Old Comedy vs. New Comedy

I found an excellent site that explains the differences between old and new comedy: http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/genrecm.htm

Old comedy is focused more on "slapstick action, scatological and sexual jokes and just about every other device of humor know to man", and is often used to parody "tragic" plays. Old Comedy does not typically base its story from tradition like tragedy, but is based primarily on the poet's fancy, or as the site puts it, "characterized by free comic fantasy". Political and social satire are also paradigms of Old Comedy, and can be based on "plausible solutions to contempory problems". An example would be in Lysistrata when the women come up with a plan to deny their husbands sex to stop the war. "political and intellecutal figures from contemporary Athenian scene such as Pericles, Cleon, Socrates and Euripides are [also] targets of harsh comic censure". (On a side note, according to wikipedia, Socrates didn't much care for this abuse, even going as far as blaming Aristophanes for leading to his death. Curious that Aristophanes is in the Symposium, wouldn't you say so?) Another important part of Old Comedy is the chorus, whose presense declines in New Comedy.

New Comedy "focuses on family matters such as complications in love relationships, with no interest in the concerns of the polis, which were central to Old Comedy". The site describes New Comedy as more universal, which made it easier to transfer to Rome, Italy and England, and later, to our television screens. The site declares, "Old Comedy, on the other hand, was tied to the political and social milieu of fifth century Athens and therefore could not be as easily transplanted. But the spirit of Old Comedy still survives, for example, in modern political cartoons, occasional musical comedies, and comedy skits on television which satirize political figures and current trends". So Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park would be considered a form of Old Comedy. They are satire, and focus on absurdities in our lives and the world at large. Judd Appatow style comedies, Arrested Development, Big Bang Theory, and most sitcoms are New Comedy, that is they focus on humor in relationships. It is also important to remember that comedy usually ends in celebration, weddings, feasts, dances, confetti, balloon animals, clowns, dancing kittens, hamsters on pianos, chimpanzees riding segways, and hypnotoad.