This list of comedy and humor awards provides an index to articles on notable awards for comedy and humor, including writing and performance. The list is organized by the country of the sponsoring organization, although a few of the awards are not restricted to one country.
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through the amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending. Comedy is one of the oldest genres in the film—and derived from the classical comedy in theatre. Some of the earliest silent films were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. To provide drama and excitement to movies, live music was played in sync with the action on the screen, by pianos, organs, and other instruments. When sound films became more prevalent during the 1920s, comedy films grew in popularity, as laughter could result from burlesque situations but now also dialogue.
The following outline provides an overview of and topical guide to entertainment and the entertainment industry:
Marvin Neil Simon was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly film adaptations of his plays. He has received three Tony Awards, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for four Academy Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards. He was awarded a Special Tony Award in 1975, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995 and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2006.
Lists of awards cover awards given in various fields, including arts and entertainment, sports and hobbies, the humanities, science and technology, business, and service to society. A given award may be found in more than one list. Awards may be given by a government agency, an association such as the International Cricket Council, a company, a magazine such as Motor Trend, or an organization like Terrapinn Holdings that runs events. Some awards have significant financial value, while others mainly provide recognition. The lists include awards that are no longer being given.
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer, producer, and playwright. Fey was a cast member and head writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1997 to 2006. After her departure from SNL, she created the NBC sitcom 30 Rock and the Netflix sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2020), the former of which she also starred in. Fey is also known for her work in film, including Mean Girls (2004), Baby Mama (2008), Date Night (2010), Megamind (2010), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Sisters (2015), Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), Wine Country (2019), and Soul (2020).
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, gallows humor, or dark humor is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Popular themes of the genre include death, crime, poverty, suicide, slavery, genocide, forced labor, torture, war, violence, terrorism, discrimination, disease, racism, sexism, homophobia, and human sexuality.
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish, or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian.
Joan Alexandra Molinsky, known professionally as Joan Rivers, was an American comedian, actress, producer, writer and television host. She was noted for her blunt, often controversial comedic persona—heavily self-deprecating and acerbic, especially towards celebrities and politicians, delivered in her signature New York accent. She is considered a pioneer of women in comedy by many critics.
The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is an American award presented by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts annually since 1998, except for the years 2020 and 2021. Named after the 19th-century humorist Mark Twain, it is presented to individuals who have "had an impact on American society in ways similar to" Twain. The JFK Center chose Twain due to his status as a controversial social commentator and his "uncompromising perspective of social injustice and personal folly." A copy of Karl Gerhardt's 1884 bust of Twain is presented in an autumn ceremony at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington, D.C., during which the honoree is celebrated by his or her peers. The event is a significant fundraiser to benefit the Kennedy Center, which sells tickets as well as access to dinners and after-parties featuring the celebrities.
Andy Borowitz is an American writer, comedian, satirist, and actor. Borowitz is a New York Times-bestselling author who won the first National Press Club award for humor. He is known for creating the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the satirical column The Borowitz Report.
The American Comedy Awards were a group of awards presented annually in the United States recognizing performances and performers in the field of comedy, with an emphasis on television comedy and comedy films. They began in 1987, billed as the "first awards show to honor all forms of comedy." In 1989, after the death of Lucille Ball, the statue was named "the Lucy" to honor the comic legend.
CollegeHumor is an Internet comedy company based in Los Angeles. Aside from producing content for release on YouTube, it was also a former humor website owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC) from 2006 until January 2020, when IAC withdrew funding and the website shut down. Since then, CollegeHumor has continued to release content on YouTube and its streaming service, Dropout. The site featured daily original humor videos and articles created by its in-house writing and production team, in addition to user-submitted videos, pictures, articles and links. Created by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen in 1999, CollegeHumor is operated by CH Media, which also operates Dorkly.com and Dropout.tv, and formerly operated Drawfee.com.
American humor refers collectively to the conventions and common threads that tie together humor in the United States. It is often defined in comparison to the humor of another country – for example, how it is different from British humor and Canadian humor. It is, however, difficult to say what makes a particular type or subject of humor particularly American. Humor usually concerns aspects of American culture, and depends on the historical and current development of the country's culture. The extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous obviously depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including, but not limited to geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, and context. People of different countries will therefore find different situations funny. Just as American culture has many aspects which differ from other nations, these cultural differences may be a barrier to how humor translates to other countries.
The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series is an annual award given to the best television comedy series of the year. From 1960 to 1964, this category was combined with the Comedy Specials category so that both type of programs competed for the same award during those years. The award goes to the producers of the series.
Comedy horror, also known as horror comedy, is a literary, television, and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. Comedy horror has been described as able to be categorized under three types: "black comedy, parody and spoof." It often crosses over with the black comedy genre. Comedy horror can also parody or subtly spoof horror clichés as its main source of humour or use those elements to take a story in a different direction, for example in The Cabin in the Woods, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Shaun of the Dead or the Evil Dead franchise.
Cracked.com is a website based on Cracked magazine, which dates back to 1958. It was founded in 2005 by Jack O'Brien.
Comedy is a genre of dramatic performance having a light or humorous tone that depicts amusing incidents and in which the characters ultimately triumph over adversity. For ancient Greeks and Romans, a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, the Divine Comedy.
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: In Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which engender dramatic irony, which provokes laughter.
Allison Howell Williams is an American actress. Following several minor roles in television, she played Marnie Michaels in the HBO comedy-drama series Girls (2012–2017), which earned her a Critics' Choice Award nomination. After playing the titular role in Peter Pan Live! (2014), she earned several accolades for starring as Rose Armitage in the horror film Get Out (2017). She has since appeared as Kit Snicket in the series A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2019) and starred as Gemma in the horror film M3GAN (2022).
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson is an American sketch comedy series created by Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin, with Robinson also starring in most of the sketches. The first season premiered on Netflix on April 23, 2019, while the second season was released on July 6, 2021. The series was renewed for a third season in May 2022, which is scheduled to premiere on May 30, 2023.