society.

Comedies are sometimes badly criticised for being lowbrow entertainment, but some of the most interesting comedians do actually aim towards a smart community with a high touch of highbrow humor. The average viewer of these comedians do not show patience with the intellectuality of the joke throughout the show, but those who did pick up the right joke at the right time which makes these comedians a huge success for comedy lovers, who could watch them on repeat.

Highbrow Vs Lowbrow Comedy

Now that we have picked up the idea of what these terms are, let’s find out the differences between them and how we can distinguish them from one another. We know that people who appreciate highbrow humor require some cultural knowledge, a certain level of education and cultural literacy, especially to understand the true meaning of the joke, while low brow humor is one that can be appreciated by anyone without or even with a high degree of intelligence.

There are many who use high brow as a way to berate people with their philosophies or ideas. This is the difference between comedians like George Carlin and Sam Kinison. 

George Carlin was a thinking man’s comedian. He was about being highbrow in a way that he talked to the working class while explaining the upper class. His ideas were explained with facts and statistics while also giving you humor. This was his bit about saving the planet. (WARNING: NSFW)

Kinison, on the other hand, gave a plain and simpler explanation for things. One of his best and also most controversial bits was about world hunger, especially in Africa. This simple and lowbrow way of explaining things makes sense but is offensive to high brow people. 

The idea that only one or the other can exist in a meaningful way takes away from the entire point of comedy. Comedy is designed to entertain and make people laugh. It does not matter whether it is with a witty retort or someone getting hit in the crotch, comedy at its most raw form is a surprise that makes people laugh.  No matter which one you enjoy more know that there is a style of comedy for everyone and if you want to make as many people laugh as possible mixing highbrow and lowbrow comedy is always a recipe for hilarity.