Abstract

Defining the visual gag is like defining laughter, it is impossible. And we, however, recognize one when we see it. Gags are one of the most mysterious images in our culture, one of these ideas pounding freely between fun and absurd. That's why this book doesn't talk about what a gag is, but about how it works. What is displayed here is a cartography, a map of its forms. A journey through the mechanisms and routines in hundreds of gags, from silent film to video game screens, where this visual form is shown as a powerful experimenting tool, alive and bastard, with freedom as a principle of the aesthetic conduct. The gag reinvents our reality and transforms laughter into a symptom, a way of resistance which extends beyond the category of the comical and makes (it possible to) laugh.