A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor, which, in its most basic definition, is humor that makes light of otherwise solemn subject matter, or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor.
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or comedy:
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”
—Monty Python’s Flying Circus. first broadcast Sept. 22, 1970. Michael Palin, in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC TV comedy series)