ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of motion pictures, comedies have commonly found vast resonance with mass audiences, often outperforming their more celebrated and spectacular counterparts at the box office. The ancient Greeks believed that laughter is the breath that animates the soul. Aristotle claimed that it was on a baby's fortieth day of existence that the miracle of laughter transformed this creature from a human into a human being. Comedy shows us another way of looking at what we think we already know, which is precisely why it lends itself so well to political discourse. Politics is the art of ideological alignment, and comedy is one of its most valuable instruments of persuasion. After World War II, the US government propagated the belief that America was the fulfillment of the world's aspiration for the 'Nation of Nations' by constructing the threat to the attainment of that ideal in the image of the Soviet Empire.
