What's So Funny? A New Road Map to Humour in Dangerous Times

Why do we laugh— and why does it matter now more than ever? Humour has always been a tool for survival, rebellion, and understanding the absurdity of life. In What’ s So Funny?, Mira Falardeau, author of the widely acclaimed pioneering work, A History of Women Cartoonists, explores the power of humour across cultures and centuries— from ancient Greek satire to modern political cartoons. With insight and wit, she examines why we laugh, how humour challenges authority, and what makes a joke land (or fail). In an age of cancel culture and controversy, this book is a timely guide to the art of laughter.

MIRA FALARDEAU is a renowned cartoonist and academic, with her comic strips featured in magazines like Chatelaine, Perspectives, and La Vie en rose. Her work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum in Montreal and the Cartoonists Guild in New York. The author of A History of Women Cartoonists (Mosaic Press, 2020), Falardeau has taught at Laval University, the University of Ottawa, and CÉ GEP Limoilou. She lives in Quebec City.

Introduction xi Chapter 1: The Birth of Comic Language 1 The Birth of Ancient Comedy in Greece 2 The First Comic Graffiti 6 The Medieval Comic 8 The Renaissance 10 Chapter 2: Exaggeration 18 Chapter 3: Simplification 30 Chapter 4: Simplification/Exaggeration 40 Ideograms 47 Stereotypes 50 Parody and Mediatization of Humour 54 Cancel Culture and Humour 57 Chapter 5: Contrast 59 Irony or Saying the Opposite 64 Chapter 6: Inversion 68 Chapter 7: Repetition, Accumulation, Gradation 78 Accumulation 81 Gradation 84 Chapter 8: Transfers-Anthropomorphism 88 Mechanization of Movement 99 Chapter 9: Word and Image Games 103 The Pun 103 Other Word Games 105 Double Meaning 107 The Visual Pun 110 Visual Double Meaning 112 Chapter 10: Nonsense and Snapshot 114 Chapter 11: Metaphor and Metonymy 122 Visual Metaphor 126 Visual Metonymy 136 The Globalization of Humour 145 Conclusion 153 Bibliography 159 Index 165