Humor is “the best guide to changing perceptions,” writes Marshall McLuhan. Because “older societies thrived on purely literary plots” and “demanded storylines” to channel sophomoric energy, they employed elaborate farce in poems, plays, operas, and later books and films. But formed by modern communications technology, a wilder sense of levity wandered home, from Vaudeville acts, gag-heavy serials, the Looney Tunes, to Mad magazine. “Today’s humor,” McLuhan adds, “has no storyline—no sequence,” being “usually a compressed overlay of stories.”
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