By Veer Sharma ‘Comedy’ in the modern sense is difficult to pin down, but has usually been reduced to that which causes a specific physical response. In the same vein as horror (fear), romantic melodrama (tears) and pornography (sexual arousal), it has its own generic sine qua non: laughter. Critics will regularly laud comedies as ‘side-splitting’ because surely the physical response is the clearest and most accurate example of the success of a self-identified humorous film?