Does comedy have to be coupled with another genre to be good?

Someone wrote a blog entry last week that in part had to do with Knocked Up. She classified it as humor primarily, unless I missed something. I wonder though, was it primarily humor? It struck me as a dramedy, or half comedy, half drama. There's a love story in there so that's romance (a subgenre in many people's books for drama). That love story is an integral part of the movie and its plot. Is there a movie that is pure comedy that people really look at critically and say "I loved that movie"? I think it might be a requirement that comedy is coupled with another genre to create anything of substance. Some pure comedy genre movies that I'm thinking of include Monty Python, Blades of Glory, and Scary Movie type stuff. Some people might love this stuff, but it's pretty much a cult following or an "I have to be in the right mood" type of love. When was the last time a comedy or something primarily humorous was nominated for an award of substance like an Emmy or Golden Globe?
It makes humor seem meaningless unless attached to something else. Grawe talks about this same problem or presupposition. He talks about how Aristotle and other rhetoricians just wisked right by humor and comedy, not treating it seriously, denying it any enduring worth. He extends the argument saying basically, no wonder no great writers more than dabbled in it.
I guess this is a weird observation coming from Knocked Up. I mean it doesn't have all that much substance, maybe. Romance and comedy tend to have less serious consideration in the public eye in genre. Maybe the real message is just lost or the audience doesn't want to acknowledge it, make fun of it by saying that the message is become a baby daddy and then marry the mommy, yeah that's the way. How about people find love in really weird ways, but it's real. Too corny for a modern audience? Probably. Ridiculous? Maybe. But maybe not.
So back to the question: Does comedy have to be coupled with something to be at its best? I think probably, if it has a message.

The Rhetoric Part

It's been a long time since we've focused on rhetoric in this class. We hear a lot about humor, what's funny, what isn't and so on. Sometimes we talk about what works to make someone's point and what does and that is rhetoric talk. We don't say it though, the word rhetoric. The two words to some people might seem very different in terms of content and purpose at first glance. Rhetoric is very serious. Humor is light. Humor is "just for laughs" and Rhetoric is for a distinct purpose. These ideas however are just stereotypes, not fully shaped. The two, Rhetoric and Humor, fit quite well together. It seems that it is more and more important for even the speakers on the most serious topics to lighten the mood with some humor. How many of you think it would be inappropriate for a speaker on cancer or heart attacks to crack a joke before he talked about his prize winning research? Probably no one, although I remember when I was very young that my grandma used to talk about this: "When did it become o.k. for people to joke at things like this?" was what she was saying; she was a cancer survivor herself and thought it was profane, now though she's loosened a bit up, adjusted to the times.
So when did humor and rhetoric start fitting together so well? Probably always to some extent. I mean we've read A Modest Proposal, a work which was written a couple hundred years ago; this is a perfect example of humor and rhetoric. We talked extensively about if this worked however. Did his backwards argument really convince us or if it did that, was it enough to convince us to do something about it? I guess the one thing that I mentioned above about speeches needing humor is quite different from this. The humor is just a sidebar. It serves a different purpose. It's entertainment in the midst of serious stuff; it's not integral material to the speech itself. It is not to convince. I think these differences are also the differences between today and then. We still have Modest Proposal-esque arguments, but the sidebar stuff is sort of new. I'm sure that in earlier years when people gave speeches, it was straight up; it was serious throughout.

Bill Bur and Standards

One person in our class wrote a blog entry on Bill Burr and the gender standards that our society enforces. For instance, men cannot hit women, but women can hit men. Apparently we can get away with property destruction too. The gap is even larger with foreign students I think. It's really nice in a way, but it's also really funny. I don't care if any of the "traditions" stick and hence I mean to make fun of them, but I don't want any one to think I'm making fun of what are just viewed as nice things guys do for girls. If intentions are in the right place, it's cool. No harm, no foul. It doesn't mean that some of the situations aren't funny though because the motions are becoming archaic in our society.
For instance, I think I could hold open a door all day for one of my European or Asian male friends and they would stand outside all day long if I didn't go in first. And vice versa: they won't go in when they're holding the door until I do. As a matter of fact I've had an entire mob of European guys just halt behind me like I was an army captain or something when I stopped to get some gum from my pocket before I went in the door to the gym.
I also mentioned playing soccer in my comments to the previous person who wrote on this subject. You would swear they killed your dog by how profusely they apologize after they barely graze your leg trying to get the ball in a game.
Then there are somethings that are downright annoying, not nice yet archaic traditions like, "Wow, she's good for a girl." Do we really need the prepositional phrase on the end?

p.s. Wear gym shorts constantly and call them dude on occassion. It'll freak them out. Then go find a nice phonebooth (like the one in Brown's poetry this week) and laugh.