From: howddgrhol@yaynnoo.com   
      
   I saw a bit of a clip of the latest Saturday Night Live Trump bit, and   
   as always it wasn't funny, and I got to wondering why impressions are   
   such a big part of comedy at all.   
      
   Kicking around the idea with a couple of people who also don't get them,   
   a couple of ideas came up, but not in a very satisfying way.   
      
   There's a transgressive quality, where you see a serious person doing   
   something ridiculous. But the problem is that the more out of character   
   they go, the less believable the impression, and it just becomes a   
   slapstick bit. Except the attempt to make a believable impression always   
   seems to dampen the ridiculousness to the point where it's not even good   
   slapstick.   
      
   There's a certain appeal to insider identity, where having the moderator   
   of a debate on screen triggers a sense of being smart or whatever. But   
   while I can see how that might work for a Star Wars movie or a literary   
   bioflick, I don't get the connection to humor.   
      
   Sometimes I can see some meta-humor coming through, where comedians are   
   mostly just mocking the idea of impressions at all. I know The Simpsons   
   has done this sometimes, for example. But that's just a tiny bit of how   
   they're used, as far as I know, and most of the comedy is just around a   
   fairly conventional impression.   
      
   What am I missing? Why are impressions so popular?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)