Steven Kapica regards physical pain-based comedy the lowest: “Think Ow! My Balls! from Mike Judge's brilliant and prophetic Idiocracy.” Though he agrees that sarcasm is near the bottom of the barrel. “It doesn't take much skill to inflect a phrase with sarcasm in response to an authority's power move, or to use sarcasm to point out what is already obvious to everyone; the jokester who feels inclined to perform what everyone else is thinking isn't [a] comic genius.”
He gives another example from cinema: “The scene from Raising Arizona (1987) where Glen (Sam McMurray) tries to explain what a ‘way-home-er’ joke is to Nick Cage's H.I. The scene is funny because it's broadly acted (slapstick; visually funny); the scene is witty because it layers H.I.'s reaction to Glen with the film audience's reaction to Glen and H.I.'s reaction to Glen. It's meta-comedy. That's wit.”
