Dale, The fact that your creativity studies seem to depend heavily on movie jokes explains a lot.
Russ, you can't simplify life and the moviegoing experience like that. The experience of all things in the world meshes with your own stored experiences and personality, and produces whatever result. People read books, and don't "see" the items described with their eyes - they see with their mind, and its memories. When you talk about the "masters", they don't have the whole of life experience within their portfolios, so you have to fill in a lot of things.
You aren't allowing people here a lot of credit, that when and if they see the Flip Wilson bit, that they can't get a lot out of it. It just takes patience and imagination. I carry my images with me on a small computer, and show some of them when it's relevant to something going on where I am at the time. I don't bore people with slideshows - I just get to the point and then drop it.
Having a video clip of a comedy bit as an illustration of something is an excellent device, as good as carrying an electronic dictionary, or a digital camera. Then again, some folks might think a digital camera is the devil's poison that killed real photography.