Sick comedy
Form of comedy characterized by cynicism, social criticism, and political satire
Sick comedy was a term originally used by mainstream news weeklies Time and Life to distinguish a style of comedy/satire that was becoming popular in the United States in the late 1950s. Mainstream comic taste in the United States had favored more innocuous forms, such as the topical but (for the time) inoffensive one-liners in Bob Hope's routines. In contrast, the new comedy favored observational monologues, often with elements of cynicism, social criticism and political satire.
As a guest at the first airing of the Playboy's Penthouse show in 1959, Lenny Bruce objected to a Time article indiscriminately grouping seven new comedians, labeling them as "sick comics".
The public source identifies “Sick comedy” as form of comedy characterized by cynicism, social criticism, and political satire. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sick, comedy and Form.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q17112995. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sick comedy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.