What purposes does comedy serve?

Comedy serves many purposes, for starters, comedy is a relief to the seriousness in life. An example is in the text "Trevor Noah live at the Apollo." Trevor talks about Apartheid, a law that made it illegal for black and white people to interact with one another and instead of him talking about it in a serious matter, he tells us a humorous story about his parents and how they didn't care whether it was illegal for them to be together. How his mom would get thrown into prison and still come back like "Woo! I don't care! I don't care! Woo! Can't tell me who to love! I want a white man!" Comedy allows us to change our attitudes towards unpleasant realities. In the passage, Trevor Noah informs us how he was born a crime, in other situations we would find this fact rather upsetting, but because of the way he added " I felt like a bag of weed." we found his story somewhat hilarious. Trevor Noah might have suffered difficulties in life, but possibly by becoming a comedian he was able to free any pains by laughing and joking around, using comedy as a defense mechanism.