Comedy P.O.V.

In Dean's Step By Step to Stand Up Comedy, he talks about the comedian embodying three differing points of view. There is:
1) Narrator POV- how you perceive things as a nonparticipant or observer
2) Self POV- how you perceive things as a participant
3) Character POV- how you perceive things as someone or something else

In a stand up routine (which is what we are using as an example for our own philosophical routine) the three different POVs play out like so:

NPOV [Narrator POV]: the comedian is never directly involved in the experience the joke is about, but observes, reports, talks about, or … narrates it.

CPOV [Character POV]: anyone or anything the comedian can act out as a character. This includes people, impersonations, animals, objects, and concepts such as emotions.

Observation comedians operate exclusively from NPOV; character oriented comedians submerge themselves in a vast array of CPOVs. Most comics employ some form of all three of the basic POVs.

While our aim is not specifically to make people laugh, somehow to me that just seems unavoidable. I think people should laugh when they're learning about philosophy....kind of like how I laugh in Greg Ulmer's class while learning about philosophy. You can use comedy to turn something difficult or hard into something hilarious...kind of like Dave Chappelle's experience in the ghetto.