Persistence of Perception

“A charlatan prophet cast a client’s horoscope and told him he could never have children. 
"But I’ve already got seven!" 
"Then you’d better take good care of them!"”
Ancient Roman joke, circa 4th CE.

Good comedy does not seem to age, the jokes usually convey something about the human condition. I admit I have never seen the classic 1931 Frankenstein movie, and I have seen Young Frankenstein. The sign of a good parody is that you can laugh at it even if you have no grasp of the source material; it is funny in itself. 
Alas, allow me to demonstrate:
Frau Blücher! (Sound is required)


There were times when the genre used to spoof a target genre in general, as opposed to what runs today under the title of parody: recent blockbuster’s disjointed spoofs. Good classical comedy has characters you care about as much as you do for in an engaging drama. It’s a shame Gene Wilder never even got an Oscar-nomination for his performance in Young Frankenstein. He was brilliant. I hope comedies will manage to redeem themselves one day from the MTV-generational attention deficit syndrome.