Hello!
tl;dr
It seems prudent to add a genre for Stand-up Comedy. Thoughts?
Long version:
I'm coming from about 17 years of Wikipedia editing but I only have ~150 edits on this project. Please do feel free to correct and educate me. I welcome it.
For some time, I've been surprised that there isn't a Stand-Up Comedy genre. I did some searching on the forum (native search and through Google). I can't find a discussion as to why it doesn't exist. I apologize if I've missed a previous discussion or rule.
They're obviously Comedy, and I know many people consider them Documentaries, but it feels like it's own genre. A Comedy film typically has a narrative that it moves through like almost all films. Documentaries are typically are used to relay information about a topic, and while they sometimes have theatrical reenactments, I wouldn't call them a performance.
Stand-Up is certainly a subgenre of Comedy but the same goes for Romance, Western, and Crime being subgenres.
Thoughts on the addition? Is it a can of worms?
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Reply by softpillow
on January 10, 2025 at 2:21 PM
I think standup comedy has been mentioned before in the bigger thread about genres: https://www.themoviedb.org/talk/51b5fe1a760ee359996a0e62?page=1 (feel free to read it since I havent read everything on there so maybe theres a discussion about stand up there that I havent read)
There are more obvious changes that shouldve already happened to genres like adding Horror and Romance as TV genres and its been a while. So if those changes havent happened I dont expect to see other changes to genres happening soon (although you never know I guess).
What did you mean by this?
I personally think theres no need for a Stand-Up genre. I think the keyword existing is good enough: https://www.themoviedb.org/keyword/9716/movie.
I think it is a specific sub genre of Comedy (and that genres should just cover the major genres- not the sub genres). I dont see Crime, Western and Romance as subgenres the way stand-up is a sub genre of Comedy. Although I do get your point that a genre like Comedy you would think should be about a Narrative (fictional? with characters and plot) just like Drama or Romance is as well and that obviously stand-up content is not narrative. Theyre definitely not documentaries imo I dont really think anyone thinks that (or at least I dont see anyone setting the genres of stand up movies on this site as Documentary or anyone arguing they should be).
(For now, stand-up content is in the Comedy genre)
Reply by bradbeattie
on June 28, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Probably worth noting that the keyword "stand-up comedy" looks to be in the process of being purged (e.g. https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/57573-craig-ferguson-does-this-need-to-be-said/changes, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1195480-pete-holmes-i-am-not-for-everyone/changes, etc). Is there somewhere we can look to see the discussion around why the TMDB-Bot has been instructed to do something?