Comedy on Stage and Screen An Introduction Wieland Schwanebeck Wieland Schwanebeck is a researcher in literary/ cultural studies. His interests include impostors, twins, James Bond, and comedy. Wieland Schwanebeck Comedy on Stage and Screen An Introduction DOI: https: / / doi.org/ 10.24053/ 9783823395331 © 2022 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetztes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikro‐ verfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Alle Informationen in diesem Buch wurden mit großer Sorgfalt erstellt. Fehler können dennoch nicht völlig ausgeschlossen werden. 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Internet: www.narr.de eMail: info@narr.de CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 2627-0323 ISBN 978-3-8233-8533-2 (Print) ISBN 978-3-8233-9533-1 (ePDF) ISBN 978-3-8233-0381-7 (ePub) Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. www.fsc.org MIX Papier aus verantwortungsvollen Quellen FSC ® C083411 ® www.fsc.org MIX Papier aus verantwortungsvollen Quellen FSC ® C083411 ® 9 11 11 14 15 19 19 19 20 25 33 33 33 36 39 42 47 47 47 48 51 56 62 67 67 67 70 71 73 Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction: Tragedy tomorrow - Comedy tonight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Losing the plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Before we start … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Our comic forefathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Let there be laughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Old Comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What have the Romans ever done for us? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why so serious? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tragedy plus what? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blame it on Aristotle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Not tragedy, but not not tragedy either . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tragicomedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . So Shakespearean, so romantic! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The apprentice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setting the scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shakespeare’s patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Into the Green World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fool’s licence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Life as a carnival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bakhtin’s take on carnival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No comedy without carnival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross-dressing (I): Shakespeare’s transgressive heroines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross-dressing (II): A man is still a man, right? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 79 79 80 86 91 91 91 93 97 101 105 105 105 107 110 112 114 116 119 119 119 122 127 133 133 133 137 142 147 147 149 152 158 160 163 Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The raunchy Restoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A night out at the rumour-mill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rakes and cuckolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The taming of the rover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The funny type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A new brand of satire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dandies of the stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Old situations, new complications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But this is absurd! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philosophy of the absurd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sisyphus labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Existentialism on stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comedy and the absurd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harold Pinter’s comedies of menace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Popular culture and the absurd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And now for something completely grotesque! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The body and the grotesque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It’s … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The grotesque on stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The more, the merrier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The community of laughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ealing spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The working-class comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What a farce! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Farce has an image problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the bedroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The mechanics of farce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Highbrow farce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dark farce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Contents 167 167 167 170 173 179 179 179 182 188 193 193 193 195 198 199 205 1. 205 1.1 205 1.2 207 1.3 210 2. 211 222 225 Chapter 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stop making sense! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A short stopover in Wonderland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction to Marxism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A topsy-turvy world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . So funny it hurts! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meet the Brentmeister General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Towards the age of awkwardness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cathartic cringe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lessons from Medusa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Not just a man’s world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What makes her laugh? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unruly women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two can play at that game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Works cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Primary texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plays, prose, recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Television shows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Contents “If anyone wants to stand up and stretch his legs, now is the time to do it. The next item on the programme is a long one.” (Plautus: Prologue to Pseudolus) A: “Who are you, and how did you get in here? ” B: “I’m a locksmith. And I’m a locksmith.” (Police Squad! ) Acknowledgements I am indebted to many colleagues and friends with whom I have had the pleasure of collaborating on comedy-related projects and talks over the past few years. The list includes my Ph.D. supervisor, Stefan Horlacher; Nele Sawallisch, with whom I co-organised a DFG-sponsored digital conference on Funny Women (2021); and Stefanie Schäfer, with whom I hosted a panel on Funny Men at the Anglistentag in Leipzig (2019). The book has also profited from many conversations I have had with friends over the years, about the merits of Love Actually and a few other things. I am grateful to everyone who has kindly put up with my whims and the occasional vile pun, and I hope they all recognise the extent of their contributions. My love of comedy affected my teaching far earlier than it did my research, and I am grateful to all the students who have taken part in my classes on British comedy, farce, Shakespearean drama, and cringe humour. Quite a few of them also had to endure a painfully unfunny yet all the more memorable staging of one of the funniest plays of all time, Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. I remember particularly fondly one seminar in 2020, which coincided with the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and which served to remind us that laughter does have a cathartic dimension. Speaking of the pandemic: One chapter in this book was written while I was at home with a bout of COVID-19 myself. So whichever chapter in this book you feel is the worst - this is probably the one. I am very much indebted to Kathrin Heyng (Narr) and especially to Laura Park, who patiently read the manuscript and helped me to improve it; she also writes better jokes in her commentaries than a lot of professional playwrights manage in their plays. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of my son. Our repeat viewings of silent-film classics did in no small part contribute to keeping us sane throughout the pandemic. I envy his confidence when it comes to ranking funny people. Primary and secondary sources will be cited using the ‘author year’ convention, with the exception of a few classic plays, which I cite using act/ scene/ line numbers. References to television shows come with a short reference to the respective series/ episode number. The Works Cited list at the end of this book does not list every play, film, or television show that is mentioned throughout this book, but those that are actually quoted and/ or discussed in more detail. Chapter 1 Introduction: Tragedy tomorrow - Comedy tonight Stephen Sondheim’s stellar musical comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), is set in ancient Rome, and it starts with an introduction sung by the slave Pseudolus. He welcomes the audience with a song that sets the tone for the evening’s entertainment and also summarises the genre of the comedy. “Tragedy tomorrow - Comedy tonight” contains the following lines: Something familiar, Something peculiar, Something for everyone, A comedy tonight! Nothing with kings, Nothing with crowns, Bring on the lovers, Liars and clowns. Nothing with gods, Nothing with fate, Weighty affairs will just Have to wait. Old situations, New complications, Nothing portentous or polite, Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight. The song lists various distinguishing features of the genre, in a rather understated fashion. If the audience cannot expect anything that is wildly original (“something familiar”, “old situations”), nor anything too substantial (“weighty affairs will just have to wait”), what do they get out of it? Well, for starters, some degree of relief and a welcome distraction from life’s more pressing questions and from the strain of tragedy, with its “kings”, “gods” and “fate”. There is always time for that tomorrow, because with comedy, we are firmly in the here and now. This book will explore several of Sondheim’s claims in more detail. We will explore comedy’s complicated relationship with tragedy, some of its most familiar modes and subgenres, and the many ways in which it ditches politeness in favour of the uninhibited and the outrageous, with the aim to be, well, funny. “What normally happens [in comedy] is that a young man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist in the plot enables the hero to have his will.” (Frye 1990, 163) To come to terms with our comic present, we have to acknowledge our comic ancestors. In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sondheim recycles many tropes and characters that had been around since the ancients but which still work very well in contemporary musical comedies or sitcoms. This underlines that comedy has, in many ways, remained remarkably stable over the centuries. We will have to look into those well-rehearsed patterns, those old situations that comedy forever recycles and updates, not to mention the beloved roster of familiar character types, those “lovers, liars, and clowns”, that continue to make us laugh. One of those patterns that many people will know about is the rule-of-three, which is often taken as gospel in comedy. One of the most popular joke templates (“A rabbi, a priest, and an imam walk into a bar …”) consists of an idea presented (#1), a pattern established (#2) and then immediately subverted to create the punchline (#3). I will honour the rule-of-three throughout this book by including little boxes here and there that offer you three select quotes or examples of a particular phenomenon. We may as well start with three brief definitions of comedy from different authorities in the field: THREE SHORT DEFINITIONS OF COMEDY ● “a movement towards harmony, reconciliation, happiness” (Nelson 1990, 2) ● “a genre, a recognizable type or category of artistic creation with character‐ istic features” (Weitz 2009, 2) ● “comedy can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet” (Bevis 2013, 1) These brief definitions highlight different aspects of comedy, but they all boil down to structural arguments. They envision comedy on the basis of patterns with recurring features: a degree of confusion, the struggle to resolve this confusion, and a happy outcome. This indicates the topsy-turvy pattern of carnival that we will discuss in more detail in Chapter 5, and those familiar plot patterns that hinge on “a nightmarish tangle” of confusion (Booker 2004, 150). Some of the most widespread comic master-plots are summarised in the following table. Not all of them are unique to the genre of comedy, but their usage in comedy differs from their usage within other genre traditions (e.g. the comic revenge story goes for a different outcome than the rape-revenge story in horror). PLOT TYPE WHAT IS IT ABOUT? AS SEEN IN David vs. Goliath A likeable underdog challenges an over‐ whelming adversary and wins the day, by resorting to wit rather than strength. Lysistrata (411 B.C.) Easy Street (1917) fish out of water The hero is stranded in an unfamiliar en‐ vironment, learns to adjust, and conquers their new surroundings. I Know Where I’m Going (1945) Beverly Hills Cop (1984) 12 Chapter 1 PLOT TYPE WHAT IS IT ABOUT? AS SEEN IN marriage plot A story of romance, where foes turn into lovers. Alternatively, a married couple breaks up and makes up again. Much Ado about Nothing (1599) anything from the 1990s star‐ ring Meg Ryan mistaken identity The hero must don a masquerade and lead a schizophrenic existence, until ev‐ erything can be cleared up and the char‐ ade is over. As You Like It (1599) Some Like It Hot (1959) quest The hero goes on a journey to obtain a goal or to reach a destination, overcom‐ ing various obstacles along the way. The Twelve Chairs (1970) Back to the Future (1985) rags to riches An ‘ugly duckling’ is made over into the ‘belle of the ball’ to climb the social ladder. But it’s all about inner values, you know. Pygmalion (1913) Pretty Woman (1990) revenge Some petty rivalry erupts into an open conflict, with every party intent on set‐ tling the score. The foes may or may not make up. Big Business (1929) Grumpy Old Men (1993) Scrooge plot A misanthrope becomes a better person. The audience will secretly resent this, as misanthropy is more fun to watch. Groundhog Day (1993) As Good as It Gets (1997) It does not hurt to be familiar with some of these patterns, but the plot is by no means all there is to comedy. None of the short definitions presented above stress the importance of laughter, even though most people would instinctively identify laughter as an indispensable feature of comedy. A definition that tries to bring both aspects together must inevitably conflate the aesthetic level with the dimension of affect (see Neale/ Krutnik 1990, 17), but this is necessary to properly identify what makes comedy special. This means that what we call comedy may refer to at least three different things: 1. a genre that encompasses subgenres like farce or the romantic comedy (“I watched a great comedy at the theatre last night.”); 2. an umbrella term for different comic modes like slapstick or parody (“The perform‐ ers really knew how to do comedy! ”); 3. and also a general term for comic effects that make us laugh (“You should have seen how he bumped his head, it was comedy gold! ”). Throughout this book, I shall not pretend that those three phenomena can always be neatly separated from one another - and I will also be looking into those components that many people instinctively acknowledge to be important parts of comedy: comic techniques, motifs, and character types, not to mention a number of ground-breaking comic writers and performers. 13 Introduction: Tragedy tomorrow - Comedy tonight Losing the plot Most comedy introductions are a little plot-heavy for my taste, or let me rephrase this: they over-emphasise plot at the expense of gags and comic techniques. Plot is integral to comedy, but I am not entirely sure it is the main reason for people to tune in. Let us start in a different place here, with the strongest currency known in the world of comedy: the gag. The gag is the smallest unit of comedy and, arguably, comedy’s main raison d’être. Plot theorists will sometimes complain that gags have a tendency to interrupt the narrative flow (see Crafton 2006, 355), and they will characterise them as show-stoppers, similar to the song-and-dance numbers in a musical, or the sex scenes in a porn movie. This approach may be structurally sound but it is perfectly useless at the same time; these sequences are the very reason that audiences choose these films. Viewers are unlikely to complain that the gags were not integral to the story, as long as they made them laugh. Gags can range from visual jokes (sight gags, slapstick numbers) to verbal punchlines (one-liners, witticisms, banter); either way, they are “self-sustained routines committed to entertainment, with no obligation to context” (Wasson 2009, 12). This indicates the gag’s origins on stage, as part of the clowning tradition in the Italian commedia dell’arte of the 16 th century: small routines that were used to fill the time between different segments in the programme (see Born 2020, 565-566). Gags may go out of fashion, but there is always a chance that a classic one will come alive again for another generation of spectators. The pratfall will never not be funny, no matter if it is performed by circus clowns or the professional stunt performers on Jackass (2000-2022). The gag is so integral to comedy that we cannot simply take it out of the equation to focus on plot patterns or to make an argument on how repressed people are when they tell a smutty joke. The gag is arguably at least as crucial to comedy’s popularity as a well-organised plot or the happy ending. Is anyone really that much invested in the number of marriages that happen in Shakespeare or in the question of who exactly ends up with the diamonds in A Fish Called Wanda (1988)? Of course not. We are mainly there for the laughs, often at our own peril. A doctor in Denmark famously laughed himself to death while watching A Fish Called Wanda (see King 2018). Would anyone dare to debate the greatness of Buster Keaton’s The Goat (1921), one of the funniest films of all time, just because it does not have a proper plot to speak of ? In The Goat, Buster goes on the run from the police when his photograph accidentally ends up on the ‘wanted’ poster of an escaped convict, and he woos the daughter of the local chief of police. It is clear that the film simply ties a bunch of inspired set-pieces together, which means that the storyline zigzags from one chase segment to the next. But who needs a compelling plot in the presence of all the terrific gags that Keaton performs along the way, including an elevator chase for the ages? 14 Chapter 1 At the same time, the gag does have narrative value, and the plot itself can always be undercut with gags. Many classic episodes of The Simpsons (1989-) will veer into a number of different directions throughout the first few minutes to blindside the audience. “Bart the Fink” (S7E15) starts with the Simpsons learning about the death of a relative, whose money they will only inherit if they spend the night in a haunted mansion. So it is a ghost story? Well, no, because the episode simply cuts to the family rising again the next morning, following a good night’s sleep in the spooky-looking house (misdirect #1). Everyone has thus earned a portion of the inheritance, including the children. So is the episode about irresponsible Bart squandering his money? Again, the answer is no (misdirect #2). Bart uses his new chequebook to get an autograph from Krusty the Clown, which inadvertently leads to Krusty’s exposure as a tax fraud and thus kick-starts the episode’s actual plot. So while they may be unfairly maligned as extraneous material that disrupts the story’s momentum, gags can accomplish different things. They may serve as a means of characterisation, or they may embellish the film’s main themes. Both are true of the comic universe of Jacques Tati (1907-1982), whose carefully observed, largely silent comedies contain gentle caricatures of modern civilisation. The humour is often based in the characters and their various eccentricities. Tati’s films consist of little comic vignettes that suggest a story with remarkable narrative economy, even though they do not exactly advance a plot. Just think of the hilarious blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sight gag that occurs in the dining-room scene in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, 1953): The head waiter, seen in the foreground, cuts the meat as the dinner guests enter the frame from the right; he subtly adjusts the size of his cuts depending on the size of the person who enters the room. Fig. 1.1: The sight gag as character work (Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, 1953). Before we start … You will quickly realise that this book does not follow a strict chronology, or only to a point. We will start with the origins of comedy in the ancient period (Chapter 2), then work our way towards the present day via stop-overs in the world of Shakespeare (Chapter 4), the Restoration (Chapter 6), or existentialism (Chapter 8). At the same time, I will be cutting back and forth between different periods to explain that our idea of comedy is still very much informed by historic precedents. Inevitably, this approach must bring together some strange bed-fellows, including Aristophanes and the Looney 15 Introduction: Tragedy tomorrow - Comedy tonight Tunes (Chapter 2), Aphra Behn and Eddie Murphy (Chapter 6), Alice in Wonderland and The Naked Gun (Chapter 12). Rest assured that this is all in your own interest, and in a way, it liberates you from the need of having to read this book cover-to-cover. Feel free to use the table of contents or the index to trace specific phenomena like the fool or visual humour, to find out what else they are related to. This also means that I do not always introduce comic terms and concepts in the context of where they pop up for the first time in history. The fact that I am discussing the pun in the chapter on 19 th and 20 th -century nonsense, for example, does not mean that puns did not exist prior to this period; it simply means that they are particularly integral to it. I will offer as many examples and visual aids as possible, to illustrate gags and comic techniques. You will quickly realise that I am playing favourites. My examples do not constitute a canon of any sorts, they simply reflect personal tastes. The selection brings together many acknowledged classics that have endured for one simple reason: they are hilarious. To paraphrase a line from Groucho Marx (1890-1977): These are my examples, and if you do not like them, I have others. Besides not formulating a canon, this book will also not offer apodictic rules on what makes ‘good’ comedy, nor will it try to explain why something is funny. We should not forget that comedy has always known how to poke fun at narrow-minded attempts to delineate the field and to define funniness. Rule-books written by comedians themselves should be taken with a grain of salt; when great comic minds formulate their personal lists of dos and don’ts, tongues tend to be firmly in cheek. Billy Wilder (1906-2002) believed in ten iron rules as a screenwriter and director, the first nine of which are, “thou shalt not bore” (qtd. in Karasek 1992, 147). David Zucker (1947-), the director of the first two Naked Gun movies, formulates 15 rules of comedy, the last of which simply says, “no rules” (see Wahl 2017). Besides comic modes and techniques, this book will also look into various theoret‐ ical approaches to comedy and laughter, as well as a number of critical debates that have popped up over the years. The list includes cringe humour (Chapter 13) and the recent debate about funny women (Chapter 14). I should point out, though, that I resent the underlying implication in such discussions: that an academic degree is required to ‘properly’ appreciate comedy. It is, after all, “something for everyone”, to use Sondheim’s words. Moreover, comedy does not need to be validated by critical discussion as though it only deserves to be taken seriously when it is more than ‘just’ comedy. Highbrow critics tend to feel embarrassed when their gut reaction is ahead of their intellect, so they are more likely to laugh at a witty remark once they have received clearance from their super-ego. I cherish a line from Stephen Fry (1957-), who once reviewed a book on the history of British satirical magazine Private Eye. In response to the author’s claim that the readers appreciate how Private Eye “strays over the border of what is permissible and tasteful”, Fry has one thing to say: “Drivel. They read it for one reason and one reason only: because it is funny. When it stops being funny they will stop reading it.” (Fry 2004, 133) 16 Chapter 1 THREE THOROUGH TAKES ON THE DEEPER MEANING OF COMEDY Lewis Carroll, when asked by children about the meaning of his poem The Hunting of the Snark (1876): “I’m very much afraid I didn’t mean anything but nonsense.” (qtd. in Ede 1987, 48) George Seaton, when asked about the underlying agenda of the hit comedies he wrote throughout the 1930s and 1940s: “This whole business of social significance is nonsense.” (qtd. in Adamson, 1973, 210) Mel Brooks, when asked about the point of the farting scene in Blazing Saddles: “The farts were the point of the farting scene.” (qtd. in Smurthwaite/ Gelder 1982, 32) I am all too aware that probing jokes in too much detail may kill them, and thanks to a 1991 episode of the Tiny Toon Adventures (S2E9), we know what happens to jokes that have been killed. They are buried at the joke cemetery, where they wait to be resurrected. I hope that I will not become guilty of too many such crimes against comedy throughout these pages. When I cite examples, it is not my aim to take all the fun out of them, but to highlight the comic traditions they are embedded in and to explain different comic techniques and concepts. Other than that, all you need to know ‘going in’ is that unlike comedy, which habitually thinks outside the box, I have done my best to put as many phenomena inside the box when writing this book. You will find various types of info-boxes scattered throughout these pages, whenever an additional quote or a quick explanation of a particular phenomenon or theoretical debate is required. Some of them are dedicated to the three major theories of laughter, the superiority theory (Chapter 2), the incongruity theory (Chapter 8), and the release theory (Chapter 11). It is worth stressing, though, that the three of them should not be considered mutually exclusive; they simply meet different needs. Take the iconic scene from Fawlty Towers (1975-1979) in which a desperate Basil Fawlty beats up his broken-down car with a tree branch. Clearly, the comic effect of this scene cannot be explained solely through one of the three theories. The scene is full of incongruity (modern man being stripped off all his dignity; the inappropriateness of the response), but it also establishes a position of superiority (we laugh at Basil Fawlty and his continued misfortune), and it allows the viewer to release psychological tension by proxy, via Fawlty’s ham-fisted attempt to let off steam. Such mixed emotions can be attributed to most comic set-pieces, and this is as true of the contemporary sitcom as it is of the ancient world, which is where we will start our journey through the world of comedy. 17 Introduction: Tragedy tomorrow - Comedy tonight ● The genre of comedy has been around for a long time, and has remained re‐ markably stable. ● There are numerous well-known comic master-plots, but plot may have been overemphasised in theoretical discussions of comedy. ● The gag is at least as integral to the nature of comedy. ● Not all definitions of comedy highlight the importance of laughter. ● There are three major theories of what makes people laugh: the superiority theory, the incongruity theory, and the release theory. FURTHER READING : Bevis, Matthew (2013). Comedy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP. Romanska, Magda/ Alan Ackerman (eds., 2017). Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory & Criticism. London: Bloomsbury. Weitz, Eric (2009). The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy. Cambridge: CUP. 18 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Our comic forefathers Let there be laughter Though it is hard to pinpoint the origins of comedy, scholars agree on a formative myth of sorts. The theatrical experience itself is said to have started with dithyrambs, the choric songs performed during the annual festivities in Ancient Greece (see Baumbach/ Nünning 2012, 22-23). They were part of elaborate processions involving music and dance, in honour of Dionysus, the god associated with wine, fertility, masquerade, and various forms of ecstasy (from Greek ek-stasis: to be outside yourself). The chorus performances gradually evolved into a more elaborate form consisting of a back-and-forth between a soloist and the chorus, and later several soloists who adapted roles to act out a story. This later manifested itself into the well-known pattern of Greek tragedy, which is interspersed with chorus parts, and which became the central focus of the Dionysia. Plays were performed over the course of three days as part of a competition, with a winner chosen at the end. Comedy is said to have evolved in reaction to the very high-minded official proceed‐ ings: as a way of mocking the sombre rites, led by drunken revellers who resorted to obscene chants in light-hearted protest against three days of standardised protocol. The term ‘comedy’ is derived from kōmos (‘to revel’) and aoidos (‘the singer’). While the mocking of officialdom may be seen as an outright provocation, it did not completely contradict the festive spirit. The Dionysus festivities celebrated fertility and were thus very much a phallic ritual, invested in the idea of renewal: “the expulsion of death, the induction of life” (Cornford 1914, 53). This foundation myth sits well with anthropological accounts of laughter and comedy that we will discuss in more detail in Chapter 5, as this is, in essence, the carnivalesque pattern: a folkloristic and down-to-earth reaction to ritualised officialdom. The story also attributes a parasitical nature to comedy that is most evident in parody (see Chapter 12), in that comedy is seen as a mere negation of something serious, like tragedy. The genre has had difficulties shaking off this reputation as a secondary phenomenon, and is often not taken seriously in its own right. Like tragedy, the comic ritual took several decades to become manifest in a distinct generic pattern, and another few decades until it became part of the annual proceedings. Eventually, the drama competition was no longer limited to tragedies, satyr plays, and burlesques. When comedy was accepted as part of the competition, it quickly became an audience favourite. Aristophanes (c. 446-386 B.C.) would reference the ritualised occasion in his plays, and he was not above using bawdy material to win over the audience. Today, the ancient world’s most influential manifestations of comedy are known as Old and New Comedy. The former belongs to the Greek tradition and is more or less synonymous with Aristophanes, while the latter is dominated by the theatre of ancient Rome. THREE MAJOR EVOLUTIONARY STEPS IN THE HISTORY OF COMEDY (BOOKER 2004) Old Comedy establishes a rough plot pattern of equilibrium - complication - resolution. New Comedy favours the love story, with the most popular template revolving around lovers who must overcome resistance to their union and clear up some confusion. Later, William Shakespeare builds on the ancient templates to arrive at more complex plots and variations, including unrequited love or love triangles. Old Comedy What we call Old Comedy is more or less synonymous with the plays of Aristophanes, who wrote eleven of the twelve surviving comedies from ancient Greece. He contrib‐ uted regularly to the annual drama competition, a fact that can also be inferred from his play-texts. His signature wit betrays a competitive mind that did not shy away from denigrating his rivals. In his plays, Aristophanes accuses his colleagues of stealing from him, he pokes fun at them, and goes so far as to conclude Act One of The Clouds (423 B.C.) with some gentle threats to the jury should they not give him the first prize. His put-downs are not limited to his fellow authors, though. The Clouds is a satire on contemporary philosophers, most of whom Aristophanes mocks as bullshit artists who have no idea what is going on in the real world. To make sense of Old Comedy’s distinct brand of humour, it is quite important to consider the historical context. Imagine these plays performed during the annual festivities, in front of about 10,000 men as part of an arena spectacle. Such a setting will not encourage an author to go for subtle wit and a ‘less is more’ approach. Quite the contrary, Aristophanes often opts for crude and very blunt solutions to please an audience consisting of inebriated festivalgoers and tourists. The setting resembles that of modern-day poetry slams or hip-hop battles, where it is often the unabashed loud-mouth who is most likely to leave an impression with the audience, particularly if the performer is willing to chew the scenery and to interact with the viewers. 20 Chapter 2 Fig. 2.1: The coyote loses yet an‐ other battle with gravity (Chariots of Fur, 1994). CHORUS . My Comedy’s a modest girl: she doesn’t play the fool By bringing on a great thick floppy red-tipped leather tool To give the kids a laugh, or making fun of men who’re bald […]. No torches, shouts, or violence, or other weak distraction: She comes before you trusting in her words and in her action. And I am not a long-haired fop, nor yet a smooth-faced cheat Who pretends that something’s new when it is really a repeat. (Aristophanes: The Clouds, 1.537-546) Accordingly, the humour is far from subtle. Old Comedy does not shy away from grotesque, larger-than-life effects in all departments. Close-fitting body suits are as common as leather phalluses and lewd punchlines. The fun is not in looking for elaborate plots or endlessly inventive story ideas. It is a far more monological form of comedy with only a few soloists in the main roles, and the setup is similarly sparse. A few doors will be enough to suggest the scenery and to allow for exits and entrances. The plot is merely an excuse for the author to include as many jokes and inventive put-downs as possible. Typically, Old Comedy involves one character who is presented with a problem, and who must come up with ideas to solve it. Elder Olson calls Aristophanes’s plays “cartoons in dramatic action” (1968, 69), and he has a point. The dramatic arc favours stubborn linearity - there is one objective that must be achieved, and each scene sees another little scheme tested and abandoned. We can draw a line from Aristophanes’s method to Wile E. Coyote’s failed attempts to catch the Roadrunner in the classic Looney Tunes shorts. The audience is not in‐ vested in the dramatic goal, as it is all too clear that Wile E. Coyote will once again go over the cliff. What they are interested in is the sequence of events that will lead to this inevitable outcome. To mistake this for a proper dramatic arc, you would have to be pretty unfamiliar with the laws of story-telling, like ALF, former resident of the planet Melmac, who gets cartoons mixed up with soap operas: “On Friday, the coyote fell off of an 80-foot cliff. I better see if he survived.” (ALF S2E16) Instead of wondering about the outcome, the audience are free to enjoy the exact how of the failure, the pratfalls and detonations. Some critics dismiss Aristophanes because he simply wrote ahead, without worrying too much about how the jokes would eventually hang together, but you might as well criticise Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957) for never allowing their characters to evolve as human beings. 21 Our comic forefathers What remains impressively modern about Aristophanes’s plays is their diverse repertoire of comic routines and the cheekiness of his jokes. The plays are full of satirical interludes and songs, they provide room for slapstick clowning and parabasis: little digressions akin to stand-up routines, where the character pauses the plot to deliver lengthy asides to the audience, to act as a surrogate for the playwright to insult the competition, or to have a go at contemporary politicians. These bits will seem inevitably dated to modern spectators, so that the actors will update these references with more topical material in modern productions. But this does not mean that the texts themselves are out of date. The comedies of Aristophanes are rather timeless and as likely to please (or offend) audiences today as they were more than two millennia ago. Old Comedy is unabashedly scatological and bawdy, as references to bodily functions abound. A discussion about wind and weather in The Clouds will inevitably give way to fart jokes. Conservative audiences who frown upon raunchy comedies for revelling too much in bodily fluids conveniently forget that this kind of material was part of comedy from the very beginning. Not just as a celebration of fertility and the life-cycle, but also as an important reminder that tragedy’s high-minded soliloquising and spiritual torture are not all there is to the human condition. The tragic actor sets his sight on the heavens and the afterlife, but the comedian always remains down-to-earth. Gravity will remind him of the earth’s powerful pull (particularly during the inevitable fall), and there are other ways of making sure the character remains grounded: insults, shame, and humiliation. Comedy revolves around that which is unfairly labelled as ‘lowly’, and it would be short-sighted to dismiss this historical nexus as a mere product of ‘bad taste’. Bawdy humour is the overall term for risqué material involving sexual innuendo and the realm of genitalia. Bawdy humour can be traced back to the very beginnings of comedy. In his seminal work on The Origin of Attic Comedy (1914), Francis Macdonald Cornford explains that the presence of the phallus on stage served as “a negative charm against evil spirits” as much as “a positive agent of fertilisation” (1914, 49-50). Obscenities and sexual rhetoric are direct descendants of Old Comedy’s phallic tropes, which must be seen in the context of this ritualistic background. Our discussion of romantic comedy (see Chapter 4) will explain how comedy is still very much invested in this celebration of life-force and procreation. Henri Bergson traces this idea in his evolutionary idea of the élan vital, the ‘vital impetus’ (see Bergson 1907/ 2014). Comedy was always a manifestation of a festive spirit that allowed for a temporary inversion of social order - a pattern that I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 5. This involves the ‘safety valve’ argument of carnival, according to which the rigid hierarchies of our everyday lives need to be loosened from time to time so that people 22 Chapter 2 can let off steam, as well as a seasonal pattern of rejuvenation: out with the old, in with the new. This involves a big emphasis on sexuality, procreation, and the living, breathing, sweating, and farting (corpo-)reality of what it means to be human. Arguably, bawdy jokes are not a modern-day sign of moral deterioration; they have their basis in ancient ceremony and beliefs. When the underlying ritual belief-system receded into the background, we were still left to hold the phallus, i.e. the ‘dick joke’ proved hard to eradicate. Comedy, then, is a secularized version of a ritual that was so entertaining that it could not be allowed to die out. […] [Comedy] is an authentic, continuous expression of the communal identity as it encounters the life force. (Stott 2005, 26-27) The best example is Lysistrata (c. 411 B.C.), probably the most well-known play of Aristophanes. It was written during one of the bleakest periods in the history of Athens, as the Greek army was at peril in Sicily, and the country had been at war for so long that the population had begun to wonder whether there would ever be peace again. Lysistrata, the wife of one of Athen’s soldiers, comes up with a radical scheme to end the war. She proposes that all the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands until a peace settlement is reached. She talks the others into acting seductively towards their husbands to arouse them, only to frustrate their desires to save the nation. LYSISTRATA. Well, just imagine: we’re at home, beautifully made up, wearing our sheerest lawn negligees and nothing underneath, and with our - our triangles carefully plucked; and the men are all like ramrods and can’t wait to leap into bed, and then we absolutely refuse - that’ll make them make peace soon enough, you’ll see. (Lysistrata Act 1) Spike Lee’s film adaptation, Chi-Raq (2015), relocates the plot to contemporary gang‐ land Chicago, but retains the classic verse and chorus passages. When you compare the film (tagline: “No peace - no pussy! ”) to the original play, the humour seems rather tame by comparison, as contemporary feature films can hardly match the degree of sauciness that Aristophanes routinely brought to the stage more than 2,000 years ago. Once the women have sworn “not [to] raise [their] legs towards the ceiling” nor to “take up the lion-on-a-cheese-grater position” (Act 1), the play milks the setup for every bawdy joke that it can, scoring loads of punchlines from the practical consequences of the women’s sex strike. There are plenty of not-so-subtle allusions to painful erections and gaping holes. The characters are plagued by priapism (look it up - no, really, please do), and the playwright includes various double entendres which, to paraphrase a line from the poet Ogden Nash (1902-1971), mostly contain entendres that are “not double but single” (Nash 1933/ 1993, 37). Myrrhine, one of the women, offers a bottle of wine 23 Our comic forefathers to her husband, Cinesias, but he passes: “I’ve got one already and it’s fit to burst! ” (Lysistrata Act 2) Double entendres are figures of speech that convey a second meaning not evident at first glance. The reader or listener is forced to do a kind of double-take to get at the second meaning, which is often sexually charged. The classic James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s specialised in this kind of flirtatious banter, with Bond using puns and double entendres to chat up suggestively named Bond girls: Honey Rider, Holly Goodhead, Pussy Galore. In The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), his superiors find him naked on top of his female colleague from the KGB, leading Bond to quip that he is “keeping the British end up”; having slept with a woman named Christmas Jones, he negates the popular assumption that “Christmas only comes once a year” (The World Is Not Enough, 1999) These charged puns tend to divide the audience, as many people find them as exhausting as other kinds of ‘dad jokes’. However, there is a very serious point to these jokes. Not only does the play expose the adolescent frustrations of men who believe themselves to be in charge at all times, it also satirises the patriarchal and phallocentric nature of the war and the military. Lysistrata remains a powerful and very modern play in that it arrives at some of the same conclusions that Klaus Theweleit (1942-) draws in his seminal psychosexual reading of Male Fantasies (1977): that the military apparatus itself is intricately bound up with sexuality, and that armed conflict often amounts to an enormous dick-waving contest involving a huge build-up of testosterone - and other things. The analogy is also drawn in Plautus’s take on the buffoonish Swaggering Soldier (Miles Gloriosus) Pyrogopolynices, who pities his sword when it sees no action: “poor chap, he’s quite disheartened and cast down, hanging idly at my side so long” (v. 4-8). This does not make Lysistrata a feminist achievement, as comedy by its very nature foregoes unambiguous messages in favour of irony and other kinds of speech that are charged with additional meanings. Moreover, we should not forget that ancient theatre practically excluded women in toto. This also applies to Roman theatre culture, where women are routinely side-lined in the plays. One of the central characters in Plautus’s comedy The Pot of Gold (Aulularia) is Euclio’s daughter, Phaedria. She has lost her virginity out of wedlock and is to be married off to a suitable candidate - but Phaedria never appears on stage and is only talked about by the men who try to control her fate. However, Aristophanes’s Lysistrata is a proto-feminist character who tries to overcome the internalised inferiority that plagues women in patriarchal regimes. The women in the play make a convincing case for their political emancipation, forcing the men into negotiations to bring about the peace settlement, and confronting them with their own double standards. 24 Chapter 2 STRATYLLIS. ‘But women can’t talk politics,’ you say. Why not? What is it you insinuate? That we contribute nothing to the State? Why, we give more than you! See if I lie: We cause men to be born, you make them die. (Lysistrata Act 2) What have the Romans ever done for us? Even though New Comedy is a transitional phenomenon that also involves Greek authors like Menander (c. 342-292 B.C.), the term is mostly used for authors from Rome, which took over from Athens as the cultural centre of the world after the death of Alexander the Great. As the theatrical form evolved, the experience of going to see a play was no longer limited to the ritualistic occasion it occupied in the Greek calendar. The first touring companies came into being, commercial theatres were built, and as a consequence, the plays were no longer exclusively tailored to one single occasion and one particular audience, as they were in the days of Aristophanes and the annual play-writing competition. As Greek culture become a fashionable export and the Greek playwrights were widely translated and adapted, Roman theatre started to blossom, emancipating itself from other leisure activities like boxing and gladiator fights. With the Romans adding their own spin to the inherited forms, the Greek chorus disappeared, as did the song interludes. What emerged in the works of Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.) and Terence (c. 195-159 B.C.) was a more plot-driven form of comedy, whose influence can still be felt today. Where Old Comedy mainly runs on an anti-authoritarian attitude and a spirit of bawdiness, New Comedy builds a distinct repertoire of plot patterns, motifs, and (stereo-)types. Even those who have never seen a comedy from Ancient Rome nor read a single line by Plautus will still recognise these as familiar, because they remain so pertinent in sitcoms and modern-day feature-film comedies. No matter what makes you laugh, there usually is a precedent for it in Roman theatre. This includes not just the kernel of the romantic-comedy plot (young lovers must overcome the resistance of stubborn and cold-hearted parental figures to be together), it extends to clever slaves who outsmart their dim-witted masters, parasitical free-loaders, and hyper-masculine loud-mouths who turn out to be cowards and mother’s boys when danger comes calling. The ancients already categorised many of the character types that continue to inform comedy. Greek polymath Theophrastus (c. 371-287 B.C.) collects thirty of them in his witty collection of short essays, On Characters. I have chosen everyone’s favourite holiday-season comedy, Home Alone (1990), to illustrate some of these sketches. Home Alone is a wonderful example of using a cartoonish performance style to bring stock characters to life. The film’s adult characters are filtered through a child’s point-of-view, which frequently reduces them to their worst character traits. 25 Our comic forefathers CHARACTER IN THEOPHRASTUS ILLUSTRATION CHARACTER IN HOME ALONE The garrulous man never stops talking. Mitch Murphy, the kid from next door, who keeps asking questions un‐ til the driver tells him to “beat it”. The gross man en‐ joys giving every‐ one a hard time. Kevin’s brother Buzz, who tortures his kid brother and steals his pizza. The stupid man is mentally slow in speech and action. Marv the burglar, who leaves a call‐ ing card that conveniently allows the police to trace his crimes to him. The grumbler is an‐ gry with everyone. Harry the burglar, played by typically short-tempered Joe Pesci. The mean man does not give freely. Uncle Frank, who never picks up a check and steals silverware. The boastful man shows off with his achievements. Gus Polinski, the polka band-leader who enjoys listing his hit records. The coward is do‐ minated by fear. The pizza-delivery boy, who is scared by sounds of machine-gun fire on VHS. The late-learner pursues exercises for which he is too old. Marley, the elderly man who takes life lessons from an eight-year-old. While New Comedy has its fair share of satire, it is on the whole not as blunt and aggressive as Old Comedy. Aristophanes never shied away from radical resolutions: The Clouds ends with the angry protagonist burning down Socrates’s academy. New 26 Chapter 2 Fig. 2.2: The miles gloriosus lives on in Otto (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988). Comedy, by contrast, culminates in reconciliations, marriages, and a gentle affirmation of the status quo. It thus establishes templates that have persisted over time, in the multiple-marriage plots of Shakespeare as well as in modern-day romantic comedies. Usually, the characters overcome their minor follies to repair little violations of social custom and etiquette. Lessons are learned, and the social unit is repaired to emerge stronger and better. In his most famous play, Plautus has the braggart soldier acknowledge that he deserved the trick that was played on him in a final aside to the audience. PYROGOPOLYNICES. Well, it was a fair catch, and justice has been done. Serve all lechers so, and lechery would grow less rife; the sinners would have more fear and mend their ways. Get you in … and [to the audience] now your thanks. (The Swaggering Soldier, v. 1434-1437) The character of Pyrogopolynices proved so popular with audiences that he turned into one of the most frequently reiterated jokes of New Comedy. The miles gloriosus remains shorthand for the braggart soldier who boasts with his achievements, but who is actually a buffoon and easily outwitted. The character of Otto in A Fish Called Wanda is a modern-day miles gloriosus. He claims to have an impressive track record as a former CIA assassin, but does not know the first thing about covert operations. As a failed elite soldier who reads (but fails to understand) Nietzsche and who gives himself boosts of confidence by smelling his own arm-pit, Otto is a stellar caricature of male swagger and hyper-masculinity, played with impressive gusto by Kevin Kline. It is one of the few genuinely comic performances that ever won the Academy Award. Plautus’s knack of building a repertoire of stock situa‐ tions added to his reputation as the most influential comic playwright of ancient Rome; according to his ep‐ itaph, his death “caused Comedy herself to grieve” (Ri‐ chlin 2019, 2). Sondheim’s musical comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which I have cited in the introduction, is essentially a mash-up of Plautine tropes and situations and thus a lovingly craf‐ ted homage to New Comedy. Stephen Sondheim has singled out Plautus as “the first person to domesticize comedy. All comedy, Aristophanic, for instance, was about gods and goddesses. Nobody had ever written about husbands and wives, daughters and maids. Plautus is responsible for the situation comedy.” (qtd. in Secrest 2011, 148-149) In Plautus, the happy ending is never in question, but it takes some skilled manoeuvring to arrive there, including schemes and counter-schemes. The obstacles are realistic but not horrifically dangerous. Girls may be abducted but their virginity remains intact, and 27 Our comic forefathers the villains are far too dumb to appear life-threatening. Frequently, the most intelligent character whose cunning brings about the happy ending is the ‘running slave’, an ancestor of the raisonneur in farce (see Chapter 11). In Miles Gloriosus, it is Palaestrio who runs rings around everyone. He frequently pays compliments to his master while bad-mouthing him behind his back: “he’s my lord and master; / He is also a dirty liar, a boastful, arrogant, / Despicable perjurer and adulterer.” (v. 89-91) While master/ servant pairings can be traced back to antiquity, the trope found its most succinct formulation in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Hegel uses masters and servants to explain the nature of dialectics, arguing that self-con‐ sciousness develops by mirroring oneself in another person, so that it “exists only in being acknowledged” (Hegel 1807/ 1977, § 178). Hegel attributes an existential dimension to this dynamic, as two self-conscious individuals must prove each other through a life-and-death struggle. One always tries to supersede the other “to become certain of itself as the essential being”, but this is futile: if self-consciousness were to erase the other, it would also erase itself, “for this other is itself ” (§ 180). In Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (1958), Clov and Hamm are forever locked in their love-hatred relationship of mutual dependence: “Gone from me you’d be dead.” - “And vice versa.” (Beckett 1958/ 1964, 45). Hegel exerts a remarkable influence over modern identity theory because he does not reduce the master/ servant relationship to a mere binary between power and powerlessness. While the master is the servant’s superior, the latter “acquires a mind of his own” and thus a degree of freedom in his work (§ 196). The master, in turn, always remains dependent on what the servant provides for him. Literature and popular culture have frequently built on Hegel’s argument. In ancient comedy, witty slaves outsmart their masters; the master in Denis Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste (1796) is such a dull character that even the narrator would rather follow the servant; and the 20 th century would give us dim-witted gentleman Bertie Wooster, who can always depend on his brilliant valet Jeeves to get him out of sticky situations. The dynamic lives on in the Despicable Me franchise, with the Minions turning into a far more popular intellectual property than their mean-spirited master, Gru. The slave might not seem a natural pick as the play’s wittiest and most perceptive character, but it is his picaresque position that allows him to ‘sail under the radar’. As a lowly figure who is invisible to members of the vain and dim-witted elite, he uses his skills as an observer to gain information and to scheme in subtle ways. At the same time, his inferior social position means that the stakes are high for him, too. He must fight for his freedom while threatened with abuse. Typically, this involves slave-whacking routines: little moments of physical humour, where the slave is comically beaten up or kicked by his master, to the amusement of the audience. In The Brothers Menaechmus (Menaechmi), the Plautus comedy that would later serve as the main source of William 28 Chapter 2 Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, the co-presence of a pair of twin brothers leads to much confusion and various mix-ups. Each mistake is blamed on the slave, who routinely receives a kicking for his alleged failures. The ‘slave-whacking’ tradition lives on in comic duos consisting of a bossy master and an infantile servant who depends on the former’s approval: Laurel & Hardy, Basil Fawlty and Manuel (Fawlty Towers), Edmund Blackadder and Baldrick (Blackadder, 1983-1989). In later centuries, slave-whacking would evolve into more diverse forms of comic violence known as slapstick: “a mode of performance humour which, in its conven‐ tional guise, denies or distorts the real-life implications of physical aggression and bodily harm” (Weitz 2009, 129). Slapstick properly comes into being throughout the Early Modern period, with the term starting to denote a style of physical comedy on the music-hall stage (see Babiak 2021). It becomes synonymous with a particular form of clowning used in small sketches and as filler material between other stage numbers; this will later make it the preferred comic mode for the early silent-film comedies of the 1910s. Producer and director Mack Sennett (1880-1960), head of Keystone Studios, emerged as the king of slapstick comedy during this decade, specialising in fast-paced chase sequences and pie fights. Sennett’s typical burlesque comedies look rather unrefined from today’s point of view, but their style was deliberately crude. They served as an important training ground for renowned performers like Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) and Harold Lloyd (1893-1971), who continued to develop the tricks and routines they had learned under Sennett. Their art was not about creative ownership of a routine, it was ruled by “the principle of accretion”, with gags and situations being “rehearsed and recycled in film after film” (Crafton 2006, 356). Just before silent cinema was to bow out, slapstick reached its zenith, as Chaplin and Buster Keaton (1899-1966) explored the possibilities of feature-length filmmaking, introducing slapstick routines into melodrama (The Circus, 1928) or the civil-war epic (The General, 1926). Laurel & Hardy would cross more successfully into the sound-film era by updating setups that had been around forever, including the pie fight (The Battle of the Century, 1927) or the construction of a building (The Finishing Touch, 1928). The virtues of slapstick comedy are also the virtues of Aristophanes’s plays: what strikes us as original is not the innovative setup nor the inventiveness of the plot, it is the number of brilliant variations. “We know that the conflicts will build up, everything will go on and on, until it results in the worst (or rather: the best) case, that is: complete destruction. What keeps us hooked is the pure form: What will the conflict look like this time, what crazy scheme will the opponent come up with, driven by his destructive energy? This is why Laurel and Hardy’s films never grow stale. They do not run on mere surprise effects, they deliberately foreshadow the gags through close-ups, they comment on them, and they lead the audience astray. […] It is the sheer variation that makes the films so great, not the number of gags.” (Hanuschek 2010, 114, my translation) 29 Our comic forefathers There is a timeless charm even in oft-repeated, crude gags like the Three Stooges beating each other over their heads with wrenches, and the most elementary of slapstick tropes (falling on your bum, getting knocked out) never had to properly evolve because they work as well today as they did on the ancient theatre stage. Even Preston Sturges (1898-1959), a master of sophisticated screen comedy, concludes his list of “rules for box-office appeal” with the dictum: “A pratfall is better than anything.” (qtd. in Pirolini 2010, 41) But there is a deeper point to slapstick that we will return to in the chapter on the absurd (see Chapter 8). By reducing the characters to objects who are used and abused on stage, slapstick acquires a properly existential dimension. It is not a coincidence that Chaplin’s little tramp became the face of dehumanisation, as his creator pitted him against Fordism (Modern Times, 1936) and against fascism (The Great Dictator, 1940). In his reappraisal of Frank Tashlin (1913-1972), the director of many Warner Brothers cartoons as well as various Jerry Lewis comedies (Cinderfella, 1960), Jonathan Rosenbaum concedes that slapstick is driven by vulgarity, but this vulgarity must be seen as a “bittersweet response to infantile American energies run amok”, resulting in “a deliberately dehumanized form of expressionism” (Rosenbaum 1994, 25). This degree of dehumanisation and the endless misfortunes that are heaved upon the main characters have led to slapstick being invoked as the number-one example to illustrate one of the three major theories of laughter: the superiority theory. The superiority theory of laughter emphasises a position of laughing at, where the person who laughs holds power over another person who serves as the butt of the joke. This approach has arguably been misrepresented in the history of thought, because philosophers who attack laughter on such moral grounds tend to have a particular type of laughter in mind: the excessive and malicious kind. The superiority theory already gained traction in the ancient world, though it cannot be exactly attributed to any one philosopher (see Billig 2012, 37-56). It is more accurate to think of it as a position used for argument’s sake. In his Philebus dialogue, Plato identifies malice as the root of the comical; he ascribes this quality to people who have an inflated opinion of themselves and thus demonstrate a lack of virtue. Malice amounts to a form of wickedness and is identified as “the opposite of what is prescribed by the inscription at Delphi”, that is: to know yourself (Plato 360 B.C./ 2017, 33). This kind of laughter indicates a lack of self-reflexivity. Aristotle is also associated with the superiority theory, partly because of the ambiguous turn of phrase he uses in the Poetics (see Chapter 3), and partly because he cautions against laughter that oversteps the boundaries of decorum in his Nicomachean Ethics (c. 322 B.C.). This position resurfaces in the Early Modern period, with Sir Philip Sidney (1554- 1586) valuing the joyful quality of delight over the “scornful tickling” of laughter in his Apology for Poetry (1580/ 1984, 36). But the most prominent philosopher to be associated with the superiority theory of laughter is Thomas Hobbes (1588- 1679). According to him, laughter derives from a mental comparison between 30 Chapter 2 other people’s misfortunes and our own selves. In a well-known paragraph in “Human Nature”, the first part of The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640), Hobbes defines “the passion of laughter [as] nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly” (Hobbes 1640/ 1999, 54-55). Hobbes’s argument was frequently revisited, particularly in religious attacks on carnivalesque phenomena or any public exhibition of lack of restraint; the Puritan position is as indicative of that as the arguments Umberto Eco has his fanatic monk Jorge put forward in The Name of the Rose (see Chapter 3). It is true that laughter often requires an object of ridicule, and if we assume that communities of laughter (see Chapter 10) always constitute themselves at the expense of people who are forcefully ejected from the group, then laughter must, by definition, imply a superiority of sorts over “an inferior person” (Buckley 2003, xi). Yet we should be careful not to generalise this position, nor to assume that philosophers associated with the superiority theory are out to wipe the smile off everyone’s face. The point of the superiority theory was not to dismiss all laughter on moral grounds, just the malicious kind known throughout the world as Schadenfreude. ● Comedy has its roots in the Dionysian rituals that were part of ancient Greek culture. ● The oldest surviving comic plays are the bawdy and satirical texts of Aristo‐ phanes. ● Roman playwrights like Plautus created an inventory of stock character types and plot devices that are still part of popular culture. ● The ancients also established the ground rules for modern slapstick, which goes back to their slave-whacking routines. ● Slapstick exemplifies the superiority theory of laughter. FURTHER READING : Henderson, Jeffrey (1991). The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy. Oxford: OUP. Malakaj, Ervin/ Alena E. Lyons (eds., 2021). Slapstick: An Interdisciplinary Companion. Berlin/ Bos‐ ton: de Gruyter. Richlin, Amy (2019). Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy. Cambridge: CUP. 31 Our comic forefathers Chapter 3 Why so serious? Tragedy plus what? There have been many attempts to neatly separate comedy from tragedy, as though they were mutually exclusive. One of the most oft-quoted lines to that effect is attributed to Woody Allen (1935-): “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” It is a bit baffling why this little formula has become gospel, and why it was taken so seriously in the first place. The line does come from a Woody Allen film (Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989), but the person who says it is a self-important buffoon (played by the great Alan Alda), quite full of himself and a bit of a pseudo-intellectual. The line should also be taken with a pinch of salt because the film itself contradicts it. Crimes and Misdemeanors runs two plot-lines, a comic one and a serious one, parallel to each other until they finally intersect. What is funny is not funny because time has passed, but because it is funny to begin with - though not for everyone in the film. Legendary stand-up comic George Carlin addresses the limits of comedy in his show, Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics: “They say, ‘You can’t joke about rape, rape’s not funny.’ I say, ‘Fuck you, I think it’s hilarious! ’ […] I believe you can joke about anything, it all depends on how you construct the joke and what the exaggeration is. Every joke needs one exaggeration, one thing to be way out of proportion.” (Carlin 1990) If comedy really were tragedy plus time, anything could become a laughing matter at some point. But subjects like famine or genocide are as likely or unlikely to raise a chuckle five minutes or five centuries after the event. What is more relevant in determining the funny quality of an event is one’s proximity to it - this may be a matter of time, space, or emotional involvement. The question is with whose plight the viewers identify. Most Shakespearean comedies contain serious undertones and allude at least in passing to mortality and death, but the main plotlines are resolved happily, and the main characters are spared tragic fates. In Twelfth Night (1602), the siblings find each other again and are headed for a bright future with their wealthy spouses. Unlucky Malvolio, on the other hand, is humiliated and scorned by the other characters, so to him, “the play’s ending is tragic” (Holderness 1992, 31). There are two reasons why the audience will find it acceptable to laugh at him: (1) Malvolio is not the main character of the play, so the focus of the climax is not on him but on the family reunion and the two engagements; (2) Malvolio is, for the most part, a flat character: the caricature of a humourless Puritan without a great quantity of redeeming features. According to one of the most common generalisations, comedy is dominated by flat rather than round characters. While this is not true for every comedy, the genre tends to rely on caricatures of social types and individual character traits. It is easier to laugh at somebody if they do not come alive as three-dimensional characters whose plight invites empathy. To come back to our initial hypothesis, then: It is not so much a temporal distance to the events that enables laughter as an emotional one. Mel Brooks (1926-) put this into the concise formula: “If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.” (Brooks 2021, 36) The distinction between flat and round characters goes back to a series of lectures given by novelist E. M. Forster (1879-1970). According to Forster, flat characters represent “a single idea or quality” (1927/ 2005, 73), like stubbornness or meanness. Forster does not recommend that authors rely exclusively on flat characters, but he concedes that every author must use them for sheer economy. Flat characters are easily recognised, easily remembered, need no character arcs, and make for memorable cameo appearances. To substantiate his claim that flat characters are “best when they are comic” (ibid. 77), Forster cites examples from Charles Dickens (1812-1870), of whom Gilbert Keith Chesterton famously said that “he conquered [the world] with minor characters” (Chesterton 1906/ 2006, 29). Forster might as well have picked examples from his own works, which contain memorably comic caricatures like Ms. Lavish, the novelist who speaks exclusively in clichés (A Room with a View, 1908). Many great comic minds built an entire oeuvre by creating a whole gallery of memorable flat characters, including P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) and Tracey Ullman (1959-) with her various television sketch shows. It is understandable that people would think of tragedy and comedy as antonyms, given the various myths surrounding their inception and the ways in which they were theorised early on. It all starts with Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who wrote the earliest rule-book on dramatic genre, or at least part of it. His book Poetics (c. 335 B.C.) is the oldest known volume on the theory of drama. Aristotle’s work is a highly normative theory of dos and don’ts, which overemphasises plot at the expense of character and language, and it may be partially to blame for the 20 th century’s blossoming screen‐ writing industry. Syd Field (Screenplay, 1979) or Ari Hiltunen (Aristotle in Hollywood, 2002) would advertise (pseudo-)Aristotelian and somewhat outdated guidelines of what makes a ‘good’ and compelling story. Moreover, the fact that Aristotle focuses almost his complete attention on tragedy had an impact on how drama was studied over the next centuries. For the most part, critics frowned upon comedy as a lightweight affair 34 Chapter 3 that did not merit the same degree of attention as other, allegedly more serious and ‘worthy’ genres. This critical denigration has never completely vanished. Authors primarily known for their comedic output are often overlooked come awards season. It is rare for the Nobel Prize committee to honour writers who have a few comedies under their belt, and even rarer for them to highlight an author’s comic credentials in their official citation. Dario Fo (1926-2016) received the Nobel Prize in 1997 in acknowledgement of how “[he] emulates the jester of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden” (“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1997” 2022). Comedy fares slightly better in the Anglophone world, where the distinction between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ art is not as pronounced as in continental Europe. The designation ‘comic novelist’ remains notoriously problematic and reductive, but it is worth stressing that the UK’s most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize, has often been awarded to authors with a terrific sense of humour, including Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children, 1981), Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger, 2008), and Howard Jacobson (The Finkler Question, 2010). A comedian at the Oscars, the saddest man of all. Your movies may make millions, but your name they’ll never call. (Will Ferrell, singing at the 2007 Academy Awards) A similar picture emerges in the world of cinema. Sight & Sound’s prestigious 100 Greatest Films of All Time list, as voted for by more than 800 critics and scholars (“The 100 Greatest Films of All Time” 2021), contains but a handful of comedies, including Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and some films by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The Sting (1973) is one of just a few ‘pure-blooded’ comedies that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The quirky comedy that turns into a surprise hit through word-of-mouth is likelier to walk home with a consolation prize for Best Screenplay, without a chance of beating war movies and prestigious literary adaptations to Best Picture. The same is true for the acting categories, which rarely honour comic performers. Instead of giving Madeline Kahn (1942-1999) a much-deserved Oscar for her hilarious performance as saloon singer Lili von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles (1974), they preferred to give Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) her third trophy. (In her defence, even Ingrid Bergman herself appears to have felt underwhelmed by the experience, but her line, “It’s always very nice to get an Oscar”, still ranks as one of the all-time great acceptance speeches.) The Golden Globes split the Best Picture category into ‘Drama’ on the one hand and ‘Musical/ Comedy’ on the other. While this somewhat arbitrary alignment means the Golden Globe for Best Comedy has also been awarded to ‘laugh fests’ like Les 35 Why so serious? Misérables (2012), it allows for Romancing the Stone (1984) or The Hangover (2009) to find a degree of critical recognition. These films would not stand a chance at the Oscars where they are up against allegedly ‘weightier’ subject matter. This imbalance can be traced back all the way to Aristotle. Blame it on Aristotle In Poetics, Aristotle explores what makes a truly great play, and what distinguishes the best playwrights from the rest of the competition. He mainly draws on examples from the tragedies of Aeschylus (c. 525-456 B.C.), Sophocles (c. 497-406 B.C.), and Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.) to explain the most effective ways of organising the plot and subjecting the audience to a cathartic experience. It is not clear to what extent Aristotle wanted to see comedy included at all. Some suggest that there was, indeed, a second volume of Poetics in which he discussed comedy in more detail. According to a popular conspiracy theory, self-appointed keepers of morality and virtue made this book disappear and erased all its traces; Umberto Eco’s medieval mystery novel The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa, 1980) is founded on this very idea, as it blames the disappearance of Aristotle’s manuscript on a fanatic monk who is wildly opposed to the idea of elevating the devilish force of laughter into art. Eco’s novel speculates that Aristotle’s manuscript had to be suppressed because the glorification of irony and ambiguous wit amounted to heresy in the eyes of ecclesiastical forces. Blind Jorge, the villain in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, kills everyone who wants to read the second volume of Aristotle’s Poetics because “this book could teach that freeing oneself of the fear of the Devil is wisdom. When he laughs, as the wine gurgles in his throat, the villain feels he is master, because he has overturned his position with respect to his lord; but this book could teach learned men the clever and, from that moment, illustrious artifices that could legitimatize the reversal. Then what in the villain is still, fortunately, an operation of the belly would be transformed into an operation of the brain. […] Laughter, for a few moments, distracts the villain from fear. But law is imposed by fear, whose true name is fear of God. This book could strike the Luciferine spark that would set a new fire to the whole world, and laughter would be defined as the new art, unknown even to Prometheus, for cancelling fear. […] And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts? ” (Eco 1980/ 2004, 466-467) Others claim that Aristotle never bothered with comedy because he simply was not properly invested in the genre. Indeed, a few side remarks in the Poetics suggest that he did not think too highly of comedy, though Aristotle’s exact wording remains subject 36 Chapter 3 to interpretation. I have to admit that the original lines in Poetics are all Greek to me, so let us take a look at three different translations of one key passage. According to Aristotle, comedy is: ● “an imitation of characters of a lower type - not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the UGLY ” (Samuel Henry Butcher, 1902), ● “a representation of inferior people, not indeed in the full sense of the word bad, but the laughable is a species of the BASE OR UGLY ” (W. Hamilton Fyfe, 1932), ● “a mimesis of men who are inferior, but not in a way which involves complete evil: the comic is one species of the SHAMEFUL ” (Stephen Halliwell, 1987). If you compare the terms I have highlighted in bold, italics, and CAPITALS , respectively, you will get an immediate sense of which problems follow from these different versions of Aristotle’s text. It makes a subtle yet clear difference whether we think of comedy as entirely mimetic or as a form of representation, and whether we call it shameful or ugly, thus attributing deliberate aesthetic or moral shortcomings to the comic. But the most controversial debate rages around Aristotle’s take on the characters of comedy. Today, most scholars will agree that Aristotle distinguishes the dramatis personae of comedy from those of tragedy on the basis of social class. So when he talks about ‘inferior people’, he means those who are not of noble birth. Unlike the tragedies of Sophocles, which are based on the various myths surrounding the royal clan of the Labdacids, comedy is populated with working men and women. Aristotle felt that tragedy affects the audience more if the stakes are really high for the characters, and in terms of absolute power and standing, the stakes do not get any higher than for members of royal households. This is why the Sondheim song I have cited at the beginning proclaims that comedy amounts to “nothing with kings/ gods/ crowns/ fate”, and that it is “for everyone”: it is more democratic and more grounded. Besides plot structure and the ancestry of the main characters, catharsis is most often invoked to distinguish comedy from tragedy. In tragedy, the audience identifies so much with the protagonist that the inevitable downfall gives them a shattering experience of pity and fear. Comedy is considered inferior because it does not allow for this kind of cathartic experience. Instead of putting the characters into lethal danger, it deals with ‘symbolic’ deaths, like public humiliation and shaming (“When I realised my flies were unbuttoned, I just died …”). In the words of Aristotle, the comic springs from “a mark of shame” but is “lacking in pain or destruction” (Aristotle 1987, 36). But it would be short-sighted to suggest that comedy never strays beyond laughter when it comes to affective responses. Cringe humour, for example, shows that comedy is perfectly capable of putting the audience through the wringer (see Chapter 13). 37 Why so serious? Aristotle’s potentially misleading take on ‘inferior men’ was often read as a hint that comedy was invested in fart jokes, and not in the moral betterment of the spectators. Post-Aristotelian theorists would continue to fix on this high/ low binary to cement differences between the two genres, going far beyond Aristotle’s class-based argument. The fourth-century treaty De Tragoedia et Comoedia, attributed to Donatus, explains that comedy is about “the lives of men who inhabit country towns because of the mediocrity of the happy” (qtd. in Palmer 1984, 30). By the time we get to the Middle Ages and thus to the period that Umberto Eco envisions as dominated by humourless fanatics who suspect comedy to be imbued with devilish spirits, this has turned into an even more general critique of the genre. Dante Alighieri, in an epistle to Can Grande (1319), dismisses comedy as dominated by “an unstudied and low style” (qtd. in Palmer 1984, 31). It is only during the Renaissance that the critical tide starts to turn in favour of comedy again. While the genre has never fully caught up to the critical status of tragedy, it is no longer conceptualised as the complete antonym of tragedy, with many contemporary dramatists insisting that comedy can be used for serious purposes. Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990), for one, claims that comedy is the only adequate response to a completely disjointed, Godless universe and the historical experience of two World Wars. His celebrated play, The Physicists (Die Physiker, 1962), is accompanied by a list of 21 observations, all of which frame the genre of comedy in a rather tragic fashion. THREE OF FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT’S “POINTS ON THE PHYSICISTS” 4. The worst possible outcome is unforeseeable. It happens by accident. 8. When human beings rely on a plan, they are hit by accident all the more forcefully. 9. Human beings who rely on a plan are in pursuit of a specific goal. An accident hits them in the worst possible way if it leads to the opposite of their goal: that which they were afraid of and what they set out to avoid, like Oedipus. (Dürrenmatt 1962/ 1998, 91-92, my translation) Post-war cinema has demonstrated numerous times that it is perfectly capable of rising to the occasion. Comedy as informed by the holocaust and the nuclear threat emphasises fragmented plots and the cynical laughter of despair, approximating Theatre of the Absurd (see Chapter 8). All that human beings have to fall back on is “affirmative nihilism”, a kind of dogged resignation that allows them to accept the futility of their struggles (Born 2020, 584, my translation). This attitude is most pronounced in apocalyptic comedies like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), a political farce produced at the 38 Chapter 3 Fig. 3.1: A period of suspense pre‐ cedes the punchline (L’arroseur arrosé, 1895). height of the Cold War, or Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (2021), a thinly veiled satire about the climate crisis. Both films end in global annihilation. Not tragedy, but not not tragedy either Maybe the problem of comedy’s and tragedy’s alleged irreconcilability is far simpler. Maybe it is simply the issue of mortality and death that separates one from the other. But then again, who would want to formulate an apodictic rule from this, in the vein of ‘Thou shalt not introduce the subject of death into the genre of comedy’? Look no further than Billy Wilder’s unmatched farce, Some Like It Hot (1959), a film frequently singled out as the funniest screen comedy of all time. The plot kicks off with a bloodbath, as Chicago mob boss ‘Spats’ Colombo and his goons assassinate a group of traitors. Musicians Jerry and Joe become accidental witnesses to the murder, and are understandably desperate to leave the town as soon as possible. When it turns out their only chance is to dress up as women to join an all-female jazz band about to go on tour, they jump at the chance. Grounding the plot in a life-and-death situation is a risky endeavour for a comedy, but it pays off in spades. Not only does the assassination, loosely based on the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929, provide the farce with a dramatic backbone, the setup also intensifies the laughs. Clearly, comedy does not run on punchlines alone. Like tragedy, it requires a dramatic arc and various plot points along the way. Aristotle highlights the elements of peripeteia (a reversal of fortune sends the plot in a different direction) and anagnorisis (the character has a moment of recognition), arguing that tragedy is most effective when these two coincide. Moreover, the fact that comic plots follow a climactic structure and work against deadlines allows for sus‐ pense, which is not an exclusive feature of edge-of-your-seat horror films. It simply designates the audience’s emotional investment in the story and their sense of anticipation: if a plot contains suspense, it means we are eager to learn its outcome. Comedy has a natural affinity to this, as every joke involves build-up and anticipation, with the punchline releasing the ac‐ cumulated tension. One of the earliest examples of nar‐ rative cinema, Louis Lumière’s short vignette L’arro‐ seur arrosé (1895), is comic suspense in a nutshell. It sees a prankster sneak up on a gardener who is watering his plants (setup). When the prankster steps on the hose (complication), the water supply is cut off, leading the gardener to inspect the hose (anticipation). After a few seconds the prankster removes his foot again, so that the pent-up water pressure is released into the gardener’s face (climax). The punchline is not antithetical to the suspense, it is its logical culmination. Before David Lean (1908-1991) became the Oscar-winning director of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), he was a renowned editor who also pondered the question of how 39 Why so serious? well-known comic set-pieces like the old slipping-on-a-banana-skin routine could be made funnier through editing. He suggests that the viewer should be made aware of the banana skin several seconds before the arrival of the dupe: “Tell [the audience] what you’re going to do. Do it. Tell them you’ve done it.” (qtd. in Reisz/ Millar 1968, 104) The final gag in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) follows his advice to a tee (see Chapter 10). The viewers may not be aware of it, but they enjoy the build-up no less than the release. “This suspense is terrible”, Gwendolen complains in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), only to conclude: “I hope it will last.” (Wilde 1895/ 2008, 304) THREE TYPES OF SUSPENSE ACCORDING TO SUSAN SMITH (2000) Vicarious suspense: The audience has access to information that the characters have not, and thus assumes a kind of parental responsibility for them (“Watch out, behind you! ”). In Modern Times, Chaplin goes roller-skating while blindfolded, and remains blissfully unaware that he is dancing close to the abyss and nearly falls to his death. Shared suspense: The audience know as much as the character and identifies fully with their plight. In Bridesmaids (2011), the group is struck by food poisoning while shopping for dresses. We sympathise with Annie, who refuses to show weakness in front of her rival, as well as with Lilian, who tries to make it to a bathroom in time. Direct suspense: Anxiety does not depend on identification, so the relationship is one between viewer and film world rather than between viewer and character. During the chase scene in What’s up, Doc? (1972), a giant pane of glass is ear-marked for destruction, but there is a two-minute bout of near-misses before the pane eventually breaks. The cinema of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) is organised around this intriguing nexus of thrill and laughter. While Hitchcock specialised in spy movies and psycho‐ logical thrillers, most of his films are permeated by a terrific sense of humour. The Hitchcockian ‘comedy thriller’ testifies to the director’s conviction that cinema is a spectacle that is indebted to the fairground experience. As a direct descendant of the rollercoaster ride, where the thrill frequently yields shrieks of laughter (see Schwanebeck 2020a), the thriller attracts the viewers with the prospect of fear. Hitchcock himself wrote that great cinema offers rides that should be, in appearance, “as terrifying as possible” but in reality, “completely safe” (Hitchcock 1949/ 1997, 120). Hitchcock already perfected this formula during his formative years in Britain, with The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), suspenseful yet hilarious tales of romance and intrigue. Typically, the plot is kicked off in Aristotelian or rather: farcical 40 Chapter 3 fashion, by an innocuous little mishap or mix-up that will snowball into an immense catastrophe. The setup of North by Northwest (1959) sees advertising executive Roger Thornhill mistaken for a spy when he gets up in a restaurant to make a phone call; the ‘mistaken identity’ plot is not the film’s only link to comedy. The protagonist runs for his life throughout the whole film, but each scene is structured like a comic vignette, so that we are as much invested in the character’s fate as we are swept away by his comic bravado. Cary Grant (1904-1986) plays Thornhill as a charming trickster who cons his way out of any death trap. Not unlike the screen persona of Buster Keaton, he personifies the mobile target that is much harder to hit. In a series of hilarious yet also nerve-wracking set-pieces, he survives a drunk-driving episode, dons costume to escape his enemies, and even feigns madness at one point. Clearly, the distinction between comedy and other genres can only ever be a gradual and somewhat arbitrary one. Some Like It Hot might not respect the ‘noble birth’ convention of classic Greek tragedy, the presence of screen goddess Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) notwithstanding. But even Aristotle would acknowledge that the plot of this carefully composed farce respects his guidelines. The Poetics state that a well-designed plot must neither begin nor finish “at arbitrary points”, and each event must have “causal connections with both what precedes and what ensues” (Aristotle 1987, 39). This clearly resonates with farce (see Chapter 11), which relies on a tightly woven plot, not to mention intricate cause-and-effect relationships and outrageous coincidences. Consider the structure of Some Like It Hot’s first act, particularly how the film proceeds at such dazzling speed that we never have enough time to be bothered by the various coincidences: 1. Joe and Jerry are musicians working in a speakeasy owned by Chicago mob boss ‘Spats’ Colombo. 2. They abandon the place when it is raided by the police. 3. When Joe and Jerry look for a new gig, receptionist Nelly points out a miraculously suitable offer to them (coincidence #1), but it is with an all-female band. 4. The only gig they can book requires them to drive to Urbana. They borrow Nelly’s car. 5. The garage where Nelly keeps her car happens to be the hideout of the traitors who have ratted out ‘Spats’ Colombo’s joint to the police (coincidence #2); Joe and Jerry show up the very moment that ‘Spats’ Colombo has the men gunned down (coincidence #3). 6. Joe and Jerry witness the killing, and the scene binds their dilemma to their respective character flaws (what Aristotle calls hamartia): a. Joe is a misogynist who routinely exploits women. In the garage, he does not hesitate to buy gas with Nelly’s money; it is the faucet that gives away their hiding place. b. Jerry is clumsy and talks too much when nervous. When asked by the assassins whether he has seen anything, he says no, “and besides, it’s none of our business if you guys wanna bump each other off.” 41 Why so serious? 7. They escape and dress up as women to secure the gig that will get them out of Chicago, blissfully unaware that the Florida beach resort which they are headed for happens to be the place where the mobsters hold their annual convention (coincidence #4). When it turns out that Joe and Jerry have picked the one place where the gangsters can easily find them, this is no longer mere coincidence but nemesis: the tragic force of retribution that you cannot outrun. Joe and Jerry’s unfortunate choice of destination echoes the myth of Oedipus: having heard the prophecy according to which his own son would murder him, King Laius tries to have Oedipus killed, but this very decision ends up making the prophecy come true. Oedipus, in turn, learns about the prophecy many years later and sets off on a journey to outrun his fate, but only ends up shovelling his own grave. The difference is in the laughs, of course, as well as in our attitude towards the characters. Viewers will have conflicted emotions regarding Oedipus’s degree of guilt and accountability; but in a comedy, heroes and villains are much easier to tell apart. We want Joe and Jerry to get away and the gangsters to receive their just punishment, because we instinctively know to side with the life force of the young: “In tragedy it is the son who is guilty; in comedy it is the father” (Nelson 1990, 32). Tragicomedy Clearly, comedy and tragedy are not complete opposites; theirs is a complementary rather than a competitive relationship. According to anthropological approaches to comedy, tragedy occupies the position of winter (decline, passing), and comedy that of spring (resurrection, rejuvenation); both must be conceptualised together, as parts of the same cycle. This is why it might take only a slight shift in emphasis or a change in perspective to transform one into the other. When segmented into three little panels and interspersed with Snoopy’s dry observations or Lucy Van Pelt’s merciless invectives (“You blockhead! ”), Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strips are masterpieces of character comedy, carefully worked-out running gags, and plenty of droll humour. But adjust the perspective by only a few degrees, and what you are looking at is the tragedy of a boy who is forever disrespected and humiliated by his peers, his dog, and kite-eating trees. This reading is highlighted in Bert V. Royal’s play, Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead (2004), in which an adolescent Charlie Brown faces homophobia, grief, and loneliness. The close interplay between both tragedy and comedy is very much emphasised in tragicomedy, which blends elements of both. Plautus was the first to use the term for one of his own plays, Amphitruo, thus kick-starting a fierce critical debate that was to go on for centuries, with critics dismissing tragicomedies as abominations (see Frank 2021). In Shakespeare scholarship, the most striking juxtaposition of comic and tragic elements has given rise to a distinct subgenre: that of the Problem Play. This term 42 Chapter 3 derives from 19 th -century discussions of drama, where it was applied to George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893) or Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (Et dukkehjem, 1879), plays that address social taboos in a somewhat didactic fashion. English literary scholar Frederick S. Boas (1862-1957) was the first to apply the term to a particular group of Shakespeare plays, especially those written after 1600, when Shakespeare started to push the limits of genre. Shakespeare’s Problem Plays are typically set in rotten civilisations, where the classic trajectories of tragedy and comedy are not workable anymore. Their endings are brimming with unresolved contradictions, so that the final tableaux of bliss have overtones of tragedy, and the marriages come across as forced and strained. The viewer experiences conflicted emotions: “our feeling is neither of simple joy nor pain; we are excited, fascinated, perplexed” (Boas 1896/ 1910, 345). The list of Shakespeare’s Problem Plays has been notoriously unstable over the years. Three of the plays that Boas examines in his book (All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida) are still widely accepted as Problem Plays, but over the years, the list of contenders has also included Hamlet (Boas 1896/ 1910), Twelfth Night (Holderness 1992), and Othello (Margolies 2012). The discussion tends to focus on plays where the text is “filled with a dubious content” so that “form and content are in contradiction” (Margolies 2012, 2), not on plays that 21 st -century sensibilities will find less easily digestible. The blatant misogyny of The Taming of the Shrew, for example, necessitates a revisionist spin in modern-day stagings, but this does not make it a Problem Play. The Merchant of Venice, by contrast, is rarely staged as a straightforward comedy today, as the final act’s matchmaking and sexual flirtations cannot gloss over several unresolved topical issues: the Venice slave trade, the uncomfortable pairing of Jessica and Lorenzo, the play’s queer subtexts, and most of all the play’s blatant antisemitism. Modern productions, including Michael Radford’s film version starring Al Pacino (2004), give the Jewish villain, Shylock, a tragic dimension, emphasising one of the play’s key contradictions: if the villain represents cruelty and thus the antithesis to Antonio and Bassanio’s unconditional friendship, then why is the spirit of Christian forgiveness so notably absent later in the play, when the Christians join forces to have their revenge on Shylock? By the same token, modern-day productions will highlight rather than gloss over the cruel aspects of Shakespeare’s happy endings. Frequently, ‘undesired elements’ are driven into (symbolic) exile, with superfluous loners either expelled from the group or leaving by their own volition. Twelfth Night concludes with the humiliated Malvolio swearing revenge on the merry pranksters, and As You Like It (1599) has Jaques turn his back on the wedding festivities: “So to your pleasures, / I am for other than for dancing measures.” (AYLI 5.4.190-191) If you consider how many Shakespearean comedies add such a drop of vinegar into an otherwise highly saccharine dish, you realise that there is a touch of the Problem Play about most Shakespearean comedies. An in-depth look at the Problem Plays and other forms of tragicomedy can help us ponder the limits of comedy. Should the audience still be allowed to have fun if it comes at the expense of borderline tragic characters like Malvolio, or if the plot 43 Why so serious? includes rape and murder? Can we still speak confidently of happy endings if they are clearly not happy for everyone? What is crucial in determining that Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) is a comedy: the fact that the weddings outnumber the funerals, or that the funeral is only a distant memory by the time we reach the final act? Richard Curtis (1956-), the screenwriter of Four Weddings and a Funeral, frequently adds a bittersweet touch to his romantic comedies but remains unapologetically committed to warm embraces and passionate kisses before the dissolve. Film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013) famously quipped that Curtis’s feel-good Christmas film, Love Actually (2003), was so jammed with warmth and laughter that it reminded him of “a gourmet meal that turns into a hot-dog eating contest” (Ebert 2003). There is an ongoing debate on whether or not comedy always needs a happy ending. For some critics, a happy ending is actually more crucial to comedy than gags or laughter, particularly if they assume “the yearning for harmony and reconciliation” to be comedy’s essential feature (Nelson 1990, 186). These critics subscribe to Northrop Frye’s view that the comic plot always moves from the undesirable state of winter towards spring’s spirit of rejuvenation (see Frye 1957/ 1990, 171). Sentimental comedies of the 18 th century were not big on witty repartee or comic stereotypes, they simply offered reconciliatory endings based on mercy and forgiveness, to underline that human beings were capable of moral betterment. At the other end of the spectrum, there are comedies which offer an impressive gag rate but opt for bleak resolutions, albeit for wildly different reasons. The last episode of Blackadder’s fourth and final series, Blackadder Goes Forth (1989), went down as one of the most poignant endings in the history of British television, with the World War I protagonists sent into almost certain death. Extradiegetic circumstances, by contrast, provided ALF with its downbeat ending. The lovable alien is arrested by the US military, the producers having unsuccessfully counted on their show getting picked up for another season. The scope of tragicomedy on the 20 th -century movie screen is illustrated well by the filmography of actor Jack Lemmon (1925-2001). Having turned into a household name as the lead in romantic comedies of the 1950s (Phffft, 1954), he emerged as one of Hollywood’s most versatile and relatable screen presences. Lemmon transitioned gracefully from the old studio system into the post-1960s spirit of disillusionment and cynicism that became characteristic of New Hollywood cinema. This transition happened in part because Lemmon was the trusted on-screen alter ego of two major directors who had trouble adjusting to the post-1960s Zeitgeist, Billy Wilder and Blake Edwards (1922-2010). 44 Chapter 3 Fig. 3.2: The quintessential bitter‐ sweet ending (The Apartment, 1960). Lemmon excelled in farce (Some Like It Hot) as well as cartoonish slapstick extravaganzas (The Great Race, 1965), but he found his true vocation in tragicomedy. According to his friend and frequent co-star, Walter Matthau (1920-2000), Lemmon looked like “a clean cut well scrubbed Boston choir boy with quiet hysteria seeping out of every pore” (Matthau 1986, 6), and this helped him to make deceptively straightforward but invariably broken and disillusioned characters relatable to the audience. Billy Wilder’s masterpiece, The Apart‐ ment (1960), would not work without Lemmon’s unique ability to humanise a spineless everyman who learns a couple of life lessons the hard way. He brought this quality to a long list of characters stuck in permanent midlife crisis. Key films include Billy Wilder’s quintessential underdog tale, The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975, based on a Neil Simon play), Tribute (1980), and his final collaboration with Wilder, Buddy Buddy (1981). Not all of these are tragicomedies, but Lemmon always adds a tragicomic grace note, especially in his characters’ various botched suicide attempts. In The Apartment, C.C. Baxter recounts accidentally shooting his knee while contemplating suicide; in the film adaptation of Simon’s The Odd Couple (1968), Felix accidentally throws his back out while trying to jump out of a window; and in Buddy Buddy, the bathroom pipe from which Victor tries to hang himself bursts open. These films invariably conclude with bittersweet endings rather than genuine moments of victory. When Baxter finally declares his love to Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) over a game of cards in The Apartment, all he gets in return is a sympathetic smile and some friendly advice to “shut up and deal”. ● Although they have often been characterised as diametrical opposites, comedy and tragedy have much in common. ● The split between both can be traced back to Aristotle’s discussion in Poetics. ● Comedy continues to be dismissed in favour of tragedy, so that some of its key characteristics are often conceptualised as deficits. ● Like tragedy, comedy involves suspense, and contrary to its reputation, it does not always avoid the subject of death. ● Comedy and tragedy merge in tragicomedy and in the Shakespearean Problem Play. FURTHER READING : Aristotle (1987). Poetics. Ed. Stephen Halliwell. London: Duckworth. Kerr, Walter (1967). Tragedy and Comedy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Margolies, David (2012). Shakespeare’s Irrational Endings: The Problem Plays. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 45 Why so serious? Chapter 4 So Shakespearean, so romantic! The apprentice For some reason, the comedies of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) are not as prominent and as well-known as his tragedies. A 2016 survey in the UK asked people which Shakespeare plays they knew, and far more tragedies than comedies made the top-ten, pointing to comedy’s lower cultural prestige. But turn to the list of Shakespeare’s most frequently staged plays (see Kopf 2016), and you get a different picture, with a comedy earning the top spot: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1596). It is evident that the comedies have always remained audience favourites. Scholars have sometimes been a little more hesitant to embrace them, maybe because the comedies sabotage the case for Shakespeare’s unrivalled originality. As hilarious and timeless as they are, they owe a big intertextual debt to the ancients, and this clashes with the predominant Shakespeare narrative in literary studies: that of the highly original genius who was without precedent in literary history. In his famous appraisal of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson (1572-1637) cheekily points out that Shakespeare knew “small Latin and less Greek”, but this does not stop him from putting Shakespeare in the same category as “thund’ring Aeschylus, / Euripides, and Sophocles”, a trio of authors who were already known to Aristotle as the ‘big three’ in the field of tragedy ( Jonson 1623/ 1988, 263-265). Jonson does not compare Shakespeare to any comedy writers, but he certainly would have been aware of Shakespeare’s predecessors in that field, too. The most frequently performed Shakespeare plays, 2011-2016 (Kopf 2016) [comedies are highlighted in bold print] 1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2. Romeo and Juliet 3. Twelfth Night 4. Hamlet 5. The Taming of the Shrew 6. As You Like It 7. Much Ado about Nothing 8. The Tempest 9. Macbeth 10. The Comedy of Errors The Comedy of Errors (1594) goes so far as to lift most of its plot from Plautus’s The Brothers Menaechmus and simply multiplies the latter’s central conceit. Twin brothers are separated as babies; when their paths cross again many years later, they get mistaken for one another and accidentally wreak havoc in each other’s lives. Eventually, they learn about the presence of their long-lost sibling. Shakespeare stretches this ancient joke into five acts by adding a second twin pairing, thus amplifying the confusion. Gary Taylor aptly observed that Shakespeare effectively “outPlautuses Plautus” in this play (1990, 396). Because The Comedy of Errors is so extremely derivative and mines its source material for everything it can, it used to be treated as a kind of embarrassing family secret among Shakespeare scholars. This gave rise to a rather questionable narrative about ‘Shakespeare the apprentice’. According to this rather reductive view, the only reason Shakespeare borrowed so heavily from the Plautine source was to hone his stagecraft and to practise his skills as an emerging playwright. We will come across this argument again in the chapter on farce. Critics suggest that it is acceptable to write a farce when you are a young, emerging playwright, as long as you renounce the genre at some point to find artistic maturity. So in the case of Shakespeare, this would mean that foolish adolescent behaviour like ripping off ancient playwrights can be shrugged off, because boys will be boys, right? There are various problems with this assessment: The Comedy of Errors is not Shakespeare’s first play; more likely his ninth or tenth. Similarly, to explain away Shakespeare’s debt to Plautus, the critics employ rather questionable arguments. Allegedly, the only reason Shakespeare borrowed so heavily from the ancient source was that he sought a way to improve it. In fact, “the same critics who here praise [his] implausible complication will elsewhere applaud Shakespeare’s efforts to simplify and plausify the stories he stole from other sources” (Taylor 1990, 396). There is little to be gained from pitting ‘Shakespeare the comic’ against ‘Shakespeare the tragedian’ and from elevating the latter at the expense of the former. I want to opt for a different approach. Instead of making apologies for the many ways in which the comedies are not the tragedies, I will discuss them against the backdrop of Elizabethan theatre culture, explain some of their most striking characteristics, and link them to their modern-day successors. Setting the scene It is not necessary to illuminate Shakespeare’s biographical background in order to properly appreciate his comedies, yet it does make sense to see them in the context of Elizabethan theatre culture, and as plays written for specific occasions and purposes. Shakespeare did not set out to become a ‘published’ author, to have his plays examined in seminars or to be acknowledged by future generations. He wrote plays because he was trying to make a living, and some of them were composed for special occasions in court or at universities. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance, is widely assumed to have been written for an aristocratic wedding. But most of the time, Shakespeare 48 Chapter 4 wrote plays because he was running a theatre company and needed to provide his troupe with new material. To draw a big audience, he routinely drew upon popular types of entertainment. For some literary buffs, satirical depictions of Shakespeare himself amount to sacrilege, but I think there is something to be said for the idea of the rather desperate, notoriously broke playwright that is put forward by tongue-in-cheek biopics Shake‐ speare in Love (1998) and Bill (2015). Neither of these films will appeal to historians, but they demonstrate a healthy down-to-earth attitude to Elizabethan theatre. These films acknowledge that early-17 th -century theatre impresarios had the same goal as 21 st -century movie producers: to put ‘bums on seats’, i.e. to sell as many tickets as possible. Before professional theatres became a regular occurrence in the Elizabethan age, plays were performed by travelling troupes on temporary, improvised stages in university dining halls and pubs. Theatre was still a controversial endeavour in those days, frequently attacked by conservative forces as an essentially indecent activity, or railed against by politicians and medical authorities because it was seen as a hazard to the nation’s moral and physical constitution. In the context of contemporary plague outbreaks, it is understandable that the confined auditorium was eyed suspiciously. What has done more long-term damage to theatre’s reputation was the assumption that actors were in the same category as prostitutes and their ‘partners in crime’, vagabonds. Many people went to the theatre during the Elizabethan era, but it was also a very controversial pastime. Preachers like John Stockwood railed against what they perceived as a sign of moral decline: “Will not a filthy play with the blast of a trumpet sooner call thither a thousand, than an hour’s tolling of a bell bring to the sermon a hundred? ” (qtd. in Thomson 2001, 179). Given such moral outrage, it is no wonder that the acting profession was considered as disreputable as prostitution; “common strumpets and adulteresses” allegedly chose the vicinity of the play-houses to prostitute themselves (qtd. in Stern 2010, 51). The prejudice stuck around for several centuries after the Elizabethan era. It still affects iconic adventuress Irene Adler, Sherlock Holmes’s brilliant antagonist in A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), who is doubly shunned by the establishment: as a courtesan and as an opera singer. Towards the end of the 16 th century, a more vivid theatre culture came into being, as theatre became an acceptable and more inclusive institution that accommodated practically all layers of society. Going to the theatre was certainly not for everyone, as the poorest of the poor could not afford tickets, while labourers were unable to attend performances in the afternoon. Yet the theatre became a popular destination for the whole family, and a welcome opportunity for people to ‘let off steam’, not just 49 So Shakespearean, so romantic! by cracking jokes at the expense of aristocrats in the balconies, but also by taking an active role during the performance, rooting for the hero, booing the villain, or becoming friendly with the fool, who often acted as a kind of surrogate character for the audience. The biggest public theatres in London would accommodate up to 3,000 spectators, and they put on quite a show to keep audiences happy. Wrestling bouts were as common as animal tricks, which also accounts for one of the most bizarre stage directions in all of Shakespeare’s work: “Exit, pursued by a bear”, which is included in Act III of The Winter’s Tale (c. 1611). Clearly, Shakespeare’s audience appreciated outrageous stage effects, as well as bawdy jokes and comic relief. That is why the appearances of Shakespeare’s fools are not limited to the comedies, and why his comic material is much bawdier than that of the competition. John Lyly (1554-1606), one of the most successful Elizabethan playwrights, preached that the theatre should breed “soft smiling, not loud laughing” (qtd. in Dillon 2003, 52), but the lesson would have been lost on Shakespeare, his contemporary. Rather than go for the subtle wit and learned rhetoric that would have appealed to audiences in court, Shakespeare built his reputation by tailoring his plays to a much broader audience. His comedies are thoroughly down-to-earth, full of innuendo, slapstick, and classic clowning routines. How many Shakespeare comedies are there? The First Folio edition (1623) of Shakespeare’s works, published a few years after his death, lists 17 comedies. Not all of them would make the cut today: The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale are now considered romances. All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure are also now more often referred to as tragicomedies or ‘Problem Plays’ (see Chapter 3). Today, the list includes: All’s Well that Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Love’s Labour’s Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado about Nothing The Taming of the Shrew Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen In Shakespeare, love is never just a spiritual, disembodied phenomenon; not in his plays, and not in his sonnets. The Petrarcan tradition dictated that the sonnet be addressed to 50 Chapter 4 an angelic, idealised being: the unreachable Laura in the poems of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). Shakespeare’s lyrical persona, on the other hand, is a witty, lewd, and also somewhat queer trickster character who will use any trick in the book to get the addressee into bed. ‘Using any trick in the book’ also sums up Shakespeare the playwright. The genius of Shakespeare is not to be found in his originality but in his virtuosity when it came to sampling material, adapting well-known stories and routines, and catering to audience tastes. He knows not just the rule-book but also that the rules are “there to be bent, broken, and even flouted, when the comic spirit, with its love of variety rather than uniformity, demands it” (Draper 2000, 4). But what constitutes the enduring appeal of the comedies, and what are some of the key devices that Shakespeare brings to the table? Shakespeare’s patterns In the 1980s, the Reduced Shakespeare Company premiered their first full-length show, a comic mash-up of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare divides most of the stage time between Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595) and Hamlet (c. 1601), leaving little room for the comedies, presumably because they are not as easily spoofed as the tragedies. However, the protagonists debate the merits of Shakespeare’s comedic output when they ask the late author: “Why did you write sixteen comedies when you could have written just one? ” (Borgeson et al. 1994, 36) They follow this claim by condensing most of Shakespeare’s comic motifs and plot elements into one completely outrageous outline. DANIEL. Act One. A Spanish duke swears an oath of celibacy and turns the rule of his kingdom over to his sadistic and tyrannical twin brother. He learns some fantastical feats of magic and sets sail for the Golden Age of Greece, along with his daughters, three beautiful and virginal sets of identical twins. […] ADAM. Act Two. The long-lost children of the duke’s brother, also coincidentally three sets of identical twins, have just arrived in Italy. […] [T]he six brothers fall in love with six Italian sisters, three of whom are contentious, sharp-tongued little shrews, while the other three are submissive airheaded little bimbos. JESS. Act Three. The shipwrecked identical daughters of the duke wash up on the shores of Italy, disguise themselves as men, and become pages to the shrews, and matchmakers to the duke’s brother’s sons. (Borgeson et al. 1994, 38-39) The characters end up in a forest, where they drink an aphrodisiac and celebrate “a lovely bisexual animalistic orgy” (ibid. 39), and there is a happy ending for everyone. Well, for everyone, that is, except for those characters who get eaten by bears. As this tongue-in-cheek synopsis indicates, unlikely couplings and romantic pursuits are crucial to Shakespearean comedy, as are outrageous coincidences. According to one rather programmatic line in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “the course of true love never did run smooth” (1.1.134), but all tends to be well by the time we get 51 So Shakespearean, so romantic! to the final scenes with their multiple marriages. Unlike the tragedies, which tend to be named after one main protagonist such as King Lear or Othello, the comedies are ensemble pieces. Several pairs of young lovers must work through a temporary state of confusion, something that has come to be known as the ‘idiot plot’. The term idiot plot was not invented but popularised by American film critic Roger Ebert. According to Ebert’s glossary of movie clichés, an idiot plot is “any plot containing problems which would be solved instantly if all of the characters were not idiots” (Ebert 1995, 52) This applies to farcical or romantic comedies where the lovers are basically in agreement, but a stupid misunderstanding comes between them. This often occurs in romantic comedies about married couples temporarily torn apart because they erroneously suspect each other of infidelity or worse. In Love Crazy (1941), featuring the popular pairing of Myrna Loy (1905-1993) and William Powell (1892-1984), a woman suspects her husband of cheating on her, which leads him to feign madness so that he can postpone the divorce proceedings. Send Me No Flowers (1964), starring Doris Day (1922-2019) and Rock Hudson (1925-1985), is about a hypochondriac who tries to scout a prospective future husband for his own wife because he mistakenly assumes that he is terminally ill. The wife, in turn, interprets his erratic behaviour as proof that he is having an affair. If the couples just had a proper chat or simply acknowledged what is glaringly obvious to the audience - that they are devoted to each other - there would be no plot to speak of. Confusion can only reign supreme for so long because the characters in a Shakespeare comedy never take the time to assess the situation carefully. Does Count Claudio in Much Ado about Nothing (1599) have any reason to believe Don John’s slanderous remarks about Hero? Certainly not. But Claudio has to swallow the lie, or the story could not unfold. Where the tragic downfall follows from one central character flaw like Othello’s jealousy or Macbeth’s ruthless ambition, comic confusion derives from lack of insight or a slight human folly, and these follies are hardly ever beyond repair. This goes together with several key comic techniques and strategies. Discrepant awareness is crucial to the idiot plot, as it allows the audience their fair share of Schadenfreude. The particular nature of drama allows for the playwright to derive suspense and irony from discrepant awareness: a selective distribution of information that means the audience know more than some of the characters, for instance because they have been privy to a character’s inner thoughts through soliloquy, or because they have witnessed developments that the protagonist is unaware of. In Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, the audience immediately learns about 52 Chapter 4 the existence of the twins, but the brothers only find out in the final scene, when the different vantage points are reconciled. Dramatic irony is a special manifestation of discrepant awareness: it means that the characters do or say something that has an additional layer of meaning that they are not aware of. In Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), a theatre critic complains about the stupid behaviour of characters in hackneyed crime plays, not realising that he is about to be overpowered in the exact same way. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) opens on matinee idol Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) telling an interviewer about his way to the top, but the brief flashbacks strongly contradict everything he is telling the reporter. In Shakespeare, the battle between the sexes is often also a battle for sex, and it is enacted with witty banter that signals a degree of sexual tension. Prospective partners will often match wits in a form of repartee that requires the speakers to outdo each other, that is: to send the ball back and forth across the tennis net until someone scores the point. Shakespeare’s dialogues are so elaborate when it comes to the invective mode that they can also be read as precursors of modern-day insult comedy. Take this little exchange between Beatrice and Benedick, the central pair of lovers in Much Ado about Nothing: BENEDICK. [T]ruly I love [no lady]. BEATRICE. A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. […] I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. BENEDICK. God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall ‘scape a predestinate scratched face. BEATRICE. Scratching could not make it worse, an ‘twere such a face as yours were. (1.1.125-135) It is clear to the audience that sparks are flying between Beatrice and Benedick, and hatred will soon give way to passion. This kind of dynamic will later become a staple element of the modern-day romantic comedy, particularly the screwball tradition of the 1930s and 1940s. Cary Grant played the lead in many of them, including The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and His Girl Friday (1940). All three start from a similar premise: the central couple separates or has separated at the beginning, only to realise that their mutual antipathy is, in fact, proof of their chemistry and devotion to each other. They bicker and conspire against each other before getting back together. The dialogues in His Girl Friday, based on the play The Front Page (1928) by Ben Hecht (1984-1964) and Charles MacArthur (1895-1956), set the gold standard for the post-Shakespearean type of quick-witted banter that modern-day romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally … (1989) still try to emulate. His Girl Friday is widely known as one of the most fast-paced films of all time, with more words spoken per minute than in any comedy of that era. At one point, the newspaper man tells his ex-wife that she 53 So Shakespearean, so romantic! has “the brain of a pancake”; she in turn suggests that he is “wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way”. Screwball comedy blossomed in American cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. It was a product of the studio system, but heavily influenced by the sophisticated touch of exiled European screenwriters and directors like Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947). The screwball comedy is characterised by its high tempo, witty banter, and slapstick elements. According to film critic Pauline Kael (1919-2001), screwball comedies came into being when the elaborate Broadway comedy was married to silent cinema’s slapstick tropes, allowing for the latter to be absorbed into a proper ‘cinema for adults’. Screwball comedy meant that American movies could regain “some of the creative energy and exuberance - and the joy in horseplay, too - that had been lost in the early years of talkies” (Kael 1975). Screwball films of the 1930s and 1940s often focus on married couples or couples who get hitched early in the film and struggle to keep things fresh. This made it easier to get away with innuendo that the censor would have objected to if it had been spoken between unmarried couples. The list of romantic comedies about married life includes Woman of the Year (1942) and Adam’s Rib (1949), both starring Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) and Spencer Tracy (1900-1967), a legendary non-married Hollywood couple who kept their own relationship a secret. NORA CHARLES . That sounds like an interesting case. Why don’t you take it? NICK CHARLES . I haven’t the time. I’m much too busy seeing that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for. (The Thin Man, 1934) Theirs were not the only films to suggest that married couples could still be solid flirts. The Thin Man movies (1934-1948), based on a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), were rooted in the period before the Hays Code, when Hollywood films did not yet tiptoe around risqué subject matter and immoral behaviour. Nick and Nora Charles, The Thin Man’s central couple, love cocktail parties, sexually charged banter, and working homicide cases together. As played by popular screen couple William Powell and Myrna Loy, Nick and Nora are the embodiment of urban sophistication and wit, and they take obvious delight in spicing up their marriage with brief excursions into the underworld. Loy’s character, in particular, has been singled out as a quick-witted heroine in the Shakespearean tradition and as one of Old Hollywood’s most iconic funny women: “She was beautiful, she was witty, she was self-possessed, she was adventuresome, she wore great hats.” (Heimel 1996, 258) 54 Chapter 4 Fig. 4.1: Nick and Nora Charles love a cocktail - and each other (The Thin Man, 1934). The decline of the screwball comedy coincided with the United States entering World War II, when glamorised depictions of wealthy New York socialites began to look inappropriate. Nick and Nora had to adjust, too: their fifth adventure, The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), sees them take a break from their cosmopolitan high jinks to discover rural America, where they give up Martinis in favour of Cider. There is a paradoxical effect to all romantic comedies that follow Shakespeare’s template of obstacles faced by couples until they can be together, particularly when the lovers initially seem repelled by each other. Because there is so much fun in the sparring and the elaborate wooing rituals, the viewers will often wish for the cou‐ ple not to get together, as keeping them in opposite corners like two boxers ready for a fight is far more entertaining than having them make up and embrace. ‘Happily ever after’ is all well and good, but what would you rather want as an audience? Two people who en‐ tertain you with their impressive witticisms and fast comebacks, or two people who are in complete agreement and even prevent each other from making wisecracks when they kiss? There is more to Shakespearean comedy than that, of course. The plots involve political and economic ideas, moral conundrums, the question of free will, and matters of emancipation and feminism avant la lettre. Yet ultimately, it is the romance plot that defines Shakespearean comedy, and most of his plots fulfil the modern-day definition of the romantic comedy, “which has as its central narrative motor a quest for love, which portrays this quest in a light-hearted way and almost always to a successful conclusion” (McDonald 2007, 9). This definition does not dictate heterosexual love exclusively, but most Shakespearean relationships are firmly situated in the heteronormative matrix. Shakespeare’s queer and asexual figures tend to remain loners, the most prominent example being Antonio in The Merchant of Venice (c. 1598). Ian McKellen suggests that Shakespeare intended Antonio to be played as “an openly gay man” (“Guardian Webchat” 2015), and the play’s character constellation and plot trajectory certainly support this view. Even though he is actually the titular hero of a Shakespeare comedy, Antonio remains single throughout the entire play. Having largely fulfilled his plot duty by the end of Act IV, he recedes into the background so that the focus can shift to the two central couples, Portia/ Bassanio and Nerissa/ Gratiano. According to W.H. Auden (1907-1973), every director must face “the awkward problem of what to do with Antonio in the last act”, as “the real hero of the play” has no dramatic function anymore following his best friend’s engagement (Auden 1962/ 1989, 166). The fact that people were reluctant to embrace such a queer reading of Antonio suggests, (1) that the theatre establishment often struggles to look beyond hetero‐ normativity in staging Shakespeare, and (2) that the comedies are not generally assumed to be very complex affairs. Shakespeare’s most complex and most endlessly 55 So Shakespearean, so romantic! discussed play, Hamlet, also happens to be his longest; the list of Shakespeare’s five shortest plays, by contrast, includes four comedies. This is reason enough for some to dismiss the comedies as superficial lightweights, and to criticise them for lack of character introspection. But their composition betrays a great deal of skill. Few of the comedies overstay their welcome; in fact, they exhibit a degree of narrative economy that is arguably missing in some of the wordier Shakespeare tragedies. Hamlet’s various soliloquies are more likely to be cut than any part in The Comedy of Errors: remove one scene or even a few lines of dialogue and you end up destroying the whole construction. Shakespeare’s comedies are more than just a random series of funny situations and sketches. In order to have a rewarding payoff in the final act, you need to establish a strong premise in the first, which is why the comedies tend to start with a bang. The shipwreck is a popular choice, featuring in The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, and in Twelfth Night. In The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1592), an intriguing what-if situation does the trick, with Baptista Minola forbidding his young daughter Bianca from getting married unless her elder sister Katherina has found a husband. Bianca’s suitors must work together to find Katherina a husband, leading to a very amusing battle of wits between the spinsterish Katherina and her prospective husband, Petruchio. To resolve the situation, obstacles must be cleared, providing the characters with plenty of opportunity to exercise their wits. In some cases, the central problem is bigger than that and involves a rebellion against social structures and convention. This may go together with a change of scenery, as the lovers flee into what is known as the ‘Green World’ in Shakespeare studies. Into the Green World The term ‘Green World’ was coined by literary scholar Northrop Frye (1912-1991) in The Argument of Comedy (1948). Though it is embedded in a more comprehensive discussion of the anthropological foundations of comedy, it starts from a very simple structural observation: many Shakespearean comedies involve a scenery change. The lovers are drawn towards one another, but an oppressive regime, often associated with the patriarchal rule of strict fathers, stands in their way. Fathers provide reliable opposition in comedy; silent-film director Mack Sennett once remarked that mother jokes never get a laugh, while “you can do anything with [fathers]. Father’s one of the best butts we have. You can do anything but kill him on the stage.” (qtd. in Dale 2000, 92) In both As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the young lovers are not free to pick their own romantic partners, because their fathers or stern monarchs have chosen more suitable matches for them. The characters refuse to bow to tradition, and when a window of opportunity opens, they flee into the realm of nature to undergo trials before they are allowed to return home. This pattern echoes the basic structure of the journey plot that runs through classic adventure stories, the so-called monomyth as explored by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). Once the initial setup has been established, the main character crosses a 56 Chapter 4 border into the unknown world where the majority of ‘trials and tribulations’ will play out, and it is only by clearing these obstacles that the hero gets to return home: slay the dragon, find the treasure, destroy the ring. The formula has been updated by Dan Harmon (1973-), the creator of critically acclaimed sitcom Community (2009-2015). Harmon’s Story Circle suggests that the plot can be segmented into eight steps that also work supremely well for plot-driven comedies (see Taylor 2021). Fig. 4.2: Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. This ‘journey into the unknown’ corresponds a little to the structural pattern of Shakespeare’s Green World. The comedies may not be adventure stories as such, as there is no territory to conquer and colonise. But as the antithesis to the familiar realm of home, the Green World fulfils a similar function. Adventure stories routinely accommodate supernatural threats and otherworldly creatures, and a little bit of magic and wizardry is always on the cards in Shakespeare’s Green World, too. Just look at the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is populated by mischievous fairies who enjoy a bit of naughty fun. Various Shakespearean comedies make use of the Green World trope. In Love’s Labour’s Lost (c. 1598), the King and his friends swear a vow of abstinence, and when love comes calling in the shape of the Princess of France and her three companions, they must leave the castle and relocate to the nearby park to start their wooing. But the most well-known example is the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, a deceptively blissful locus amoenus where old hierarchies temporarily vanish, and where the lovers are free to live the life of Riley. Most of the characters in the play belong to the court of a little duchy in France, where the legitimate ruler, Duke Senior, has been driven into exile by his treacherous brother, Duke Frederick. When Duke Frederick commands that his daughter Celia is to be separated from her best friend, Rosalind, the 57 So Shakespearean, so romantic! two women flee to the Forest of Arden, where the good Duke has built a new life for himself and his followers. The bucolic world of Arden thus represents everything that the oppressive court cannot be: it is an enlightened realm of carefree meditation, where everyone is on equal terms. The scenery could well be that of Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood and his Merry Men have established their own little alternative regime of outcasts who defy authority. In the Green World, this may range from refusing to pay taxes to practising free love. It is much to Shakespeare’s credit that he does not paint a completely rose-tinted picture of Arden; in fact, the play very much suggests that old hierarchies still apply, though not as pronounced as before. Act Two starts with Duke Senior singing the praises of the Forest as a realm of harmony between all creatures, where man is free at last to find “good in everything” (2.1.17). The punchline follows immediately, as Duke Senior does a complete verbal U-Turn and invites his men to “go and kill us venison”. Clearly, this is not the Garden of Eden for every being; even in the land of milk and honey, animals are slaughtered to put dinner on the table. Shakespeare continues to drop hints throughout the play that the Forest of Arden is not the complete antithesis to the Duchy from which the characters have fled. When the clown Touchstone, one of the courtiers, meets a shepherd, he immediately pulls rank on him, proving that even in the Green World, some animals are more equal than others. TOUCHSTONE. Holla, you clown! ROSALIND. Peace, fool, he’s not thy kinsman. CORIN. Who calls? TOUCHSTONE. Your betters, sir. (2.4.63-66) The same goes for morals and inhibitions: they do not simply vanish because of a change of scenery. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander tries to talk Hermia into sleeping with him (“by your side no bed-room me deny”), but she gently rebuffs him, insisting on a separation as “becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid” (2.2.50-58). Much to Lysander’s chagrin, Hernia remembered to bring her virtue when she packed for their little weekend break. Clearly, the Green World does not allow the characters to completely cut ties with the world they have temporarily left behind. Instead, the Green World offers them a brief interlude before they return to their familiar environment, somewhat reconciled to its problems and ready to meet its demands. The Green World is where you can fall in love, undergo a learning process, maybe reach an epiphany - but eventually, reality will come knocking at your door, and the holiday is over. However, the homes that the characters return to will have changed a bit for the better, sometimes miraculously so. As You Like It offers its main characters a rather unexpected return ticket when they learn that the stern Duke has undergone a rather unlikely character change, abdicated the throne, and decided to dedicate his life to meditation and spiritual betterment. Such radical transformations must occur off-stage, maybe because real and credible change is much harder to achieve in front of the spectators. 58 Chapter 4 The lesson that Shakespeare’s young lovers learn amounts to growing up a bit. They are adolescents who must bide their time before they are admitted into a state of (symbolic) adulthood. In this respect, Shakespeare’s characters are not so different from the horny high-school students in the American Pie franchise (1999-2012). They all get to throw one big final party before the responsibilities of adulthood await them: marriage, procreation, and tax forms. The continuation of the life-cycle is quite crucial here and also informs Frye’s argument on the Green World. In his book Anatomy of Criticism (1957), he draws a link between comedy and the myth of spring, arguing that Shakespeare’s romantic plots are “assimilated to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land” (Frye 1957/ 1990, 182). Comedy celebrates the triumph of spring over winter, of life, warmth, and fertility over barrenness and the cold - this makes the notion of carnival that we will turn to in the next chapter instrumental to comedy. It entails renewal and rebirth, and often a symbolic ‘changing of the guard’, as the old generation makes way for the young. Federico Fellini’s film Amarcord (1973) starts with a bonfire night in rural Italy that heralds the arrival of spring; the ceremony appears to make the villagers cheeky and mischievous. Rituals to that effect are known throughout many cultures, and they may involve the burning of (symbolic) scapegoats, cleansing rites, and fertility charms. This constella‐ tion sounds rather archaic, but the underlying spirit is still at work in contemporary romantic comedies. They maintain strong ties to ancient rituals, as ‘true love’s first kiss’ is often set against the backdrop of spring awakening. This is as true of You’ve Got Mail (1998) as of Notting Hill (1999), both of which conclude with idyllic tableaux of the lovers amidst a modern-day Green World, with the directors throwing in green meadows, blossoming trees, and the occasional pregnancy. The spirit of fertility can also be felt in some romantic comedies about middle-aged couples falling in love. Cactus Flower (1969), based on the Broadway hit by Abe Burrows (1910-1985), concludes with the ageing Lothario (Walter Matthau) finally settling for a woman of his own age, and the final shot shows the sterile cactus on her desk blossoming at last. It was a lover and his lass, With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino, That o’er the green cornfield did pass, In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding a ding, Sweet lovers love the spring. (Shakespeare: As You Like It, 5.3.16-21) 59 So Shakespearean, so romantic! Fig. 4.3: Blossoming spring frames the romantic tableau (You’ve Got Mail, 1998). A more literal yet also subversive acknowledgement of the spring/ winter divide can be found in Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), which is a horror film but also a dark and twisted take on the romantic comedy - ‘A Midsummer’s Nightmare’, as it were. The film is about a group of American Ph.D. students who travel to rural Sweden to take part in the traditional midsummer festivities of the Hårga commune. Once in Sweden, the young anthropologists learn that they have been as‐ signed roles in the macabre rites of purge and renewal. Dani, the protagonist, is crowned the new May Queen, while her boyfriend Christian is chosen to impregnate a young Hårga woman. There is no happy ending, at least not in the traditional sense: Christian, the prospective ‘young lover’, is sacrificed once he has spent his seed, while the increasingly psychotic Dani becomes absorbed into the communal body of the Hårga commune. Pregnancies and parental responsibilities emblematise the social contract that is bound up with wooing and matchmaking. Even Shakespeare’s most transgressive characters, strong women like Viola (Twelfth Night) and Rosalind (As You Like It) learn to adapt. What constitutes the happy ending is not that the lovers voice their feelings for one another, but that they get to reconcile their libidinous desire with the social contract. They choose to abandon the Green World, marry, and settle down. Needless to say, marriage is usually not negotiable in Shakespeare’s plays. Modern-day romantic comedies will emancipate themselves from this template; Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and I Give It a Year (2013) present us with some disastrous marriages and couples that deliberately forfeit the institution of marriage because they have seen too many relationships go down the drain once the partners have said, “I do”. The most iconic example is counter-culture classic The Graduate (1967). In the final scene, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) tries to save Elaine (Katharine Ross) from marrying the ‘wrong guy’ and becoming another unhappy trophy wife. When he finds the church, it is too late - Elaine has already said yes. But this does not stop Benjamin from kidnapping the bride. They run away, having locked the gathered congregation inside the church with a large crucifix; a not very subtle but emphatic dig against the sanctity of marriage. In Shakespeare, such an ending is not on the cards, but this does not stop him from working out quite unambiguously that marriage is, first and foremost, a commercial transaction. More than 300 years later, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908- 2009) will make a similar point in his book Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949). Lévi-Strauss explains how in tribal cultures, women frequently serve as exchange objects between different groups of men, and that these kinship systems are the foundation of most civilisations. 60 Chapter 4 “[T]he value of exchange is not simply that of the goods exchanged. Exchange - and consequently the rule of exogamy which expresses it - has in itself a social value. It provides the means of binding men together, and of superimposing upon the natural links of kinship the henceforth artificial links - artificial in the sense that they are removed from chance encounters or the promiscuity of family life - of alliance governed by rule.” (Lévi-Strauss 1949/ 1969, 519) Shakespeare’s ‘happy endings’ can be read along these lines. Twelfth Night ends with the two wealthiest families of Illyria joining forces through a double marriage; and in The Merchant of Venice, the whole marriage plot is “not so much a courtship but a business plan” (Holderness 1996, 71). Bassanio, the play’s young lover, is primarily a businessman who discusses the virtues and merits of his prospective bride in mercantile terms: BASSANIO. Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia. Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, […] her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden fleece. (Merchant 1.1.165-170, my emphasis) This is why it makes sense for the play to dedicate so much time to the search for a ring - both a luxury item and a symbol of marriage. The ring acquires an additional sexual connotation in the final lines of the play, when newly-wed Bassanio promises that he will do his best to “[keep] safe Nerissa’s ring” (5.1.307), in other words: to make sure that he is the only who has access to his wife’s vagina. Clearly, Shakespeare’s happy endings are often loaded with additional meaning and with troubles that even multiple marriages cannot completely gloss over. Most of Shakespeare’s young comic heroes and heroines exhibit foolish behaviour, so that getting married and settling down becomes a crucial character step for them: an end to foolishness and prolonged adolescence. Both inside and outside the realm of romantic comedy, refusal to get married often goes together with a character’s ongoing commitment to childish play-acting and foolishness. Bertie Wooster, the good-natured but singularly irresponsible protagonist in many stories of P.G. Wodehouse, is a stellar example of that: an eternal bachelor who is frequently dragged into engagements by powerful, maternal women, and who must rely on the stories’ convoluted plots and the cunning of his man-servant, Jeeves, to wriggle his way out of these engagements again. As a wealthy young heir whom many assume to be eccentric, Wooster enjoys some of the privileges of the only Shakespearean character who usually escapes unharmed (that is, single) from the marriage plots: the fool. 61 So Shakespearean, so romantic! Fool’s licence The terms ‘fool’ and ‘clown’ are sometimes used interchangeably in discussions of Shakespeare’s comedies, but in fact, the fool constitutes but one category within the taxonomy of clowns (see Gay 2008). The clowns include (1) the witty servants whom Shakespeare inherits from his Roman precursors; (2) the unsophisticated country bumpkins who demonstrate a non-intellectual, accidental sort of wit; (3) down-to-earth labourers like the gravedigger in Hamlet. And there are (4) the fools: professional jesters whose wit is their bread and butter. Some of them appear in minor roles, while others have a bigger impact on the plot; some fools exhibit the gentle kind of wit that sits well with the more lightweight comic plots, while King Lear’s personal, nameless fool offers plenty of cynical wisdom (see Videbaek 1996). Lastly, there is Sir John Falstaff, a minor character in the two parts of Henry IV (c. 1596-99) who proved so popular that he was promoted to leading-man status in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597). In his film Chimes at Midnight (1965), Orson Welles (1915-1985) condenses Falstaff ’s appearances into a thoughtful meditation on foolishness and old age, showing that there may be more to this hard-boozing rascal than meets the eye. No matter what importance the plays bestow upon him, the fool is anarchy and inversion personified. He always enjoys the various types of freedom that carnival, addressed in more detail in the next chapter, affords the rest of us for a limited amount of time. The fool is allowed to speak his mind and to violate social protocol, he is free to crack jokes in front of the ruler, at the expense of the ruler. On the stage, he enjoys privileges that none of the other characters have: he is in a position to reach out to the spectators, the same way that Plautus’s witty servants will break the fourth wall to deliver lengthy asides to the audience. They can use this privilege to provide plot exposition, a witty inner monologue or to sing a song, as Feste does at the end of Twelfth Night. But most of the time, it is their vocation to crack jokes, specialising in wordplay and obscenities. Historically, the fools earned their privileged position through social marginalisa‐ tion. Often suspected of idiocy and madness, fools were widely known as antisocial elements, and they existed on the fringes of society. In feudal times, before the rise of modern psycho-pathology, people who were rumoured to be mad or half-witted were grudgingly tolerated as part of the community. Some suspected mad people of being touched by God - or, by contrast, to be possessed of the devil. It was therefore thought best not to interfere with those ‘fools’, colloquially known as the ‘village idiots’ in some areas, to leave them in peace, and to let them ramble on. When this type of subaltern figure merged with various clowning traditions on stage, it produced a character who enjoyed licence to be as direct and obscene as no-one else. If the fool is, indeed, mad, this means he has not been refined (you might also say: ruined) by common courtesy and the rules of civilisation. The fool is a child of nature, he always speaks his mind and is perfectly straightforward about his hunger and his thirst. At the same time, the fool is not foolish in the strictest sense of the word, unlike Shakespeare’s dim-witted peasants or ‘dupes’. Though they lack a formal education, the fools can act the part 62 Chapter 4 of teachers, exhibiting a kind of unrefined wisdom that the audience experiences as refreshing and completely unbiased by book-knowledge acquired in the ivory tower. There is a radical and highly political dimension to the fool, if we consider him as an anti-establishment figure who is always at odds with the authorities. This goes beyond puns and double entendres, and it also goes beyond transgressive comedians like Lenny Bruce (1925-1966), who is sometimes talked about as a martyr figure. And do not some of the fool’s qualities apply to Jesus Christ, too? As a rebellious figure rumoured to be the Son of God, Jesus was certainly not considered a member of the establishment by his contemporaries. While he did not deliver his Gospel in the form of jokes, Jesus certainly exhibited the foolish quality of making his audience swallow the bitter pill, confronting them with hard truths. Shakespearean comedy often casts the fool in the role of an unconventional teacher. In a world where nearly everyone is somewhat foolish, the fool may paradoxically turn out to be a wise man. Because nobody expects him to know anything, he is at liberty to express “all the mischievous and rebellious desires in man which society attempts to control or frustrate” (Kaiser 1963, 88), and this gives him the aura of a prophet. Shakespeare’s melancholic anti-hero Jaques (As You Like It) is delighted when the fool Touchstone surprises him with his down-to-earth wisdom and his unmatched insight into the human condition: ‘Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more ‘twill be eleven. And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, And thereby hangs a tale. (AYLI 2.7.24-28) Though this little philosophical digression, garnished by a typical pun (“hangs a tale/ tail”) amounts to little more than a truism, Jaques is quite enthusiastic about Touchstone’s speech. The reason he finds this little memento mori intrusion into the Forest of Arden so refreshing is that he is surrounded by two groups of people whom he finds equally obnoxious because they have completely lost touch: high-minded courtiers and young lovers with a disarmingly sunny disposition. The fool cuts through all of their pretensions with his trademark nonchalance, which not everyone will appreciate. When Chris Rock (1965-) cracked his infamous hair-loss joke at the 2022 Academy Awards at the expense of Jada Pinkett Smith, this earned him a slap from her husband, who was about to win the award for Best Actor. In a room full of privileged celebrities, Rock was acting in the tradition of the Auriga, the slave in ancient Rome who followed the generals during their moment of triumph, whispering reminders of mortality into their ears, to make sure they kept things in perspective. 63 So Shakespearean, so romantic! Touchstone’s lesson in As You Like It is cut from the same cloth. It will inspire Jaques’s “All the world’s a stage” monologue, which is in turn echoed in the gravedigger scene in Hamlet (see Chapter 8). Clearly, people afflicted by melancholia drift naturally towards the fools, whose existential outlook mirrors their own. The fools are not integral to the central plot and could well be omitted without damaging the central conflict, but their wit, their endlessly inventive wordplay, and their rhetorical brilliance make them audience favourites. THREE CLASSIC FIGURES OF SPEECH, AS USED BY GROUCHO MARX Pun (wordplay based on linguistic ambiguity, like homophony): “You want some ice water? Get some onions, that’ll make your eyes water.” (The Cocoanuts, 1929) Paradox (a juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible ideas): According to his memoir, Groucho and Me (1959), Groucho resigned from a theatrical organisation by sending them the following wire: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” (Marx 1959/ 1995, 321) Paraprosdokian (a statement that ends with an unexpected twist): “Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot. But don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” (Duck Soup, 1933) Beyond the Shakespearean stage, the fool has endured in different incarnations. Few contemporary comedies are set in feudal times where jesters wearing caps and bells would not seem out of place, but they still accommodate modern-day fools: characters who enjoy a marginalised yet privileged position. The list may include extra-terrestrial visitor ALF (ALF, 1986-1990), who is known for his parasitic lifestyle as well as his unrivalled cheek, the ‘gay best friend’ trope in the contemporary rom-com (see Staples 2021), as well as animated characters like the Animaniacs (1993-1998), who routinely break the fourth wall, love puns, and poke fun at the establishment. Another natural habitat for the fool is the stand-up stage, which has always attracted transgressive performers. George Carlin (1937-2008) or Tig Notaro (1971-) have shocked audiences with their madcap energy and their disarming “I’m just saying …” attitude. Louis C.K. (1967-) used one of his guest stints on Saturday Night Live to ponder the attractions of paedophilia, while some comics make it an integral part of their act to have a go at the audience. While their most offensive material regularly provokes strong reactions, stand-up comics still get away with a lot more ‘thinking aloud’ than someone running for public office. They speak from a position of privilege and in a protected space, which allows them to invite the audience to follow an unconventional train of thought into uncharted territory, with the safety net firmly in sight: they’re only joking, right? There is a potential for epiphanies here. Nanette 64 Chapter 4 (2017), a critically acclaimed special by Hannah Gadsby (1978-), has been singled out as one of the most ground-breaking comedy solos of all time and has inspired extensive conversations about mental illness and homophobia; and it was a stand-up routine by American comedian Hannibal Buress (1983-) that led to a reinvestigation of the rape allegations against Bill Cosby (1937-). Both examples underline that the stand-up stage can become a courtroom. Hannah Gadsby used it to renegotiate the very terms of the performer/ audience relationship, while Hannibal Buress confronted the audience with their deliberate ignorance of well-documented sexual-assault cases. “Let’s have a laugh at your expense, shall we? Remember: they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon, and there’s no sequel.” (Ricky Gervais, hosting the Golden Globes in 2020) ● The genre of romantic comedy can be traced back to the plays of William Shakespeare. ● Shakespeare’s marriage plots involve one or several couples who must over‐ come various obstacles. ● The lovers often escape into another location ('the Green World’), where they experience a brief interlude of freedom. ● Eventually, they return into the bosom of society, accepting their place in the social hierarchy. ● One of the most popular Shakespearean characters is the fool, a witty outsider who represents anarchy and inversion. FURTHER READING : Gay, Penny (2008). The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s Comedies. Cambridge: CUP. Leggatt, Alexander (ed., 2001) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy. Cambridge: CUP. Smith, Emma (ed., 2004). Shakespeare’s Comedies. Malden: Blackwell. 65 So Shakespearean, so romantic! Chapter 5 Life as a carnival Bakhtin’s take on carnival Comedies frequently resort to patterns of inversion: women adopting male personas, noblemen falling from grace or posing as servants, sane people erroneously believed to be mad. These topsy-turvy arrangements have a long history, and many of them are based in ancient rituals of renewal and rebirth. Even in Shakespeare’s time, there was a place for them in the annual calendar; Twelfth Night even owes its title and likely premiere date to one of them. But the most well-known of these rituals - and one that is crucial to the genre of comedy - is carnival. Carnival has long been part of the scholarly discussion in literary and cultural studies. The concept was explored in detail by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a Russian critic and philosopher. He earned his Ph.D. in the 1940s with a study of French writer François Rabelais (c. 1483-1553), but the manuscript remained unpublished until the 1960s, a few years before Bakhtin’s death. While the book is, ostensibly, a study of medieval and Renaissance culture, its findings have wider implications. “[C]arnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter. It is a festive life.” (Bakhtin 1965/ 1984, 8) Bakthin’s key argument revolves around the dualism between what he calls ‘official culture’ and the ‘culture of the marketplace’ in medieval times. While ‘official culture’ is stable and inflexible, dominated by unalterable rules, the church and the feudal system, the ‘culture of the marketplace’ exists next to it, as a second life. It is a more inclusive and democratic expression of vitality, and it allows people to escape the shackles of official duty and institutionalised law. In a wider sense, comedy allows for the social grid to become permeable, as forces ‘from below’ are called upon to fix “disorder in the upper world” (Booker 2004, 124). The most common manifestation of this pattern is carnival. OFFICIAL CULTURE CULTURE OF THE MARKETPLACE sombre merry ruled by church and state ruled by the people duty festivity suppresses the body liberates the body asceticism excess It is clear that this discussion goes far beyond the period of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, and also beyond Rabelais, whose humoresque tales Bakhtin regards as overlooked masterpieces. Carnival, though a highly political phenomenon, has an anthropological dimension that links it to ancient fertility rites and to indulgence in various forms. Bakhtin mentions the paintings of Peter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569), which we will return to in the chapter on the grotesque. Bruegel paints carnival as a corpulent, joyous figure, whose sheer presence ridicules the joyless and ascetic body of duty and officialdom. Instead of being moderate and eating merely to sustain one’s existence, carnival goes for excessive amounts of food in order to celebrate life as a feast. The underlying impulse, to offer a brief liberation from strict regimes, is a universal one, as carnivalesque celebrations are part of the calendar all over the world. They are rites of passage that allow societies to exorcise the old and to renew themselves. In line with the psychic-release theory of humour, carnival amounts to letting off steam which has built up over the course of the old year. For a short period of time, it becomes acceptable to ditch official protocol and polite speech in favour of jokes, obscenities, and pranks. While carnival will not liberate us forever from our most pressing concerns, it allows for a temporary lifting and releasing of energy and stress. This clearly has a political dimension. If the ruling class insists on “ascetic oppression”, then carnival allows for “an authentic proletarian voice” expressing itself (Stott 2005, 33). It was this political angle that barred Bakhtin from acquiring his doctorate in 1940s Russia. His findings indicate that carnival serves as an element of political control, and that it is instrumental when it comes to upholding authority. A regime that wants to avoid actual rebellions is well-advised to reserve a place for some mild form of anarchy in the annual calendar. Unless pressure is released from time to time in a carefully orchestrated manner, it might get pent up to the point of detonation. No wonder, then, that carnival practices were already known in the ancient world, with the slaves promoted to the status of equals for a short period of time. Even in democratic societies where everyone is supposedly equal, this type of social utopia that suspends all class barriers has a place. There is a carnivalesque element even in something as primitive as a costume party, for as long as you wear the mask and the cloak, you abandon your identity and thus give up your status. But the temporary limitation is built into the experience from the beginning; there can be no permanent 68 Chapter 5 residency in the Forest of Arden. All time-loop comedies hinge on this unspoken agreement: the protagonists in Groundhog Day (1993) and Palm Springs (2020) initially embrace the freedom that follows from wiping the slate clean again every night, but keeping the party going forever soon becomes exhausting. When absolute freedom starts to feel like a curse rather than a blessing, they yearn for the bosom of civilisation and conventional time regimes, happy to accept their ‘natural’ place in the pecking order. The same lesson can be learnt from The Mask (1994), starring Jim Carrey, one of the most explicitly carnivalesque films of all time. It revolves around Stanley Ipkiss, a mild-mannered and timid bank clerk - is there ever any other kind of bank clerk in a Hollywood film, really? When this honest schmo comes into possession of a mask made by the mischievous god Loki, he transforms into the personified spirit of carnival: a powerful trickster figure, ruthless, obscene, and not to be restrained by convention, gravity, or the rules of classical Hollywood story-telling. The trickster is a mythic creature known to many indigenous cultures. He has different animal manifestations and may appear as a monkey or as a coyote in various tribal traditions. The trickster is an adaptable and timeless creature, capable of lying and swindling his way out of any situation, always with another ace up his sleeve. Many folktales emphasise that the trickster has been around forever and can change his shape and gender at will; most tales opt for a male trickster persona, though, to emphasise the trickster’s immense sexual appetite (see Hynes/ Doty 1993). He is closely aligned with the picaro and the con man tradition, not quite integrated into society, always out for his own gain. A list of modern-day tricksters might include Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk (1924) and Groucho Marx. In Freudian terms, carnival allows the libido to release some energy. The id that we all try to contain and hide from the world runs rampant for some time, a werewolf who has waited for the full moon. Stanley, who in one scene imitates the well-known image of Tex Avery’s horny wolf (Red Hot Riding Hood, 1943), manages to retain some of Loki’s madcap energy once he has disposed of the mask. Yet most people are not so lucky. The stereotypical lover of carnival is a person whose everyday existence is bleak and mirthless. When carnival ends, that person must once again reconcile themselves to existential despair. Charlie Brown, the hapless anti-hero of the Peanuts universe, springs to mind. He is not like his dog Snoopy, whose entire existence revolves around trying out one alter ego after the other, including the World War I Flying Ace, Joe Cool, and a series of “World Famous” expert sportsmen. Charlie, in contrast, rarely transcends his own existence. One notable exception is the ‘Mister Sack’ story-line that appeared in the June/ July strips of 1973, when Charlie puts a grocery bag over his head because he is ashamed of a rash. Disguising his true identity like this turns him into ‘Mr. Sack’, the most popular and well-respected kid in summer camp, and Charlie rues that he “can’t 69 Life as a carnival Fig. 5.1: John Belushi as per‐ sonified carnival (Animal House, 1978). wear this sack for the rest of my life”. Once the summer is over, he turns back into the world’s unluckiest little boy, disrespected by his peers and his dog. For the most part, characters who embody the carni‐ valesque principle are not integral to the plot, but as supporting players, they become human hand gre‐ nades. Toss them into a scene, and they will cause havoc to everyone around them, as their exclusive allegiance is to their gargantuan appetites and their love of mis‐ chief. Watch how Bluto (Animal House, 1978), played by the comic tornado John Belushi (1949-1982), fills his plate in the cafeteria and then initiates the greatest food fight in cinema history, or the terrifically unhinged performance that Rebel Wilson (1980-) gives in the role of ‘Fat Amy’ in the Pitch Perfect trilogy (2012-2017). No comedy without carnival In the Christian calendar, carnival precedes the 40-day fasting period to commemorate the death of Jesus Christ; in fact, the literal translation of carnival is ‘to put away meat’, which signals the coming of a longer abstinence period. Before good Christians subject themselves to this annual ritual, carnival offers them a chance to gain some excess weight. But anthropology has long shown that the idea of indulging yourself before an extended period of frugality predates Christianity by far. Festivals like the Dionysia or the Saturnalia also celebrated excess and fertility. As we have seen, these festivals were formative for the genre of comedy, and the oldest surviving plays are full of grotesque imagery as characterised by Bakthin: bodies that know no modesty, bodies that eat, drink, digest, fart, and fornicate. So no matter if you share Bakthin’s view on the class dimensions of carnival or not, it is clear that the carnivalesque principle is fundamental to the idea of comedy. Just remember the Shakespearean pattern that we established in the last chapter: the idea of a temporary disequilibrium, the momentary escape into the Green World that liberates the characters from their everyday duties and official protocol. The Green World is a carnivalesque space where class barriers disintegrate, where the characters put on masks and costumes to engage in flirty role-play and to crack lewd jokes to engage in flirty role-play and to crack lewd jokes. Even those plays that do not explicitly resort to the Green World respect the pattern of carnival. When an outrageous event leads to some form of temporary anarchy, anything goes - until it does not. Inevitably, the characters are forced back into ‘official culture’ and their place in the existing pecking order. While a generally accepted definition of comedy is hard to come by, this very basic pattern might be the closest thing we have to a comedy ‘formula’. 70 Chapter 5 THREE CARNIVALESQUE SCENARIOS IN POPULAR COMEDIES Home Alone: When his family go on a Christmas vacation, 8-year-old Kevin McCallister is accidentally left behind. As his family cannot get in touch with him for several days, Kevin enjoys a truly carnivalesque holiday season. With no adults to supervise him, he watches inappropriate films, wreaks havoc on his brother’s room, and eats all the candy he wants. Carnival ends when Kevin defends his home against intruders and cleans up in time for his parents’ return. Shaun of the Dead: This comedy-horror hybrid resorts to a rather extreme scenario in order to create the carnivalesque state of exception: the zombie apocalypse. Apocalyptic scenarios always create an anarchic space in fiction, as people fight for survival, trample over each other, and fight for resources. Aimless slacker Shaun first enjoys his carnivalesque liberty, disposing of his humourless flatmate, before he accepts the responsibilities of adulthood and saves the woman he loves. The Hangover: This film is set in Las Vegas, a town into whose very fabric the carnivalesque spirit seems to be written. As a place where not only the laws of etiquette are temporarily suspended (“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas! ”), it is the ideal setting for this tale of a bachelor party that goes horribly wrong. When the groom goes missing, his three friends must overcome their memory loss to get him to the altar (and thus back into the social fabric) in time. Though applicable to a variety of examples in all kinds of comic subgenres, the notion of carnival, with its emphasis on masquerade and costumes, is particularly helpful to discuss one motif that not only Shakespeare uses repeatedly in his plays: cross-dressing. Cross-dressing (I): Shakespeare’s transgressive heroines The Shakespearean canon contains three major comedies that involve cross-dressing: As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and The Merchant of Venice. In all three plays, it is the female lead characters who adopt a male persona to scheme or to secretly woo the men they are in love with. Disguised as men, they have a major impact on the plot, exhibiting the kind of transgressive behaviour that would have seemed hard to reconcile with female gender scripts in the Elizabethan era. To be precise: Rosalind (As You Like It), Viola (Twelfth Night), and Portia (The Merchant of Venice) do not have to put on male costume to be talkative, witty, and smart. But it is through putting on the costume that they get to influence the plot in a significant way. As fools use folly to shoot their wit, “so the heroines use their androgynous natures to be more provocative than might otherwise be possible” (Draper 2000, 178). 71 Life as a carnival By contrast, those Shakespearean heroines who try to exert dominance without dressing up as men are ridiculed as ill-behaved tomboys who need a ‘proper man’ to be housebroken. This is as true of Beatrice (Much Ado about Nothing) as it is of Katherina (The Taming of the Shrew). Unlike them, Shakespeare’s cross-dressing heroines get to disentangle the plot and dispense justice where the men fail, and they are applauded for their efforts. Shakespeare is far ahead of his time in this respect, seeing as he highlights the performative dimension of gender as explored by Judith Butler (1956-) nearly 400 years later. In her seminal book, Gender Trouble (1990/ 2008), Butler explains that drag performances always reveal the gender system itself as “imitative”, for the performance “dramatizes the cultural mechanism of [sex and gender’s] fabricated unity” (Butler 1990/ 2008, 188). In Butler’s reading, gender itself is a performative act that depends on frantic repetition, and the plots of comedies bear this out. Otherwise, would the male protagonists in cross-dressing comedies be so keen on proving their gender if it was not for an underlying suspicion that this ‘natural’ state is not so natural, after all? This leaves them with a tautological double-bind: to ‘express’ gender, we must perform individual acts; these acts produce what they are allegedly based on. “If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. […] Genders can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived.” (Butler 2008, 192-193) Tellingly, Rosalind and Viola do not undergo a significant personality change when they pass as men. They are witty and intelligent to begin with; it only takes a change of costume for them to be actually listened to and taken seriously. Shakespeare thus underlines that ‘doing one’s gender’ does not entail quintessentially ‘male’ or ‘female’ qualities. Effectively, cross-dressing “denaturalizes, destabilizes, and defamiliarizes sex and gender signs” and reveals them to have “a conventional rather than natural connection” (Garber 1993, 147). Cross-dressing thus also indicates the historical backdrop of what Thomas Laqueur (1945-), in his influential study Making Sex (1992), has characterised as the ‘one-sex’ model. He argues that gender was a much more flexible category before the 17 th century, and that women were for a long time not seen as a distinct sex but rather as an inversion of men, which makes gender, historically, “a social rank, a place in society” and thus “a sociological and not an ontological category” (Laqueur 1992, 8). This type of gender flexibility would have been even more obvious to Shakespeare’s audience, who were used to seeing men in female roles. Women were not legally 72 Chapter 5 banned from acting on the Elizabethan stage - female actors were tolerated in some touring companies, for example. Yet the idea of women speaking in public was akin to a cultural taboo, and ‘amateurish’ women who had the nerve to compete with ‘professional’ men on stage provoked moral outrage. The practicalities of Elizabethan theatre culture made for a rather complex setup when it came to cross-dressing. A male actor, usually a boy, would have played a female character who, in turn, pretends to be a man. This gives the proceedings an additional layer of fun that tends to escape contemporary audiences. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio comments on the strange appearance of ‘Cesario’, who is really Viola in male clothing: MALVOLIO. Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy […]. ‘Tis with him in standing water, between boy and man. He is very well-favoured, and he speaks very shrewishly. One would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him. (1.5.158-164) This is not just funny because Malvolio fails to recognise that ‘Cesario’ is, in fact, a woman; it would have been even funnier for Elizabethan spectators who were perfectly well aware that Malvolio is describing a boy actor. Consider how the joke is taken one step further in As You Like It: (1) A male actor would have played Rosalind, the female lead of the play; (2) Rosalind dons male disguise to become ‘Ganymede’, who strikes up a friendship with Orlando, the man Rosalind is in love with; (3) in order to help Orlando woo Rosalind, ‘Ganymede’ suggests a role-play in which (s)he takes on the role of Rosalind, that is: herself. The audience thus gets to see an actor who plays Rosalind, who plays ‘Ganymede’, who plays Rosalind. As You Like It happens to be the Shakespeare play with the most frequent use of the word “if ”. Everything is make-believe and fiction here, including gender. When we only see men and women play their biological sex in modern productions of these plays, we lose some of that dimension; Cheek by Jowl scored a global theatre hit with their all-male production of As You Like It, starring Adrian Lester as Rosalind, in 1991. Cross-dressing (II): A man is still a man, right? So far, we have only discussed the case of women passing as men, not the other way round. When we turn to comedies about men impersonating women, one key difference emerges quickly. Usually, the women are not compelled to act as men, or only to a degree. In Twelfth Night, Viola adopts the persona of ‘Cesario’ to work for Duke Orsino, but the situation does not require her to take this job at all costs. When she talks about her motivation, Viola argues somewhat evasively that the disguise shall help her to become “the form of my intent” (1.2.55), that is: to reconcile her appearance to her agenda. It is by no means clear why this should necessitate a complete masquerade, but Viola’s reasoning echoes the famous speech of Lady Macbeth, who asks the spirits to “unsex me here” and to fill her “from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty” 73 Life as a carnival (Macbeth 1.5.41-43). The unspoken assumption is that the female sex is (or rather: is said to be) weak and fragile. Shakespeare’s heroines thus choose to abandon their gender to acquire agency and to put their plans into action. In other words: to become protagonists. This is clearly not the case for men passing as women, seeing as they have agency to begin with. Popular culture is full of examples where men do not choose to dress as women but are forced into that by circumstance. The narratives seem to ask the question why any man would put himself into an effeminate and inferior position in a well-organised patriarchal environment. Quite often, it takes a lot of manoeuvring on behalf of the writer(s) to put the hero in a position where transvestism becomes inevitable, I Was a Male War Bride (1949) starring Cary Grant being one of the most prominent examples. In spite of the hero’s in-built reluctance to don drag, cross-dressing films remain incredibly popular to this day. In fact, two of them took the top spots when the American Film Institute compiled their list of the 100 greatest American comedies of all time: Some Like It Hot (1959) and Tootsie (1982). The former’s farcical setup was already addressed in Chapter 3; it involves two musicians who go into hiding as members of an all-female jazz band when the Chicago mob pursues them. Variations on this scenario are played in Big Momma’s House (2000) and White Chicks (2004), all of which set up a farcical crime plot to force their firmly heterosexual protagonists into female disguise. The masquerade is then milked for increasingly grotesque effect. Elsewhere, the protagonists are not threatened with literal death but with the symbolic death of effeminacy. They have fallen on hard times and fail to comply with the breadwinner role and the unwritten rules of masculinity. American sociologist Michael Kimmel compiles a list of these in his book Guyland (2009), building on Robert Brannon’s four basic rules of masculinity. The “Guy Code”, as outlined by Kimmel, contains items like “Boys Don’t Cry”, “Take It Like a Man”, and “Size Matters” (Kimmel 2009, 45-46). Narrative cinema has a hegemonic function when it comes to perpetuating gender clichés (see Kaltenecker 1996); typically, the feature-film plot requires the hero to reaffirm his masculinity following a crisis or traumatic experience. This pattern has been around forever; it can be found in ancient myths and in medieval tales of knights going into battle to reclaim their honour following a disgraceful experience. This implies that the oft-quoted ‘crisis of masculinity’ is crucial to upholding patriarchal authority - because the crisis allows the hero to repair and affirm his masculinity. This pattern is most obvious in tales of courage and combat, including the action film or the mercenary film. But it applies to comedy, too, even though the genre tends to favour the pre-adolescent man-child, and some of the most legendary cinematic tough guys, including John Wayne (1907-1979) or Clint Eastwood (1930-), wisely refrained from spoofing their well-known persona in comedies. But when masculinity itself gets subjected to a comic treatment, the 74 Chapter 5 5.2: Mrs. Doubtfire has some is‐ sues (Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993). films often turn to remasculinisation plots, where the hero has to suffer through distinctly ‘unmanly’ scenarios to emerge victorious. Sylvester Stallone (1946-) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947-) riffed on their carefully established images as Hollywood’s muscular mercenaries. Schwarzenegger played an undercover policeman in a day-care facility (Kindergarten Cop, 1990) and a geneticist who becomes pregnant (Junior, 1994), Stallone exercised his comedic chops in the role of a cop with Oedipal issues (Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, 1992). These plots all depend on what Judith Butler identifies as the punitive consequences of the gender system: “we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right” (Butler 1990/ 2008, 190). Stallone and Schwarzenegger are thus not only up against terrorists and thugs, they are also up against the controlling gaze of the audience, to prove that they are still ‘proper’ men. The protagonist’s inability to ‘give ‘em hell’ leads to a paradoxical constellation. To repair his ailing masculinity, he goes fully effeminate, yet any suspicion of queerness must be dispelled in the end. Cross-dressing comedies go out of their way to stress how thoroughly heterosexual the protagonist is, often using the ‘fox in a henhouse’ motif to this end. The hero gets close to attractive women who feel safe from the male gaze, because they do not suspect that their kind-hearted, maternal friend is, in fact, a guy. Effectively, when the protagonist ‘becomes’ a woman, he “penetrate[s] her space symbolically in order ultimately to penetrate her” (Reeser 2010, 123). On a subliminal level, these scenarios may spread fears that are articulated in trans-exclusionary feminism. Many ‘TERFs’ argue that opening up female spaces such as dressing-rooms or bathrooms for trans people will attract sexual predators, even though there is no empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. Global box-office hit Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), starring Robin Williams (1951-2014) as a man who passes as a female housekeeper to see his children, opts for a more balanced portrayal of masculinities, allowing the hero to grow into a better version of himself. Playing the elderly British nanny makes divorced dad Daniel Hill‐ ard less self-centred and leads to professional accom‐ plishments; the man-child who was unable to hold a job turns himself into a success story. While this sounds like a reactionary conclusion, the ending of Mrs. Doubtfire has aged remarkably well. Not only does the film wisely refrain from the Parent Trap pattern of bringing the divorced parents back together, it also allows the hero to retain his female persona. Instead of burying her beneath layers of freshly restored machismo, Daniel turns Mrs. Doubtfire into the star of a television show for children. Unlike other carnivalesque heroes, he holds on to a slightly more adjusted and responsible version of his infantile persona and thus to some of his boundless queer energy. 75 Life as a carnival The same cannot be said for Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman (1937-) in the role of Michael Dorsey. Michael initially resembles the protagonist of Mrs. Doubtfire: both are talented but self-absorbed actors who cannot find work. By turning himself into ‘Dorothy’, Michael earns a role in a popular daily soap-opera, falls for a female colleague and becomes subjected to the entertainment industry’s everyday sexism. Several men fall in love with the ‘fraudulent woman’, which is part of a running joke within the genre. In Twelfth Night, the richest lady in town falls for Viola-as-Cesario and then settles for Viola’s twin brother; in Some Like It Hot, a kind-hearted but dim-witted millionaire becomes smitten with ‘Daphne’, Jerry’s female alter ego. But a foray into the Forest Arden also necessitates an eventual return; and the same is true of the gender masquerade. Cross-dressing comedies conclude by repairing the usual gender hierarchy, with femininity and masculinity restored and the characters at last reconciled to their ‘natural’ gender, even though the plots go to great pains to reveal the underlying gender system to be anything but natural. This reactionary twist in the end is often hard to stomach. On the one hand, there is a queer sense of jouissance and of play-acting that sits well with postmodern gender theory, on the other hand, the stories firmly rest on a binary view of gender (“This woman is not really a woman.”), and their endings reaffirm rather than undercut existing hierarchies. As You Like It provides the template for this. The Forest of Arden liberates Rosalind, but her transformation into ‘Ganymede’ also turns her into a chauvinist pig. ‘Ganymede’ is not only quite the mansplainer, (s)he also adopts macho attitudes and affirms various gender stereotypes. Once the charade is over, Rosalind gets married to Orlando and adopts submissive femininity again. Having said her wedding vows in the final scene, Rosalind keeps her mouth shut and leaves the talking to the men. Tootsie has an even more reactionary ending that does its best to exorcise the queer spirits it has summoned. Unlike Mrs. Doubtfire, which feels no need to repair the hero’s masculinity by showing off his ‘undamaged’ heterosexuality, Tootsie sees the protagonist ditch one attractive woman who has the hots for him to court another attractive woman. He also makes peace with a man who has fallen in love with ‘Dorothy’ by seeking him out in a bar, the quintessential homosocial space, and buying him a few beers. The underlying assumption is that two guys can still hang out - at least they have not kissed, thank God! Yet there are also examples where the carnivalesque state of exception is not completely undone by conventional happy endings, and where a degree of queer energy prevails. Twelfth Night and Some Like It Hot are brothers (or should this be: sisters? ) in spirit, because their happy endings have a distinctly queer flavour to them. In Shakespeare’s play, Duke Orsino seems to have taken a proper liking to his servant, ‘Cesario’, and he simply displaces his desire to Viola, whom he still addresses with her male alias once the charade is over: “Cesario, come; / For so you shall be while you are a man.” (TN 5.1.384-385) More than three centuries later, Some Like It Hot goes for the most tantalisingly queer ending of any comedy from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Jerry and Joe have made their escape from the gangsters, and while Joe ‘gets the girl’ 76 Chapter 5 (Marilyn Monroe’s kind and naïve Sugar Kowalczyk), Jerry still has to come clean with the millionaire who has fallen in love with ‘Daphne’. JERRY (as ‘DAPHNE’). Osgood, I’m gonna level with you. We can’t get married at all. OSGOOD. Why not? ‘DAPHNE’. Well, in the first place, I’m not a natural blonde. OSGOOD. Doesn’t matter. ‘DAPHNE’. I smoke! I smoke all the time! OSGOOD. I don’t care. ‘DAPHNE’. Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I’ve been living with a saxophone player. OSGOOD. I forgive you. ‘DAPHNE’. I can never have children! OSGOOD. We can adopt some. ‘DAPHNE’. But you don’t understand, Osgood! (removes the wig to reveal himself as JERRY). I’m a man! OSGOOD. Well, nobody’s perfect. The last line was thought up by the screenwriters because they could not find a better one and figured they could always fix this later on - lucky for us they did not. Osgood’s closing remark works not just as a terrific punchline to the film but also as a humanist message, without coming clean about its implications. Has he caught on to the fact that ‘Daphne’ is really a man? Does he not care? And then again, is ‘Daphne’ really a man? The film makes it quite clear that Jerry is much happier and more comfortable when he is ‘Daphne’. While Jerry’s companion Joe simply adopts the name ‘Josephine’ as a footnote to his real self and ditches the role immediately to go after Marilyn Monroe, Jerry takes to his transformation like a fish to water and seems completely at ease in his role, exhibiting a degree of self-confidence that he never shows as a man. If Some Like It Hot’s borderline utopian ending is to be believed, then Osgood will not mind ‘Daphne’ being a biological man, as long as they have each other. In ancient Greece, the persona was the name given to the characteristic mask worn by the actors, typifying a particular emotional state (‘happy,’ ‘angry,’ ‘sad’). Later, the persona became the general term used to describe individual stage or screen personalities, particularly for a particular alter ego associated with one actor. Chaplin’s persona was the little tramp, the persona of Mindy Kaling (1979-) is that of the quick-witted yet insecure, single urbanite woman. The persona was a key organising principle in the old Hollywood studio system, when actors were routinely called upon to lend their trademark shtick to various films. Take a minute to browse through the impressive IMDb filmography of Arthur Housman (1889-1942), who was Hollywood’s most popular comic drunkard during the 1930s. Actors have frequently complained about the ‘curse’ of their personas, particularly 77 Life as a carnival when they cannot find other parts or when the audience confuses them for their alter egos. Cross-dressing films riff on this dilemma, as the protagonists play their parts so well that it becomes hard for them to touch base with their ‘real’ self again. Where does the existence of Mrs. Doubtfire leave Daniel, who is so much more successful when playing the role of a woman? One final remark on As You Like It: The ending of the play may be a conservative affair, but it is followed by a rather baffling epilogue, with Rosalind stepping out of character to address the audience - as a performer. When she puts ‘her’ own gender into the conditional form (“If I were a woman …”, 5.4.16), the very concept of gender becomes untrustworthy. Is this a man or a woman speaking? And does it matter? ● Carnival signifies a temporary lifting of inhibitions and a form of release. ● Carnival celebrates excess and over-indulgence, and it is known in various incarnations all over the world. ● From a political viewpoint, carnival signifies a disintegration of class barriers. ● Carnival is integral to comedy, as the comic plot contains brief episodes where the usual hierarchies are temporarily suspended. ● The theme of carnival is highlighted in comedy’s emphasis on masquerade, like Shakespeare’s cross-dressing plots. FURTHER READING : Bakhtin, Mikhail (1965/ 1984). Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Garber, Marjorie (1993). Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. London: Penguin. Marx, Nick/ Matt Sienkiewicz (eds., 2018). The Comedy Studies Reader. Austin: U of Texas P. 78 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 The raunchy Restoration A night out at the rumour-mill The term ‘Restoration theatre’ is somewhat misleading, as it homogenises a diverse and contested time-span of nearly half a century, encompassing more than the combined reigns of Charles II (1660-1685) and his brother James II (1685-1688). Theatres had been closed in England under the Protectorate and during the Civil Wars. It was only when Charles II ascended the throne that two companies received a royal patent to restart performances. These two companies, run by Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683) and William Davenant (1606-1668), would perform for up to 500 people, under conditions that were fundamentally different from those of the Elizabethan period. The new theatres that were built around London were equipped with state-of-the-art theatrical devices and lighting equipment, allowing for quick scenery changes. Live music and dance numbers added to the spectacle, and the forestage that protruded into the audience space bound the spectators intimately to the performance. All of this bred an audience that was “very conscious of their part in the theatre experience and able to relate to the characters and situations they witness” (Langhans 2006, 17). The history of the modern playhouse really starts here, and it made the Restoration era one of the most fruitful theatrical periods in English history. By royal decree, women were allowed to appear on stage, which added to the spectacle. One of the first performances to take place after the reopening of the theatres was of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Othello (1603), with an actual woman rather than a boy-actor appearing in the role of Desdemona. A prologue was added to highlight the event: “The Woman playes to day, mistake me not, / No Man in Gown, or Page in Petty-Coat” ( Jordan 1664, 21). While her presence was advertised as an event, her artistic contribution seems to have been of no significant interest beyond the sheer novelty; the name of the performer was never recorded for posterity. Restoration theatre’s tendency to objectify and sexualise the female characters certainly added to the problem, as did the fact that several actresses were rumoured to be royal mistresses. This does not take away from women’s professionalism; not only did the Restoration period see them take up the pen to become playwrights, some of them, including Davenant’s widow, also managed their own theatre companies. Some of the most detailed and insightful notes on the theatregoing experience during the Restoration can be found in the diaries of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). A member of parliament trusted with various administrative jobs in the Admiralty, Pepys left behind a detailed record of life in 17 th -century England, offering plenty of insight into the life and politics of the period, as well as infidelities and indigestions. His diaries are in themselves a treasure trove of comic bathos - he is the man who skipped part of Charles II’s coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey because he had to pee. But the diaries also make for fascinating reading when it comes to contemporary theatre culture, which Pepys felt very conflicted about. He often makes vows to abstain from the theatre and to cut back on the expense, chastising himself for his inability “to conquer myself as to going to plays” (2 Jan. 1664), but he always comes back for yet another performance a few days later. Pepys notes how his love of plays distracts him from his business affairs (17 Aug. 1661), even though he seems unsatisfied with the experience most of the time. It is typical for Pepys to visit the theatre to have a good time, but to find little to recommend the play other than the “fine legs” of an actress (23 Feb. 1663). For Pepys and other members of the aspiring middle class, immersion in a well-told story would have been but one minor aspect of going to the theatre. It was much more about gazing at the stars, male and female, hearing the latest gossip, seeing other people, and being seen in turn. The crowd was looking for entertainment but did not primarily attend to appreciate distinguished acting skills. In fact, Pepys’s diary indicates that he was more interested in ogling the women and in flirting - before, after, and during the performances. Pepys finds A Midsummer Night’s Dream completely ridiculous, but he consoles himself with the sight of “some handsome women” (29 Sep. 1662). “The audience sat dressed in all their finery, and their warmest clothes: cloaks, surcoats, gloves. Actresses always displayed their shoulders and a good deal of their breasts, and consequently were freezing cold. […] One of the main attractions of the Restoration theatre was of course the display of the actress as a new phenomenon. About 90 of the 350 Restoration plays contain women disguised as boys, many of whom at some point reveal that their masculinity is false by stripping open their jerkins, or having a man feel their bosoms. Restoration theatre gives me the overwhelming impression of a sex-orientated, fashionable club: the Playboy Club of the day.” (Hall 1983, 311) Rakes and cuckolds Our idea of Restoration comedy is mainly informed by the plays written throughout the 1660s and 1670s, when authors tried to reconcile the theatrical tradition with contemporary subject matter. Their comedies return to the mould of traditional romantic comedy as done by Plautus and Shakespeare: courtship plots about young lovers who must overcome paternal authority; witty dialogues; a few added twists and innovations. Morality is being renegotiated, sexual virtue becomes a contested issue, 80 Chapter 6 and cuckolding turns into a major plot point, as women routinely cheat on their older, borderline senile husbands. Restoration comedy is, on the whole, not as lewd and obscene as is sometimes suggested, and there are plenty of authors like John Dryden (1631-1700) who try to clean up the English stage and who rail against French farce, claiming it is a ‘dirty foreign import’ (see Chapter 11). Dryden insists that comedy should lead by positive example rather than revel in misbehaviour, and he values subtle wit over obscenities. In practice, however, even the farcical adultery comedies that Dryden rails against exhibit stellar examples of wit, and the sexual libertines often co-exist with paragons of virtue in the same play. Wit represents an intellectual virtue in comedy. While it contributes little to the plot, it is a chance for the comic mind to impress the audience with clever ideas or surprising and paradoxical observations. In the comedy of manners (see Chapter 7), which is rather light on plot, the authors engage in a kind of contest where they try to outdo each other with the most elaborate insult or the most outrageous comparison. Wit enjoys a reputation as “the unfailing symptom of intelligence” (Hitchens 2007/ 2011, 391), but it is also said to indicate cold-heartedness, as opposed to the genuine warmth of humour (see Strachey 1888, 516). Wit is often associated with the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of intellectuals that regularly met throughout the 1920s. Among others, it comprised critic Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943), the actor Harpo Marx (1888-1964), and the author Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), who was famous for her sharp observations. Harpo Marx attributes to her the following story: “I met a strange fellow up in Canada, the tallest man I ever saw, with a scar on his forehead. I asked him how he got the scar, and he said he must have hit himself. I asked him how he could reach so high. He said he guessed he must have stood on a chair.” (qtd. in Marx 1962/ 2017, 198) In fact, the wittiest type of character who ever graced the Restoration stage may well be the most immoral and self-centred one: the rake. Typically, the rake is a young gambler and womaniser who does not have to work for a living and who fights his boredom by feeding his voracious sexual appetite. The Restoration period was equally outraged and fascinated by real-life rakes like John Wilmot, 2 nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), a courtier and author of erotic poetry rumoured to have been so notorious that he got his own biopic starring Johnny Depp (The Libertine, 2004). As a serial seducer of women, the rake follows in the footsteps of the medieval vice character, a kind of personified evil who attempts to seduce the play’s everyman character (and, by implication, the audience), only to be rejected in the end. In time-honoured tradition, the vice character is not only there to be despised, as his charm and cunning give him qualities that go over well with the audience. Watching the vice character in action may trigger our sense of decency and alert us to various temptations. At the same time, viewers are implicitly 81 The raunchy Restoration encouraged to root for the vice character. According to popular stage folklore, actors tend to be more interested in playing Mephistopheles than Faust, as the devil usually gets all the good lines. The rake embodies various other stage traditions besides the vice character. Like the witty servant, he is agile and flexible enough to scheme for his own benefits; like Shakespeare’s young lovers, he is impulsive and rash; and like the fool, he demonstrates down-to-earth pragmatism and never apologises for who he is and what he wants. In the works of the first generation of Restoration playwrights, the rake usually does not develop; authors belonging to the second generation, born after the actual Restoration period, make more attempts to reform him (see Corman 2006). Throughout the play, the rake usually lives up to his reputation as a serial adulterer who juggles several affairs at the same time, and he is quick to dispose of his lovers post-coitum. At the beginning of George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676), Dorimant complains that “a billet-doux written in cold blood” is dull and insipid, “after the heat of the business is over” (Etherege 1676/ 2005, 90). One of the quintessential rakes of the Restoration stage is the aptly-named Horner, conceived by William Wycherley (1641-1716) in The Country Wife (1675). The play is widely acknowledged as one of the bawdiest comedies of the era, blending elements of farce and the comedy of manners (see Hughes 2004). Horner asks his doctor to spread a rumour about his impotence, which makes it likelier for upper-class husbands to invite him into their homes, as they erroneously assume the “innocent playfellow” to present no threat to their young wives (Wycherley 1675/ 2005, 26). The rake congratulates himself on having come up with the perfect seduction scheme. HORNER. Now may I have, by the reputation of an eunuch, the privileges of one, and be seen in a lady’s chamber in a morning as early as her husband; kiss virgins before their parents or lovers; and maybe, in short, the passe-partout of the town. (Wycherley 1675/ 2005, 7) Horner does not hesitate to go after the eponymous ‘country wife’, Mrs. Pinchwife, whom he seduces before sending her back into the arms of her unloving husband. Various subplots allow Wycherley to poke fun at contemporary marriage practices. He has Pinchwife ponder the advantages of picking ugly and stupid women, as they are likelier to remain faithful and to keep their mouths shut: “he’s a fool that marries; but he’s a greater that does not marry a fool. What is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold? ” (Wycherley 1675/ 2005, 13) Later on, a maid who is busy dressing up her mistress for her betrothed, drily remarks that she might as well be “perfum[ing] a corpse for a stinking second-hand grave” (46). A lot of this points in the direction of 20 th -century bedroom farce (see Chapter 11), not least because Billy Wilder recycles the play’s central gimmick. In Some Like It Hot, Tony Curtis’s character pretends to be an impotent, bookish millionaire so that he can be ‘cured’ by Marilyn Monroe’s character. The setup lends itself to dramatic irony and allows for plenty of double entendres, particularly in The Country Wife’s china scene 82 Chapter 6 Fig. 6.1: Ryan O’Neal confides in the audience (What’s up, Doc? , 1972). (Act 4, Scene 3). As Horner feigns to discuss porcelain with several of the ladies present, Sir Jasper fails to pick up on the lewd subtext: MRS. SQUEAMISH. Good Mr. Horner, don’t think to give other people china, and me none; come in with me too. HORNER. Upon my honour, I have none left now. MRS. SQUEAMISH. Nay, nay, I have known you deny your china before now, but you shan’t put me off so. Come. HORNER. This lady had the last there. LADY FIDGET. Yes, indeed, Madam, to my certain knowledge, he has no more left. MRS. SQUEAMISH. Oh, but it may be he may have some you could not find. […] HORNER. Do not take it ill, I cannot make china for you all, but I will have a roll-waggon for you too, another time. (59) The characters’ constant two-facing involves frequent use of a theatrical convention that was already popular before the Restoration era: the aside. It allows the characters to briefly break the fourth wall so that they can voice an inner thought without being heard by the others. Characters can thus confide in the audience, and the audience becomes complicit in turn. As a highly theatrical convention that fosters a close rapport between stage and auditorium, the aside has made an unlikely comeback in postmodern comedy formats with cartoonish overtones. The title of What’s up, Doc? already invokes Bugs Bunny’s signature catch-phrase, so it is rather appropriate that the characters also exercise their privilege of breaking the fourth wall. Ryan O’Neal’s character makes the occasional use of the aside when no-one else in the scene wants to listen to him. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (2016-2019) has tragicomic overtones, but it also gives its lead character qualities of a female rake: she is quick-witted and promiscuous, and frequently betrays her true emotions in short asides to the audience. For the most part, though, Restoration comedy is less invested in characters and more in taking a satirical look at the underlying social malady. The Country Wife holds no illusions regarding the practice of arranged marriages, where women are routinely exchanged as commodities and a man’s value is determined by the number of ‘trophy wives’ whom he seduces. In the end, the cuckold himself chooses to keep up the charade, so as not to lose face: “For my own sake fain I would all believe; / Cuckolds, like lovers, should themselves de‐ ceive.” (84) Satire, while sometimes posited as a distinct subgenre of comedy, is actually more of a “free-ranging mode of artistic attack” (Weitz 2009, 184), usually with a clearly defined target in mind. There is a didactic dimension to satire in that it assumes a 83 The raunchy Restoration position of moral superiority and pursues a political agenda. The targets of satire are manifold. It may poke fun at a general character deficit, or it may go after real-life people like Adolf Hitler, who appears as ‘Tomainian’ dictator Adenoid Hynkel in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. When satire goes after less obvious targets, the audience must rise to the occasion and figure out the hidden subtext. The protagonist in satire is often an anti-hero with a sceptical, picaresque outlook on an imperfect world that he may or may not feel called upon to change. Peter Gibbons, the deeply unsatisfied protagonist in Mike Judge’s Office Space (1999), only starts to rebel when under hypnosis; the disengaged IT schmuck suddenly calls out the hypocrisy of his inhumane, neo-liberal work environment. Satire involves charged gags with a distinct anti-authoritarian streak. In his insightful discussion of director Blake Edwards, Sam Wasson suggests the category of the ‘splurch’ to describe slapstick routines in which authority is cut down to size (see Wasson 2009). The subsequent generation of Restoration playwrights would cut back on the satire to make room for unlikely reconciliations and spiritual betterment. George Farquhar (1677-1707), a playwright notorious for his scandalous subject-matter and the cruelty of his humour, would tack virtuous endings onto his plays to comply with contempo‐ rary notions of morale. In Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle (1699), Roebuck recalls how he had to go into exile because he got a woman pregnant with twins. Even in looking back at this act of complete ruthlessness, Roebuck cannot help but brag about his powerful seed: “The Jade was so pregnant to bear Twins, the Fruit grew in Clusters.” Unwilling to “marry a Whore”, he jumped ship, somewhat consoled by the fact that one of the twins died, which makes Roebuck thank the heavens for “lessen[ing] my Affliction” (Farquhar 1699/ 1760, 14-15). Convention dictates that the rake eventually sees the error of his ways and gets married. But the resolution is so clearly forced on a play that spends most of its running time revelling in misogynist jokes that it is hard to believe in Roebuck’s concluding verses: “Wild and unlawful Flames / Debauch us first, and softer Love reclaims.” (Farquhar 1699/ 1760, 94) The unlikely change of heart remains a popular plot point in romantic comedies to this day. Frequently, the protagonists are ageing playboys and Lotharios who learn to embrace monogamy. By deciding to give up on their carnivalesque existence, they earn true love’s first kiss. In Pillow Talk (1959), starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson, Hudson’s dashing songwriter Brad Allen compares an unmarried man to a tree in the forest: He stands there independent, an entity unto himself. And then he’s chopped down, his branches are cut off, he’s stripped of his bark, and he’s thrown into the river with the rest of the logs. Then this tree is taken to the mill. And when it comes out, it’s no longer a tree. It’s the vanity table, the breakfast nook, the baby crib, and the newspaper that lines the family garbage can. 84 Chapter 6 Fig. 6.2: There’s something queer about this rake (Lover Come Back, 1961). This comparison provokes Brad’s mate to insist that there are girls that make you “look forward to having your branches cut off ”. The film inevitably proves him right, though the underlying castration threat never completely vanishes. Day and Hudson would try to emulate Pillow Talk’s impressive box-office results with Lover Come Back (1961), another version of the tale about the confirmed bachelor who decides to ‘play the wild rover never no more’ when he gets house-trained by the spinsterish professional woman. But Lover Come Back comes with a twist, as Hudson’s on-screen alter ego has a habit of stumbling into situations that make him look suspiciously queer. When he is seen wearing women’s clothes, somebody comments that he is “the last guy in the world I would have figured”, thus alluding to (without explicitly naming) the subject of homosexuality. Richard Dyer (1945-) uses the scene as his point of departure for a detailed reading of Rock Hudson’s screen persona, now widely overshadowed by the fact that Hudson was a closeted gay man throughout his life and died as one of Hollywood’s first AIDS victims. This has also led to a re-evaluation of his career, particularly the various romantic films in which he was paired with desirable leading ladies such as Elizabeth Taylor (1932- 2011) and Lauren Bacall (1924-2014). As part of their efforts to prove the virility and heterosexual commit‐ ment of the rakish leading character, Hudson’s romantic comedies often use homo‐ phobic set-pieces that Dyer calls “pretending-to-be-a-cissy routines”. They clearly denigrate women and gay men, but their presence suggests that films that look com‐ pletely heteronormative are, in fact, “bristling with sexual hysteria and gender confu‐ sion” (Dyer 2002, 166). Dyer’s argument can also help us shed light on the subtexts buried in Restoration comedies. The plays of that era not only infuse their minor characters with queer qualities (see Atwood 2013; Wiehe 2021), they can also be probed for the various ways in which they camouflage homoeroticism. Queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009) reads The Country Wife as an example of her ‘triangulation’ hypothesis, according to which bonds between men often require a kind of mediation through a woman. Horner in The Country Wife is more interested in cuckolding other men than being with women; his masculinity arguably rests not so much on his sexual conquests but on giving himself an advantage over other men (see Sedgwick 1985). Sedgwick also argues that triangular relationships use women only as a pretext to conceal a homoerotic attraction between two men. This links Horner to modern-day rakes like Stifler in the American Pie franchise, a striking blend of the self-assured womaniser and the Shakespearean fop. Stifler, whose walking erection of a telling name would have done the Restoration playwrights proud, shares Malvolio’s habit of being constantly humiliated, in scenes brimming with homophobic subtext. In one rather paradoxical scene in American Pie 2 (2001), Stifler 85 The raunchy Restoration goes so far as to kiss another man to prove his heterosexual prowess. While the rest of the characters gradually succumb to the marriage game, he remains in prolonged adolescence. His popularity suggests the rake is an adaptable enough character to remain in circulation. He continues to haunt the ‘raunch-com’, a genre well-known for “[making] filthiness funny” (Patches 2014). The list includes Blake Edwards’s Skin Deep (1989), a sex comedy for the AIDS age and well-known for the bizarre scene in which two glowing condoms appear to be ‘dancing’ in the dark, as well as Boomerang (1992), starring Eddie Murphy (1961-). Boo‐ merang was a ground-breaking Hollywood film. Not only does it contain an all-black ensemble, Murphy’s suave womaniser is the rare example of an African-American man playing the role of the rake. This came after decades in which the sexuality of African-American men was either ignored or treated as a threat, with films revelling in racist imagery that suggested beastly savagery. Shakespeare’s romantic comedies were on to the economic subtext of the marriage market (see Chapter 4); the modern-day rake comedy suggests that even the dating game is all about commodification and professional marketing. It is not a coincidence that so many of the films, including Lover Come Back, Boomerang, What Women Want (2000), and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), are set in the world of advertising. The romantic plot threads are intertwined with stories about a new product launch, and the parallels between both are often foregrounded as the lovers apply their professional sales skills to their dating routines and courtship rituals. They dress themselves up as glossy packages, and they rehearse their chat-up lines as carefully as brand slogans. Wooing a prospective lover amounts to winning over a customer. Boomerang contains another modern twist in that Murphy’s character is outwitted by a female rake who first objectifies and then ditches him. This constellation was rare at that point; less guilt-ridden depictions of female sexual appetite would only gradually become normalised in Sex and the City (1998-2004), Girls (2012-2017), and other 21 st -century comedy shows. There was another precursor for them in Restoration comedy, though, in the work of Aphra Behn (1640-1689). The taming of the rover Aphra Behn was not just one of the most prolific authors of the Restoration period, she also achieved an unrivalled degree of notoriety, due to her gender and her biographical background. Having travelled to the colonies with her father as a young woman, she was forced to make her way back alone after he died. Various rumours circulate as to what different jobs she took to sustain herself, ranging from espionage to prostitution. After a time spent in prison, Aphra Behn became a writer of almost unrivalled productivity, publishing plays, poetry, and novels. It was not only for her achievements as a ‘funny woman’ (see Chapter 14) that she earned her place in the annals of stage comedy. According to Virginia Woolf, the fact that Aphra Behn managed to make a living as a female writer “outweighs anything that she actually wrote. […] For now that Aphra Behn 86 Chapter 6 had done it, girls could go to their parents and say, You need not give me an allowance; I can make money by my pen.” (Woolf qtd. in Golinelli 2019, 62) The fact that female writers like Behn or Frances Boothby turned to comedy is not surprising. Tragedy was reserved for authors who had enjoyed the privilege of higher education; women were grudgingly tolerated in the literary scene as long as they stuck to the ‘lowly’ characters and domestic topics of comedy (see Brockhaus 1998). This does not mean that the critics welcomed female authors with open arms; far from it. Behn was frequently dismissed as a hack who plagiarised existing material; the critical beatings she had to endure prefigure many of the polemical attacks that female comics face on a daily basis (see Chapter 14). In the preface to her comedy Sir Patient Fancy (1678), Aphra Behn writes that she printed the play with the impatience of someone trying to be vindicated “from the most unjust and silly aspersion” that “only my being a Woman has procured me; That it was Baudy, the least and most Excusable fault in the Men writers, to whose Plays they all crowd, as if they came to no other end then to hear what they condemn in this: but from a Woman it was unnaturall.” (Behn 1678) Behn’s most popular play is without a doubt The Rover (1675). It mixes not just some of comedy’s most popular ingredients, like mistaken identities and amorous entanglements, it also throws in the occasional sword-fight and adds several new nuances to the gender politics of Restoration comedy. Sisters Florinda and Hellena try to escape the stern patriarchal regime of their elder brother, Pedro, who wants to put one of them into a nunnery and marry off the other one. The two young women escape to Naples in the midst of the carnival season, where they cross paths with a couple of rakes out for a good time: “All the honey of matrimony, but none of the sting, friend” (Behn 1675/ 2003, 191). Hellena, the more rebellious of the two sisters, matches wits with Willmore, the titular ‘rover’. He is a womaniser and a gambler, who makes a pass at every woman he meets, right from his first entry: “Fair one, would you would give me leave to gather at your bush this idle month; I would go near to make somebody smell of it all the year after. […] I could pluck that rose out of [another man’s] hand, and even kiss the bed the bush grew in.” (167) Clearly, Behn can dish out the innuendo like the best of her male colleagues. The Rover is a conventional and rather typical Restoration comedy in that it allows Willmore to dominate the scenes with his cheeky one-liners and his cartoonish sexual appetite, only to transform him into an anti-hero with whom Hellena can safely fall in love. 87 The raunchy Restoration There is no general requirement to a one-liner other than that it consists of one sentence, to be delivered snappily and in a memorable way. Outside of the stand-up stage, one-liners can be sprinkled throughout dialogue-heavy scripts. Mae West (1893-1980) or Bob Hope (1903-2003) specialised in being swept along by the plot while briefly resting for the occasional funny aside; the one-liner tends to resist narrative and can be added generously ad libitum to a scene, as long as the delivery is on point. Some comics, including Jimmy Carr (1972-), have demonstrated that it is possible to sustain a whole act with a string of one-liners. The jokes will not add up to a story but will be organised in thematic clusters, to address the current news cycle, sex, or relationships: “To keep things fresh in the bedroom, [my girlfriend and I] do a little bit of role-play - she pretends to be a nurse and I pretend I’m still attracted to her.” (Carr 2013) But The Rover also offers a more nuanced perspective when it comes to calling out double standards and misogyny (see Todd 2003). One minor character, the courtesan Angellica Bianca, embodies some of the critique that was also voiced by the author, whose initials she shares. In the final scene, this vengeful prostitute turns out to be capable of forgiveness and withdraws from the concluding festivities; in doing the honourable thing, she acts in line with the play’s overall trajectory, where “ladies act like whores and whores like ladies” (Pacheco 1998, 323). Convention dictates that a woman who sleeps with different men must be expelled from the group, whereas the men who haggle over her price fare better. In the end, even those men who have tried to rape Florinda are redeemed. Clearly, The Rover is not a feminist work, as the author tried to entertain rather than educate her audience. But Behn’s play is still a thought-provoking one that includes many satirical jabs. The ending may not break with the dominant conservative pattern, as Hellena, one of the few women in a Restoration comedy to be a match for Shakespeare’s transgressive heroines, does get married to Willmore. But she insists on a marriage on her own terms, cutting through the hypocrisy and bullshit in the last scene, pointing out to Willmore how much more is at stake for women where sex is concerned: HELLENA. [W]hat shall I get? a cradle full of noise and mischief, with a pack of repentance at my back? can you teach me to weave inkle to pass my time with? […] WILLMORE. I can teach thee to weave a true love’s knot better. HELLENA. So can my dog. […] WILLMORE. I adore thy humour and will marry thee, and we are so of one humour, it must be a bargain - give me thy hand. (Behn 1675/ 2003, 242-243) Hellena impresses Willmore so much that he accepts her not just as playmate but as an intellectual equal. The ending stands as an impressively modern depiction of a marriage among equals, but this did not stop Behn from killing off Hellena when the success of The Rover prompted her to write a sequel (The Second Part of the Rover, 1681) in which 88 Chapter 6 Willmore is back to his old ways. This type of practice has become known as ‘fridging’ in 21 st -century popular culture: the hero’s love interest is sacrificed to provide a crisis and thus another story. The cyclical nature of comedy dictates that it must partake in this practice to get its hero back to square one. When James Bond surrogate Austin Powers, at the beginning of his second adventure (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, 1999) discovers that the woman he fell in love with and married in the first film was, in fact, an android that detonates in front of his eyes, he allows himself five seconds of mourning before moving on: “Wait a tick - that means I’m single again! Oh, behave! ” It is a common practice in serial narration; female-led formats like Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones novels (1996-2013) and the Sex and the City franchise have exercised it, too. ● After theatres reopened in England in the 17 th century, a new type of comedy conquered the stage. ● Restoration comedy allowed women on stage, and drew audiences with fresh and modern depictions of gender relations and sexuality. ● Restoration playwrights specialised in witticism, often at the expense of elaborate plotting. ● Restoration comedy’s blunt satire and bawdy content is somewhat alleviated by the conventional endings. ● One of the era’s most popular comic types, the rake, became wildly popular and continues to appear in modern-day ‘raunch-coms’. FURTHER READING : Fisk, Deborah Payne (ed., 2006). The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre. Cambridge: CUP. Hughes, Derek/ Janet Todd (eds., 2004). The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. Cambridge: CUP. Styan, J.L. (2008). Restoration Comedy in Performance. Cambridge: CUP. 89 The raunchy Restoration Chapter 7 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy The funny type The Romans were the first to organise comic plots around a single character fault. In a way, this is the bread and butter of most comedy, as the genre has been drawing on an immense repertoire of character types ever since the age of Plautus (see Chapter 2). But there is a distinct branch of comedy that runs with this concept and almost completely ditches any attempt at elaborate plotting. The name of French playwright Molière (1622-1673) was to become synonymous with this approach. Many of his plays highlight one particular character flaw that is already invoked in the title, The Miser (L’avare ou l’école du mensonge, 1668) and The Hypochondriac (Le malade imaginaire, 1673) being the best-known examples. On the English theatre stage, the comedy of humours was the first distinct development in that direction, mining the field of humoral pathology and the various temperaments for comic opportunities. The comedy of humours exposes human weakness in droll little fables. This involves plenty of Schadenfreude at the expense of a central character who embodies a certain vice or rather a certain disequilibrium. The characters who populate Ben Jonson’s comedies, particularly Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Every Man out of His Humour (1599), are not three-dimensional, which makes it safe for the viewers to take delight in their misfortunes. According to Jonson’s prologue to Every Man in His Humour, the characters deserve to be laughed at for their “popular errors”, though the audience must not judge so harshly in real life: “there’s hope left, then / You, that have so graced monsters, may like men.” ( Jonson 1598/ 1992, 8) The concept of humoral pathology can be traced back to Antiquity. It was Hippocrates (c. 460-370 B.C.) who built a comprehensive system of medicine around the humoral theory, according to which four liquids (humours) co-exist in the human body, with a stage of life, a season, and an element attached to each of them. A healthy, humorous person is someone who enjoys balanced amounts of the four humours in their body, while an imbalance results in a certain temperament and character type. A predominance of black bile, for example, makes the person inclined towards a melancholic disposition, which is associated with the advancing years of adulthood and the autumnal season. This typically involves “insurmountable sadness, a dark mood, misanthropy, and a firm penchant for solitude”, according to Denis Diderot’s treaty on melancholia (1765/ 2007). The most famous literary incarnation of the melancholic person is the anxious dreamer Hamlet, whose unresolved grief makes him pensive and unproductive. The Early Modern period started to look at persons with temperamental issues first as eccentrics, then as ridiculous, and thus as ripe for comic treatment: “As a result, ‘humour’ evolved into what humourists did.” (Carroll 2014, 5) HUMOUR blood yellow bile black bile phlegm STAGE OF LIFE infancy youth adulthood old age ELEMENT air fire earth water SEASON spring summer autumn winter TEMPERAMENT sanguine choleric melancholic phlegmatic The playwright may thus retain a degree of optimism regarding humanity, but the plays themselves are often void of empathy. Quite the contrary, they are the quintessential ‘laughing-at’ experience. Like in tragedy, we get to watch the character’s downfall; unlike in tragedy, there is no suggestion of spiritual elevation, nor of catharsis. This often enraged the same critics who railed against the farcical belly-laugh or any kind of comedy lacking in moral instructiveness (see Chapter 11). William Congreve (1670-1729), in a letter to John Dennis, cautions against exaggerated ridiculing of character defects on stage (see Congreve 1695/ 1984). The actual story-arc will often belong not to the outrageous personalities who illustrate a particular temperament but to the witty slave fighting for his freedom or to the young lovers who must evade the miserly old man’s controlling grasp. But the comic villain is often the meatiest role in the play and its main attraction. French comic Louis de Funès (1914-1983) exemplifies this type. In most of his films, for example the Gendarme series (1964-1982), his narrow-minded and hypocritical police-man does most of the comic heavy lifting, while the actual plot trajectory revolves around his fun-loving and disobedient adolescent daughter. De Funès is not just cinema’s most iconic choleric, he is also the ultimate Plautine antagonist, promoted to leading-man status. In one scene in the third Gendarme film, The Gendarme Gets Married (Le gendarme se marie, 1968) he stops traffic to make sure his subordinates do not go gallivanting while on duty; the traffic jam that piles up behind him underlines that this officious pedant is the ultimate blocking figure. 92 Chapter 7 Fig. 7.1: The blocking figure as comic anti-hero (The Gendarme Gets Married, 1968). To complain about the paper-thin plots would be to miss the point, because what drew millions of people to the cinema was not the prospect of young love in peril, but the hilarious sight of de Funès’s choleric outbursts and facial expressions. He never became a star in the Anglophone world, but his sort of material was also in demand on Broadway. Playwright Claude Magnier (1920-1983) adapted Alec Coppel’s The Gazebo (1958) into Jo (1971) as a star vehicle for de Funès; Hollywood, in turn, remade Magnier’s biggest de Funès hit, Oscar (1967), with Sylvester Stallone. A few years before his death, Louis de Funès would cement his association with the eccentric character comedy in the Molière tradition when he fulfilled his lifelong dream of directing a film adaptation of The Miser (1980). A new brand of satire The most important English brand of comedy organised around individual character deficits and quirks is the so-called comedy of manners. It usually traces the character flaw beyond the individual level, so that it does not just point fingers at one particularly anti-social individual who gets their comeuppance. The comedy has wider social implications and shares some of Restoration comedy’s satirical bite. This development must be seen in the context of social change famously examined by Jürgen Habermas (1929-), in his influential study of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). Habermas’s argument revolves around a separation between private and public sphere that did not exist in the feudal society of the medieval period but started in the early modern period. Feudalism, with its inherited privileges and strict hierarchies, gradually gave way to the modern bourgeois, civil society and a more democratic political culture, and the development of a distinct public and private realm produced the category known as public opinion. “[The emerging public sphere of civil society] developed to the extent to which the public concern regarding the private sphere of civil society was no longer confined to the authorities but was considered by the subjects as one that was properly theirs. […] [The public sphere] was now casting itself loose as a forum in which the private people, come together to form a public, readied themselves to compel public authority to legitimate itself before public opinion.” (Habermas 1962/ 1991, 23-25) In Shakespeare’s comedies, the traditional feudal system still looms in the background, though the settings often remain obscure or have a degree of fairy-tale vagueness about 93 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy them. Character flaws can still be fixed on the individual level here; it remains up to the family or similarly small social units to repair what is deficient. When the characters return to a better and more humane court at the end of As You Like It, it is not because the political forces have decided to pass reforms; it is because the despotic ruler has had a change of heart as unlikely as the rake’s betterment in Restoration comedy. Disruptions and individual failures are not as easily disposed of in a comedy of manners, by contrast. Here is a new type of satirical comedy that involves shady elites fighting for their reputation - and for their survival. The authors make a point of revealing the ugly grimace of hypocrisy behind a respectable façade. In spite of its unjustified reputation as unpolitical ‘character comedy’, the comedy of manners has really been quite the political genre throughout its history, and known for its sharp satirical attacks against state dignitaries and institutions. This is as true of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Broken Jug (Der zerbrochene Krug, 1805), in which a judge leads an investigation that reveals himself to be the culprit, as it is of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector (1836), a play that highlights small-town pettiness and corruption. Satire’s characteristic lack of obvious empathy often favours an outsider’s perspec‐ tive, which may be why the English comedy of manners has been dominated by a striking number of Irish playwrights. They may differ in terms of their dramatic approach, but they all share an overall ambivalence towards England, where they celebrated their most resounding successes. Terry Eagleton (1943-) suggests that Oscar Wilde was in a much better position to poke fun at English society than any English playwright of the period, “like the circus clown who cheekily nips off with the suitcase the strong man has been struggling to lift” (Eagleton 2001, 3). Wilde also illustrates the somewhat ambivalent reputation of the comedy of manners. Far too often misunderstood as an apolitical dandy figure whose witticisms masked his alleged spiritual emptiness, Wilde exposes the anxieties and inner conflicts of a society plagued by fear of scandal and humiliation. On the surface, his plays are all lightness of touch, which allowed them to age better than the highly didactic plays of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). The latter’s most enduring work, Pygmalion (1913), is about a linguist who conducts a social experiment to pass off a Cockney flower girl as an upper-class lady. The story’s unlikely success in Hollywood may have made Shaw one of the very few people to have won both a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Academy Award, but it does not mean that Shaw is a sentimentalist. Pygmalion owes much of its popularity to the musical adaptation, My Fair Lady, (1956), and the latter’s successful film version (1964), both of which deliberately misread the source-text as a love story between the flower girl and the inhumane scientist who takes control of her life. The Pygmalion template was to remain a typical incarnation of the comedy of manners, with the teacher/ pupil dynamic providing plenty of opportunity to satirise matters of class and education. Willy Russell’s critically acclaimed two-hander, Educating Rita (1980), is a case in point. For the most part, though, the comedy of manners is slanderous rather than didactic. The work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) is indicative of this. Like 94 Chapter 7 other enfants terribles of the Anglophone stage (see Chapter 11), Sheridan enjoyed a somewhat scandalous reputation as a young man, having been involved in a much-talked-about duel over the honour of Elizabeth Ann Lynley, his future wife. The couple later settled down in London, where Sheridan became the owner of the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane. He produced most of his plays before the age of 30, when he started to concentrate on his political career. His most successful comedy, The School for Scandal (1777), premiered in an era where sentimental plays and more didactic comedies dominated the English stage, so that Sheridan’s cynicism and saucy jokes amounted to a deliberate throwback to the previous era, like “a neo-Restoration high comedy of manners" (Schiller 1956, 694). On the surface, The School for Scandal looks anachronistic and blissfully unaware of the transformation of the public sphere as outlined by Habermas. The characters are part of the wealthy elite, they deliver witty asides, and the plot itself does not amount to much besides their various amorous entanglements. What is new, however, is that the individual transgressions do not occur in the protected space of the Shakespearean Green World. There is a public dimension to each transgression, with everyone’s reputation at stake. Because the characters are part of the bourgeoisie, they are keen on “appearing virtuous and credit-worthy” (Klotz 2013, 57, my translation). In Sheridan’s time, a typical comedy of manners involves a (potential) scandal that must be avoided at all costs. Gossip, rumours, and blackmail serve as important plot points, as the characters’ guilty secrets catch up with them, threatening to bring them down. LADY SNEERWELL . Wounded myself, in the early part of my life, by the envenomed tongue of slander, I confess I have since known no pleasure equal to the reducing others to the level of my own injured reputation. (Sheridan 1777/ 1966, 10) As members of the aristocracy or the upper-middle class, the characters are for the most part unfamiliar with existential despair. They have little to do besides cracking witticisms, gambling away their inheritance, or circulating rumours about their neighbours’ affairs, debts, and illegitimate children. Comedies of manners typically insist that rich people are so out of touch that when left to their own devices, they will indulge in stupid games, having fun at the expense of others. The bored gamblers in Rat Race (2001) bet on how much a prostitute would charge for shaving a man’s buttocks in a Jacuzzi filled with diarrhoea medicine; in P.G. Wodehouse’s stories about Jeeves and Wooster, members of the elite regularly get arrested for pinching police-men’s helmets and other forms of disorderly conduct. In comedies of manners, the satirical agenda clearly outweighs the plot. The School for Scandal may offer little besides a rather loose construction, “with two separate plots clumsily grafted together” (Thompson 2008, 89), but this is very much the point, as the characters are far too idle and dim-witted to spin elaborate webs of deceit. 95 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy It is not unusual for a comedy of manners to introduce characters solely for the purpose of playing pranks at their expense; Shakespeare sets a precedent for this with Malvolio’s plotline in Twelfth Night. What makes the parts attractive for experienced actors is a chance to showcase their ability when it comes to delivering acerbic putdowns. Several passages in The School for Scandal amount to little more than collages of elaborate insults, as the aptly-named Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, or Sir Benjamin Backbite treat themselves to round after round of backstabbing, thus revealing themselves to be utterly immoral and shallow. The art of the insult is a key discipline in comedy. Already in Shakespeare, it constitutes its own category of verbal brilliance, with the most elaborate put-downs ranking high on any list of Shakespeare’s most quotable bits. The line “you minimus, of hindering knot-grass made” (Midsummer 3.2.329), is as poetic as any of the romantic serenading in Romeo and Juliet. The 20 th century saw various ‘insult comics’ rise to fame, including the great Don Rickles (1926-2017). Their popularity helped establish the roast as a ritualised occasion. The roast is dedicated to a guest of honour who must sit through various rounds of deeply personal and offensive invectives, delivered by their peers and well-known comedians. While the roast painfully singles out the individual’s various shortcomings, its overall effect is, paradoxically, one of elevation, in that the person exhibits humility in public, showing what a good sport they are. The contributors spare neither the guest of honour nor each other. At the roast for Alec Baldwin (1958-), comedian Nikki Glaser (1984-) not only inquired how the actor could still produce children at his age (“Isn’t your semen just oat-meal at this point? ”), she also found time to dish out against fellow guest Robert De Niro (1943-): “I get to share the stage with you. And by ‘the stage’, I mean the final one of your life.” Insults and invectives are also an integral part of comedy on screen. Blackadder’s elaborate one-liners at the expense of his dim-witted servant Baldrick became as popular as the expletives-filled programmes that Armando Iannucci (1963-) and his team specialise in. Their political sitcom The Thick of It (2005-2012) and its feature film spin-off, In the Loop (2009), not only became known for their testosterone-infused, phallic language (see Schwanebeck 2017), but also for employing a ‘swearing consultant’. When Iannucci took the series’ concept to the United States, he created Veep (2012-2019), starring Seinfeld alumna Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1961-) as a permanently frustrated vice president. Abusive language was so integral to the show’s success that it created its own brand of “invective spectacularity” (Kanzler 2022, 158). The audience is unlikely to become emotionally involved, as all alliances and sympa‐ thies are merely temporary and strategic. Among the characters, solidarity only extends to the common denominator of class rather than character. In the end, the elite will close ranks to keep out intruders, and we can infer that a rotten system will keep on 96 Chapter 7 rotting some more once the curtain has come down. It remains debatable to what extent the audience recognises its own complicity. Will they be encouraged to challenge this corrupt system, or are they too busy enjoying the verbal spectacle of people being mean towards each other? Probably the latter, as the climactic moralising is detrimental to our fun, and slandering is infinitely more hilarious to watch. Dandies of the stage Two of the biggest names associated with the comedy of manners are those of the two most flamboyant authors who ever cast a spell over the English stage. Both Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and Noël Coward (1899-1973) were larger-than-life personalities whose off-stage reputation threatens to eclipse their literary achievements, which makes it all the more important to revisit their considerable output. As self-made men who relied on the media to spread their carefully cultivated image, they styled themselves as the ‘life of the party’ and belonged to the rare breed of playwrights who were outright celebrities. The photographer Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) recalls how, during the 1920s, all sorts of men “suddenly wanted to look like Noël Coward - sleek and satiny, clipped and well groomed, with a cigarette, a telephone, or a cocktail at hand” (qtd. in Gray 2006, 225). But the two men’s lives were not completely glittering and unblemished success stories. As homosexual men, both of them were, to a different degree, forced into a life of secrecy. In Wilde’s case, this ended in tragedy - having been tried for indecency, he spent a period in jail and died a poor man in Paris. The fight for equality was far from over when Coward rose to fame a few decades later, but the open secret of his homosexuality did not damage his popularity. His public image, dominated by dressing-gowns and cigarette holders, has to be seen in the tradition of Wilde’s queer dandyism. Coward successfully reinvented himself several times on the stage and screen, enjoying success as a highly prolific playwright, actor, director, and songwriter. As the creator of one of the most successful British World War II films (In Which We Serve, 1942) and as a supporting actor in The Italian Job (1969), a cult classic that helped spread the idea of ‘Cool Britannia’, Coward was widely hailed as a patriot and, in his later life, as a beloved ambassador of British culture. Both authors are associated with the drawing-room comedy, which is a particular form of the comedy of manners primarily defined by its setting and milieu. Many of their plays are set in country-houses and salons belonging to members of the up‐ per-middle class, whose escapades are thoroughly detached from real-world problems, and in the case of Coward’s indestructible ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1941), even quite otherworldly. New productions of their plays continue to attract acting royalty. Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s stern mother in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), has been done by all the grand old dames of the British stage, including Maggie Smith (1934-) and Judi Dench (1934-), and the same goes for Madame Arcati, the fraudulent medium in Blithe Spirit. 97 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy But in spite of their reputation as fluffy conversation pieces that have little to offer besides plenty of opportunities for scenery-chewing, there is substance and topicality here. Wilde’s plays are not exclusively about the aristocracy and its various non-problems, they also shine a light on contemporary double standards. This is particularly true of the three plays that Peter Raby (1997) groups together as Wilde’s ‘Society Comedies’: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), and An Ideal Husband (1895). They are cut from the same cloth as the rather humourless works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) in that they focus on a moral dilemma that forces the characters to come clean about their past. But unlike Ibsen’s plays, they do not culminate in tragic outcomes nor do they force martyrdom upon the characters. This makes it easier to align them with Wilde’s somewhat unjustified image as an idle dandy whose plots amount to very little; Wilde reportedly loved the first Act of A Woman of No Importance because it “contained absolutely no action at all” (Raby 2008, xvi). What the plays lack in elaborate plotting they make up for in quotable bonmots, an overwhelming sense of leisure being “the prerequisite for Wilde’s verbal virtuosity” (Fest 2014, 166). These skills allowed him to spread an impressive amount of carefully worded epigrams throughout his essays and plays. Unlike the aphorism, which formulates a serious maxim or general truth, the epigram is “terse, pointed, and witty” (Abrams/ Harpham 2014, 113), and it often surprises the listener with a paradoxical twist. Wilde used some of his epigrams more than once, which made it likelier for him to be quoted. One of the most famous lines (“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.”) is included both in A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest. THREE DEMONSTRATIONS OF OSCAR WILDE’S WIT (ALL TAKEN FROM A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE) “It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.” (Wilde 1893/ 2008, 104) “[My cigarettes] are awfully expensive. I can only afford them when I’m in debt.” (Wilde 1893/ 2008, 108) “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” (Wilde 1893/ 2008, 135) Inevitably, some of the cleverness will wear off in the process. There is a danger that the epigram turns into annoying shtick when everything is turned on its head, so that the paradox becomes an arbitrary technique. In Monty Python’s ‘Oscar Wilde’ sketch (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, S3E13), what we are left with is a tedious rhetorical 98 Chapter 7 shouting match, as Wilde tries to come up with increasingly nonsensical and empty lines solely to get a laugh and to impress royalty: WILDE. There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. (laughter) THE PRINCE. Very, very witty. Very, very witty. WHISTLER. There is only one thing in the world worse than being witty, and that is not being witty. WILDE. I wish I had said that. WHISTLER. You will, Oscar, you will. (laughter) WILDE. Your Majesty, have you met James McNeill Whistler? THE PRINCE. Yes, we play squash together. WILDE. There is only one thing worse than playing squash together, and that is playing it by yourself. (dead silence) But the best of Wilde’s plays are not as hollow as the Pythons suggest. The author exposes the pointlessness of conventions and the inflexibility of those who sustain them. In The Importance of Being Earnest, everything is masquerade and fiction, as two rich good-for-nothings create second lives for themselves. They adopt these secret identities whenever they want to amuse themselves in the city, all the while keeping up the façade of respectability for the sake of their families. Inevitably, confusions start to mount when their alter egos, ‘Ernest’ and ‘Bunbury’, intrude upon their existence. The increasingly complicated scheming makes this Wilde’s most farcical play, and it also reveals him as a modernist who prefigures a lot of subsequent identity discourse: “If Wilde is superficial, he’s profoundly so.” (Eagleton 2001, 8) In retrospect, it is impossible to overlook the play’s queer subtexts, as the characters’ attempts to maintain a secret identity all too acutely reflects the double lives that gay men led in Victorian times. The Importance of Being Earnest thus not only highlights the fictitious nature of identity in general but “the misanthropic characteristics and social corruptness of Victorian society” in particular, especially “in regard to homosexuality” (Detmers 2002, 115). Similar to Wilde, Noël Coward is occasionally up against his own colourful reputation, as popular opinion tends to confuse him with the characters in his plays: well-dressed idlers who spend their time slurping martinis and asking, “Anyone for Tennis? ” Admittedly, many Coward plays content themselves with poking fun at the carefree rich, but his oeuvre cannot and should not be limited to the best-known stage hits that are continuously revived in the London West End. The original production of Coward’s epic play Cavalcade (1931) required a staff of 300 and one of the most ambitious sets in the history of the British stage up to that point. Cavalcade depicts the lives of several members of the Marryot family who get caught up not just in their private affairs but in historic events like World War I. All of this is garnished with Coward’s trademark wit, but the jokes are dispensed in a more laconic, tragicomic manner. Midway through the second part, young Edward Marryot and his bride, Edith, sail across the Atlantic for their honeymoon. Edith concludes the scene with 99 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy a completely sincere celebration of their love (“This is our moment - complete and heavenly. I’m not afraid of anything. This is our own, for ever.”), only for the stage direction to clarify the young couple’s fate: EDITH takes up her cloak which has been hanging over the rail, and they walk away. The cloak has been covering a life-belt, and when it is withdrawn the word “S.S. Titanic” can be seen in black letters on the white. The lights fade into complete darkness, but the letters remain glowing as the orchestra plays very softly and tragically “Nearer My God to Thee.” (Coward 1931/ 1994, 178) The 1933 film adaptation, one of the first winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture, employs the same bleak punchline. As the camera pans from the young lovers to the ship’s life-belt, the audience is confronted with a very striking example of dramatic irony. Fig. 7.2: The honeymooners are about to be ship-wrecked (Cavalcade, 1933). Aside from such forays into British history, Coward conquered the British stage with a string of plays that John Lahr (1941-) characterises as “Comedies of Bad Manners” (1982). Coward would have been the first to admit that his plots were even thinner than those of Wilde, as his characters meet, quarrel, pair off in different combinations, then go their separate ways. Life goes on, and no-one learns a lesson. In Hay Fever (1924), the audience gets to spend three acts in the company of the Bliss family: mother Judith, a legendary actress who is usually played by legendary actresses like Marie Tempest (1864-1942) or Maria Aitken (1945-); father David; and their equally eccentric, borderline-obnoxious children, Sorel and Simon. Having invited their various flings to join them in their country-house, the Blisses flirt with their guests, provoke them with their behaviour, and reveal their general indifference to other people in a series of droll exchanges. SOREL. Amy’s got toothache. JUDITH. Poor dear! […] Who’s Amy? SOREL. The scullery-maid, I think. JUDITH. How extraordinary! She doesn’t look Amy a bit, does she? Much more Flossie. (Coward 1925/ 1994, 9) For Judith, every domestic encounter is a chance to put on an act and to give the performance of a lifetime. She never simply meets people; she stages every aspect of her private life, spicing up her personal conversations with impromptu recitals that move herself to tears. As her performances force vicarious embarrassment upon innocent 100 Chapter 7 bystanders, Judith is a precursor to cringe icons David Brent and Alan Partridge. Coward’s effective use of awkward pauses and overlapping dialogue point in the same direction (see Chapter 13). In the end, the four guests can take no more. They sneak out as the family sit down for breakfast, much to David’s astonishment: “People really do behave in the most extraordinary manner these days”, he remarks drily (93). Watching the Blisses fling insults at each other and cultivating their quirks affords ambiguous pleasures to the audience. We can try to keep our distance, so as to judge the characters, or we can simply sit back and enjoy the show, becoming complicit with these shallow narcissists. Critics have debated the depth of Coward’s writing, with some of them suggesting that a critical depiction of shallowness must more or less by nature result in a shallow play. John Lahr, on the other hand, argues that Coward’s work has tragic overtones, in spite of all the punchlines. Gary Essendine, the egocentric actor in Present Laughter (1939), is a spiritual cousin of Judith Bliss and so completely self-absorbed that he can only perform increasingly exaggerated versions of himself. Effectively, Present Laughter testifies to the pathological condition of “a man who dissimulates so eagerly that he has forgotten who he is” (Lahr 1982, 32). GARRY . I’m always acting - watching myself go by - that’s what’s so horrible - I see myself all the time eating, drinking, loving, suffering - sometimes I think I’m going mad. (Coward 1939/ 1994, 148) In his play Easy Virtue (1924), Coward dedicates more attention to the unlucky intruders who are first devoured and then spat out again by the establishment. Easy Virtue looks deceptively like another version of the Hay Fever plot, but it does not shy away from sensitive issues. As a working-class child, Coward remains acutely aware of class divisions. What starts off as a run-of-the-mill ‘weekend in the country’ conversation piece takes a sharp turn towards melodrama as the Whittaker family close ranks on Larita, their son’s new bride, because she is a divorcee. Having been bullied extensively by the family, Larita chooses to end her marriage. Unlike the silent-film adaptation (1928), directed by none other than Alfred Hitchcock, the 2008 adaptation frames her retreat as an emancipatory moment. It does not hurt that she leaves in the company of the equally disgruntled Major Whittaker, played by Colin Firth (1960-). Old situations, new complications Today, the comedy of manners enjoys a rather undeserved reputation as private and apolitical, maybe because it has become synonymous with the sitcom. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the sitcom gradually evolved from radio serials to weekly 101 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy half-hour television shows recorded in front of a live studio audience, a template that exists to this day. In the tradition of Oscar Wilde’s and Noël Coward’s dramatis personae, sitcom characters are best understood as personified character quirks, seeing as they often exist solely to deliver one-liners or to embody a particular flaw that the audience learns to appreciate as a running gag. This is very much the point, of course, and their inability to grow over the course of several seasons is what endears many people to sitcom characters. Unlike sketch comedy, the sitcom relies on a cast of recurring characters and serialised story telling. However, the plots tend to be cyclical, so that most sitcoms offer little narrative development (see Mills 2009, 34). They are direct descendants of Plautine character comedy, and often revolve around a family or a group of friends who are characterised by their individual quirks and quick-wittedness. The domestic, middle-class settings are sometimes enhanced by ‘high-concept’ gimmicks, for example the secret visitor from another planet (ALF) or the celebrity cameo of the week (Extras, 2005-2007). Other branches of the sitcom adopt workplace settings (The IT Crowd, 2006-2013) or historical scenarios (Dad’s Army, 1968-1977). Many sitcoms are recorded in front of a live studio audience, though their reactions may be supplemented by a pre-recorded laugh track that seems more and more anachronistic in the 21 st century. In the age of streaming, single-camera shows with elaborate sight gags have become the norm rather than the exception (30 Rock, 2006-2013), with the production values rivalling those of cinema. This has also had the effect of liberating the sitcom more and more from the traditional 22-minute format. But whatever its shape and form, the sitcom remains the legitimate heir of the comedy of manners, “a historical and cultural document for observing and scrutinizing dominant social manners”, especially those “relating to gender, social class, and relationships” (Pierson 2005, 45). Not that the sitcom always goes easy on its personnel. Al Bundy, the protagonist of Married … with Children (1987-1997), is actually a tragic figure in the tradition of Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman, 1949). A former high-school athlete who once had great potential, Bundy had to marry at a young age when he got his high-school sweetheart pregnant. As the pater familias of a lower-middle class household in the suburbs of Chicago, he is forever stuck with his lowly job as a shoe salesman, with no hope of ever paying off his mortgage or earning his family’s respect. Bundy retains a modicum of self-respect by going through the motions of masculinity scripts that are a laughing stock to everyone but him: organising the family barbecue, building his own toilet, driving a run-down American car. Al vents his bitterness in a string of sarcastic asides levelled at his wife: “As soon as you say ‘I do’, [women] put on forty pounds, and the only hike you’ll see is them hiking up their pants before they weld their butts to the sofa for the rest of their worthless lives.” (S4E18) 102 Chapter 7 There is an existential dimension to this rut that also makes the sitcom a natural ally of Theatre of the Absurd (see Chapter 8). Watching season after season of the Bundys and other sitcom clans going through the same rituals has overtones of the Sisyphus story. Blackadder gives a historical dimension to this idea, with each of its four series set in a different period of English history. But no matter if the context is that of the Elizabethan era or of World War I, the scenarios and character dynamics remain the same. There is always an upper-class nitwit born with a silver spoon in his mouth, not to mention a Machiavellian schemer (Blackadder) bullying his personal slave (Baldrick). THREE SOLID BURNS DELIVERED BY EDMUND BLACKADDER (ROWAN ATKINSON) “It is said, Percy, that civilised man seeks out good and intelligent company, so that through learned discourse he may rise above the savage and closer to God. Personally, however, I like to start the day with a total dickhead to remind me I’m best.” (S2E5) “Your brain, for example, is so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn’t be enough inside to cover a small water biscuit.” (S4E1) “Baldrick, you wouldn’t see a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord, singing ‘subtle plans are here again’.” (Blackadder’s Christmas Carol) Outside the realm of more didactic family sitcoms like The Cosby Show (1984-1992) or Modern Family (2009-2020), which require the characters to mature and family trees to expand, the sitcom tends to leave the characters the way it finds them: quirky and damaged, happy or unhappy in their various ways. This approach became known as the policy of “no hugging, no learning” on Seinfeld (1989-1998), the legitimate successor of the comedy of manners (see Pierson 2005, 40-45). The show’s central quartet of characters are spiritual heirs to Coward’s hilarious yet sociopathic clan members. They are egomaniacs who neither learn nor grow; genuine commitment remains as unfeasible for them as acts of proper selflessness. In this respect, they also resemble the characters in Jane Austen (1775-1817), who does to the upper-middle class in Regency England what Seinfeld does to urbanite baby boomers: “The audiences for both are fascinated by, perhaps even share, the narcissism of a small group of young adults who are groping to find, or to forge for themselves, their identities and their relationships within a social milieu.” (Hall 2006, 73) Having been conceived in the exhaustingly ironic 1990s, Seinfeld has been criticised for revelling in postmodern solipsism and for its stubborn refusal to favour growth and maturation. Faced with the decision to either retire one of his comic routines 103 Manners maketh man, bad manners maketh comedy or to commit to a meaningful relationship, Jerry will invariably pick the funny gimmick (S9E2). In fact, anything that suggests a shake-up of the basic dynamic will be perceived as a threat and dealt with accordingly. Season 7 of Seinfeld put the screws on George by presenting him with a fiancée, Susan. Following a series of unsuccessful attempts to ditch the woman, the script takes mercy on George. When the notorious cheap-skate buys the least expensive wedding invitations, Susan is doomed - by licking the envelopes, she inhales too much of the toxic glue and dies. The show does not even pretend to mourn for her, with the ‘bereaved’ simply shrugging off his loss and suggesting they all go for a cup of coffee, like in any other episode. What also recommends Seinfeld as a modern-day successor to the comedy of manners is its obsession with social codes and dating etiquette. This topic got a lot of exposure in popular culture of the 1980s and 1990s, when the comedies of Nora Ephron (1941-2012) and various television shows started to investigate (un-)acceptable behaviour on the dating scene, leaning more and more into the raunch-com. On Seinfeld, a man’s inability to perform cunnilingus had to be suggested through his saxophone playing (S7E11); in the more permissive environment of HBO’s Sex and the City, the pressing issues of our time are addressed in a more direct fashion, be it the etiquette of post-coital farting (S1E11) or the acceptability of baby talk in bed (S4E6). As a dramatic form, the comedy of manners is flexible enough to accommodate all of these modern updates, just as it managed to accommodate 19 th -century Shavian drama with its socio-political agenda. The label ‘comedy of manners’ continues to be used loosely and was never limited to just one distinct period of cultural history, nor to one particular genre. It has been applied to the ancients, to Shakespearean comedy, and to Hollywood comedies organised around the established personas of popular comedians, such as the ‘loudmouth’ Eddie Murphy or the ‘phallic woman’ Mae West. ● There are various comic subgenres that mainly revolve around a single, com‐ ically exaggerated character trait. ● The comedy of manners draws on this tradition and gives it a satirical spin, poking fun at the quirks of bored upper-class people. ● The comedy of manners specialises in the art of the insult and exploits its characters’ fear of public humiliation. ● Authors who specialise in the comedy of manners are often accused of neglecting the plot. ● The comedy of manners was integral to the development of the sitcom genre. FURTHER READING : Hirst, David L. (1979/ 2017). Comedy of Manners. London/ New York: Routledge. Mills, Brett (2009). The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Raby, Peter (ed., 1997). The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: CUP. 104 Chapter 7 Fig. 8.1: Existentialism is a hoot (Animaniacs, 1994). Chapter 8 But this is absurd! Philosophy of the absurd Theatre of the Absurd seems an odd choice for this book. Few people would immedi‐ ately agree think of it as a bunch of laughs, particularly if their predominant association is the image of two tramps standing next to a bare tree, looking depressed - which is the basic setup of Waiting for Godot (1953), the most famous play of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). Admittedly, Theatre of the Absurd is not a straightforward branch of comedy. Yet its comedic merits are not to be overlooked, in spite of the rather weighty subject matter and its strong affiliations with existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960). I have to admit that my own stereotypical idea of existentialism used to be dominated by characteristics like “gloomy” and “fashionably French”. This stereotype is most succinctly summarised in a scene from 1990s animated TV show, Animaniacs (1993- 1998), where the characters watch a fictitious black-and-white film about morose French people sitting in a train compartment, staring into the landscape, and talking entirely in non-sequiturs that bear an uncanny resemblance to the lyrics of Frère Jacques. One of the spectators concludes: “This is the worst French film I’ve ever seen. It’s also the only French film I’ve ever seen! " (Animaniacs S1.E53) Admittedly, existentialism has earned its reputation as the philosophy of choice for the well-read, Gi‐ tanes-smoking, brooding college crowd. It became an intellectual fashion after World War II, because of the cultish and Bohemian aura surrounding it: “night-club hangouts, American jazz, special hairdos and style of dress” (Barrett 1958/ 1990, 7-8). But this should not di‐ minish its philosophical importance. Existentialism ad‐ dresses fundamental questions, such as how to achieve self-fulfilment in a Godless and solitary universe. It reformulates the key question of ethics for a post-Nietz‐ schean world, where the master narratives of traditional religious belief systems have become eroded. How do you lead a good life if no divine entity is watching? Existen‐ tialism is not the only 20 th -century school of thought that reacts to what has been described as the “triple insult" of the modern age. THE THREE MAJOR INSULTS AFFECTING MODERN MAN 1. The Copernican Revolution overturned the idea that man is the centre of the universe. 2. Darwin’s theories challenged the assumption that man is the pinnacle of creation. 3. According to Freud, the human psyche is fragile, and free will may be an illusion - after all, we are all subject to libidinous drives (the id) and the various dos and don’ts we internalise throughout our lives (the super ego). To make matters worse, the high-strung, nervous individual of the early 20 th century finds it hard to take comfort in traditional religious belief systems. At the same time, religion is not the enemy in existentialist philosophy. Philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) even stress that religious commitment is one of the best shots we have at living a fulfilled life, it is just that very few people are capable of making a genuine “leap of faith”. If religion is a desirable option or, to use Kierkegaard’s diction, a radical choice that we have to make each day anew, it is also rather hard to maintain, which leaves the individual stranded at the abyss of ‘nothingness’ (Sartre). Ever since Nietzsche, philosophers have thus had to deal with the question: “What next? What happens to the race when at long last it has severed the umbilical cord that bound it for millennia to the gods and a transcendent world beyond this earthly world? ” (Barrett 1958/ 1990, 13) According to existentialism, this spiritual void also brings the burden of radical freedom. Can modern man even handle this degree of freedom? Both comedians and tragedians have dealt with this question. As we shall see throughout this chapter, the Absurd tends to attract people who have a foot in both camps. One of them is Woody Allen, whose characters are haunted by existentialist questions. They struggle to find fulfilment in a godless universe and seek comfort in the material world, cracking jokes and indulging their appetites. According to one of Woody Allen’s most frequently cited witticisms, reality is horrible, “but it was still the only place to get a good steak” (Allen 1997, 307). He went so far as to borrow the title of one of his films from a formative text of American existentialism: William Barrett’s Irrational Man (1958). Allen’s film of the same name (2015) revolves around a philosophy teacher whose perspective on the human condition leads him to 'play God’ and to commit murder. In spite of its heavy subject matter, Irrational Man is not a completely dour affair. While the film is a far cry from Allen’s ‘early, funny ones’, it retains a degree of light-hearted self-awareness. Not only does the protagonist, a professor of philosophy, dismiss his own discipline as “verbal masturbation”, key scenes revolve around a fairground to suggest that even existentialists will take solace in the life-as-carnival view which is the basis of comedy. Woody Allen’s films are thoroughly existentialist projects in that they favour characters who gain a degree of insight into the absurdity of the 106 Chapter 8 human condition, because they feel so much at odds with the world. The critic Dale Thomajan dismissed Allen’s films because the characters in them “aren’t alienated - they’re aliens” (Thomajan 1992, 199). This position is a productive starting point for any foray into the realm of the absurd, and it will be the aim of this chapter to show that it is not a contradiction to look for common ground between the gloominess of an absurdist world-view and the fully-fledged silliness and joyous spirit of comedy. Sisyphus labour To characterise the absurd condition, it makes sense to start with a text that has become widely known as the manifesto of existentialism: Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). According to Camus, we can grasp a glimpse of the absurd if we perceive the world with a degree of awareness, and if we take a fresh, comparative look at things without taking them for granted. If we manage to strip away “the images and designs” that we have “attributed to [the world] beforehand”, we can recognise the utterly strange and foreign nature of objects (Camus 1942/ 1955, 11). Camus highlights that this process has a funny dimension to it, and his examples resonate with Bergson’s observations on comedy (see Chapter 11). By stressing that it is important to juxtapose things, Camus formulates an idea that resonates with the incongruity theory of humour. The incongruity theory of laughter approaches comedy from an intellectual vantage point and on the basis of structural observations. This sounds more high-minded than it really is; at its heart, the incongruity theory suggests that laughter occurs when the mind registers a difference between the way things should be and the way they really are. Throughout the history of thought, philosophers have emphasised the mind’s ability to distinguish between things; John Locke (1632-1704) discusses the subject in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). This intellectual virtue is at the root of what we call wit, which specialises in shrewd comparison and the ability to come up with paradoxical yet accurate observations (see Chapter 6). The incongruity theory gained additional momentum since the industrial revolution, since when human beings have been increasingly reduced to the role of automatons (see Billig 2012, 111-138). With the world becoming more standardised and uniformly patterned, plenty of opportunities arise for comic mishaps, particularly when ‘the human factor’ kicks in. The most iconic example is Chaplin’s little tramp losing his sanity at the conveyor belt, sabotaging the whole operation (Modern Times, 1936). 20 th -century cognitive theory provided a new understanding of incongruity as a comic weapon. Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), in the context of his theory of bisociation, argues that comic effects are the result of “quantitatively different scales of operations” contrasting with each other (Koestler 1964, 66), which is the bread and butter of the witty mind that registers little absurdities and articulates them. In A Night at the Opera (1935), Groucho Marx and his massive wardrobe 107 But this is absurd! trunk are assigned the tiniest cabin aboard the ship, leading him to quip: “Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just put the stateroom in the trunk? ” According to Camus, absurdity always “springs from a comparison” (Camus 1942/ 1955, 22), particularly if things are completely disproportionate. Funnily enough, when Camus provides an example to make his point, he anticipates one of the most famous sight gags in the history of the movies. He says that absurdity is embodied by a “man armed only with a sword” who is attacked by machine guns (ibid.), an image that looks ahead to the moment in Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982) when Indiana Jones is challenged to a duel by an Arab swordsman. Having briefly weighed his options, the world’s most resourceful archaeologist simply takes out his gun and shoots the other man, turning away from the scene with a rather world-weary expression on his face. The swordsman in Spielberg’s film dies a truly absurd death, though an existentialist might say: any death is bound to be absurd. However, absurdity does not preclude the possibility of laughter. Look up the absurd in any dictionary and you will find two seemingly incompatible notions: meaninglessness on the one hand, and outright silliness on the other. In fact, these two notions are not incompatible at all - and The Myth of Sisyphus is not a call for despair. Sisyphus, whom Camus singles out as the personification of the absurd condition, is not a tragic case. True, he is in a rather hopeless situation: condemned to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down again, so that the whole procedure has to be repeated. Sisyphus cannot cherish any hope of accomplishing anything meaningful - and again, an existentialist might say: isn’t that true for all of us? By showing strength and determination, Sisyphus can rise above his fate and decide not to let the boulder win. “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. […] Sisyphus’ fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. […] There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. […] The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (Camus 1942/ 1955, 90-91) 108 Chapter 8 Fig. 8.2: The Punishment of Sisyphus (Titian, c. 1549). Fig. 8.3: It’s an uphill struggle for Laurel & Hardy (The Music Box, 1932). The Sisyphus dilemma resonates throughout the history of comedy, a genre that routinely scores laughs from a person’s futile efforts to ar‐ rive at an impossible goal. Michael Palin’s monumental stutter in A Fish Called Wanda comes to mind, as does Leonardo DiCaprio’s efforts to get into his car while high on Quaaludes in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). My favourite example is the sight of Lau‐ rel & Hardy’s frequent co-star, Anita Garvin (1906-1994), chasing an unco‐ operative cocktail cherry with a spoon (From Soup to Nuts, 1928). The Sisyphus task certainly bloss‐ omed in slapstick comedies of the silent-film era. In One A.M. (1916), one of his early short films, Charlie Chaplin plays a drunk gentleman who arrives home late one night and tries to get up the stairs without waking his wife. The task is rendered nearly impossible through a series of obstacles, including a spinning table-top, a tigerskin rug, and a pendulum clock. Repeatedly, the character is sent tumbling down the stairs and must start from the very bottom again. There are at least two reasons why Chaplin abandons his well-known tramp persona here. The setup only works if he plays the wealthy homeowner, and the audience is more inclined to laugh at Charlie’s repeated misfortunes if they do not have to feel sorry for the tramp, who is a social reject that always invites sympathy. Laurel & Hardy's Oscar-winning short film, The Mu‐ sic Box (1932), provides yet another update of Sisy‐ phus. Having been hired to deliver a piano to the home of an arrogant Professor, they drag the piano up an endless flight of stairs to reach the house, and the piano tumbles back down several times. What renders their efforts even more absurd is the punchline. Once they have made it to the top, the mailman tells them that they could have taken a shortcut to avoid the stairs in the first place. Their reaction is completely nonsensical yet somewhat logical at the same time. To undo their futile work, they invest even more futile work and carry the piano down the stairs again to take advantage of the shorter route. They arrive in the exact same spot. 109 But this is absurd! Existentialism on stage Existentialism may have only conquered the stage after World War II, but there were clearly some important predecessors. Apart from Laurel & Hardy’s existential shenanigans, we could look at Shakespeare’s fools: truly existential characters who are much more sceptical of metaphysics and who are committed to the here and now. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare presents us with the clown Feste. Feste swears that he “live[s] by the church” (TN 3.2.3), but he does not mean that he cherishes religious principles, he is simply saying that his house is located close to the church premises. Unlike Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists, the clowns are not bound by convention. They are truly boundless characters who are thoroughly committed to their various appetites. In As You Like It, both the jester Touchstone and the melancholic Jaques keep reminding us that we all must die and that existence might well be futile. The courtier Jaques even accepts the fool as his superior because he is so taken with Touchstone’s existential lessons: that time inevitably marches on and that we all must die someday (see Chapter 4). But the Shakespeare play most thoroughly committed to the absurd condition must be the tragedy of Hamlet. The final act starts with Hamlet’s conversation with the gravedigger, who shows a rather unsentimental attitude towards life and death. The scene is an audience favourite, and comedians like Stanley Holloway (1890-1982) and Billy Crystal (1948-) have appeared in the role of this wise guy. He brings Shakespeare’s rhetorically versatile and high-minded hero down to earth - quite literally so, as he spends the scene digging a grave and tossing about bones and skulls while delivering his one-liners. When he insists that the grave he is digging is for no man nor woman, but for “one that was a woman” but is now dead, even the loquacious Hamlet seems to have found his master: “How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us.” (5.1.129-130) The key quality in the grave-digger’s rhetoric is bathos, a comic virtue that sits well with the absurd. Bathos has been aptly described as “the puncturing intrusion of reality that floors lofty aspirations” (Stott 2005, 55). It contrasts high-minded rhetoric with mundane reality, using matter-of-fact punchlines to bring a weighty and high-minded discussion crashing down to earth. The term was first used by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in Peri Bathous (1728), as a counter-concept to pathos. Woody Allen’s stories and early film comedies are full of bathos. Young Boris Grushenko, the protagonist of Love and Death (1975), shares his theological musings with the audience: “I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If he was a carpenter, I wondered what he charged for bookshelves.” Chapter 4 already gave us some insight into the character of the fool, who has a wonderful way of grounding any situation with his dry wit and matter-of-factness. This is as true of King Lear’s nameless fool as of the Porter in Macbeth (1606), Shakespeare’s 110 Chapter 8 darkest play. The convivial tone of the Porter Scene is so at odds with the rest of the play that some claim it was added by another author. But the interlude is there for a reason. Not only does it provide a moment of comic relief after the murder, it also gives the actor playing Macbeth time to wash his bloody hands and get changed. The porter’s drunken cameo barely lasts three minutes, but its themes (alcohol and impotence) add a touch of mundane reality to a play bursting with supernatural horrors. Before the porter opens the door, he cracks a series of witticisms that some have identified as the first instance of a ‘knock knock’ joke in world literature. The grave-digger episode in Hamlet is equally crucial to the tragedy. The hero’s epiphany comes when the grave-digger hands him the skull of Yorick, the late court jester. Holding in his hand tangible proof that Yorick is truly gone forever, together with his jokes and songs, Hamlet realises that all of our highfaluting rhetoric about eternity and all our vain attempts to cheat death are in themselves just a joke: a lady who paints her makeup “an inch thick” to look younger will be buried one day, just like everyone else (5.1.183). Paradoxically, it is the spirit of “letting go” and a degree of world-weariness that now makes him determined to go on and to make amends. This is not so far from the resolve of the aforementioned Indiana Jones, another Oedipally challenged icon. His facial expression when he shoots the swordsman seems to say, “What’s the bloody point? " Incidentally, these were also the last words written by Kenneth Williams (1926-1989) before his suicide (see Williams 1994, 801). Unlike the late star of the Carry on franchise (see Chapter 11), Indiana Jones does carry on, a true heir of Sisyphus, who knows fully well that there will always be yet another obstacle to clear, yet another swordsman to defeat, yet another artefact to chase. Tired, but not broken in spirit, reconciled to the idea that he must go on, because if he does not, who else will? Unfortunately, this does not work for Hamlet. When the plot catches up with him shortly after the grave-digger scene, Hamlet is killed in a duel - we are still in a tragedy here, as farcical and as funny as Hamlet may be in places. The protagonist is defeated by the conspiracy but somewhat redeemed in the end. No such redemption awaits Vladimir and Estragon, the protagonists of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot (1953), widely considered the foundational text of Theatre of the Absurd. Waiting for Godot has variously been described as a play where “less than nothing happens” (Robbe-Grillet 1965, 111), or where “nothing happens, twice” (Vivian Mercier qtd. in Kennedy 1992, 24). Instead of building an Aristotelian plot over the course of several acts, Waiting for Godot emphasises repetition and circularity, and it abandons traditional stage concepts of time and character development. Two men named Vladimir and Estragon spend several hours waiting for a man named Godot, who never comes. They pass the time bickering, half-remembering past events and playing silly little games, the purpose of which seems to escape them. Like the characters in subsequent Beckett plays such as Endgame and Happy Days (1960), they are stuck in a rut. Scholarly debates have concentrated on the significance of waiting as an emblem of the human condition, and on the question of who Godot is or what he stands for. Is Godot, in fact, God? Does he symbolise the impossibility of salvation, or even death? 111 But this is absurd! Beckett himself said that he had no idea: “If I knew [who Godot is], I would have said so in the play." (qtd. in Esslin 1961/ 1991, 44) Some productions employ the two leads’ forgetfulness and despair as a metaphor for old age, others play up the class angle and power relations. None of this may be obvious subject matter for a comedy, and there is hardly any glimpse of carnival nor a marriage plot to be found anywhere in this allegory of human endurance. But if Godot’s plot, or rather: its non-plot, sounds like a desolate and bleak proposition, it never becomes a completely sombre affair on stage. The play is revived quite regularly, and it continues to draw audiences all over the world. Though the parts of Vladimir and Estragon neither offer grand character arcs nor any obvious stage spectacle, they have attracted some of the biggest names in theatre and film. Crucially, the list includes comedians Robin Williams and Steve Martin (1945-), who starred in Mike Nichols’s 1988 production at the Lincoln Center. Comedy and the absurd Waiting for Godot makes serious points about the human condition, but readers of the play will find that Beckett is all too aware of the art of clowning and slapstick. He not only collaborated on a project with Buster Keaton (Film, 1965), he also at one point suggested that Laurel & Hardy would make a very good Vladimir and Estragon. This was more than a facetious remark, because Godot requires two skilled comedians to pull off various sight gags and extended comic routines, including the running gag about mixed-up hats and Estragon’s struggle to remove his boots. When legendary director Peter Hall (1930-2017) saw a production of Godot that had been directed by Beckett himself, he felt “the ghost of Buster Keaton hover[ing] over Estragon and Vladimir” (Hall 1983, 230). A running gag is a joke that occurs repeatedly throughout a comedy. Its impact will lessen or diminish with each repetition, according to the particular rhythm of the scene, and comic performers will use it to toy with their audience, to subvert expectations and to play variations on a theme. One running gag in Duck Soup (1933) involves Groucho Marx expecting to be chauffeured around in the sidecar of Harpo’s motorcycle. Each time, he fails: the motorcycle leaves without the sidecar (#1); it leaves before Groucho has had a chance to get in (#2); and when he demands the chauffeur swap seats with him, it is the sidecar that leaves without the motorcycle (#3). Running gags are closely related to catchphrase comedy, which uses verbal leitmotifs and variations on them. In Airplane! (1980), the escalating crisis sees tower supervisor McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) announce, at various points, that he has “picked the wrong week” to quit smoking, drinking, amphetamines, and sniffing glue. In Theatre of the Absurd, the compulsive repetition of the running gag stresses the idea of circularity and ‘eternal recurrence’ (Nietzsche). 112 Chapter 8 In many ways, Vladimir and Estragon resemble Shakespearean fools. Being driven by their needs, they eat, digest, and fart; and they are in love with puns as well as insults. The invectives that Vladimir and Estragon hurl at each other to pass the time belong to the Shakespearean tradition of repartee but are a lot more down-to-earth. ESTRAGON. That’s the idea, let’s abuse each other. […] VLADIMIR. Moron! ESTRAGON. Vermin! VLADIMIR. Abortion! ESTRAGON. Morpion! VLADIMIR. Sewer-rat! ESTRAGON. Curate! VLADIMIR. Cretin! (Beckett 1952/ 2010, 71) No less funny, though rather disturbing, is Lucky’s monologue in Act One. When Pozzo, his master, orders him to think aloud in order to entertain the crowd (“Think, pig! Think! "), Lucky delivers a nonsensical mash-up of academic bullshit and half-digested fragments of philosophy, sprinkled with references to the collected works of “Fartov and Belcher” (40). It is as though someone took “all the great works of Western thought, [put] them through a paper shredder, and [pasted] them back together at random” (Nealon 1992, 47). Over the course of Lucky’s monologue, language completely disintegrates until the speaker resembles a broken record. When Lucky turns into a verbal automaton, unable to stop, Vladimir and Estragon must grab his hat to put an end to his verbal diarrhoea. Lucky is also the target of the play’s most extended bouts of comic violence. In the manner of Stan Laurel in his double act with Oliver Hardy, Lucky plays the simple-minded, dedicated servant to a self-important master. The only difference is that we cannot be sure Lucky will get up again without suffering long-term harm when Pozzo kicks him or threatens him with the whip. In Waiting for Godot, the slave-whacking routines carry a more violent edge; Lucky’s struggle is truly existential, that is: life-threatening. It does make sense, though, to look at Beckett's theatre not as a subversion of traditional clowning but as a continuation of it, albeit one with serious implications. Their down-and-out visual appearance marks Vladimir and Estragon as spiritual heirs to Chaplin's tramp, updated for the post-war world. Time is out of joint for Vladimir and Estragon as much as it was for Chaplin, whose obstinate refusal to have the tramp speak seemed more and more desperate with each new film he made after the 1920s. In a way, Waiting for Godot echoes Chaplin’s plea for the art of pantomime, because for Vladimir and Estragon, language only ever leads to misunderstandings, confusion, and disintegration. Tellingly, Waiting for Godot premiered only a few months after the release of Chaplin’s film Limelight (1952), a melodramatic assessment of the comic’s own legacy. Limelight is not just a film about endings and closures, it also turned out to be Chaplin’s final film in the United States before he was forced to go into exile. For his big finale, 113 But this is absurd! Chaplin stages a highly self-referential slapstick routine with none other than Buster Keaton. Yet although Limelight and Waiting for Godot end on sombre notes, they are not works of despair. As tragicomedies that juxtapose laughter with sadness, the two works supplement the merriment of springtime with a memento mori quality that hints at old age. The dying words of Calvero, Chaplin’s ageing clown character in Limelight, are: “I believe I’m dying, doctor. But then, I don’t know. I’ve died so many times." Harold Pinter’s comedies of menace Samuel Beckett may have pioneered the Theatre of the Absurd, but he is by no means its only proponent. On the English stage, it was Harold Pinter (1930-2008) more than any other playwright who formulated a new type of comedy on the basis of existentialism, marrying it to various other English stage traditions, including melodrama, the crime play, drawing-room comedies, and the comedy of manners. A pun on the latter serves to characterise Pinter’s own brand of writing as “comedy of menace”. Pinter’s plays, including The Birthday Party (1957) and No Man’s Land (1974), are set in the boarding-house or the drawing-room; domestic environments that are still recognisable as stereotypical English settings like. But absurdities keep intruding. There are inexplicable plot developments, cryptic relationships between the characters, and a building sense of dread that is never purged in a conventional way. Pinter’s mastery lies in his ability to build suspense without fully committing to the Aristotelian principles of classic drama. His plots do not follow conventional logic, and there is a sense that what remains unspoken is at least as important as what the characters reveal. This has made the Pinter Pause his trademark weapon as a playwright, though its importance may have been over-emphasised in some productions. Mark Twain (1835-1910) already knew that the pause is “uncertain and treacherous”, always ready to “make trouble” (Twain 1895/ 1906, 24); the Pinter Pause takes its cue from this observation and eradicates any attempt at witty banter, creating uncertainty. In this short exchange from The Homecoming (1965), Teddy tries to reconnect with his brother after several years abroad: TEDDY. I’ve … just come back for a few days. LENNY. Oh yes? Have you? Pause. TEDDY. How’s the old man? LENNY. He’s in the pink. Pause. TEDDY. I’ve been keeping well. LENNY. Oh, have you? Pause. LENNY. Staying the night, then, are you? TEDDY. Yes. LENNY. Well, you can sleep in your old room. 114 Chapter 8 TEDDY. Yes, I’ve been up. LENNY. Yes, you can sleep there. (Pinter 1965/ 1978, 26) The damaged fraternal relationship is never entirely clarified, but it can be grasped between the lines, in the pauses and helpless repetitions. Pinter usually refuses to spell out subtext and to establish certainty beyond doubt, driven by his conviction that “the becauses of drama” cannot be trusted: “any connections we think we see, or choose to make, are pure guesswork” (qtd. in Batty 2005, 132). This healthy distrust in reason also propels The Dumb Waiter (1957), one of Pinter’s most frequently revived dark comedies. This equally suspenseful and funny one-act play revolves around two professional killers waiting for their assignation, passing the time like bored children. As Ben and Gus sit around in a windowless room, they start bickering to vent their frustration over the situation. When the dumbwaiter, an old-fashioned service hatch located in the back of the room, springs into action, they become obsessed over it. Even though they are hit-men and lack the necessary equipment to prepare meals, Ben and Gus become convinced they must fulfil the orders that keep coming through the hatch: GUS (reading). Soup of the day. Liver and onions. Jam tart. […] BEN. We’d better send something up. GUS. Eh? BEN. We’d better send something up. GUS. Oh! Yes. Yes. Maybe you’re right. They are both relieved at the decision. (Pinter 1957/ 1989, 148-149) Their back-and-forth with the dumb waiter takes on increasingly absurd dimensions as Ben and Gus treat the device as though it were a higher power they must reason with, before the subsequent and oft-copied twist: that it is, in fact, one of them who is the intended target of the next assassination. Over the next few decades, the bickering mates who are stranded in a kind of shared limbo turns into an existentialist staple of popular culture. Jim Jarmusch (1953-) uses the trope in Down by Law (1991), set in a prison cell, and Kevin Smith (1970-) builds his Clerks trilogy (1994-2022) around two notoriously miserable friends and their love-hate relationship with the petty jobs they have held for decades. Others emulated Pinter’s template by revisiting the story of the two assassins passing the time before their next job. Quentin Tarantino (1963-) opens Pulp Fiction (1994) with a segment about two hit-men who talk about fast food and old TV shows because they have some time to kill, and Martin McDonagh (1970-), whose work marries Theatre of the Absurd to Tarantino’s characteristic brand of dark humour, has included the two waiting hit-men on several occasions. Seven Psychopaths (2012) opens with a one-take sequence where two assassins become so absorbed in their inconsequential conversation that they fail to notice their approaching killer, and In Bruges (2008) effectively stretches the Dumb Waiter setup into a feature-length film. 115 But this is absurd! Letter to Harold Pinter: “Dear Sir, I would be obliged if you would kindly explain the meaning to me of your play The Birthday Party. These are the points that I do not understand: 1. Who are the two men? 2. Where did Stanley come from? 3. Were they all supposed to be normal? You will appreciate that without the answers to my questions I cannot fully understand your play.” Harold Pinter’s response: “Dear Madam, I would be obliged if you could kindly explain to me the meaning of your letter. These are the points I do not understand: 1. Who are you? 2. Where do you come from? 3. Are you supposed to be normal? You will appreciate that without the answers to my questions I cannot fully understand your letter.” (taken from Batty 2005, 112-113) Popular culture and the absurd While it is true that Theatre of the Absurd has left its stamp on popular culture, the examples of Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy show that the absurd had a place there long before Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot. In fact, his plays owe at least as much to the various clowning traditions and to silent-film comedies as subsequent comedians owe to him. Chaplin’s tramp character is a modern-day Sisyphus who never ages and who always exists on the fringes of society. Things turn out well for him in some of the films, including The Kid (1921) and The Gold Rush (1925), but his improved social standing never has any long-term effect. Each new film wipes the slate clean again, to burden the tramp with yet more hardship. Moreover, there is an existential dimension to the very nature of slapstick itself. Its comic repertoire consists of different varieties of the pratfall. Falling down and standing up constitute the basic operation of all slapstick (see Chapter 2), and the performer’s dedication to getting on his feet again assures the audience that it is okay to laugh - no harm done, right? There is a Sisyphean dimension to this vicious circle, of course, because the tramp is bound to suffer one blow after the other. Not getting up again means you are dead. Peyton Glass III counts 45 different stage directions that require the characters in Waiting for Godot to leave their upright positions (see Glass III 1992), and Beckett will later formulate the oft-quoted motto for this existential series of mishaps in his novella, Worstward Ho! (1983): “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” (Beckett 1983/ 2009, 81) By virtue of its infinite circularity, the absurd lends itself naturally to serial formats, especially the sitcom. As a story-telling format, it is afflicted by a similar kind of short-term memory to that of Chaplin’s films, with each new episode restoring the count to zero. Seinfeld repeatedly pays homage to Theatre of the Absurd. In one of the last episodes (“The Betrayal”, S9E8), they went so far as to loosely adapt an actual 116 Chapter 8 Pinter play, Betrayal (1978), which tells the story of a collapsing marriage backwards. Moreover, the scenarios of various classic Seinfeld episodes would not feel out of place in the works of Beckett. Like Theatre of the Absurd, Seinfeld is replete with characters whose lack of social skills constantly create awkward pauses, and who pass the time by bickering over banalities. Elaine, the only central character to show ambition, at one point vents her frustration at her friends’ arrested development: “I can’t spend the rest of my life coming into this stinking apartment every ten minutes to pore over the excruciating minutiae of every single daily event! ” (S8E3) But this is exactly what she does, unable to escape farcical plots based on everyday absurdities and the arbitrary conventions of modern civilisation. Over the years, Seinfeld acquired a reputation as a primetime version of Theatre of the Absurd. The show where ‘nothing happens’ was one of the first TV series to inspire philosophical readings (see Irwin 2000). One episode, “The Chinese Restaurant” (S2E11) takes its cue from Godot as Jerry, Elaine, and George try to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant, with the maître d’ reassuring them repeatedly that they will be seated soon. They pass the time chatting, complaining, and playing silly games, but all to no avail. They eventually give up and leave the place hungry and frustrated, only for the maître d’ to call out their names the very moment they have left, in a finale that evokes memories of Kafka’s short parable, Before the Law (Vor dem Gesetz, 1915). Variations on this theme are played in “The Parking Garage” (S3E6), when the gang spends an entire episode looking for their car, and in “The Dinner Party” (S5E13), when they get stuck in a bakery waiting for their order. The show’s controversial final episode, “The Finale” (S9E24) reinforces the idea of the characters stuck in existential limbo. As the four go to prison to atone for their antisocial behaviour, they re-enact a conversation from the show’s very first episode. ● 20 th -century existentialist philosophy emphasises the idea of a godless and solitary universe. ● This philosophical school gave rise to Theatre of the Absurd, where laughter is interspersed with despair. ● There are precedents for this kind of existential clowning in Shakespeare and in slapstick, where the characters are doomed to fail and always get up again, like Sisyphus. ● Absurd comedies abandon straightforward cause-and-effect plots in favour of circularity and waiting, thus reflecting existential limbo. ● Instead of witty banter, the dialogue emphasises repetition and awkward pauses. 117 But this is absurd! FURTHER READING : Batty, Mark (2005). About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work. London: faber & faber. Cohn, Ruby (ed., 1992). ‘Waiting for Godot’. A Casebook. Houndmills/ London: Macmillan. Esslin, Martin (1961/ 1991). The Theatre of the Absurd. London: Penguin. 118 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 And now for something completely grotesque! The body and the grotesque The term 'grotesque’ derives from an ornamental style of art that emerged during the time of Emperor Nero’s rule. The etymology of the word itself seems rather incidental, as the grotesque is linked to the Italian word grotto, simply because the artworks were found underground. Then again, the connection is strangely appropriate: the grotesque is linked to that which we have buried and suppressed to the extent of pretending it is not there. The term is now used in a wider sense, relating to diverse works of art that mix rather seemingly incongruous elements. There is an everyday dimension to the grotesque, allowing for the term to be levelled at all kinds of phenomena: anything, really, that appears strange, unnatural, monstrous, “distorted, wildly fantastic, or bizarre” (Abrams/ Harpham 2014, 157). This has led to the term 'grotesque’ being used interchangeably with the term 'absurd’ in everyday diction (see Heidsieck 1969), especially when the speaker wants to articulate outrage: “But this is absurd/ grotesque! " Yet strictly speaking, the two terms designate rather different ideas. The absurd refers to the incompatibility of two elements, and a struggle to make sense of a chaotic and Godless universe. By contrast, the grotesque highlights more material concerns and a particular kind of aesthetics, emblematised by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) or Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The latter also features in Bakhtin’s study, Rabelais and His World (1965), which I have cited before (see Chapter 5). In one chapter, Bakhtin discusses the topic of banquets, which in many respects contain the gist of carnival in a nutshell. The relaxed and jolly atmosphere of the banquet liberates speech, so that even the realm of the sacred can suddenly be discussed in a playful fashion. When the spirit of the feast permeates everyone and everything, our bodily needs take priority over our spiritual ones. Merry gluttony defeats the idea of askesis, as evidenced in Bruegel’s Tournament between Lent and Carnival (ca. 1560). Like the bizarre tales of Rabelais, Bruegel’s paintings highlight the grotesque body, a body that never bends to fashion nor to aesthetics, a body that is unruly and always about to escape control. In physical terms, the grotesque expresses that which is normally hidden behind the orifices of an “entirely finished, completed, strictly limited body”, in other words: that which “protrudes, bulges, sprouts, or branches off ” (Bakhtin 1965/ 1984, 320). Fig. 9.1: Tournament between Lent and Carnival (Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1560). Bulging eyes are as characteristic of the grotesque body as a prominent nose or a gaping mouth; clearly, there is a distinct emphasis on bodily orifices. As small children, we learn to draw a strict line between our bodies and the world, so that there is no permeability between the two. We learn not to chew with our mouths open and to keep our bodily discharge a secret from everyone. Anything that violates this contract is treated as an embarrassment, be it a drop of sweat or a fart; the sight of vomit, shit, or menstrual blood is coded as embarrassing or even as taboo. The mere presence of any one of those elements is potentially shocking or subversive. Think of the normally well-adjusted little girl who throws up in the face of a priest (The Exorcist, 1973) or the group of female friends who suffer bouts of explosive diarrhoea during a bridal-dress fitting (Bridesmaids). While plenty of male comics have specialised in gross-out humour that depends to a great deal on grotesque effects, it is much easier to surprise an audience with scenes that depict women sweating, farting, and throwing up. The grotesque body reminds us that our bodies are, in truth, “never finished, never completed” (Bakhtin 1965/ 1984, 317); we all must sweat, bleed, urinate, and defecate. The culture of the marketplace briefly allows the body to abandon its prison, as carnival celebrates the unruly and the excessive. When the body allows itself to be dominated by its appetites, it must devour food; this in turn means that the body must digest and excrete to rid itself of superfluous input. 120 Chapter 9 Because the female body is subjected to stricter cultural regimes of appropriateness, the sight of the grotesque woman has far greater potential to surprise and upset audiences. Gregor Balke discusses this phenomenon extensively in his book Poop Feminism (2020), where he reads the history of comedy and humour in terms of how it constantly suppressed the idea of defecating women. According to Balke, “the mere suggestion that our bodies produce excrement is enough to upset and terrify people”, because we live “in a world where the female body is subjected to perfectionism and the constant need to optimise and rejuvenate” (Balke 2020, 72 and 95, my translation). The debate is linked to the history of ‘unruly women’ in comedy (see Chapter 14). The ensuing 'corpo-reality’ comes alive in performance more than on the printed page, as filmmakers who are associated with the grotesque often cast actors with a memorable physique. This is as true of Federico Fellini (1920-1993) as it is of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1953-), directors whose regular ensembles include performers who defy conventional beauty standards. Various films that lean heavily into the grotesque invoke the transitional period between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the era that Bakhtin was interested in. Fornicating, sweating, and flatulent bodies populate the sensual and raunchy world of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron (Il Decamerone, 1971), based on the anthology by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), or Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977), loosely based on the poem by Lewis Carroll (1832- 1898). Images of decadence and over-indulgence often permeate transitional tales that also reflect on the decline of civilisation, for example Volker Schlöndorff ’s The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel, 1979), based on the Günter Grass novel, and Marco Ferreri’s The Grand Bouffe (La grande bouffe, 1973), about a group of men who eat, drink, and fornicate themselves to death. Stylistic touches that are taken as a sign of artistic vision when they are used by well-respected and award-winning auteurs are dismissed as juvenile potty humour when they occur in Hollywood films. This double standard is one reason why comedic blockbusters get so little love from the critics. Before Peter Farrelly (1956-) turned into an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (Green Book, 2018), he produced a string of box-office hits with his brother Bobby (1958-). The list of their most famous set pieces includes Jeff Daniels’s apocalyptic diarrhoea (Dumb and Dumber, 1994), Cameron Diaz styling her hair with semen (There’s Something about Mary, 1998), Jim Carrey sucking on a young mother’s breasts (Me, Myself and Irene, 2000), and Hugh Jackman as a man with a pair of testicles dangling from his neck (Movie 43, 2013). Critics have often frowned at the profitable films that the Farrellys have churned out an impressive rate since the 1990s, but it is worth remembering that they also did pioneering work in terms of inclusivity, winning the prestigious Morton E. Ruderman Award in 2020 for their regular work with disabled performers. Their stories often involve non-normative bodies, though this is a risky endeavour. There is always the 121 And now for something completely grotesque! ambiguous pleasure of laughing at rather than with the characters, particularly when the Farrellys cast well-known, able-bodied Hollywood stars in the lead roles. It is easier for the audience to enjoy Schadenfreude when the object of ridicule is not an actual obese woman but spindly Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit (Shallow Hal, 2001), and the same goes for the sight of screen idols Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear playing conjoined twins (Stuck on You, 2003). But to be fair, both films conclude with the world adjusting to the non-normative bodies, rather than the other way round, and they advocate a humanist outlook as well as communal bonds of solidarity. On the other side of the Atlantic, the grotesque has enjoyed a rich history in British popular culture, particularly in the works of comedy sextet Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It’s … Self-defence against men armed with bananas; the fish-slapping dance; a man beating mice with a mallet as part of his music-hall act; a group of martyrs humming a cheerful tune while nailed to the cross - the brains behind these and other controversial sketches were those of Graham Chapman (1941-1989), John Cleese (1939-), Terry Gilliam (1940-), Eric Idle (1943-), Terry Jones (1942-2020), and Michael Palin (1943-). Together, they formed Monty Python, the most influential and critically acclaimed comedy group of all time. With the exception of Gilliam, an American, all of the Pythons were from Great Britain. Three of them had been members of the Cambridge Footlights, Britain’s cradle of alternative comedy. The label alternative comedy was coined in Britain in the 1980s. It relates to comedy that avoids easy targets, dated stereotypes, and conventional setup/ punchline patterns (see Hunt 2009). Alternative comedy is associated with smaller clubs, fringe shows, and non-traditional sketch formats. But as more and more alternative comics, having been bred by academic groups like the Cambridge Footlights, crossed over into the comedic mainstream to headline TV shows, the alleged differences between mainstream and alternative comedy are hard to maintain. Ben Elton (1959-) used to be the face of alternative comedy in the 1980s, but today, it is hard to think of anyone with a more successful career in mainstream formats, as Elton has written some of the most successful comic novels, stage plays, musicals, and TV shows in history, including The Young Ones (1982-1984), Blackadder (1983-1989), and We Will Rock You (2002). Monty Python created a distinct brand of anarchic yet highly sophisticated comedy that took the comedy world by storm yet always retained the distinct flavour of a niche phenomenon, as though their comedy had only ever been aimed at a choice few. Their early work is infused with the rebellious spirit of the counter-culture, 122 Chapter 9 as the comics take frequent swings at authorities and institutions, including the state and the church. Their routines were wildly popular with the college-educated, urban crowd: young people who appreciated sketches with overtones of the surreal and the grotesque, unbound by the traditional punchline structure. “We’d seen Peter Cook and Dudley Moore doing so many really great sketches where they traditionally had to end with a zinger, and the zinger was never as good as the sketch. […] Time and again you’d see these really great sketches that would die at the end - they wouldn’t die, but they just wouldn’t end better [than] or as well as the middle bits. So very early on we made a decision to get rid of punchlines.” (Terry Gilliam qtd. in Morgan 2019, 38) The Pythons had their own television show between 1969 and 1974, and over the next forty years, they would occasionally reunite for films, TV specials, and live shows. They never officially disbanded, unlike the Beatles, with whom they would cross paths on occasion. George Harrison (1943-2001) set up a production company to help finance Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), and Eric Idle wrote and directed a feature-length parody of the band’s rise called All You Need Is Cash (1978). Monty Python arguably changed the face of comedy, similar to how the Beatles changed pop music, and all six of Python’s individual members went on to have remarkable solo careers. However, their legacy will be forever defined by Monty Python’s characteristic brand of humour, which merges the nonsensical with anarchic situation comedy. Where the Marx Brothers before them (see Chapter 12) had ticked off powerful institutions and ideologies by setting their films in the realms of higher education (Horse Feathers, 1932), politics (Duck Soup, 1933), and highbrow culture (A Night at the Opera), Monty Python went after the sacred canon of historiography and the founding myths of England (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975), not to mention organised religion (Monty Python’s Life of Brian). They even turned the death of one of them into an opportunity to push the boundaries. Speaking at Graham Chapman’s funeral in 1987, John Cleese took it upon himself to become the first person to say “Fuck” during a British memorial service. A few years later, the surviving members would ‘accidentally’ knock over the urn with Chapman’s ashes during a televised interview. Monty Python’s old shows and films continue to find new audiences on DVD and on streaming services, and Eric Idle has proven particularly inventive when it comes to updating and recycling the old material. He adapted The Holy Grail into an award-winning Broadway musical (Spamalot, 2004), and Life of Brian into an actual oratorio (He’s Not the Messiah, 2007). 123 And now for something completely grotesque! THREE ESSENTIAL MONTY PYTHON SKETCHES The Dead Parrot (S1E8): In a pet shop, a customer complains that the shopkeeper has sold him a dead parrot, but the stubborn shopkeeper is not to be convinced that the parrot is no longer alive. Signature phrase: “This is an ex-parrot! ” The Spanish Inquisition (S2E2): Less a sketch, more a terrific running gag, where a group of fanatic cardinals come bursting through the scene to interrupt other sketches. Signature phrase: “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition! ” The Cheese Shop (S3E7): A man tries to buy cheese in a cheese shop, but it turns out that the cheese shop has no cheese. Far funnier than I make it sound. Signature phrase: “It’s not much of a cheese shop, really, is it? ” The individual members of Monty Python had rehearsed their scattershot approach in earlier TV shows like Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967-1969), but it was only when the BBC commissioned 13 episodes of what was to become Monty Python’s Flying Circus that their particular brand of satire turned into a cultural phenomenon. Flying Circus was full of non-sequiturs, hard cuts, and completely arbitrary stream-of-consciousness transitions between the individual segments, often announced by John Cleese’s signa‐ ture line: “And now for something completely different". Recurring characters include the knight who carries a rubber chicken, the humourless Colonel who interrupts the show when it gets too silly, and the hapless “It’s” man, an announcer who takes ages to reach the camera, only to be cut off mid-sentence. One of the defining features of Monty Python’s comedy aesthetic is their love for the grotesque, which is amped up by the use of cartoonish elements. This is not just about weights being dropped on the actors from great heights, which also happens; Python really goes for the grotesque in Terry Gilliam’s characteristic animated sequences. One typical Gilliam animation shows a hunchbacked man pushing a predatory pram that swallows elderly ladies who try to take a look at the baby. This continues until an off-screen voice of outrage interrupts the routine and sends the pram after its owner (“Kill! ”). From a structural point of view, it is clear that we are back with our old friend, incongruity, here - but with special ingredients. Python’s grotesque brand of humour crosses over into the realm of the horrific, where distorted and exaggerated bodies feature very prominently. By virtue of “monstrous juxtaposing or collageing of incompatible elements” (Thompson 1982, v), the grotesque lends itself to comedy as much as to horror and, by implication, to a synthesis between the two. Grotesque comedy often involves extreme violence, but applied in such an over-the-top fashion that it becomes funny, unlike in straightforward horror. Not that the two can always be neatly separated. What viewers find amusing or horrifying will depend on their personal tastes, and this is as true of the climactic crucifixion in Life of Brian as it is of horror comedies. In the films of Sam Raimi (1959-), especially the Evil Dead trilogy 124 Chapter 9 Fig. 9.2: Mr. Creosote is about to burst (The Meaning of Life, 1983). (1981-1992), each new scene outdoes the gross-out factor of the previous one: pretty girls become vile demons, trees turn into rapists, and chainsaws replace chopped-off limbs. Few other branches of comedy lend themselves as well to explorations of taboo subjects as the grotesque, and its multimedia history is bursting with scandals and censorship debates. The Evil Dead was banned in several countries, and one of Monty Python’s most controversial sketches involved a hard bargain with the BBC. In the “Undertaker” sketch (S2E13), a man walks into a funeral parlour to arrange the burial of his mother, but the undertaker has different things in mind. He suggests they eat the corpse, to which the customer quickly agrees (“Well, I do feel a bit peckish …"). The studio audience reacts with audibly outraged cries and eventually storms the stage - a pre-arranged display of moral rectitude that the Pythons had been compelled to write into the script, so that viewers at home could rest assured that the BBC did not actually condone the tastelessness displayed on screen. Throughout the 1970s, Monty Python were frequently accused of blasphemy and ribaldry; their televised argument with Bishop Mervyn Stockwood following the release of Life of Brian was even adapted into a film, co-starring Stephen Fry in the role of God (Holy Flying Circus, 2011). But the Pythons always remained a step ahead of their critics, going so far as to write the respective debates into their shows. The Colonel (played by Graham Chapman) frequently issues warnings to the producers between sketches, and the Flying Circus shows included made-up letters of complaint as a running gag, in the spirit of Joe Orton’s 'Edna Welthorpe’ letters (see Chapter 11). While Monty Python found bigger and bigger audiences over the years, they continued to look outside the mainstream to hone their aesthetics, toying with ugliness and splatter effects. Jabberwocky, Terry Gilliam’s first solo effort as a director, not only packs plenty of manure, garbage, and dirt into every frame, it also sees the main character fall in love with the morbidly obese Griselda. Even though the mise-en-scène pushed the limits of what was considered acceptable in a comedy at that time, the director rightly insisted that his film contained nothing "[that] you won’t find in a Bruegel painting” (qtd. in Thompson 1982, 25). The joke is taken to yet another level in the final Monty Python film, The Meaning of Life (1983), where the gluttonous Mr. Creosote, a vomiting landmass of a man, has an excessive dinner in a fancy restaurant and explodes when the sadistic waiter forces one final “wafer-thin mint” into him. Mr. Creosote is, on the one hand, a thoroughly car‐ nivalesque character as described by Bakhtin, who em‐ phasises that most gluttonous clown characters carry “the names of national dishes (Hanswurst, Pikkelher‐ ring, and others)" (Bakhtin 1965/ 1984, 298). But the ab‐ ject sight of Creosote’s detonated body, with organs flopping out and the adjacent tables covered in half-di‐ gested food, also brings the carnivalesque body to its logical conclusion. This truly is no longer the “closed 125 And now for something completely grotesque! system subjugated and domesticated by culture”; it is, in true Bakhtinian fashion, “an open, living, proliferating, incorporating, and excorporating organism which interacts with other bodies and ignores fixed borders” (Horlacher 2009, 39). The concept of the abject was developed by Julia Kristeva (1941-). She uses it to connote things that disturb our sense of identity and order, particularly those that are linked to our own bodies. Abjection concerns “an extremely strong feeling that is at once somatic and symbolic, which is above all a revolt against an external menace from which one wants to distance oneself, but of which one has the impression that it may menace us from the inside” (Kristeva 1980/ 2002, 374). The abject concerns our attempts to draw a line between inside and outside, and to deny the reality of things that disrupt our sense of closed systems and bodies: vomit, faeces, menstrual blood, all of which remind us of our mortality. As taboo subject matter, the abject is thus also linked to comedy. Grotesque humour, in particular, acknowledges “the organic unity of all life” (Nelson 1990, 39), directing our attention towards the baser impulses and decomposition. On the other end of the spectrum, there is John Cleese. His extremely lanky and flexible body evokes memories of legendary slapstick comics Jacques Tati and Peter Sellers (1925-1980). In Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch (S2E1), Cleese appears to have detached himself completely from his body, as his limbs exhibit balletic skills that are distinctly at odds with the entirely professional demeanour of the civil servant to whom they are attached. This human automaton illustrates the “mechanisation of life” that Henri Bergson (1859-1941) identifies as the basis of comedy (see Chapter 11). When Cleese played a variation of this routine in the infamous “The Germans” episode of Fawlty Towers, now with added military goose-step and Hitler impression, one critic suggested that Cleese had to be seen in the tradition of “Dürer’s skeletal horseman carrying the plague, all bony elbows and knees, ghastly grin and hollow eye-sockets” (qtd. in Thompson 1982, 13). Cleese has frequently played the part of death’s emissary in the Python oeuvre: the Grim Reaper (The Meaning of Life), the owner of the world’s deadest parrot (And Now for Something Completely Different), and the unfortunate Black Knight, who has his limbs chopped off by King Arthur and is left behind as an immobile torso, while insisting that it was technically a draw (The Holy Grail). These sketches remain popular examples of Monty Python’s characteristic brand of grotesque, transgressive humour. One of them, the “Funniest Joke in the World” sketch, even suggests that comedy itself is a potentially lethal weapon. It is about a comedy writer who comes up with a joke that is so funny that it causes instantaneous death; when it is translated into German, the joke helps the British win World War II. This rather disturbing juxtaposition of laughter and death literalises the idea of a 'killer punchline’, with the rigor mortis leaving the victims with a perpetual Bakhtinian grin on their faces. 126 Chapter 9 Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiberhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput! (Monty Python’s German translation of the funniest joke in the world) Fig. 9.3: The joke as a lethal weapon (And Now for Something Completely Different, 1971). The grotesque on stage Most of the examples cited so far are 20 th -century examples, but the grotesque is not limited to the post-war years, of course. We can trace it all the way back to the ancient theatre stage, as the exaggerated phallic props in Aristophanes would not feel out of place in the works of Monty Python (see Chapter 2). In the Shakespearean canon, Titus Andronicus (1593) has been singled out as a tragedy that flirts with the grotesque and at various points violates good taste. Having killed the sons of his sworn enemy, Tamora, Titus drains their blood to bake a pie for their mother. Such gross-out effects were popular in the deeply cynical revenge tragedies of the Jacobean era, where limbs are chopped off on stage, throats are slit, and the characters resort to blackly comic one-liners to comment on evil that mirrors real-world evils. The tone of these plays is all over the place, but this is very much the point. In a world where people are massacred in wars, how can the theatre pretend that politics is all about subtle diplomacy and carefully-worded aphorisms? Evidently, acts of brute force, deeply black humour and splatter-horror aesthetics are neither exclusive to highbrow theatre nor to popular entertainment. Heiner Müller’s play Germania Tod in Berlin (1971) contains stage directions according to which the actor playing Hitler has to eat a soldier alive while drinking gasoline (Müller 1996, 33); The Simpsons, on the other hand, contains the deeply disturbing show-within-the-show “Itchy & Scratchy”, which is regularly watched by Springfield’s impressionable young children. It makes sense to locate grotesque aesthetics at the intersection between avant-garde experimentalism and commercial entertainment, an assessment that also applies to the filmmakers 127 And now for something completely grotesque! discussed in Schuy R. Weishaar’s book, Masters of the Grotesque (2012): Tim Burton (1958-), Terry Gilliam, David Lynch (1946-), and Joel (1954-) and Ethan Coen (1957-). The Coen brothers often employ abrupt switches in tone and jarring moments of bizarre violence that would not feel out of place in Titus Andronicus. Toes and ears are cut or bitten off (The Big Lebowski, 1998), and the abduction plot in Fargo (1996) concludes with one of the kidnappers feeding his friend’s body into a wood-chipper. The geysers of blood that turn the snow red can be traced back to the grand guignol tradition. The term comes from a Paris theatre that specialised in over-the-top violence and the macabre. To this day, deliberately offensive violations of good taste are designated as grand guignol. The various adaptations of the Sweeney Todd legend (including the Stephen Sondheim musical of 1979) usually end with the actors drenched in blood and guts. Before the 20 th century, authors and theatre directors who presented yet another sensationalist version of the legend got away with it by framing the story as a cautionary tale; needless to say, the audience came not for the moralising but for the sex and violence. Grand guignol gradually turned into a comic trope that no longer shocks audiences who look back nostalgically at the Addams Family live-action television show (1964-1966). Tim Burton used to specialise in subversive blockbusters awash with gothic aesthetics, grand guignol effects, and unpredictable shifts in tone, including the big-screen adaptation of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (2007). The fact that he later deployed his trademark skills to produce modern fairy-tales for the Disney studios is not so much a sign of the director 'selling out’ but of his aesthetics becoming more acceptable in the cinematic mainstream. A different process of maturation has been attributed to Anglo-Irish playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (1970-), whose works are as indebted to Theatre of the Absurd and American popular culture as they are to the realm of the grotesque. McDonagh erupted on the Anglophone theatre scene in the late 1990s, when several of his plays opened in quick succession. His early works, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) and A Skull in Connemara (1997), are set in small-town Irish communities, where the characters are haunted by dark family secrets. As a writer, McDonagh owes various debts: to the closely observed Irish communes of Seán O’Casey (1880-1964), to the non-sequiturs and menacing pauses of Harold Pinter, and to Quentin Tarantino’s infatuation with movie references and colourful swearing. Yet his plays go beyond these formative influences. They are more plot-driven than anything in Theatre of the Absurd, and their love for excessive cinematic violence in the vein of Tarantino and Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) clearly distinguishes them from traditional kitchen-sink realism or Irish melodrama. For a long time, McDonagh had a reputation for being deliberately provocative and for going too far on purpose, as though he were part of the confrontational and highly political in-yer-face theatre phenomenon. McDonagh's off-stage antics were often directed against the theatre establishment, as on the occasion when he criticised audiences for being “complicit in the dullness” of the theatrical institution: “It’s like going to a fancy meal in a fancy restaurant with the attitude that, I’m here and I’ve paid the money so I’m going to enjoy it even 128 Chapter 9 though it tastes like shite." (qtd. in O’Hagan 2015) In turn, critics dismissed his plays as illiterate, unnecessarily filthy, lacking in compassion, and distinctly apolitical. In fact, the grotesque effects and the over-the-top violence are very much the point for this author, who is a committed pacifist in spite of the stage carnage. Nowhere could this be more evident than in McDonagh’s most controversial play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001). This darkly satirical piece comically skewers the IRA and the history of its various splinter groups in the tradition of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where the 'People’s Front of Judea’ feels far more hostile towards the 'Judean People’s Front’ than towards the Roman oppressors. The main character is Padraic, a rogue Irish resistance fighter and a complete sociopath who plants bombs and tortures people for a living. He feels no empathy for any of his victims but adores his cat, “Wee Thomas”. When the cat dies, this sets off a farcical series of misunderstandings involving Padraic’s dad, a group of his former allies, and an Irish girl who wants to team up with Padraic to form a kind of Irish-resistance version of Bonnie & Clyde. Even though McDonagh always insists that his approach to the theatre is completely auto-didactic, The Lieutenant of Inishmore is steeped in various theatrical traditions. Its elaborate construction delivers both a sense of the well-made play and of Theatre of the Absurd, particularly when it turns out that the cat was alive all the time, so that the carnage amounts to 'much ado about nothing’ and the surviving characters will move on without having learnt anything whatsoever. What made the play a controversial hit that continues to be revived on stage is not just the author’s biting satire at the expense of Irish national terrorism and ideological fervour, it is also the stage spectacle. People and animals are shot point-blank on stage; when the curtain opens on the final scene, the room is “strewn with the body parts of Brendan and Joey, which Donny and Davey, blood-soaked also, hack away at to sizeable chunks” (McDonagh 2003, 46). A similar sense of what McDonagh has called his “pacifist rage” (qtd. in Jordan 2010, 234) permeates Hangmen (2015), set in the 1960s, when the United Kingdom has just abolished capital punishment. The protagonist, Harry Wade, is a former hangman whose job was the sole source of his masculine pride; when forced into retirement, he is unable to let go of his former glory and obsesses over his track record as an executioner. CLEGG. So how many men have you hanged, Harry? Give me a rough estimate. HARRY. I pride myself on never having deigned that question with an answer, Derek, and I shall stick to that deigning. CLEGG. More than a hundred? HARRY. Loads more. […] CLEGG. More than Pierrepoint? HARRY. See, now you’re trying to come the smartarse again, aren’t ya, like before. Everybody knows Albert Pierrepoint did shitloads, but Pierrepoint did a shitload of Germans both during and after the war […]. Albert were doing fifteen to twenty of those bastards a day, after the trials got going proper, and I’d’ve been happy to lend a hand, I would, but Pierrepoint had that entire scene sewn up, didn’t he? (McDonagh 2015, 36-37) 129 And now for something completely grotesque! McDonagh delivers not just a critical take on the questionable norms on which masculinity rests, he also addresses vigilante justice and the question of retribution. When Harry and his mates take the law into their own hands and execute an innocent man, the author clearly exceeds his unjustified reputation as an ageing stage punk without any value system. By the same token, A Very Very Very Dark Matter (2018) may be yet another far too self-congratulatory meditation on authors and the skeletons in their closets, but it goes beyond McDonagh’s frequently criticised postmodern self-awareness to deliver a riveting assessment of colonial crimes and racism. We should be careful, however, not to over-emphasise the idea that McDonagh has 'grown up’ as an author. This would imply that outrageous stage effects and the grotesque are signs of a somewhat childish streak that 'mature’ authors must overcome at some point. The same critics who embrace this idea will argue that farce is an entirely adolescent genre that 'real authors’ should not bother with (see Bentley 1964/ 1984). McDonagh’s evolution indicates that he has acquired different and more diverse skills as a writer, not that he has found it necessary to make amends for his earliest effort. His works are still full of shocking outbursts of violence, and his dialogue remains perfectly untroubled by considerations of political correctness. His first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, contained radical shifts from kitchen-sink realism to dark comedy and slasher horror; more than twenty years later, he has become even more confident at tonal shifts. His Academy Award-winning film, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) goes from a darkly comic examination of small-town bigotry to an affecting character study exploring grief and trauma. Frequent shifts in tone are typical of the grotesque, which is a highly adaptable aesthetic mode. It can be detected in popular, Monty Python-inspired sketch comedy like Little Britain (2003-2007), as well as in political writing for the stage. Tinderbox (2008), a dystopian comedy by Lucy Kirkwood (1983-), sees a bloodthirsty English butcher grant a young man refuge in his shop. As it dawns on his visitor that the butcher only remains in business because he hacks up his employees, Sweeney Todd-style, the play reveals itself to be not just an effective mash-up of gross-out humour and farcical situations, it also exposes the barbaric side of narrow-minded Englishness. ● The grotesque is a comic mode that highlights exaggeration and unruliness. ● The grotesque toys with gross-out effects that involve bodily fluids and non-normative bodies. ● The grotesque is a staple of alternative comedy, like the cartoonish, satirical sketches of Monty Python. ● Because it involves potentially scandalous subject matter, the grotesque has often been targeted by the censor. ● Filmmakers who are known for their grotesque aesthetics frequently cross over into the horror genre. 130 Chapter 9 FURTHER READING : Harpham, Geoffrey Galt (1982/ 2006). On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Aurora: Davies. Thompson, John O. (ed., 1982). Monty Python: Complete and Utter Theory of the Grotesque. London: BFI. Weishaar, Schuy R. (2012). Masters of the Grotesque. Jefferson: McFarland. 131 And now for something completely grotesque! Chapter 10 The more, the merrier The community of laughter A man has been sentenced to two years in prison. They assign him a bunk in a cell with two other prisoners who have already been locked up together for well over a decade. On his first day, he observes a strange routine between the two others. They yell out random numbers and laugh about them (“Fourteen! " - “Ha-ha-ha! " - “Seventy-one! " - “Ha-ha-ha! " etc.). The new guy looks on for a while, then asks them what they’re doing. They explain to him that they like telling jokes to each other, but they have been in the cell together so long, they know all their jokes off by heart and have simply assigned numbers to them to save some time. The new guy tries to participate and yells out: “Twenty-three! " No-one laughs. After a moment of awkward silence, one of the older inmates points out to him: “Well, you didn’t tell it right …" There are several reasons why this is a great joke: (1) It suggests that telling jokes can be a means of survival, which makes the prisoners akin to Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, who must kill time in order to keep going; (2) it is a meta-joke about the artistry required to tell jokes, but it puts a nonsensical spin on that idea, at the same time; (3) it neatly summarises the social dimension of comedy by putting emphasis on the new guy’s need to fit in. The joke is a public affair, and it becomes more powerful “as more partake” (Buckley 2003, 18). Many comedians refrain from explaining their material or theorising the underly‐ ing nature of the joke, as rationalising and intellectualising something that depends on instinct and gut feeling can ruin the experience. But there is a rich tradition of meta-comedy: comedy about comedy, as is evidenced by the multitude of television shows and films in which prominent comedians play comedians who get into arguments about what is funny and what is not. Examples include Seinfeld (1989-1998), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023), and the Mindy Kaling-scripted film Late Night (2019). Other shows and films go behind the scenes of actual or fictitious comedy programs to highlight that comedy is, indeed, hard work. This applies to 30 Rock as much as to Being the Ricardos (2021), based on the production history of legendary sitcom I Love Lucy (1951-1957). Earlier on, it already became clear that communal aspects have been an integral part of comedy since the very beginning (see Chapter 2). As part of the annual festive calendar of ancient Greece, comedy had its roots in ancient rites such as chorus-singing, and the communal aspect remains a crucial part of it. This is true of the theatrical experience in general, of course. We are more likely to laugh at a comedy when we watch it with others, which also accounts for the laugh track which accompanies so many sitcoms. Of course, the communal feeling amplifies many other affective experiences besides laughter, too. The cathartic cleansing that awaits us at the end of a melodrama can be a more intensive experience if we share it with others. But still, the idea of shared laughter differs from the collective sympathetic mourning that an audience will feel at Romeo and Juliet’s demise. This idea is emblematised in the concept of the community of laughter (Lachge‐ meinschaft). In their book of the same title (2005), Werner Röcke and Hans Rudolf Velten explore laughter in medieval literature, to find out how different forms of ritualised communication facilitate social exchange and cooperation, particularly when there are no official, institutionalised means of resolving conflict. Feudal culture of the medieval period is a particularly fruitful ground for this analysis, because there were so many unwritten rules and codes of conduct. To establish one’s place within an existing hierarchy, the participants had to be familiar with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, and with efficient strategies of boosting their social standing. Laughter serves an important purpose here. Giving a successful ‘joke performance’ not only provides an ego boost, it can elevate a person’s social standing enormously. This performance is not limited to the sometimes tedious business of joke-telling (“Hey, have you heard this one? "); it may equally apply to the art of the witty comeback or the smart one-liner. Telling the joke entails the self-confidence of speaking up, making yourself heard, exposing yourself to an audience and running the risk of alienating at least part of the group by deviating from the strictly pragmatic mode of conversation. Speakers who pull this off will be rewarded with laughter and social prestige, they will elevate their status within the group and also exert a form of power that is crucial to the community of laughter per se: the power to bring a spontaneous and temporary group of like-minded people into being. Comedy will always divide the audience into two groups: those who laugh and those who do not, a division that may equal that between those who “get it” and those who do not. This does not have to be the dividing line, of course: After all, it is possible to get the joke but to dismiss it as dumb, to be offended by it, or to appreciate the punchline in a more cerebral fashion, without cracking a smile. Experienced stand-up comics will regularly riff on these divisions and antagonise part of their audiences, playing certain groups off against each other, commenting on how the people in the more expensive seats are more reserved or how the ‘groundlings’ go for the bawdier material. But those who get the joke and who are united in laughter undergo a communal experience that is quite unique. They form a temporary community of laughter, of people who for a moment agree on something and who thus acknowledge a particular set of norms. 134 Chapter 10 The question of norms is crucial to all theories of laughter. To know why something is funny, we must know which codes and conventions are violated, and which power relations are at work: “Either we laugh at someone and therefore with the norm or, if the norm is felt to be absurd or obsolete, we laugh at the norm and with the transgressor." (Horlacher 2009, 27) Communities of laughter come about when there is agreement, however briefly, as to what is acceptable, no matter if the joke itself is transgressive or simply affirms outdated stereotypes. Comedy rarely goes for a permanent displacement of the norm. Even a transgressive joke ultimately just reaffirms it. The group thus reassures itself where the taboos are, a bit like briefly touching an electric fence at your own peril, to remind you how far you can go. Comedy usually chooses to reaffirm the norm; in the end, the masquerade is abandoned and everyone leaves the Green World again (see Chapter 4). In the joke at the beginning of this chapter, you can sense the desperation of the new guy, who must establish his position in the confined space of the prison cell. He knows that he will have to spend quite some time with people he has never met and will be on very intimate terms with for the foreseeable future. Endearing himself to this particular community of laughter can be a valuable ice-breaker, as most people who have counted on their wits to help them through an awkward social interaction can testify. How awkwardness is toxic to communal bonds and social interaction is taken up in more detail in Chapter 13. Yet there is one fundamental paradox that communality in comedy always has to deal with: every act of inclusion requires an act of exclusion at the same time, and it can be very hard to reconcile both. Take the mesmerising “Insult Comic” sketch by Key & Peele (2012-2015, S3E6). It is about an insult comic who does his semi-improvised act in a nightclub, dishing out quips at the expense of various audience members and their quirks and shortcomings (‘single’, ‘beer belly’, ‘large breasts’). Because he does not want to cause proper offence, he deliberately overlooks a disabled man sitting at a table all by himself. But the man, who is afflicted by various deformities (burned skin, wheelchair, damaged vocal cords) will have none of it: “Make fun of the burns”, he demands through his electronic voice box. The comic starts to dig his own grave as the extent of the Catch-22 situation dawns on him: to insult the man would be punching down and thus a form of discrimination; not to insult him would mean excluding him from the act and thus to discriminate against him yet again. When the comedian finally cracks a joke about the burns, the man has a breakdown and the audience strike back. They bond not over shared laughter but over shared hatred of the comedian, striking him down in retaliation, in a scene that seems to anticipate the infamous ‘Oscar slap’ at the 2022 Academy Awards. Some sociologists have dealt with the question of how laughter facilitates personal relationships and what underlying group-psychology processes are at work here. They have shown, for example, that being part of a group not only makes it likelier 135 The more, the merrier Fig. 10.1: United in laughter (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963). for us to laugh, it also makes it more likely for us to laugh intensively (see Glenn 2003). Maybe those psychologists who emphasise that people should be looking for a partner with a sense of humour have a point. Not only does life become more bearable for two people who can have a laugh together, laughing at the same jokes may well be a good indicator for like-mindedness in other areas. For the most part, however, the idea of the community of laughter is not to look for a life-mate but to create a temporary bond with other people. “A good joke is not only funny but also sociable: the content or the drift of the joke supports or creates a feeling of fellowship. When a joke is successful, the solidarity brought about by laughing together is strengthened by the joke’s content.” (Kuipers 2006, 234) Such bonds also permeate the merry communities that we find at work in classical and contemporary comedies and sitcoms. Shakespeare populates the Green World (see Chapter 4) with such like-minded individuals who enjoy having a laugh together. This is as true of the Forest of Arden (As You Like It) as it is of the pranksters in Olivia’s household (Twelfth Night), who have fun at the expense of poor Malvolio. Clearly, the community of laughter can also be a cruel force. To solidify the members of the group and to imbue them with a degree of group belonging, it makes sense for them to laugh at others who are then excluded from the group. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, an epic three-hour slapstick comedy directed by Stanley Kramer (1913-2001), follows a ragtag group of adventurers who are after a buried treasure and who sabotage each other’s plans to get their hands on the money first. Most of the characters end up in hospital, still engaged in a pointless argument about who is to blame for the mess. But when one character’s ill-tempered mother-in-law, played by the great Ethel Merman (1908-1984), enters to berate the men, she slips on a banana skin, and the whole hospital ward erupts into uncontrollable laughter. The film thus ends on a note of consolation for everyone - well, everyone except for Ethel Merman’s character. Clearly, laughter always entails an act of exclusion, for if no-one were to be excluded, “then all communities must be disbanded” (Buckley 2003, 186). While the community of laughter emphasises sponta‐ neous interaction and non-scripted encounters, this does not mean that communities of laughter arise com‐ pletely spontaneously. On the contrary, the ritualistic nature of these communities means that there is a thoroughly conventionalised side to them. Otherwise, we could not account for the ritualistic kind of laughter that occurs in a pretty well-rehearsed manner, like when families gather round to watch their favourite 136 Chapter 10 comedies together for the umpteenth time during the holiday season. The fact that they know Home Alone off by heart and can quote the hilarious list of Gus Polinski’s minor Polka hits (“Polka, Polka, Polka”, “Twin Lakes Polka”, “Yamahoozie Polka” AKA “Kiss Me Polka”, and “Polka Twist”) does not diminish their fun at all. In this chapter, I will discuss two well-known British iterations of the community of laughter to highlight the social dimension of comedy. The Ealing spirit Some of the most riveting success stories in the history of British cinema revolve around studios rather than the kind of cigar-wielding, big-shot producers that have become so integral to Hollywood mythology. This is entirely appropriate; British cinema has always harboured a love for the obstinate little collective that challenges an overwhelmingly powerful antagonist. This narrative not only captures the underdog role that British film was forced into against the American competition, it also plays out in various beloved British film classics and in the history of those studios that produced them. We could think of Hammer Studios, who produced some of the most iconic horror films of all time (Dracula, 1958) on a shoestring budget. More ‘David vs. Goliath’ mythology can be found in the history of film production company HandMade Films, founded by former Beatle George Harrison when financing fell through for Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Desperate to see the film, Harrison took out a mortgage on his house to bankroll the film, which led the Pythons to quip that Harrison’s contribution was probably “the most anybody’s ever paid for a cinema ticket in history” (Chapman et al. 2014, 350). The overwhelming success of Life of Brian allowed HandMade to produce other films, including the endlessly quotable Withnail and I (1987). But there is probably no other film studio in British history that has become so synonymous with the myth of the obstinate little community of laughter as Ealing. Built in the early 1930s, Ealing has existed in various incarnations until today. But the term Ealing Comedy mostly refers to films made during the studio’s so-called golden-era, the post-war decade, when it was run by legendary producer Michael Balcon (1896-1977). Ealing did not focus all of its efforts on comedy exclusively; in fact, some of its most resounding box-office hits were horror films (Dead of Night, 1945) and adventure tales (Scott of the Antarctic, 1948). But the comedies would come to define Ealing’s legacy, with the year 1949 often singled out as the studio’s annus mirabilis. Ealing’s output during this time is viewed with particular nostalgia today, and many directors have acknowledged the studio’s influence on their films. Ealing films belong within “a time capsule with a collection of artefacts represent‐ ing Britain at its best, alongside Shakespeare’s sonnets, The White Album and a jar of Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade” (Braund 2011, 146). 137 The more, the merrier This influence can even be felt in the horror genre, not just because the studio employed some visionary directors whose sensibilities give the films an expressionist touch, but also because the rose-tinted view of Ealing sometimes overlooks the fact that there is quite a dark streak running through these films. Two Ealing comedies remain unrivalled when it comes to pitch-black humour: The Ladykillers (1955), later remade by the Coen brothers (2004), in which a bunch of bank-robbers unsuccessfully try to bump off their sweet old landlady but end up massacring each other; and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), which has Alec Guinness (1914-2000) playing eight different members of the D’Ascoyne family who are murdered one after the other by an illegitimate heir. The studio’s heyday coincides with the Golden Age of British cinema, a period of unparalleled productivity that overlapped with World War II and, for that reason, also delivered a last bout of unapologetic Britishness, before the inevitable downfall of the Empire and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. This also gives some of the Ealing films a rather conservative touch that is entirely understandable within the historical context. A degree of nostalgia for the greatness of Great Britain (or, in some films, for the elusive idea of Merrie England) is palpable in these films. ‘Merrie England’ designates a utopian ideal of a pre-modern, bucolic England. According to those who employ the stereotype for their own ideological ends, this is what England used to be like before the Industrial Revolution - green meadows, cosy cottages, young girls wearing bonnets. Needless to say, this nostalgic vision of England is but a fantasy. Though it is occasionally reanimated by conservative politicians, it was denounced as a pipe dream long ago. Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) disposes of the ‘Merrie England’ myth in Lucky Jim (1954), a light-hearted cousin of the Angry Young Man movement. The protagonist of this campus novel is a hapless young lecturer who is tasked with giving a lecture on ‘Merrie England’. Having had too many drinks to calm his nerves, he ends up denouncing Merrie England as “about the most un-Merrie period in our history”, before passing out and being fired from his job (Amis 1954/ 2000, 227). But the novel makes it clear with whom we should sympathise: not with the humourless and backwards-looking inhabitants of the ivory tower but with the disgruntled young man stranded in their midst. Not just the films themselves but the various legends surrounding the studio emphasise the theme of communality. Charles Barr (1998) characterises the Ealing myth as a conglomeration of several little myths and anecdotes that became part of the studio’s reputation. This starts with the foundation of the studio itself, told as the tale of an industrious British producer who found a way to keep up with the American competition by putting faith in local talent, and it extends to the studio’s legendary pub roundtable where everyone was welcome, from staff technician to well-known actor. The idea of relying on British industriousness and good old-fashioned craftsmanship 138 Chapter 10 to produce artistically valuable and profitable films remains popular until today, maybe because it reflects the persistent myth of British cultural insularity. One of the walls in Ealing studios allegedly bore the inscription, “Here during a quarter of a century many films were made projecting Britain and the British character”. By implication, Ealing showed the world what British cinema was truly capable of. The importance of this self-mythologising cannot be overstated in the context of British film history. At least up until the 1930s, British cinema enjoyed a horrid international reputation that was hard to shake off. During the formative years of the film industry, the Americans had quickly seized control of the British market by establishing local production facilities, leaving little room for local talent. Actors, writers, and directors who wanted to embark on international careers usually went abroad when Hollywood came calling, and because the government’s various quota acts only led to a wave of cheaply made British films that were no match for the international competition, British audiences could not help but compare the domestic product unfavourably to the more prestigious American films. Snobbish critics did not help things by perpetuating the myth that Britain was only capable of producing great playwrights and novelists, but no film directors to speak of. This myth became so widespread that the French critic and director François Truffaut (1932-1984), in his conversation with Alfred Hitchcock, even speculated that the weather on the British Isles was “anticinematic” (Truffaut 1968/ 1984, 124). Truffaut’s stubborn conviction that ‘American Hitchcock’ was infinitely superior to small-scale ‘British Hitchcock’ of the 1920s and 1930s clouded his judgement of British cinema; he did not seem to be aware of the quality of Ealing’s most celebrated directors, Robert Hamer (1911-1963), Alexander Mackendrick (1912-1993), or Charles Crichton (1910-1999), whom John Cleese coaxed out of semi-retirement after more than two decades to direct A Fish Called Wanda. To be fair, many Ealing stalwarts only turned into household names once they had conquered Hollywood. Actor Stanley Holloway went on to win an Academy Award for My Fair Lady (1964), and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (1913-2016) would later shoot three Indiana Jones movies for Steven Spielberg. Typical Ealing comedies, such as Whisky Galore! (1949) or The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), share the same spirit of jovial brotherhood that we can trace back to the Forest of Arden. A slightly mischievous collective manages to overcome a big adversary solely by relying on their wits, in endless variations on the plot of Jack and the Giant Beanstalk (1734). The setting of these films is often a rural one, somewhere at the margins of the nation, where traditional English ways are defended against a bully of an antagonist who tries to belittle and patronise the locals. By implication, the struggle is that of traditional, little old England against the modern age; Ealing comedies tend to “breathe with the Little Englander’s refusal to be homogenised, while - nonetheless - desiring to be part of the happy crowd” (Newton 2003, 12). This crowd fights back to defend the cherished home territory against an unwanted intruder, typically a young urbanite, a bureaucrat, or an expert with a coldly scientific mind. 139 The more, the merrier Given this formula, it is no surprise that Ealing comedies share so many tropes with horror cinema, where the home invasion plot features prominently, too. Classic British invasion thrillers like Went the Day Well? (1942) or Village of the Damned (1960) also resort to the Ealing formula, as a small-town population finds itself besieged by a fifth column of Nazis or mutants and must fight back. Usually, the comedies resolve the situation without bloodshed. The islanders practise a mild form of rebellion to teach the enemy a lesson, though in classical 'Green World’ fashion, the rebellion cannot last forever. The ‘stubborn islander’ trope which has become so firmly embedded in British popular culture has also been parodied and thoroughly inverted. Turned inside out, it is known as a staple of the horror genre. In folk-horror classic The Wicker Man (1973), the hero is an outsider, and it is the villagers who are revealed to be monstrous maniacs, their isolation from the outside world having led to inbreeding and pagan rituals. British comedy troupe The League of Gentlemen milked the folk-horror repertoire for their TV series (1992-2002, 2017), which is set in the fictitious town of Royston Vasey. This place is populated by bizarre, psychopathic characters like the freakish Papa Lazarou, or shop owners Edward and Tubbs Tattsyrup, whose catchphrase (“Are you local? ”) conveys a subliminal threat to unwanted visitors. In a similar vein, Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (2007) inverts the Ealing setup by having Simon Pegg play the urbanite intruder as an upright man of the law. It is the locals who are revealed to be homicidal maniacs, fully committed to preserving their ‘Merrie England’ village at all costs. The Ealing formula was perfected in Passport to Pimlico (1949), set right after the end of World War II. Some locals dig up an ancient document which states that London’s Pimlico district belongs, in fact, to the descendants of the Duke of Burgundy. “Blimey, I’m a foreigner”, one of the residents quips incredulously. Even though the characters are English patriots, they embrace the privilege, which liberates them not just from the rule of Whitehall bureaucrats but also from post-war food rationing. Soon, the black market blossoms throughout Pimlico, leading to a stand-off with the English government, with each side refusing to budge an inch. In the film’s most famous line, one of the Pimlico residents shouts: “We’ve always been English and we’ll always be English, and it’s precisely because we are English that we’re sticking up for our right to be Burgundians! ” Paradoxically, fighting for independence from the state turns into a matter of national pride, so that Passport to Pimlico, in spite of its anti-government stance, is ultimately an entirely pro-English film that celebrates allegedly genuine English virtues in a very nostalgic manner. All this is imbued with the wartime spirit of mutual solidarity, as is evidenced by scenes of the rest of London showing support for each other, and organising food supplies when Pimlico is cut off from the outside world. The focus may be on England, but overall, Ealing’s films are more strongly 140 Chapter 10 Fig. 10.2: The banquet facilitates the happy ending (Passport to Pimlico, 1949). invested in grand-scale evocations of Britishness. Whisky Galore! , set in a rural Scottish community, is about the clandestine efforts of the villagers to secure the cargo of a sinking freighter that is carrying thousands of whisky cases, just when wartime rationing means that their own supply has run out. By finding inventive ways of hiding the bottles all over town, they manage to outwit the English commander who is intent on confiscating everything. Ealing comedies usually side with the stubborn little outsiders and their small-scale revolution. Producer Michael Balcon suggested that the films tap into the collective desire “to get rid of as many wartime restrictions as possible”, which meant that “there was a mild anarchy in the air” (qtd. in Pulleine 1997, 117). Once again, this anarchy does not last. The endings are infused with a spirit of reconciliation that harks back to World War II, in that the former rivals come together for a joint celebration. Passport to Pimlico concludes with a tableau that will be familiar to any reader of Astérix comic-books: the banquet. Pimlico and Whitehall bury the hatchet to establish an economic relationship of mutual benefits, sticking to a pattern that we know from Shakespearean comedy: romance and friendship are all nice and cosy, but the bonds must also make sense from an economic perspective. In addition, the viewers are reminded that the road to wealth is paved with toils and hardships that can only be overcome with hard work and discipline (see Helbig 2000, 135). The post-war British citizen, in these films, resembles “an animal emerging from its burrow, blinking in the sunlight, making a few excursions without ever cutting itself off from its base, then scuttling back again into the familiar warm atmosphere of home” (Barr 1998, 63). Ealing’s legacy will endure - not just because the films are brilliant observations of English character and full of well-timed situational humour, but also because of their fascinating ambivalence. The films are torn between sympathy for outsiders and eccentrics, and a critical distance towards a kind of insular mentality. Christine Geraghty has characterised the spirit of Ea‐ ling as “both stultifying and rebellious”, with the end‐ ings maybe a little too regressive for their own good: “when faced with a conflict between the traditional and the modern, they revert to the traditional in a way that blocks off the challenges and risks that comedy can present” (Geraghty 2000, 56). Fittingly, in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum of 2016, one British newspaper suggested that the country had been “reliving a less amus‐ ing version of […] Passport to Pimlico” (Stern 2018). Contemporary films and television shows revolving around obstinate little groups of eccentrics who “rally against big government or corporations” (Cave 2012, 218) will often be compared to Ealing. This is as true of Mackenzie Crook’s beautifully observed TV series, Detectorists (2014-2017), as it is of films about groups of outsiders that have been cut off from the rest of the world in the one or other sense, and who start their own 141 The more, the merrier private rebellion. The Boat That Rocked (2009), written and directed by Richard Curtis, is a love letter to pirate radios of the late 1960s and their fight against humourless bureaucrats without any knowledge of pop music, while Attack the Block (2011) sees a group of council-estate teenagers fight back against an alien invasion. Yet the underlying formula is by no means exclusive to the British context. Commun‐ ities of laughter who take on authoritative earnestness with bright grins on their faces are popular subjects all over the world. In the United States, the anti-authoritarian spirit of the late 1960s and early 1970s carried over into the ‘raised middle-finger’ films made by former college kids who were eager to make fun of state authorities. They may not be set in remote English villages, but Animal House, Stripes (1981), and Police Academy (1984) are about ragtag groups of merry outsiders who play pranks on their college deans, military superiors, and humourless police captains. The final punchline in all these films would also have done Ealing proud. Instead of overthrowing the respective authorities, the protagonists end up joining their ranks to make distinguished careers - the lunatics taking over the asylum. The working-class comedy The era of Ealing comedy may be officially over, save for the occasional throwback film. In Kirk Jones’s Waking Ned (1998), Irish villagers try to outwit an inspector sent over from the National Lottery so that they can claim the main prize, while Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest (2016) evokes Ealing in its World War II background and coastal setting. Effectively, it was Thatcherism that wiped Ealing off the map (see Barr 1998, 182), in that selfish individualism rather than mutual solidarity was promoted as a national virtue, most notably so in Thatcher’s oft-quoted observation that there was “no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.” (qtd. in O’Sullivan 2006, 223) No wonder that the Ealing spirit is most notably felt in bittersweet and distinctly anti-Thatcherist films since the 1990s, including Brassed Off (1996) and Made in Dag‐ enham (2010). They typically focus on small working-class communities afflicted by unemployment who must rely on their wits to re-establish a sense of mutual trust. Jim Leach (2004) calls comedies about such emasculated groups of individuals “Work‐ ing-Class Feel-Good Movies”, but the pressing political realities in which these films are embedded makes them far less escapist than this moniker would suggest. They may share Ealing’s mildly rebellious spirit and impressive gag rate, but grim reality frequently intrudes in the form of suicide attempts, bankruptcies, or sudden deaths. This also makes it easier for the audience to become emotionally invested. The most amazing success story was written by The Full Monty (1997), which holds a special place in British film history, not just because it won an Academy Award and its global success inspired various stage adaptations. The Full Monty became the highest-grossing film of all time in the UK 142 Chapter 10 at the time of its release and still holds a prominent spot on the list, a proud underdog sandwiched between various Star Wars sequels and superhero movies. THREE INVENTIVE WAYS OF PLOTTING A BRITISH UNDERDOG COMEDY Brassed Off (1996): A group of miners have fallen on hard times; to reclaim their professional pride, they take part in a brass-band competition and form friendships in the process. The Full Monty (1997): A group of steel-mill workers have fallen on hard times; to reclaim their male pride, they perform a striptease act and form friendships in the process. Swimming with Men (2018): A group of middle-aged men have fallen on hard times; to reclaim their masculinity, they take part in a synchronised-swimming competition and form friendships in the process. Set in Sheffield, a city greatly affected by industrial decline since the 1960s, The Full Monty is about a group of unemployed men who decide to form a striptease group to make some money. The heterogeneous group, led by divorced dad Gary, initially keep rehearsals a secret from friends and family members, but gradually learn to draw on dancing as a new source of male pride. Dave overcomes his body issues; “Horse” shows everyone that he has still ‘got it’, in spite of a dodgy hip; Lomper overcomes depression; and Gerald finally owns up to his loss of status. The comedy lies in the sight of the men’s ageing, imperfect bodies trying to keep up with the impressive six-packs of the Chippendales; the tragedy is in their backgrounds and the precarious triumph of the happy ending. The film concludes with their riveting performance, but there is nothing to indicate that anything has changed for the better - once they have picked up their clothes again and split the money, they will still be middle-aged men without a job. The film’s ambivalent take on gender politics mirrors the remasculinisation plots of the cross-dressing comedies (see Chapter 5), as the allegedly ‘unmanly’ practice of exposing yourself to the objectifying gaze of the audience is what, paradoxically, allows the characters to reclaim their masculinity and self-determination. Dancing and stripping naked is acceptable as long as it is framed in the right terms. “Horse” resorts to football terminology to make sure his mates learn the choreography (“Any bugger looks like scoring, we all step forward in a line and wave our arms around like a fairy.”); Dave may not be able to reproduce the dance moves of Jennifer Beals in Flashdance (1983) but he takes comfort in the fact that her welding skills are poor. 143 The more, the merrier Fig. 10.3: Learning choreography through football (The Full Monty, 1997). This underlying sense of gender trouble can also be related to Thatcherism and the spectre of the ‘female woman’ who targets male labourers and, by implica‐ tion, traditional masculine values. A similarly paradox‐ ical plot trajectory of men reclaiming masculinity by performing ‘unmanly’ acts permeates Pride (2014) and Swimming with Men (2018). The former is about how a 1980s British mining community develops a grudging respect for the gay-and-lesbian activists who have come to their support; the latter emulates the Full Monty formula by allowing a crisis-ridden group of middle-aged men to find solace in synchronised swimming. Jack Halberstam has termed this distinct branch of comedy the “king comedy”, a genre that “derives much of its humour from an emphasis on small penises and a general concern with male anxiety and fragility” (Halberstam 2005, 135). Such visible gay panic and homophobia suggest a highly reactionary genre in the vein of 1980s cop comedies and mercenary films, but the working-class comedy is more nuanced than that. It suggests that the protagonists are perfectly capable of adjusting their self-concepts when necessary, and the spirit of solidarity forges new and more powerful bonds. Unlike the Ealing comedies, they do not resort to classic tropes of villainy, and their endings never eradicate all the pain and economic misery caused by neo-liberal politics. The community of laughter still manages to crack a smile, but it now looks a little worse for wear. ● Sociologists have developed the idea of a 'community of laughter’ to highlight the social dimension of laughter. ● Communities of laughter bond over shared appreciation of a joke and thus, by implication, over a set of norms or a shared frame of reference. ● Laughter always has a social dimension in that it involves practices of inclusion and exclusion. ● The social dimension of comedy is highlighted in communal viewing experi‐ ences and in institutionalised settings like the sitcom, with its laugh track. ● The idea of communality also informs underdog comedies about stubborn little groups that practice a mild form of rebellion. 144 Chapter 10 FURTHER READING : Barr, Charles (1998). Ealing Studios: A Movie Book. Berkeley: U of California P. Kuipers, Giselinde (2006). Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke. Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter. Röcke, Werner/ Hans Rudolf Velten (eds., 2005). Lachgemeinschaften: Kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale Wirkungen von Gelächter im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter. 145 The more, the merrier Chapter 11 What a farce! On any given day, you can conduct a little Google search on the term farce to find that it has made the headlines again. The New York Times called out “the ‘Trump Won’ farce” in the aftermath of the 2020 US Presidential election (11 Dec. 2020), and the English government’s decision to lift their national lockdown just as COVID cases began to soar again was criticised as the “Freedom Day Farce” (Forbes, 19 July 2021). These uses of the word are in accordance with the general definition offered by the Oxford English Dictionary: “a proceeding that is ludicrously futile or insincere; a hollow pretence, a mockery”. But this is not quite how the term is used in literary studies, where it designates a particular kind of stage comedy based on convoluted plotting and frequent mix-ups. Occasionally, literary scholars will employ a broader understanding of the term. Albert Bermel, in his comprehensive history of farce (1982), applies the term to all kinds of fast-paced comedies with an emphasis on slapstick, including Charlie Chaplin’s early two-reel comedies and Walt Disney cartoons. Much of what Bermel discusses in his book would be identified as Burleske in German, which is, in turn, not to be confused with what Americans know as burlesque: a striptease show. Throughout this chapter, I shall use the term farce in a more specific sense: to describe a type of comedy full of unlikely plot developments and thoroughly confused characters. Farce moves so mercilessly towards a catastrophic and, at the same time, hilarious conclusion, that it even has some overtones of tragedy. But unlike tragedy, farce does not require any of the characters to die. Most of the time, it is the social death of humiliation and public shame that looms over the characters. Let me stress that there are exceptions to this rule, of course. Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, frequently singled out as one of the greatest screen farces of all time, starts with a mass shooting in 1920s mob-infested Chicago, and ends with yet another bloodbath before the main characters manage to get away (see Chapter 3). Farce is a subgenre of comedy, but it is arguably also a kind of meta-genre in that it amps up many of comedy’s overall characteristics - not always to its advantage, according to some critics. In farce, the emphasis is not so much on nuanced character work or intellectually stimulating witticisms as on making the audience laugh at all costs. It comes alive in performance more than on the printed page. Only in front of a live audience will precise staging, carefully rehearsed slapstick, and perfectly timed exits and entrances really work their magic. Once the plot has been set in motion, farce gathers frantic energy. As a kind of “absolute comedy” (Nelson 1990, 25), it is the unleashed Mr. Hyde to ‘regular’ comedy’s well-adjusted Dr. Jekyll. It takes skilled performers to pull off this kind of on-stage madness. Crucially, farce often involves at least one character who desperately tries to pull all the strings. Think of Mortimer Brewster in Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), who discovers that he is the only sane person in a family of serial killers. When he finds out that his two kindly spinster aunts poison their prospective lodgers, he tries to reason with them by invoking the law, morals, and common sense, only to find that none of them apply: “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but it’s not only against the law. It’s wrong! It’s not a nice thing to do. People wouldn’t understand.” (Kesselring 1941/ 1988, 30) Mortimer serves as the play’s moral backbone, and it is much to the credit of Frank Capra’s sterling film adaptation of the play (1944) that it turns the character, played by Cary Grant, into a hypocrite: someone who publicly condemns marriage while secretly getting hitched, mainly to have sex. In a sequence that makes you wonder how they got away with it at the time, the newlyweds chase each other across a graveyard (! ), exchanging quips that are awash with bawdy innuendo: “But Mortimer, you’re going to love me for my mind, too.” - “One thing at a time! ” In spite of this libidinal energy, Mortimer still represents the play’s sole raisonneur, that is: a character who retains a degree of awareness amidst the various plot complications. The raisonneur in farce: ● must keep track of all the schemes and deceptions that are going on, ● plays double-roles and switches between different identities and allegations, depending on what the situation requires, ● shares some similarities with the stage manager in epic theatre, but usually does not step out of character. He resembles the advanced playmaker in a football squad, constantly coming up with new plans of attack, always on the lookout for ways to keep the ball rolling, and at the centre of every move. When this character takes his bow at the end of the performance, he is usually drenched in sweat like a professional athlete. Sometimes, this will even impress the critics who are otherwise quick to dismiss the paper-thin characters of farce. James Corden (1978-) won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his work in Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors (2011), an update of the classic Goldoni farce, Servant of Two Masters (Il servitore di due padroni, 1746), in which a witty servant works for two different households and has trouble juggling his duties without his two bosses finding out about his double-play. Servant of Two Masters is not the only classic of the genre that gets regularly revived and continues to find a new audience. In this chapter, we will find out why farce, in spite of its audience appeal, has a bit of an image problem, how it is linked to Freudian concepts of laughter and humour, and why it has been so popular with thought-provoking and transgressive authors who have put their own spin on it. 148 Chapter 11 Farce has an image problem The term farce derives from Latin (farcire: to fill something). It was imported from French in the aftermath of the Norman invasion, and used to be part of the kitchen vocabulary, where it designates a form of stuffing or filling. This aspect is crucial to how farce is understood in the literary context. Originally, a stage farce was synonymous with ‘filler material’ to supplement the theatrical bill: a funny little afterthought or side dish, as it were, to complement an evening’s main course of entertainment. This etymological background indicates at least two possible reasons for farce’s horrid reputation. 1. There has been an underlying prejudice against farce as an ‘un-English genre’, with its alleged illicitness and immorality blamed on its continental origins: too many bad manners, too much vice, too French! 2. Farce is still associated with the culinary prejudice of not being a very wholesome literary meal. Sure, farce is popular - but so are chocolate bars and ice-cream, and you wouldn’t advise anyone to base their diet exclusively on those, would you? George Bernard Shaw uses a similar though slightly healthier analogy when he reasons that a three-act farce is “too much for human endurance”. He remembers how he stole four dozen apples as a small boy; having eaten eighteen of them, “I found, though I was still in robust health, that it was better fun to pelt the hens with the remaining apples than to continue the banquet.” (Shaw 1932/ 1954, 229) In other words: you can have too much of a good thing, and an audience is likely to get sick of farcical shenanigans after a while. In spite of this stern didacticism, Shaw himself was not above dabbling in farce. His play You Never Can Tell (1897), for one, recycles various motifs of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Shaw was not the only one who occasionally needed a commercial hit to pay the bills. In the foreword to his farcical comedy The Hole in the Wall (1813), playwright John Poole (1786-1872) justifies himself by saying that some plays simply are not written with “fame and her trumpet” or “posterity” in mind. Woody Allen, in turn, has frequently dismissed classic screen farces like To Be or Not to Be (1942) or Some Like It Hot as too strained in their plotting. Yet his own filmography does contain the occasional farce: A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) already invokes Shakespeare in the title, and Mighty Aphrodite (1995) goes so far as to employ a Greek chorus to reconcile the genre to its roots in tragedy. While the film is brimming with allusions to some of the most solemn Greek myths, it prefers to milk the characters’ lack of awareness for laughs. The main character, Lenny Weinrib, searches for the biological mother of his adopted son, and finds Linda, a kind-hearted prostitute. When he gets her pregnant, both of them end up raising the other one’s child, none of them any the wiser. 149 What a farce! THREE TYPICAL DISMISSALS OF FARCE “the Extremitie of bad Poetry” ( John Dryden) “the events are unnatural, the humour forced” (Thomas Wilkes) “comedy with the meaning left out” (L. J. Potts) If authors and filmmakers who turn to farce tend to be apologetic, critics have often been even more scornful in their take on the whole genre. As early as the Restoration period, farce was singled out as an allegedly immoral and inhuman affair and far too obsessed with ‘indecent’ content such as adultery and bigamy. Critics seem to value high-minded notions of morality above honest craftsmanship. In fact, writing a farce requires a considerable degree of skill on behalf of the playwright, who must plot an elaborate scheme of exits and entrances to keep up the quick pace: “the crudest of all comic forms”, according to Jessica M. Davis, is also “a demanding, even a challenging style for dramatist and actors alike” (1978, 17). Still, farce is too often treated like a guilty secret in literary history, because it seems to offer so little in terms of moral instruction. Farce coaxes the audience into the ‘laughing at’ position (“Thank God that’s not me! ”), and it targets the body rather than the mind, going for the aggressive belly-laugh and throwing in physical humour wherever it can. “[Farce] is a physical theatre […]. Its physicality often mocks the intellectualism and verbal wit of higher forms of comedy and, in so doing, it opens up the restrictions of those forms, allowing the audience to focus on the actors’ bodies, not as sexual objects but as metamorphic realities that can transform their worlds.” (Holland 2000, 109) For its fans, this is very much the point. When farce comes properly alive in perform‐ ance, it holds a spell over the audience that is no less captivating than that of tragedy, where near-complete identification with the main character leads to catharsis. Farce can be just as powerful, precisely because it is not a very cerebral affair, even though the critics have often denied its virtues and taken issue with its broad appeal and commercial nature. It is true that farce remains particularly popular in the kind of ‘tourist trap’ venues that exist in big cities all over the world. No matter if it is the London West End or Broadway, commercial theatres count on the box-office appeal of television actors to sell out limited runs of timeless farces like Charley’s Aunt (1892). They tend to be better known than the names of their authors, which reinforces the age-old prejudice that farcical comedies are written by no-name playwrights who take the money and run. ‘Proper’ authors, by contrast, are said to aim for immortality, preferring spiritual elevation and mild-mannered witticisms over lewd 150 Chapter 11 puns. Thankfully, this schism is not as pronounced today as it was a few centuries ago. Particularly in the Anglophone world, it is not uncommon for critically acclaimed authors and arthouse filmmakers to experiment with farce. There is also the case of William Shakespeare. The existence of The Comedy of Errors (1594), possibly Shakespeare’s most critically derided play, has baffled scholars for centuries. How do you explain the existence of this extremely silly and rather derivative play to someone who is convinced that Shakespeare, by virtue of being a genius, only wrote plays that are original, layered, and intellectually stimulating? Can the author who conceived of Hamlet and The Tempest (1610) really have been the same person who saw a point in ripping off a centuries-old Plautus text, stretching it into five acts, and throwing in several “Yo’ Mama” jokes for good measure? Alright, so there may be no actual “Yo’ Mama” jokes in The Comedy of Errors, but when Shakespeare has one of his characters fantasise about a kitchen maid who is so fat that the grease from her body “make[s] a lamp” (3.2.98), the assertion is not far off. Even people who are fond of The Comedy of Errors will admit that it is basically just a “conglomeration of improbabilities” (Whitworth 2008, 70). Two pairs of twins who have been separated at a very young age run into each other again 30 years later, by sheer coincidence. Because they only learn about each other’s presence in the very final scene, there is plenty of room for confusion and mix-ups. To make matters worse, the brothers share the same first name, so there are two men named Dromio and two men named Antipholus running about. Shakespeare needs this for the setup to work, but even he struggles to come up with a solid explanation. Inevitably, Antipholus of Ephesus has trouble explaining to his wife why he has been seen flirting with other women, and his business partners believe him to be a scoundrel and later a mad-man. For a long time, scholars pretended that The Comedy of Errors must have been one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays (it is not), in order to justify its existence as a kind of ‘apprentice work’. This view grudgingly concedes that farce is okay if the author is still young and needs the money. When Albert Bermel suggests that farce is “favoured by authors in their formative years” (1982, 15), he is basically saying that no respectable middle-aged artist should still be dabbling in this most adolescent of all genres. This argument smacks so much of literary snobbery that it should be reason enough for anyone to root for mature comics (a contradiction in terms, surely? ) who refuse to leave farce completely to the youngsters. Skios (2012), a farcical novel written by 78-year-old Michael Frayn (1933-), is a case in point, as is Crisis in Six Scenes (2016), a miniseries written and directed by Woody Allen when he was 80 and starring Elaine May (1932-) at the age of 84. To protect Shakespeare from the ‘stain of farce’, others have argued that he only recycled the Plautine plot in order to ‘improve’ upon the source. Critics thus cut Shakespeare far more slack than other adaptors, who are accused of polluting or even ‘violating’ their source material. Apparently, the mere idea that Shakespeare could have seen any merit in writing a mash-up of stale jokes seems too outrageous for many people. But those who enjoy a good farce on stage or on screen surely will not mind. 151 What a farce! Say what you want about The Comedy of Errors, but it is the only Shakespeare play to have been adapted for the screen by Laurel & Hardy (Our Relations, 1937), and what more can you ask for? In the bedroom If farce is widely dismissed as a low form of comedy by some critics, the same critics would probably dismiss bedroom farce as the ‘lowliest of the low’. Bedroom farce springs from the frustrations of monogamous married life. Its dramatis personae consist of respectable, bourgeois middle-class men and women who try to hook up with other partners and to get away with various indiscretions, adulteries, and deceptions. In formal terms, bedroom farce is a rather old-fashioned affair. It usually respects the three classical unities, almost like a locked-room mystery. The action takes place in a confined space, typically a hotel or a cottage, where one or several potential adulterers try to conceal the accidental co-presence of their spouses and lovers from each other. Additional mix-ups add to the overall confusion: apartments are double-booked, similar-looking items of luggage are mixed up, people with similar names get confused for each other, room 6 will inevitably turn into room 9 when the number on the door is unscrewed. Outrageous coincidences are always on the cards here; Shakespeare’s twin brothers who end up in the same town on the same day are truly just the tip of the ice-berg. The classic unities of drama are sometimes referred to as the Aristotelian unities, but they are not, in fact, Aristotelian in origin. The unities of space, action, and time were put into a normative theory during the Renaissance and then attributed to him. In the Poetics, Aristotle merely states that a good and effective dramatic plot achieves unity through elegant construction. The individual parts should be “so constructed that the displacement or removal of any one of them will disturb and disjoint the work’s wholeness” (Aristotle 1987, 40). Within the genre of comedy, farce comes closest to this, while other subgenres like the drawing-room play work with a single setting. The importance of the three unities as key ingredients of ‘good’ drama has been exaggerated throughout literary history; it is worth remembering that not a single Shakespeare play, with the exception of The Tempest, respects the three unities. But there are various tight comedies that work very effectively in real-time scenarios, particularly when they revolve around escalating crises. Yasmina Reza’s critically acclaimed play The God of Carnage (2008) is set over the course of a single afternoon and amounts to a tense comic thriller, as two couples meet over coffee to discuss an argument between their two children; what starts as a civilised meeting between adults trying to work out a conflict through dialogue soon deteriorates into arguing, shouting, and vomiting, as class prejudices and buried skeletons come to the surface. 152 Chapter 11 Bedroom farce represents everything that critical arrogance, paired with cultural snobbery and xenophobia, took issue with in debates regarding the English stage. In the late 19 th -century, this kind of scorn was directed at the works of French playwright Georges Feydeau (1862-1921), who wrote many successful stage farces, including The Girl from Maxim’s (La dame de chez Maxim, 1899) and A Flea in Her Ear (La puce à l’oreille, 1907). Marriage and suspected infidelities feature in most Feydeau plays, with the content risqué enough to inspire critical outrage. English critics, in particular, were convinced that farce had a corrupting influence on the purity of the soul. This did not stop the plays from finding a large audience, quite the contrary. A Flea in Her Ear is still regularly revived all over the world and has attracted renowned actors like Albert Finney (1936-2019). During Feydeau’s heyday, French theatre had gained a degree of notoriety for making merry of conjugal life on stage and for a more relaxed take on sexuality. Just before the final curtain comes down, A Flea in Her Ear suggests that husband and wife will at last overcome their bout of sexual inactivity. RAYMONDE. So I had a little suspicion - a little flea in my ear. CHANDEBISE. Damn the suspicion. Damn the flea. I’ll kill it tonight. RAYMONDE. Will you? CHANDEBISE. Well - we’ll see. (Feydeau 1907/ 1968, 128) The phrasing seems coy but quite unambiguous at the same time. At the height of Feydeau’s fame, just when bedroom farce started to expose secret desires that could not (yet) be articulated in official culture, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) set down the basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory. Indeed, farce seems to have a particular fondness for lowering its characters’ most severe inhibitions, and it cherishes no illusions about human nature. If you strip away our clothes, our humanist education, and our gentle witticisms, what you are left with is the unhinged id, a wild animal high on various aphrodisiacs. Farce usually involves no life-threatening situations, but the possibility of ‘social death’ is omnipresent. The fear of public humiliation produces “additional anxiety” and enables “powerful catharsis” (Rozik 2011, 117); this makes it a worthy addition to the comedy/ tragedy discussion from before (see Chapter 3). Aristotle insisted that only people of noble birth should appear in tragedy, because they have so much more to lose, but farce makes it clear that the stakes are equally high for the ambitious middle class: people who want to move up but who remain acutely aware of the social downward spiral. This is as true of Feydeau’s characters as it is of the protagonist in Fawlty Towers. A hotel owner in Torquay, Basil Fawlty is a small-minded stickler for accuracy. Paradoxically, this hypocrite is wholeheartedly in favour of the old class system even though this system is set on keeping the likes of him out. He ends up catering to snobs and impostors, trying his best to maintain what he perceives to be traditional English virtues. But his ill-advised struggle for respectability only produces farcical results. Episode 3 (“The Wedding Party”) revolves around Basil’s efforts to prevent an unmarried couple from sharing a room in his hotel. His various 153 What a farce! attempts to catch the young lovers in flagrante completely backfire, and as his paranoia makes him suspect everyone of lewd behaviour, Basil reveals himself to be obsessed with sex. The release theory of laughter is not radically different from the superiority theory, in that both emphasise a form of relief. The superiority theory emphasises the subject’s relief at not being the butt of the joke; the psychic-release theory highlights relief at the prospect of releasing pent-up tension, no matter if the joke is intentional or unintentional. Either way, the subject is in a position to let off steam. But the psychic-release theory is interested in the underlying psychological process rather than moral judgment. The English polymath Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was the first to investigate the cognitive dimension of laughter. In The Physiology of Laughter (1875), Spencer highlights the physiological mechanism that results in a release of nervous energy, sometimes allowing for “the facial muscles [to form] a smile”, sometimes for “the whole body [to] rock with mirth, until the energy is dissipated” (Billig 2012, 102). But the release theory finds its most prominent formulation in the works of Sigmund Freud. Freud famously suggests that the subject is torn between its baser impulses (the id) and its moral conscience (the super-ego); the ego must struggle hard to suppress its primitive instincts. In his short monograph on Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Freud explains that smutty jokes are one way of coming to terms with our repressions and inhibitions. The more we try to repress what is clearly preying on our mind, the more forcefully it will come back to the surface, revealing civilisation to be, in the words of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), indeed but “a thin and precarious crust” (qtd. in Maurer 2016, 110). This theory seems tailor-made for the slapstick age, not because of the crude Schadenfreude that slapstick encourages in the viewer, but because it turned into a dominant form of expression just when Freud formulated his ideas on jokes and psychic release. The early 20 th century not only brought the age of the automobile and thus a new capacity for violent incidents, it also lowered the people’s “threshold for repugnance” because of the general emphasis on civility (Babiak 2021, 20). When conventions and politeness vanish, as they do in Laurel & Hardy’s ‘tit for tat’ comedies, we are suddenly back in the Neanderthal, clubbing each other over the heads, our ids running rampant. In Big Business (1929), Laurel & Hardy play a pair of unsuccessful salesmen who get into an argument with a prospective customer; once the gloves have come off, their confrontation turns into an epic battle. They completely destroy his home; he ravages their car and their merchandise. The longer the fight goes on, the more firmly the combatants are in the grip of a manic wrath that strips them of all social decorum. In England, bedroom farce turned into a box-office phenomenon during the 1960s, the heyday of the so-called permissive society. ‘Naughty’ plays that would have 154 Chapter 11 provoked the censor a few decades earlier now drew a massive crowd. In the London West End, Boeing, Boeing (1962) and No Sex, Please, We’re British (1971) ran for more than 1,000 performances. Their success points to a general loss of inhibitions that resonates with the more general trajectory of bedroom farce, a phenomenon worth decoding via psychoanalytic approaches to laughter and comedy. The actor, writer, and director Ray Cooney (1932-) emerged as the most successful playwright in Great Britain during that time. While never exactly a critical darling, Cooney is unrivalled in terms of productivity and commercial success. His output is reminiscent of the kind of ‘factory work’ that pulp novelists have often specialised in. Like Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), Cooney has teamed up with co-authors to maximise his productivity, and his name has become part of the popular idiom. A typical Ray Cooney farce is built on the main character’s fear of getting caught with his pants down, but the plays are still a family-friendly affair, and by that, I mean: (1) it is safe to take the whole family to see them, and (2) they often affirm family values. Bedroom farce may contain lewd puns and endless double entendres, not to mention the occasional flirt with softcore eroticism, but it is hardly ever transgressive or downright offensive. The endings reaffirm what is framed as the ‘natural’ pecking order: marriage contracts and heteronormativity. Bedroom farce thus walks a tightrope between permissiveness and conservatism, usually settling for the safe haven of the latter, after several stressful if rather hilarious rides on the merry-go-round. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Carry On films (1958-1978), one of the longest-running English film series of all time. Critics in the UK tend to treat the Carry On films as a kind of embarrassing family secret - at one point, The Guardian openly appealed to its readers to finally “dispense with nostalgia for these ghastly second-rate films” (Bradshaw 2004). It may be true that they have not aged well; stand-up comic Stewart Lee (1968-) acknowledges that only the Carry On films with historical settings are protected against “squeamish social revisionism” today (Lee 2016). But it is worth remembering how popular the Carry Ons were during their heyday and what a crowd they still draw through DVD sales and TV reruns. The first Carry On films dished out mild satire at the expense of British institutions and authority figures (Carry On Constable, 1960), while the mid-1960s saw them poke fun at other film genres (Carry On Cowboy, 1965). Eventually, the series turned to bedroom farce, foreshadowing the British sex-comedy craze of the 1970s (Confessions of a Window Cleaner, 1974). This was not an exclusively British phenomenon. All over Europe, the box-office was dominated by softcore franchises such as the Emmanuelle films. The final Carry On film, Carry On Emmanuelle (1978), actually crossed over into softcore territory, but the films had taken a turn towards bedroom farce even before that. The main characters tend to be stuck in monogamous and boring relationships, and they leap at the chance to indulge in some aggressive flirting, preferably while on vacation (Carry On Abroad, 1972). 155 What a farce! Fig. 11.1: Not a nudist colony, af‐ ter all (Carry On Camping, 1969). THREE VILE CARRY ON PUNS “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me! ” (Carry On Cleo, 1964) “You may not realise it, but I was once a weak man.” - “Once a week is enough for any man.” (Carry On Doctor, 1967) “You haven’t mentioned the dress.” - “Sari! ” - “Oh, there’s no need to apologise.” (Carry On Up the Khyber, 1968) The best-known example is Carry On Camping (1969), one of the biggest British box-office hits of its year. In Camping, Sidney James (1913-1976) and Bernard Bresslaw (1934-1993) star as Sid and Bernie, two plumbers who invite their prudish girlfriends on a trip to what they erroneously assume to be a nudist camping site. Initially frustrated because the site turns out to be populated not with swingers who are ‘up for it’ but with other boring middle-aged couples, Sid and Bernie decide to stay when an all-female group of young, attractive boarding-school students arrives. While the film’s main lasting contribution to British popular culture was the sight of Barbara Windsor (1937-2020) losing her bikini top during a bout of morning exercise, it contains bedroom farce in a nutshell. In good old Shakespearean fashion, the characters have telling names that sum up their characters (Sid’s frigid girlfriend is called Miss Fussey); there are plenty of double entendres (“I go all the way”, the school’s flirty bus-driver assures his female passengers), not to mention an outrageous number of puns. Sid and Bernie initially believe themselves to be in the right place when they spot a sign at the gate saying, “All asses must be shown”. However, they are soon informed that the owner “has just gone for a p [pee]”, and indeed he has, adding the missing letter to the sign (“All passes must be shown”). Talbot Rothwell (1916-1981), who wrote most of the Carry On films, may not enjoy the same degree of prominence as other English humourists, but there is no doubt that he deserves a spot in the annals of comedy for his signature style: “cheeky and titillating but never rude or offensive” (Webber 2008, 77). Streaming sites now caution their viewers against some of the more offensive bits in the Carry On films, but the films tend to appeal to conservative spectators. Though the husbands are, for the most part, lecherous, and the wives come across as nagging killjoys, the ser‐ ies is “consistently supportive of marriage as an institu‐ tion. […] Practically every film either closes with, or de‐ picts, a wedding of some kind.” (Probert 2012, 51 and 56) Carry On Camping is no exception. Sid and Bernie even‐ tually realise that they stand no chance with the naughty school-girls, and they duly return to their girlfriends. As if to drive home the point, the climax sees the various middle-aged campers join forces to drive out a group of hippies who have invaded the camping site. With the hippies emblematising all kinds of negative stereotypes that the 156 Chapter 11 film’s target audience might have held against late-1960s counter-culture, it becomes clear that bedroom farce is, ultimately, a conservative affair. In the end, Sid and Ber‐ nie get what they want, though they will in all likelihood end up paying the price for it: marriage. Given the number of misogynist jokes and ‘bimbo’ clichés, it is not surprising that many bedroom farces have not aged well. But there is a nostalgic yearning for them that keeps them alive as part of our cultural memory. “Zanzibar” (2018), an episode of anthology comedy Inside No. 9, pays a loving homage to Shakespearean twin comedy and the most popular tropes of bedroom farce, and it is entirely appropriate that its creators, former members of The League of Gentlemen, are said to have bonded over their shared memories of watching TV reruns of Carry On films. Even critical darlings and avant-garde comics have voiced their love for farce. John Cleese surprised the critics when he decided to sit out the last series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus to develop the tightly plotted sitcom Fawlty Towers, together with his wife Connie Booth. Cleese has been vocal about his love of the genre, arguing that farce produces “extremes of behaviour” that are unrivalled by any other comic subgenre, “and it’s when there’s tremendous energy going that the audience laughs the most” (Cleese 2009). Cleese’s subsequent film project, Fierce Creatures (1995), which reunited him with the cast of A Fish Called Wanda, is cut from the same cloth. When Rollo Lee, the head of a London zoo, falls in love with his new superior, this mild-mannered Englishman feels the beast stirring within him. Due to various coincidences, the middle-aged bureaucrat acquires an accidental reputation as a sex maniac, with highly embarrassing consequences. While showing his attractive boss the lemur cage, Lee finds it hard to conceal his attraction to her, which results in a series of Freudian slips: “I like [the lemur] breast, er, best of all the small mammaries. Mammals, sorry. […] I feed him some special tits-bits. Sorry, titbits. I keep making boobs. [awkward pause] Anyway, he just loves his nuts.” The device finds a natural habitat in farce, which is all about briefly releasing a psychological strain. The Freudian slip goes back to a phenomenon that Sigmund Freud describes in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904). It is not to be confused with the bawdy or smutty joke, which Freud understands as one that deliberately emphasises “sexual facts and relations” (Freud 1905/ 2003, 94). The ‘slip of the tongue’, by contrast, means that the speaker commits an unintentional blunder, revealing something that our inner censor is supposed to keep a lid on. Freud quotes the case of a young lady who says that a man will be successful “as long as he has five straight limbs” (Freud 1904/ 1914, 91). Freud does not only discuss obscenities, but these have become better known than his more innocuous examples. According to a popular joke, a Freudian slip is “when you say one thing but mean your mother”. 157 What a farce! The mechanics of farce Once set in motion, farce amounts to a well-oiled machine where each little cogwheel serves its purpose. At the beginning, the playwright introduces various little devices that will provide a comic payoff later on, allowing for the disaster to grow into an avalanche. ‘Three’ may be the golden number when it comes to telling jokes, but farce is quite content to exploit the various permutations of the number two. It allows for symmetry and doubling (Servant of Two Masters), for mistaken-identity plots (The Comedy of Errors), and for all the possibilities of comic incongruity (see Chapter 8), by way of contrast and negotiation: “It should be like this, but it is like that.” The back catalogue of theatre’s great farceurs illustrates to what extent the genre depends on ‘seeing double’, with many classic comedies announcing their obligatory dual structure in their titles. This is true of John Poole’s Who’s Who? , or The Double Imposture (1815), and of Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters. Ray Cooney not only produced titles like Two into One (1981) or Twice in a Lifetime (1997), but also plotted plays about royal doppelgangers (Her Royal Highness, 1981) and, in his most enduring success, about a bigamist who must deal with the consequences of his two households colliding (Run for Your Wife, 1982). As structural devices, deception and double-play account for the similarly schizophrenic nature of farce’s dramatis personae: frequently, the actors must play double, in that the plot requires the characters to pass as someone else in order to substantiate their exclusive claim to the family fortune (Cooney’s One for the Pot, 1961), to avoid getting married to the wrong person (Poole’s The Hole in the Wall, 1813), or just to get a decent review in the papers (A.R. Gurney’s The Perfect Party, 1986). Twinship remains a popular motif in farce, highlighting its inherent affinity for dualisms. Twin farce not only depends on linguistic twin play in the form of double entendres and puns, it also provides plenty of opportunity to exercise the principles of inversion and repetition. Present the characters with just one problem after the other and you get the (set-)piecemeal of burlesque, but present them with twins and you introduce the possibility of multiplication and thus of exponential growth (see Schwanebeck 2020b). This also has the effect of turning the play into a lab situation where the playwright can try out any possible combination in which the characters may interact, misunderstand, and double-cross each other. The characters become objectified to fulfil their function as part of well-rehearsed comic routines and stage effects. Doors must open and close in time, characters must make their entrances so that they narrowly miss each other, and there is ample room for slapstick, which turns every character into a laughable object: pratfalls, painful collisions with the furniture, bumped heads. The notion that human beings are objectified and robbed of their dignity caught on in the late 19 th century, as industrialisation took its toll on people’s lives. Against this backdrop, French philosopher Henri Bergson developed ideas that culminated in his essay Laughter (Le rire, 1900). Though Bergson deserves credit as one of the first scholars to approach laughter from a social viewpoint (see Billig 2012, 111), his account of comic phenomena amounts to a near-mathematical approach. Taking his cue from a general ‘mechanisation of life’, 158 Chapter 11 Bergson discusses a number of comic principles that are diametrically opposed to what he calls the ‘principle of living’: You take a set of actions and relations and repeat it as it is, or turn it upside down, or transfer it bodily to another set with which it partially coincides - all these being processes that consist in looking upon life as a repeating mechanism, with reversible action and interchangeable parts. (Bergson 1900/ 1994, 126) Crucially, this extends to the level of characters, too. The stock characters of farce, in particular, are almost completely inflexible. They need to enact a certain role and lack the ability to improvise and to adjust to the overall chaos. Bergson’s three main principles are routinely used in farce; I will use an episode of Fawlty Towers to explain them in practice. In the first episode of the second series, “Communication Problems”, two major plot ideas intersect: a) Mrs. Richards, a very bad-tempered woman who is also hard-of-hearing, is staying at the hotel and hides money in her room; b) Basil has won money by betting on a horse but cannot tell his wife, who disapproves of gambling. Basil recruits two allies, who receive diametrically opposed instructions from him: Manuel, the hotel’s Spanish waiter, is told to forget about the horse to ensure that Basil’s wife does not find out, while the elderly Major is advised to remember where the money is. This sets up various semantic oppositions, the permutations of which are used for comic effect. BERGSON’S THREE MAJOR COMIC PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE PRINCIPLE EXPLANATION AS USED IN FAWLTY TOWERS (S2E1) repetition In contrast to the ‘linearity of life’, comedy can repeat the same or similar events for comic effect. This principle is at the heart of running gags. The Spanish waiter cannot speak English well, whereas the deaf woman has trouble understand‐ ing people; when they meet, their two handicaps amplify each other to hilarious effect, and their nonsensical exchanges make for a solid running gag. inversion The negation of the first principle, in that an event is repeated, but with the op‐ posite outcome. Basil’s two instructions (remembering vs. forget‐ ting) backfire when he tries to undo them. Manuel takes forever to ‘know nothing’, later he fails to remember when Basil needs him to. reciprocal interfer‐ ence of series Two independent plot-lines meet in a shared event which is interpreted differently by both parties. Mrs. Richards erroneously claims that money has been stolen from her room and assumes that Basil’s money is hers; he cannot explain the truth without admitting to his wife that he has been gambling. 159 What a farce! Highbrow farce We have seen that many critics are almost violently opposed to the genre of farce per se. It is not my aim to ‘defend’ the genre against the critics, as I am not sure it needs to be defended by anyone, given its popularity and the immense craftsmanship it takes to plot one. But it does make sense to address in more detail one branch of farcical comedies that even critics have grudgingly accepted as part of the literary canon. This is less about showing what ‘proper’ authors can do with the genre, and more an indication of how ‘critical darlings’ have used the potential of farce to push the notion of normality “towards absurdity, anarchy, even nightmare” (Smith 1989, 11). Some authors have married the farcical template to interesting gimmicks, produc‐ ing genre hybrids or ‘high-concept’ plays. The title of Bedroom Farce (1975), by Alan Ayckbourn (1939-), already signals to the audience that the author is very conscious of the genre tradition. He not only presents a half-comic and half-serious investigation of marital crises, he also employs an elaborate stage design, setting the action in the bedrooms of three different couples simultaneously. In Henceforward … (1987), Ayckbourn will later marry farce to the dystopian science-fiction genre, as a man tries to pass off a female android for his fiancée to regain custody of his teenage daughter. A high-concept story is one that is based on a rather unique premise and thus can be pitched in one sentence. The amount of increasingly outrageous story ideas that have been greenlit in Hollywood over the years has led to the ‘high-concept’ label being used in a more ironic fashion these days, with critics suggesting that film studios have ceased to develop quirky premises into substantial screenplays: “Hey, what if snakes got unleashed on an aeroplane? ” (Snakes on a Plane, 2006). Commercially successful high-concept stories tend to result in sequels that are virtual carbon copies of the original, like Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) or The Hangover Part II (2011). Peter Shaffer (1926-2016), mainly known for his award-winning plays Equus (1973) and Amadeus (1979), wrote Black Comedy (1965), a hilarious one-act farce set during a power cut. The actors must pretend that it is pitch-black in the apartment, tip-toeing around each other, constantly bumping into the furniture, while the audience gets to see everything that is happening. Terry Johnson (1955-) has built his reputation on farcical comedies involving historical figures. Insignificance (1982) puts Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and a few others in the same hotel room, while Hysteria (1993) revolves around a meeting between an ageing Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dalí. His most explicit nod to the history of the genre is Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick (1998), a comedy set during shooting breaks of four classic Carry On films. The actors tease each other with innuendos while discussing haemorrhoids, meagre pay-checks, and extramarital affairs. Sidney James 160 Chapter 11 in particular lives up to his reputation as a skirt-chaser, insisting that “[as] long as they keep giving me the Romantic lead, I’ll keep doing the research” ( Johnson 1998, 15). In the world of cinema, several renowned auteurs have used farce for their own ends. Before Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) got into his properly existential phase with The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet, 1957) and Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, 1957), he wrote and directed the charming Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955). Often hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, Smiles of a Summer Night is bedroom farce in a nutshell, as four couples are plagued by jealousies during a midsummer night in a turn-of-the-century Swedish country-house. The film was to serve as the basis for Stephen Sondheim’s musical comedy, A Little Night Music (1973), which gave the world “Send in the Clowns”, not only the ultimate anthem of lovers’ regret but also a song full of metaphors relating to theatre and comedy. The setup of Smiles of a Summer Night already smacks of the Shakespearean ‘Green World’, and the magical night indeed unlocks pent-up desires and leads to new couplings. Bergman keeps his existential despair in check for most of the film’s running time, but elsewhere, farce and Theatre of the Absurd (see Chapter 8) have emerged as unlikely bed-fellows. Both share a similar outlook on the human condition: ● The characters in both farce and Theatre of the Absurd are dehumanised, to a degree. ● The characters are driven by their baser impulses: aggressiveness, hunger, and lust. ● Both farce and Theatre of the Absurd suggest that mankind is ultimately resistant to learning and growing. Vladimir and Estragon condemn themselves to the futile task of waiting, while farce concludes with the characters thoroughly confused yet none the wiser. The Coen brothers have been particularly prolific when it comes to merging farcical confusion with a postmodern awareness for the futility of existence. Some of their most celebrated neo-noir films, including The Big Lebowski (1998) and No Country for Old Men (2007), inject farcical and darkly comical elements into convoluted detective plots. Crucially, the detectives prove unable to keep up with the plot. As the various “ins and outs and what-have-yous”, to quote The Big Lebowski, snowball into a massive catastrophe beyond everyone’s control, the detectives are revealed to have no agency. Among the Coens’ oeuvre, Burn after Reading (2008) features the most explicit overtones of farce. The plot sees classified CIA documents accidentally fall into the hands of two morons working at a gym, and the ensuing mix-up kicks off an increasingly convoluted plot involving active and retired CIA agents, the Russians, murder, blackmail, and sex toys. In the end, no-one gets a full picture of what has occurred; only the CIA supervisor who eventually closes the file retains a degree of divine authority, paired with helpless absurdism: “Jesus, what a clusterfuck! ” Farce’s enduring commercial appeal is clearly not the only reason why it has remained popular after World War II, with philosophy’s general view of the human condition becoming more and more pessimistic. As mankind succumbs helplessly to bureaucracy, 161 What a farce! the overwhelming forces of history, and increasingly dehumanised and mechanised forms of labour, the dominant experience is that nothing adds up or makes sense. We are trapped in convention and social role-play, without any agency to speak of. This kind of postmodern despair also permeates deceptively funny crowd-pleasers like Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (1982). A play that is still constantly revived all around the world, Noises Off is an elaborately composed work of the utmost precision. It revolves around the desperate efforts of a second-rate stage company to perform a bedroom farce called Nothing on. The play-within-the-play is a deliberately formulaic sex farce fully in line with the Bergsonian principles. Couples attempt to hook up in secret, people get mistaken for each other, misunderstandings and mix-ups occur, doors open and close just in time. Except they do not, as the players in Noises Off are constantly plagued by missed cues and technical failures. Moreover, their jealousies and internal rivalries put a growing strain on the performance. The twist of Noises Off is that the company presents increasingly catastrophic versions of the play-within-the-play throughout the three acts. By wrecking the second-rate farce they are supposed to rehearse, they end up producing a perfect farce for the ages with their off-stage antics. One performer keeps losing her contact lenses, another one suffers from memory loss and must be kept away from booze, the director is involved with various women in the ensemble, and when jealousy starts to run rampant, the actors nearly kill each other on stage. Frayn’s play works as a classic bedroom farce, but it rises above the formulaic pattern in several respects: ● It is essentially two farces for the price of one. ● It is a meta-farce that lays bare the rules of the genre and plays with them. ● It uses the stage as an existential metaphor, suggesting that we are all actors who miss their cues and feel redundant on stage, desperately in need of a good script and a benign authority who tells us what to do. This existential dread is most evident during the final act of the play, when the performance has come to a complete standstill and the actors’ worst fears have come true: “[that] the great dark chaos behind the set […] will seep back on to the stage”, that “the prepared words will vanish”, and that “they will be left in front of us naked and ashamed” (Frayn in conversation with Glaap 2008, 23). Where the play-within-the-play requires a burglar to come through the window to rob the place, there are suddenly three burglars on stage who still try to hit their marks and say their lines in unison. In their desperation, the actors turn to Lloyd, their director, while trying to remain in character: FLAVIA. Hold on! We know this man! He’s not a burglar! He’s our social worker! ROGER. He’s what? FLAVIA. He’s that nice man who comes in and tells us what to do! OMNES. Ah! LLOYD. I’ve been working on Richard III for the last six weeks … MRS. CLACKETT. You think he needs working on more than we do? […] LLOYD. OK. OK. I’ll think of something. (Frayn 1982/ 1985, 492) 162 Chapter 11 Fig. 11.2: Farce meets existential despair (Noises Off, 1992). This is not unlike the predicament of Vladimir and Estragon seeking a message from God in Waiting for Godot, or Harold Pinter’s two assassins reacting to orders from above. The characters in farce are dancing at the abyss. Should their performance collapse, everything will be over, thus a standstill must be averted at all cost. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), his bleakly comic rewriting of Hamlet as seen through the eyes of the play’s two least important characters, Tom Stoppard (1937-) makes a similar point. Having no agency to speak of nor any clue as to their role in the plot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get their most valuable lessons from the player, who treats all of existence as a performance. He can never change into his costume because he never changes out of it, he cannot come on because he always is on, he does not have to wait for the performance to start because he knows it has already started (see Stoppard 1966/ 1998, 34-35). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die without having gained any insight into what has been going on, somewhat consoled by the inevitability of it all and by the fact that the hassle is over at last: “To tell you the truth, I’m relieved.” (ibid. 141) There are no literal deaths in Noises Off, only the symbolic death of on-stage humiliation. The characters improvise a completely bonkers happy ending to conclude their catastrophic performance of Nothing on; nothing gets resolved and no lesson is learned. The film adaptation of the play, directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022), pulls a Shakespearean deus ex machina happy ending out of the hat to repair the central relationships, but to its credit, not even the film itself seems to believe in it. Frayn’s brilliant juxtaposition of on-stage action with behind-the-scenes disasters would go on to inspire a popular brand of meta-theatre. The Mischief Thea‐ tre Company, founded in 2008, has spoofed everything from Peter Pan to A Christmas Carol in their various theatre and television projects, including The Play That Goes Wrong (2012) and The Goes Wrong Show (2019-). Frayn himself found it hard to catch lightning in a bottle again. In Look Look (1990), he builds a comedy around the audience reactions to a fictitious play, thus invert‐ ing the Noises Off formula, but the play closed after only a few performances. Dark farce If farce goes ‘naturally’ together with the theatre of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, this only underlines its spiritual emptiness in the eyes of some critics. Martin Esslin, the author of the first major study of existentialism on stage (The Theatre of the Absurd, 1961), attacked the plays of Joe Orton (1933-1967) for their punkish attitude and their hollow narcissism (see Esslin 1981). Admittedly, it is easy to read Orton’s general ‘raised middle-finger’ attitude as the calculated act of a self-styled enfant terrible. But the famous 163 What a farce! Neil Young line, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”, proved eerily appropriate to the story of Orton’s life and career. When Orton died at the age of 34, he was at the peak of his fame, having successfully imbued himself with an aura of scandal. Orton routinely presented himself as a self-taught outsider figure who was admitted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art more or less by accident and who remained opposed to the idea of the establishment, all the more fervently so when they embraced his works and made him a star of the 1960s literary scene. Orton was totally unapologetic about his homosexual adventures in public lavatories, he spoke candidly about time spent in prison for defacing library books, and he enjoyed writing the so-called ‘Edna Welthorpe’ letters. When Orton was murdered in his sleep by his partner, the painter Kenneth Halliwell, he left behind various stage plays, a novel, diaries, as well as Up Against It, a screenplay commissioned by the Beatles. For several years, Orton employed the pseudonym ‘Edna Welthorpe’ (as well as a few others) to write letters of complaint against his own plays. Orton was immensely delighted whenever another one of these letters was published in the newspapers. It is easy to picture the fictitious Edna Welthorpe as one of the iconic ‘pepperpots’ in Monty Python’s sketches: an easily outraged, mean-spirited housewife with a shrill voice and no sense of humour. Using the Welthorpe persona, Orton would, for instance, condemn his own plays as “indecent tomfoolery […]. Drama should be uplifting. The plays of Joe Orton have a most unpleasant effect on me. […] Perhaps, in time, he will turn his undoubted talents to more worthwhile subjects.” (Orton 1986, 287) The Edna Welthorpe letters established a tradition that was later widely emulated, with comics as diverse as Loriot (1923-2011) and Monty Python including fake letters of complaint in their programmes. At the time of his death, Orton was at the height of his popularity, which coincided with the cultural mainstream starting to absorb the provocative ideas of 1960s counter-culture. He certainly made his plays deliberately shocking to get attention, but this does not diminish Orton’s skills as a playwright. His comedies are classically structured, perfectly timed bedroom farces that milk a single setting for maximum confusion. At the same time, they go far beyond briefly showing the vicar with his pants down to lift the audience’s inhibitions. Orton holds no illusions whatsoever regarding middle-class respectability and family virtues; even his happy endings are twisted and perverse. The characters are rotten to the core, incest and abuse run through the families, and the violence is more Jacobean massacre than traditional slapstick. All of this reflects Orton’s own belief that farce was originally “very close to tragedy, and differed only in the treatment of its themes - themes like rape, bastardy, prostitution” (qtd. in Innes 1992, 276), a feeling echoed in Ray Cooney’s assessment that “farce is more akin to tragedy than it is to comedy” (Cooney 2014). In a manner akin to the 164 Chapter 11 tragic hero, the protagonist in farce unsuccessfully tries to remain in control of his situation, but the circumstances he is wrestling with turn out to be overwhelming. What the Butler Saw (posth. 1969) undercuts the happy family reunion of the final scene with allusions to rape and incest; Loot (1965) depicts family relations that are equally perverted and pathological. Two bank-robbers, Hal and Dennis, try to hide their loot from the police. Lucky for them, Hal’s mother has just passed away, so they hide the money in her coffin, while evading Hals’s father, the nurse who may or may not have killed Hal’s mother, and a Scotland Yard detective. The setup provides plenty of opportunities for farcical mix-ups and double-crossings, and the sight of the corpse getting thrown around, stripped naked and debased on stage soon made the play notorious with audiences and the censor. Orton peppers the scenes with witticisms and innuendo, revealing the characters to be cold-blooded psychopaths without an ounce of morality. They are hypocrites and murderers, hiding behind respectability and politeness. [Hal and Dennis] tip the coffin on end and shake the corpse into the wardrobe. […] HAL . Bury her naked? My own mum? […] It’s a Freudian nightmare. […] Aren’t we committing some kind of unforgivable sin? DENNIS . Only if you’re a Catholic. HAL . I am a Catholic. I can’t undress her. She’s a relative. (Orton 1965/ 1990, 208-209) The mishandling of the corpse allows for deliberately crude slapstick. These scenes were considered quite daring in the 1960s even though, truth be told, dead bodies had been around in comedy for centuries. The late 15 th -century satirical tale about ‘The Pastor Who Was Killed Five Times’ recounts a bizarre chain of events involving various characters who try to get rid of a body (see Struwe-Rohr 2021, 61-67), thus prefiguring Alfred Hitchcock’s crime farce, The Trouble with Harry (1955). The irritating corpse that continues to bother the living is frequently resurrected in black comedies, including the Louis de Funès vehicle Jo, based on Alec Coppel’s play The Gazebo, Weekend at Bernie’s (1989), and Swiss Army Man (2016). Some of these films encroach upon grand guignol territory (see Chapter 9); in fact, Orton’s twisted sense of humour often evokes Hitchcock’s sense of the macabre. Before Loot, there was Psycho (1960), and what is Psycho but a radical, grand guignol iteration of farce’s most clichéd tropes and stage effects? Like Loot, Hitchcock’s film features a bag of stolen money, a maternal corpse, and a protagonist with a severe case of the Oedipus complex who resorts to frantic improvisation to evade detection. The ghost of Psycho also looms over Martin McDonagh’s stage debut, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and it makes sense to think of him and Orton as artistic soulmates. Their plays have the paradoxical effect of delivering so much unabashed brutality and so many characters totally devoid of humanity that the reader cannot help but suspect the author of a strong sense of morality. Both of them use dark farce to shed a light on 165 What a farce! farcical realities; the police brutality evidenced by Loot’s Inspector Truscott illustrates Orton’s conviction that you only need to “scratch a liberal” to “find a fascist bleeding” (Orton 1986, 142). ● Farce is a plot-heavy subgenre of comedy that involves mix-ups and convoluted plotting. ● Because farce is primarily interested in making the viewer laugh at all costs, it is often dismissed by critics, and frowned upon as juvenile. ● Farce is also dismissed on moral grounds because it reduces characters to their baser instincts, yet the characters’ inability to learn suggests insight into the human condition. ● Bedroom farce is particularly rich on sex jokes and double entendres, encourag‐ ing a type of laughter that can be linked to the release theory. ● Farce’s mechanical nature exemplifies Henri Bergson’s comic principles, in‐ cluding repetition and inversion. FURTHER READING : Bermel, Albert (1982). Farce: A History from Aristophanes to Woody Allen. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. Davis, Jessica M. (1978). Farce. London: Methuen. Smith, Leslie (1989). Modern British Farce. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 166 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Stop making sense! A short stopover in Wonderland So far, we have encountered a comic world only in a rather limited sense: as a secluded and delineated zone where the spirit of anarchy roams, until everyone is sent home again, back into the arms of civilisation and common courtesy. What happens in the Forest of Arden stays in the Forest of Arden. However, there is a different kind of comic world, one that is all-encompassing. Its sole point is to make people laugh, and it is more or less fully detached from reason, convention, and the traditional rules of story-telling. This comic world has its literary and structural precedent in the 19 th -century tradition of literary nonsense, which needs to be briefly examined here, even though it exists mainly on the printed page, unlike most other comic traditions that are addressed in this book. There is an everyday dimension to the term ‘nonsense’ just as there is to the term ‘absurd’ (see Chapter 8). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, nonsense relates to “absence of rationality or meaning”, and in a wider sense: to foolish or silly conduct, with a generous streak of anarchy. But this only covers a tiny fraction of the nonsensical as an artistic and comic mode. We could potentially refer to any random sequence of letters and symbols ( OBLOYMPTHL, MN$DFAJ, UXXXÖ#BN) as nonsensical. Yet nonsense in the tradition of Edward Lear (1812-1888) and Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) implies a different and more particular kind of ‘absence of meaning’ - a more meaningful absence of meaning, as it were. According to a definition offered by German poet Robert Gernhardt (1937-2006), nonsense is about refusal to make sense, but according to rules, not in an arbitrary fashion (see Thimm 2006). This makes nonsense “a conservative-revolutionary genre” that is bound to rules but playfully subverts them at the same time (Lecercle 1994, 2). As a literary mode, it rose to prominence in the era preceding modernism, when it attached itself to traditional literary forms, particularly poetry. Nonsense amplifies the latter’s key characteristics, particularly the predominance of what Roman Jakobson (1960/ 2007) calls the poetic function: the fact that messages can be produced for their own sake, so that some sort of equivalence between the individual parts of the message becomes the constitutive principle. A text that foregrounds the poetic function allows rhythm and phonology (how something is said) to take priority over semantics (what is being said). When composing a sonnet, poets will not choose words that convey an idea in the most straightforward and unambiguous manner, they will shape the line so as to comply with metre and rhyme scheme. The limerick, a poetic form not invented but made famous by Edward Lear, takes this to an extreme (see Tigges 1987). As a nonsensical type of poem, the limerick establishes semantic links exclusively through rhyme: There was an Old Person of Nice, Whose associates were usually Geese. They walked out together, In all sorts of weather, That affable person of Nice! (Lear 1872/ 1994, 114) Fig. 12.1: Edward Lear’s illustration for The Old Person of Nice (1872). There is no reason for the person to stem from Nice other than to link him with geese in the second line. By the same token, the only reason for the person to socialise with geese is the fact he is from Nice. With the traditional laws of semantics suspended, the content of the poem is determined by the arbitrary links between signifier and signified. The funny thing about rhymes is that they suggest a strong link between two ideas; in fact, they simply bind together two entities that have nothing in common besides phonological equivalence. So instead of a traditional kind of closure or lesson, the limerick offers the reader the total cheek of its central proposition. Its rhyme resembles the punchline of a joke: inevitable yet altogether surprising at the same time. (Of course, there are other types of rhyme that work like punchlines - just think of the ‘heroic couplet’, which often provides the witty summary to a Shakespearean sonnet or a scene in one of his plays.) A similar principle is at work in the self-contained universe of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). Here, language is not just the means of story-telling, it is the structuring principle of the fictitious world itself. The only thing to bind the stories together is Carroll’s habit of basing individual episodes and characters on linguistic ideas and conventions. In Chapter VII of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice has a rather bizarre tea-party with a hatter and a march hare, whose presence is solely based on two idiomatic expressions (‘mad as a hatter’ and ‘mad as a march hare’). Words and phrases come alive in Wonderland, where “all the world is paper and all the seas are ink” (Sewell 1952, 17). The heroine also encounters the long tail/ tale of a mouse and the gigantic egg Humpty-Dumpty, who adopts a perfectly nonsensical yet somewhat compelling strategy when it comes to mastering language: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master - that’s all.” (Carroll 1871/ 1998, 186) 168 Chapter 12 Humpty Dumpty’s motto testifies to a form of linguistic anarchy that precedes avant-garde comedy of the 20 th century, including Monty Python’s Flying Circus (see Chapter 9). In Python’s world, it is perfectly common to meet a salesperson who refers to mattresses as dog-kennels (S1E8) or to check into the argument clinic, where you can book a session of contradiction or verbal abuse (S3E3). One member of Monty Python, Terry Gilliam, not only directed a film loosely based on Alice (Tideland, 2005), he also adapted Carroll’s most sustained example of verbal nonsense, the poem Jabberwocky, for the screen. Jabberwocky is filled with words that in themselves mean nothing but suggest meaning (see Poole 2005). Wonderland remains untroubled by traditional plot structures and the Aristotelian principles of story-telling; neither causality nor dramatic turning points are to be found here. Characters appear and disappear at random, their actions remain unmotivated, and the only guiding principle is the stubborn linearity that also characterises the slapstick chases of the silent-film period. Alice’s adventures exhibit a remarkably cruel streak here and there, but at the same time, they are entirely appropriate for children. Not only does Alice in Wonderland have a dreamlike quality and a great love for playing games, it is also an epic with a rather short attention span, always happy to move on to the next episode once the joke is exhausted. Few comic techniques are as much loved and despised as the pun. At its core, the pun amounts to “two strings of thought [being] tied together by an acoustic knot” (Koestler 1964, 65); it works on the basis of a term having two different meanings or two different terms sounding alike. The pun is often seen as an altogether harmless form of fun; Freud called verbal jokes “the most innocuous of all jokes” (1905/ 2003, 88). The rather annoying habit of turning every utterance on its head and of exposing the potential ambiguity of everything has led to the stigmatisation of some puns as ‘dad jokes’ (i.e. the opposite of topical humour), jokes that are more likely to provoke groans than chuckles. In his entirely bogus autobiography, actor Leslie Nielsen writes how he had to seek help to overcome his addiction to doing ‘dopey lines’, learning that in order to “beat a habit”, you have to “hang it on a clothesline and smack it with a broom”, provided that “the nun takes it off first” (Nielsen/ Fisher 1993, 222). But the pun’s bad reputation is not deserved. As a comic tool based on arbitrary linguistic relations, it contains a philosophical kernel, and because it is so language-specific, it can speak a form of individual truth like few other comic devices. When talking about her foreign-language skills, one character in Top Secret! (1984) claims that she “know[s] a little German” - and she proceeds to greet a little person in lederhosen who is sitting across the room. The hall of fame of post-Carrollian literary nonsense also includes John Lennon (1940-1980), who published cartoons and zany poems (A Spaniard in the Works, 1965) in addition to his increasingly experimental song lyrics. Once Lennon had left the Beatles’ 169 Stop making sense! early straightforward proclamations of affection (“I Want to Hold Your Hand”) behind, he penned songs like “I Am the Walrus”, written for the Magical Mystery Tour (1967). It contains Lennon’s trademark mixture of grotesque imagery, wordplay, and random associations, as befits the whole film, which sees the Beatles lean heavily into Lewis Carroll and the mind-enhancing effects of LSD. John Lennon’s lyrics have been scrutinised very closely by his disciples, possibly the same crowd that came up with the conspiracy theory about the alleged death of Paul McCartney. By riffing on Lennon’s legendary tongue-in-cheek claim that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, his exegetes became convinced that the line “I Am the Walrus” had to be an allusion to the Lewis Carroll poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” (included in Through the Looking-Glass). If Lennon was ‘telling’ them that he was the walrus, he surely had to mean that he was not Jesus, that is: the famous carpenter. Freudian readers of Alice in Wonderland also mused that the heroine’s ridiculously long fall down the rabbit-hole was just another twisted re-enactment of the birth canal. The question of whether there is a deeper meaning to nonsense remains a point of contention. Two issues become conflated here: the quest for the origin of a nonsensical idea, and the search for a hidden meaning that goes against the nature of the nonsensical. Nonsense that can be deciphered along these lines would not really be nonsense. Alice in Wonderland has been interpreted through the prisms of psychoanalysis, imperialism, and Victorian education discourse (see Rackin 1991), though these readings reveal little besides “the readerly compulsion to make sense” (Kérchy 2011, 116). This resonates with a discussion that was addressed in Chapter 1 - is it worth explaining the joke in great detail, and thus running the risk of killing it? Maybe we should not allow our curiosity to lead us too far down the rabbit-hole of interpretation, and retain a sense of wonder instead. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874- 1936), in his Defence of Nonsense, stresses that nonsense can make the reader see that “everything has in fact another side to it” (1902/ 1911, 10), if only we are willing to take a step back and consider the shape of things anew. His choice of words will resonate with anyone who appreciates comedy as a cerebral palate-cleanser, not to mention those who, for whatever reason, have been excluded from “society’s shared game of sense-making: children, the insane, dreaming sleepers, slaves, women, inspired poets, queer people, animals” (Barton/ Williams 2022, 1). In the aftermath of Alice in Wonderland, a thorough appreciation of the nonsensical would give rise to even more anarchic comic worlds. Throughout the 20 th century, conventional meaning-making and formulaic story-telling patterns have been blown to smithereens by some of the most hilarious madmen in the history of comedy. Introduction to Marxism Surely one of the maddest film adaptations of Alice in Wonderland ever to see the light of the day must be Paramount’s 1933 version. It hides most of its ensemble of major 170 Chapter 12 Hollywood stars, including W.C. Fields (1880-1946) and Cary Grant, behind elaborate make-up and prosthetics that are inspired by John Tenniel’s Alice illustrations. Rather appropriately, the whole endeavour reeks of madness, but then again, its director, Norman Z. McLeod (1898-1964), had some experience on that front, having already directed two films starring the Marx Brothers. Their early films, in particular, are among the most over-the-top and exuberant screen comedies of all time. Their comic virtues, particularly their “punk-like anarchy” (Merchant 2016), can make even Carroll’s nonsensical world look tame by comparison. Carroll sets his tales in a topsy-turvy world, but his resolution hinges upon the age-old framing device of the dream trope. In the final chapter, Alice wakes up, recovering just enough of her wits to realise the curious and bizarre nature of her adventures. No such safety net is included in the world of the Marx Brothers. They had risen to fame throughout the 1920s with stage shows full of wordplay, musical numbers, and zany improvisations, when Hollywood came calling. Having adapted two of their stage shows for the big screen, they made a series of original films that effectively do away with the most common story-telling conventions. In each film, their established personas are imported into a different setting where they cause havoc and upset the establishment. Groucho dishes out one-liners and charms middle-aged widows, Chico tries to con people out of a dollar, and Harpo, well, no-one really knows what Harpo’s deal is. His persona, equally sociopathic and childish, would not feel out of place in Wonderland, even though he is a mute character and thus resorts to pantomime (and whistling) to do wordplay. In addition to playing the harp (nomen est omen! ), Harpo is blessed with the attention span of a little puppy and chases after everything with mad fervour, particularly pretty women. According to Stanley Cavell, “Harpo would not know what to do if one of the women he chases stopped running” (Cavell 2001, 97); this characterisation resonates with the self-description of the ultimate evil clown, the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008): “I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.” The first couple of films also feature Zeppo Marx, but most people agree that Zeppo’s comic persona is almost non-existent; his destiny was to be remembered as the fourth Marx Brother who was the fifth wheel (Adamson 1973, 39). According to Slavoj Žižek (1949-), we should think of the three Marx Brothers as a Freudian triangle, with hyperactive Groucho as the super-ego, calculating and rational Chico as the ego, and Harpo as the incarnation of our silent drives and thus the id (see The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, 2006). The Marx Brothers certainly have their psychoanalytic credentials, not least because of the famous mirror scene in Duck Soup, but surely Žižek’s reading is a tad too neat. There is more than just a dash of the unleashed, carnivalesque id about all of them. Shakespeare’s clowns occasionally commit to the social contract or at least accept their place in the court’s pecking order, but the Marx Brothers make a mockery of convention and hierarchy in general. Horse Feathers ends with all three of them getting married to the same woman (“We do! ”) before tackling her to the ground, in a crude anticipation of the wedding night. 171 Stop making sense! Fig. 12.2: Three men and a woman, joined in holy matrimony (Horse Feathers, 1932). They remain perfectly untroubled by Chaplin’s senti‐ mentalism or social agenda, content to inhabit a world where anything can happen - and does happen. At the beginning of A Night in Casablanca (1946), we see Harpo loitering close to a public building. A stern policeman eyes the troublemaker suspiciously, and demands to know: “What do you think you’re doing, holding up the building? ” Harpo grins mischievously and nods, but the policeman will have none of it. He pulls Harpo away - and the building collapses. It is a sublime set-piece, though the Marxes had settled into rehashing their old routines at this point. Their later films saw them act with rather than against the plot, in the tradition of the ‘witty slave’ who helps young lovers overcome paternal obstacles. At the beginning of their careers, the Marx Brothers remain blissfully unaware of Aristotelian plot guidelines, character consistency, or internal logic. Usually, the plot-line - and we are using the term loosely here - is but an excuse to fill 70 minutes of screentime with as many sight gags and puns as possible. Duck Soup remains the most revered of these films, anticipating the lunacy of the Trump administration by a whopping eight decades. A political satire disguised as a musical, Duck Soup sees Groucho appointed President of Freedonia because the country’s wealthiest oligarch fancies him and the people love a con-man with a knack of cracking dirty jokes. Chico and Harpo try their hands at spying but end up on trial, which provides an excuse for the maddest courtroom scene since the Knave of Hearts was accused of stealing some tarts (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland). CHICO . What is it, has a trunk but no key, weighs 2,000 pounds and lives in a circus? JUDGE . That’s irrelevant! CHICO . Irrelephant? Hey, that’s the answer! There’s a whole lot of elephants in the circus. JUDGE . That sort of testimony we can eliminate! CHICO . That’s fine, I’ll take some. JUDGE . You’ll take what? CHICO . A liminate. A nice, cold glass of lemonade. (From the trial scene in Duck Soup, 1933) Freedonia goes to war against the state of Sylvania, but instead of heroic battle scenes and sacrificial deaths, we get a complete send-up of gung-ho patriotism. Duck Soup points a finger at the trigger-happy narcissists and megalomaniacs who send men to their certain deaths. When Harpo is dispatched behind enemy lines, Groucho 172 Chapter 12 congratulates him thus: “You’re a brave man! Go and break through the lines, and remember, while you’re out there risking life and limb through shot and shell, we’ll be in here thinking what a sucker you are! ” A topsy-turvy world The anarchic spirit of the Marx Brothers made them popular with subsequent gener‐ ations of moviegoers, young people in particular. Their films were celebrated in the 1960s by the same college crowd who would also discover the counter-cultural merits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and who would go on to form the magazine National Lampoon (1970-1998). Subsequent generations of comics could not simply copy the Marx Brothers, as their act was far too reliant on their established personas and props, including Groucho’s fake moustache and Harpo’s horn cane. But they certainly took inspiration from them when it came to building a self-contained comic world that exists only on its own terms and in order to produce gags. The works of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker (ZAZ) are a good example of this. ZAZ consisted of Jim Abrahams (1944-) and brothers David (1947-) and Jerry Zucker (1950-), who together formed the Kentucky Fried Theater while attending university. They went on to write and direct a number of hit comedies, most of which use a plot only as a thread on which to hang as many jokes, puns, and sight gags as possible. This approach works wonders in Airplane! and the Naked Gun trilogy (1988-1994), a big-screen version of the unsuccessful television show they had produced for ABC (Police Squad! , 1982). When that show was cancelled, their boss allegedly said that the audience was not accustomed to a show where they actually had to watch the screen (see Holsopple 1982). He had a point - if you zone out of a ZAZ production or only follow it inattentively over dinner, you might suspect you are watching a run-of-the-mill police procedural or, in the case of Airplane! , one of the trashy disaster movies of the 1970s. The disaster movies, in particular, were ripe for the comedy treatment. They are played with a completely straight face yet they are so over-the-top that you are inclined to wonder whether the filmmakers were having a laugh in the first place; it may or may not be a coincidence that the director of the first Airport film (1970), George Seaton (1911-1979), used to write for the Marx Brothers. In the ZAZ comedies, the actors mimic this hyper-serious performance style, none more so than Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), one of ZAZ’s most frequent collaborators. DOCTOR. What flying experience have you had? STRIKER . I flew single-engine fighters in the air force, but this plane has four engines. It’s an entirely different kind of flying, altogether! DOCTOR and STEWARDESS . “It’s an entirely different kind of flying! ” Airplane! (1980) 173 Stop making sense! Fig. 12.3: Lt. Drebin lays down the law (The Naked Gun, 1988). Paradoxically, Nielsen’s reputation for deadpan deliveries and never letting on that he was funny made him an unlikely comic icon. Having worked as a ‘serious’ supporting actor for most of his career, he was cast in the role of the no-nonsense doctor in Airplane! , intoning dramatic dialogue with his baritone voice while the silliest gags would happen around him. As soon as Nielsen had immortalised many of the film’s signature lines (“Surely you can’t be serious? ” - “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley! ”), he became the patron saint of the spoof genre, perfecting his shtick as “the wooden straight guy” who always keeps a straight face (Ebert 1991). Even when a fireworks factory goes up in flames behind him, in one of the most famous scenes from The Naked Gun (1988), he will still do his job as a policeman: “Nothing to see here, please disperse! ” Nielsen’s acting style illustrates one of the key claims in Henri Bergson’s essay on laughter: Over-acting and clowning could never be as funny as a face that suggests “some simple mechanical action […]. Automatism, inelasticity, habit that has been contracted and maintained, are clearly the causes why a face makes us laugh.” (Bergson 1900/ 1994, 76) Apart from ZAZ’s biggest hits and a few inspired films (The Big Bus, 1976) and TV shows (Angie Tribeca, 2016- 2019), the zany laugh-fest in which every scene only provides an excuse to deliver the silliest jokes, never caught on as a genre in its own right. This is under‐ standable. On the one hand, it is not easy to come up with the required amount of material on an industrial scale - Empire magazine counted more than 250 solid gags in Airplane! alone (see Jolin 2006). On the other hand, the template deviates too much from the traditional approach to filming comedy. In spite of their deceptively generic plotlines, the ZAZ productions are thoroughly avant-garde pieces with more than a dash of surrealism, and it requires immense artistry to pull off their virtuoso set-pieces. By contrast, the dominant school of thought will insist that successful comedies are created on the page rather than on the set or in the editing room, and that directors should refrain from ‘directing too much’ so as not to kill the joke. If a musical allegedly works best when the dance sequences are filmed in long takes without cutting to close-ups that would diminish the performers’ impressive achievements, then the same received wisdom suggests that directors should simply ‘capture the joke’ in long takes and move on to the next shot. Monty Python’s Eric Idle goes so far as to say that “you don’t ‘direct’ comedy; you just avoid trying to get in the way of people being funny” (qtd. in Morgan 2019, 174). But this rather apodictic rule of thumb does not do justice to the rich history of the sight gag and the kind of inspired lunacy that goes far beyond merely pointing a camera at someone delivering a one-liner. Top Secret! (1984), one of ZAZ’s most inventive films, not only contains an unrivalled number of sight gags and constantly dumbfounds the viewer’s expectations, it also has a mesmerising one-take 174 Chapter 12 sequence that was filmed in reverse - an achievement that is absolutely on par with anything that Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) did. A good sight gag, like Lewis Carroll’s world-building puns, does not simply look for an adequate way of delivering a funny idea; the funny idea cannot be separated from the medium that is used to express it. Occasionally, sight gags work in conjunction with wordplay, to produce visual puns that literalise a double meaning as part of the mise-en-scène. Director Edgar Wright (1974-) is a master of this technique. His elaborate method of foreshadowing plot points and working with echo effects often hinges on literalised puns; it may take a second viewing to catch every instance of him using jokes as structuring devices. Before the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse in Shaun of the Dead (2004), Ed and Shaun plan a day consisting of bloody Marys, “a bite at the King’s Head”, and a few shots at the bar; it turns out their day will, indeed, involve the gory death of a woman named Mary, Shaun’s stepdad being bitten in the head, and an intense shoot-out at their favourite pub. In Hot Fuzz (2007), an incredulous policeman asks his colleague, “You are pulling my leg? ”, at which point the film cuts to the killer they are after, pulling his latest victim by the legs. THREE VISUAL PUNS It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World When Grogan dies, his foot liter‐ ally kicks the bucket. Love and Death A soldier’s wife and lover make peace at his funeral. The wife offers to “share his letters” - and hands over a bunch of vowels and consonants. Airplane! After a short press conference, the reporters decide to “get some pictures” - and remove several framed photographs from the room. 175 Stop making sense! There is but a diminished form of ZAZ’s inspired zaniness left in popular culture: the spoof movie, which ZAZ helped bring back into fashion again during the notoriously ironic 1980s and 1990s. Its history is often told as a tale of decline, as rather uninspired spoofs (Date Movie, 2006) simply recreate scenes from well-known blockbusters and add a fart joke here and there. The parody tradition is richer than that, but spoofs have often come under fire from the critics. Already in the 1960s, Pauline Kael railed against the ‘spoof phenomenon’ as harmless fun without any serious objectives and without “cleansing power” (qtd. in Smurthwaite/ Gelder 1982, 9). The spoof has been criticised as a parasitic art-form that merely feeds on other works, and denigrated at the expense of satire (see Chapter 6). Parody is often discussed in conjunction with satire and somewhat misrepresented as its less aggressive cousin. To be accurate, parody is a different comic mode that has a more intricate relationship with an original, imitating it to reveal its short-comings and adding a healthy dose of bathos. Parody has been around forever and can attach itself to individual texts, genre conventions, or to whole story-telling traditions. The medieval romance about adventurous knights was already parodied by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) in his tale of Sir Thopas, who never gets around to battling the giant because the story is cut short; Sir Thopas did, in turn, provide the template for Sir Robyn-the-not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), “who nearly stood up to the vicious Chicken of Bristol and who personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill”. Parody creates a new text by transforming elements of an older one (Harries 2000, 6), which means it is mostly funny for those who get the references. But the borders between parody and satire need not be as strict. Since the early 2000s, Will Ferrell (1967-) has emerged as one of the most original comic minds of our time, and some of his films work both as parodies of established genres like the action movie (The Other Guys, 2010) and the sports movie (Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 2006), and as satirical takes on toxic masculinity and American culture. The successful marriage between both comic modes already occurs in some of Mel Brooks’s early films. Blazing Saddles (1974) is tremendous fun if you are even vaguely familiar with the conventions of the Western genre, but it also exposes historical white-washing and the romanticisation of the Frontier myth. While the film’s main legacy in popular culture seems to be the scene in which cowboys gather around the campfire to fart, it also addresses many blind spots of the traditional Western genre, including small-town bigotry and racial segregation. When the town’s new African-American sheriff despairs over the racial abuse he has suffered, his friend explains to him: “You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the New West. You know - morons! ” Kenneth 176 Chapter 12 Tynan called Blazing Saddles “a low comedy in which many of the custard pies are camouflaged hand grenades” (Tynan 1978). In his seminal book on Film Parody (2000), Dan Harries explains the most important comic techniques of the spoof genre. Some of them overlap with Bergson’s comic principles (see Chapter 11), others are more specific to film parody. The following table briefly summarises the major ones, using examples from Mel Brooks’s Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs (1987). TECHNIQUE DESCRIPTION EXAMPLE reiteration A bit from the original is recre‐ ated, often by using the same or similar-looking actors. Actor John Hurt pops in for a cameo to recreate the chest-burster scene from Alien. inversion Use of a signifier that connotes a different meaning, thus turning the original on its head. Instead of offering helpful advice, Yo‐ gurt, the wisest man in the universe, sells Spaceballs merchandise. misdirection An incongruous element is in‐ troduced into the scene to break the illusion. The villains capture not the quartet of heroes but their stunt doubles. literalisation A pun is taken literally and fleshed out in a sight gag. When told to “comb the desert”, Dark Helmet’s men employ a giant comb to search the area. extraneous inclusion Use of elements that clearly do not belong into the genre, or deliberate anachronisms. An alien performs the classic Tin Pan Alley song, “Hello, Ma Baby”. exaggeration Typical genre features are high‐ lighted and re-enacted in a com‐ pletely over-the-top fashion. In a final twist, Dark Helmet offers a convoluted backstory that ties him to the hero: “I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.” 177 Stop making sense! ● Literary nonsense is grounded in a playful approach to language. ● One of the most popular types of comic anarchy is the pun, which exploits linguistic ambiguity and abandons straightforward semantics to score a punch‐ line. ● Nonsense lives on in 20 th -century popular culture, including the zany comedies of the Marx brothers. ● Big-screen comedies that follow the nonsense tradition are mainly organised around the gag, so as to squeeze in as many jokes as possible. ● The principle lives on in parodies and spoofs, where the 'topsy turvy’ principle of inversion is applied to a specific source material. FURTHER READING : Harries, Dan (2000). Film Parody. London: BFI. Hutcheon, Linda (2000). A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Champaign: U of Illinois P. Tigges, Wim (1988). An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 178 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 So funny it hurts! Meet the Brentmeister General In the early 2000s, a new brand of comedy emerged on the small screen. It was heralded by a series called The Office (BBC, 2001-2003), written and directed by Ricky Gervais (1961-) and Stephen Merchant (1974-). The show’s setup was that of a traditional workplace sitcom, albeit one that employed a mockumentary aesthetic. The staff of Slough-based paper company Wernham Hogg have invited a documentary crew into their offices, and the comedy mainly results from branch manager David Brent trying to present himself as a laid-back boss with hidden talents as a comedian and singer-songwriter. But Brent’s project is doomed from the start because he is quite delusional about his abilities as an entertainer and as a leader, in spite of his conviction that “I’ve created an atmosphere where I’m a friend first, and a boss second. Probably an entertainer third.” (S1E1) Mockumentaries are fake documentaries that use the traditional aesthetic and tools of the documentary tradition for satirical behind-the-scenes glances (see Hight 2010). They often involve improvisation, something that Christopher Guest (1948-) and his ensemble specialise in. The mockumentary mode has been used to spoof the true-crime tradition (Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run, 1969), but the overwhelming number of mockumentaries are satirical portrayals of the entertainment industry. All You Need Is Cash (1978) is a Beatles spoof written by Monty Python’s Eric Idle, while Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), produced by American comedy trio The Lonely Island, chronicles a fictitious teen idol’s attempts to make a comeback. In the wake of The Office, mockumentaries increasingly began to poke fun at reality formats, with shows like People Just Do Nothing (2014-2018) providing cautionary tales about people humiliating themselves when they voluntarily step in front of the camera. With its fondness for socially awkward encounters and a rather unlikeable lead char‐ acter, The Office became synonymous with a branch of comedy where painful laughter and mechanisms of social exclusion take priority over the traditional, happy-go-lucky community of laughter: cringe comedy. Few people who discovered the show in the early 2000s would have described their viewing experience as genuinely joyful. Brent’s tone-deaf attempts to connect to the Zeitgeist and to his colleagues can be as painful to watch as any World War II documentary: His practical jokes in the office backfire, he reveals himself to be prejudiced against other ethnicities, and he casually informs his co-workers over lunch that he may have found a lump in his testicles. To be clear: The Office did not invent cringe comedy, and many of its tropes and situations have precedents in British popular culture. Author Zadie Smith (1975-) locates David Brent in the British tradition of class-based humour, offering a kind of genealogy that goes back at least to the 1950s: “Hancock begot Basil Fawlty, and Fawlty begot Alan Partridge, and Partridge begot the immortal David Brent. […] [I]n my mind, they’re all clinging to the middle rungs of England’s class ladder. That, in large part, is the comedy of their situations.” (Smith 2009, 240 and 253) All the characters whom she lists here have a tragic side to them. Their inability to own up to their failures leads to increasingly desperate attempts to keep face at all times. As The Office draws to its conclusion, it becomes clear that Brent is ostracised within his company. He ends up fighting for his existence in front of the camera-eye, humiliation setting in as it gradually dawns on him that he might end up as just another unemployed middle-aged man. Not all viewers of The Office immediately understood that this was a scripted sitcom, the 21 st -century media environment offering far too many little real-life David Brents in search of their fifteen minutes of fame. Stephen Merchant, co-creator of The Office, remembers being on a train shortly after the pilot episode had aired: “There were two women talking opposite me, and one said to her friend: ‘Hey, did you see that documentary last night on the BBC, about an office? The boss was absolutely hysterical! ’ And her friend said: ‘No, I think that was a sitcom.’ And the first lady said: ‘Oh, well, it wasn’t very funny then.’” (Merchant in conversation with O’Brien 2022) Surprisingly enough, Brent was eventually repositioned as an unlikely hero, as the 2003 Christmas special of The Office and a feature film, David Brent: Life on the Road (2016), gave him a shot at redemption and provided heart-warming conclusions. But as originally envisioned, The Office is nobody’s idea of a comfort watch, and it kicked off a wave of other mockumentary projects and TV series that were equally difficult to stomach. The list includes the various TV projects of Sacha Baron Cohen (1971-) and Julia Davis (1966-), all of which routinely trade in unpleasantness and discomfort. The Office inspired a long-running American remake (The Office, 2005-2013) that for the most part abandons the original show’s edge in favour of a gentler tone and plenty of ‘hugging and learning’. Kevin Reilly, President of NBC entertainment, explained the difference by venturing that “Americans need a little bit more hope than the British” (qtd. in Hight 2010, 284). With the main character, as played by 180 Chapter 13 Steve Carell (1962-), far easier to relate to than David Brent, The Office became part of a long history of workplace sitcoms where the characters emerge as flawed but likeable individuals who will ultimately come through for each other. The Office’s US showrunner, Greg Daniels (1963-), has specialised in this type of approach, as has Michael Schur (1975-), the co-creator of Parks and Recreation (2005-2013) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-2021). The difference in tone between the two versions of the Gervais/ Merchant show led one critic to comment that “on US TV, the pain will go away” (Newman 2011, 158). This generalisation may be true for big network television shows, but the era of HBO and streaming services has gone on to produce a multitude of more transgressive and cringe-inducing programmes. This particular branch of comedy has been labelled as ‘comedy of discomfort’ (Moore 2008) or ‘comedy of awkwardness’ (Page 2008). But I favour the term ‘cringe’ because it highlights the characteristic physical reaction. Typical symptoms include feelings of awkwardness and disgust, together with an involuntary muscle contraction and inward shivers. To summarise the cringe experience, it makes sense to examine its social dimension more carefully. As has become clear throughout this book, laughter is never 100 % inclusive. Its existence solidifies social norms, which inevitably means that some people are included and others excluded, particularly those who stray too much from the group consensus. Cringe comedies complicate matters by virtue of their aesthetics and forms of representation, confronting the viewers with increasingly complex situations where the attribution of solidarity, empathy, and Schadenfreude is not as straightforward as in traditional forms of comedy. In a Marx Brothers film, we enjoy Groucho’s acerbic wit when it is directed against a self-important buffoon who takes himself far too seriously. In laughing at the buffoon, we become part of the community of laughter that expels the undesired one from their ranks, and we implicitly acknowledge Groucho’s lack of respect for authorities. Matters are more complex in cringe shows. They usually forgo the presence of a privileged trickster figure whose perfect witticisms the audience can admire. Usually, the main characters are themselves buffoons who are rather full of themselves. Because of the mockumentary setup, Brent is always ‘on’ as a performer and rarely lets down his guard; this means we cannot be sure whether or not he ever becomes aware of his social blunders and failures. This also makes it impossible for us to infer whether we are meant to laugh with or at David Brent. As the protagonist of the series, he invites empathy almost by default. Moreover, his desperate struggle for attention gives him a tragic dimension, particularly in the dog-eat-dog world of the neo-liberal workplace. The way Brent unwittingly sabotages its very foundations even gives him a touch of leftist vigilantism, like when he hijacks a staff training day to show off his questionable skills as a singer-songwriter (S1E4). 181 So funny it hurts! Towards the age of awkwardness For the most part, cringe comedy abstains from the sociable force of laughter, and does away with the Lachgemeinschaft we came across before (see Chapter 10). The narcis‐ sistic Alan Partridge, played across various media formats by Steve Coogan (1965-), or dangerous sociopath Jill ( Julia Davis) in Nighty-Night (2004-2005), are clearly beyond good and evil, and certainly beyond traditional protocols of embarrassment and shame. It remains up to the viewers to experience these emotions on their behalf. This kind of vicarious embarrassment has been known to make viewers want to shield their eyes. If there is any laughter here, it is laughter in self-defence, not the jubilant kind that claims spring’s triumph over winter. Edwin Page argues that laughter in cringe comedy is produced on an intellectual rather than on a gut level because it requires the viewer to carefully analyse the behaviour of the characters (see Page 2008, 9-10). But this does not quite do justice to the complexity of affect at work here, as vicarious shame involves empathy, pain, and also a bit of Schadenfreude that tends to bypass our inner censor. The experience cannot be accounted for by classic theories of laughter, because they tend to emphasise its inherently pleasurable quality. According to the philosopher John Morreall (1947-), laughter always entails a “pleasant psychological shift” (1987, 133), and he acknowledges that embarrassment presents a problem to this view. In the end, he attempts to explain embarrassed laughter away, arguing that it is merely feigned so that the participants can save face, which means it is no proper laughter at all. This resonates with the sociological take on embarrassment as explored by Erving Goffman (1922-1982). Goffman did not live to see the golden age of cringe humour, yet many of his observations remain on point in the age of awkwardness and social media. In his research, Goffman pursues the idea that we are all performers in our everyday lives. To him, social interaction necessitates a multitude of performances. As soon as we interact with other people, be it our parents, spouses, or colleagues, we are required to play ‘acceptable versions’ of ourselves. Embarrassment means that our acceptable self is thrown into doubt, and we must try and repair the damage. This may be an unpleasant experience, but it fulfils an important role within the social fabric. Paradoxically, we feel society’s demands more strongly when we are temporarily excluded from it; embarrassment makes us desperate to return to a state of social inclusion. It works like physical pain, except that it does not signal injuries of the body but “threats to a person’s social image in the form of potential disapproval, rejection, or devaluation” (Mayer et al. 2021, 3). By demonstrating our ability to be embarrassed, we acknowledge that we feel bound by social norms and are willing to work on a solution that repairs the damage. Embarrassment shows that we care; inability to feel embarrassed is interpreted as the mark of the sociopath: “Have you no shame? ” At one point, Goffman highlights the contagious nature of embarrassment. Once started, it will spread, “in ever widening circles of discomfiture” (Goffman 1972, 106). He talks about “a shadow of sustained uneasiness” that makes the participants acutely 182 Chapter 13 Fig. 13.1: David Brent knows about the healing power of laugh‐ ter (The Office, 2002). aware of the possibility of embarrassment (ibid. 100); a turn of phrase that already seems to look ahead to what the 21 st century came to know as awkwardness: the anticipatory tension that precedes acute embarrassment, “a catchall term for any situation that makes us uneasy, whether trivial or serious” (Dahl 2018, 6). We are all familiar with awkward situations because they are linked to self-consciousness: hating the sound of our own voices when we hear them recorded on tape; not quite catching someone’s name but being too shy to ask them to repeat it; telling a story but realising halfway through that no-one is listening. All of these experiences remind us of the social dimension of our existence; vicarious embarrassment turns this into a surrogate experience because the person who is supposed to feel embarrassed remains unaware of their blunder. The audience is encouraged to repair the damage on their behalf and winces, or makes a half-hearted distancing attempt in order to purge the situation - with laughter. In The Office, David Brent’s unsuccessful stint as a motivational speaker exemplifies this mechanism (S2E4). Mistaking the situation for yet another chance to show off his non-existent skills as an entertainer, Brent tries to teach the crowd about the healing power of laughter by laughing like a hyena for a painfully long minute, before making his exit to a recording of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” in front of the bewildered auditorium. On the one hand, this is a very traditional comic number according to the incongruity theory: things do not go to plan, and there is a visible gap between the way Brent wants things to go and the way things actually play out. But our emotions are more complicated than that, because we are torn be‐ tween solidarity (with Brent), pity (for his assistant, who suffers visibly in the scene), and Schadenfreude (at the expense of the organisers who have hired him). The cringe boom of the 21 st century did not happen overnight. William Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, gives us Malvolio, the most buffoonish and cringeworthy character to grace the Elizabethan stage, a man cut from the same cloth as David Brent. Malvolio is Olivia’s chief steward, an unlikeable agelast who ruins everyone else’s fun. To teach him a lesson, the other characters forge a letter to make Malvolio believe that Olivia has fallen in love with him, and he ends up dressing himself in ridiculous clothes to impress her. The resulting scene is as cringeworthy as anything in The Office, and it is all the more painful for Malvolio’s failure to see that he is making a fool of himself. The malicious laughter of the conspirators makes it safe for the audience to enjoy the scene, but Malvolio’s enduring popularity as a character suggests that audiences have always seen something in him that went beyond simple Schadenfreude. Even though he remains superfluous to the main plotline, Malvolio is rarely cut from productions of Twelfth Night. Revised versions of the play have even promoted him to leading-man status. Productions will often underline that his humiliation and expulsion from the group amounts to an unnecessary act of cruelty to balance the happy ending. Like David Brent, Malvolio has emerged as an unlikely audience favourite, and stellar comic 183 So funny it hurts! performers including Alec Guinness, Stephen Fry, and Tamsin Greig (1966-) have excelled in the role. The list of precedents for the cringe phenomenon also includes Theatre of the Absurd (see Chapter 8). The plays of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter are steeped in the kind of awkward, uncomfortable pause that cringe comedy so often relies on (see Chapter 8), and the same goes for the underlying sense of despair and alienation. Some of Harold Pinter’s plots, for example, resemble those of classic Britcoms (see Bignell 2021). Pathos and isolation bind cringe humour closely to the genre of tragedy, though it may take just a slight adjustment in order to change a tragic situation into a painfully funny one. August Strindberg (1849-1912) and Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), in their hard-to-categorise plays and stories, essentially produce awkwardness avant la lettre. In Chekhov’s story A Gentleman Friend (1886), a young woman who has fallen on hard times and cannot even buy food for herself (tragic setup) wants to borrow money from a dentist whom she knows casually. When the dentist fails to recognise her and simply treats her like a patient, she cannot bring herself to tell him the truth. She lets him extract one of her teeth so as not to deviate from the social script. From literature, cringe humour would branch out onto the stand-up stage, inform‐ ing the subversive routines of Lenny Bruce or Andy Kaufman (1949-1984), comedians who made a point of antagonising their audiences. Profiles of Larry David (1947-), the co-creator of Seinfeld and the creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-), typically include the tale of how he went on stage in the 1970s, took one look at his audience, uttered an insult, and left the stage again. These days, performance poets routinely humiliate themselves by reading out their teenage diaries, while the contestants in reality shows do not shy away from being humiliated on camera. Various commentators have connected the dots to characterise the early 21 st century as the age of awkwardness: a time where everyone is aware of “the terrifying possibility that civilization itself might collapse in a simultaneous worldwide cringe” (Kotsko 2010, 3). Adam Kotsko traces the phenomenon to the cultural revolution of the 1960s, which overturned old certainties. In the place of stable social visions, gender scripts, and values, we got the awkward pause. Look no further than the uncomfortable silence at the end of The Graduate (1967), directed by Mike Nichols (1931-2014). The sight of Benjamin and Elaine eloping on a bus may suggest a happy ending, but the silence that engulfs the pair underlines that they are heading off into the unknown, perfectly uncertain about the future as well as their feelings for one another. Such comedies discard the conventional way of filming conversations in shot/ reverse-shot, emphasising the distance between the characters in long, uninterrupted takes. The Graduate makes for a great case study here, as does The Heartbreak Kid (1972), the second film directed by Nichols’s former partner, Elaine May. 184 Chapter 13 Fig. 13.2: Awkward silence perme‐ ates the ending of The Graduate (1967). “[The] 1960s threw the normative social model significantly off-kilter, making it impossible to embrace that model wholeheartedly - and yet they did not produce any viable positive alternative. […] It is from this tension that there emerged the experimentation but also the paranoia and occasional nihilism of 1970s culture.” (Kotsko 2010, 19) The cultural climate that Kotsko describes heralded a new kind of humour - more character-based, less for‐ mulaic and less dependent on traditional punchline structures. It made stars of Dustin Hoffman and of Woody Allen, whose comic persona married the tradi‐ tional wise-cracking schlemiel to a neurotic existen‐ tialist who never seems comfortable in his own skin; the YouTube super-cut of every Woody Allen stammer compiled from his movies clocks in at an impressive 45 minutes. Mike Nichols was already a pioneer of awk‐ ward humour before he directed The Graduate, first with his double-act with Elaine May, and later as the director of various stage comedies by Neil Simon (1927-2018). Simon’s writing for the stage and screen foreshadows the ongoing preoccupation with the awkward in American popular culture. He does not write fully-fledged cringe comedies, but thinks up socially awkward characters and awkward conversations. In his modern-day comedies of manners (see Chapter 7), awkwardness amounts to a character flaw that can be resolved in the course of the play or film, so that the ‘culprit’ can eventually be returned to the social fabric - unless he cannot. The Heartbreak Kid ends with the awkward Jewish protagonist grudgingly tolerated but not properly accepted by the WASP family he has married into. In Simon’s The Odd Couple (1965), the permanently nervous Felix ruins his friend Oscar’s attempts to flirt with the neighbours, resulting in torturous, awkward silences: OSCAR. Why don’t you sleep with an air-conditioner? GWENDOLYN. We haven’t got one. OSCAR. I know. But we have. GWENDOLYN. Oh you! I told you about that one, didn’t I, Cec? FELIX. They say it may rain Friday. (They ALL stare at FELIX.) GWENDOLYN. Oh? CECILY. That should cool things off a bit. OSCAR. I wouldn’t be surprised. FELIX. Although sometimes it gets hotter after it rains. GWENDOLYN. Yes, it does, doesn’t it? (They continue to stare at FELIX.) (Simon 1966, 62) 185 So funny it hurts! Oscar excuses himself to get some drinks; by the time he returns, the guests are “sobbing into their handkerchiefs” (68). Some fifty years later, this uneasy situation would have provoked the exclamation “Awkward! ” Once a situation has been called out thus, all of our attempts to keep face are doomed, and the embarrassment has to be borne. The late 1960s provide a fertile ground for similar situations, as the counter-cultural movement challenged inherited norms and values, and gave rise to the political-correctness debate. Tellingly, cringe comedy often revolves around individuals who lack orientation and who cannot keep up with the times. David Brent and Alan Partridge articulate the anxieties of white middle-aged masculinity out of step with a changing cultural climate: blissfully unaware, perfectly untroubled by genuine feelings of empathy or sensitivity. In one episode of This Time with Alan Partridge (2019-), Partridge admits that he used to applaud sarcastically when a woman was trying to parallel-park her car, but he has learned his lesson now: “If I saw the same thing happen today, I would just shout out instructions.” (S1E5) In this respect, Partridge is cut from the same cloth as Shakespeare’s Malvolio, whose joyless Puritanism indicates failure to keep up with the times, and Basil Fawlty (Fawlty Towers), who is stuck in his conservatism and archaic notions of the class system; both of them find themselves trapped in embarrassing situations when their completely outdated preconceptions clash with reality. This is taken to an extreme in Sasha Baron’s creation of Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev, who represents a downright barbaric state of civilisation. As played by Cohen, Borat is a whirlwind of bad taste and offensiveness, a caricature of how the ‘enlightened West’ sees the ‘barbaric East’: sexist, racist, and deeply antisemitic. Borat’s successful journey from small to big screen indicates that the cringe experience is not exclusive to television. It has gradually established itself on the big screen since the 1980s, in comedies that often centre on negative clown figures whose idea of carnival has horrific undertones. Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1982), in which Jerry Lewis’s successful television host gets kidnapped by Robert De Niro’s desperate amateur comic, set a precedent that found greater resonance in European arthouse comedies including Klovn (2010), Toni Erdmann (2016), or the films of Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure, 2014; The Square, 2017). Outside the works of independent filmmakers like Todd Solondz (Happiness, 1998), Anglophone cinema has been hesitant to completely subscribe to cringe humour. Cringe elements will sometimes add a homeopathic dosage of awkwardness to otherwise sanitised blockbusters, a bit of vinegar in an otherwise too saccharine meal. A case in point: the cameo of Julia Davis as Nancy, the world’s bitterest caterer, in one of the most sugar-coated romantic comedies of all time, Love Actually. The romantic comedy has emerged as particularly adaptable in that respect, and excels at putting lovable yet slightly anti-social characters into awkward situations. This pattern works not just for male anti-heroes in the Dustin Hoffman tradition, like the characters played by Ben Stiller (1965-), but also for female protagonists whose awkwardness is magnified when they become subjected to the omnipresent male gaze and are measured against conventional femininity. This applies 186 Chapter 13 to Kristen Wiig’s hapless Annie Walker in Bridesmaids as well as to the character of Bridget Jones as played by Renée Zellweger (1969-) across three films (2001-2016). THREE MEMORABLE CRINGE ENCOUNTERS There’s Something about Mary: Mary and Ted are about to go to the prom when Ted’s scrotum gets stuck in his zipper. Various people offer their help, including Mary’s parents, the police, and the fire department. Bridget Jones’s Diary: At a book launch, Bridget fails to get the microphone to work, ends up alerting the crowd by shouting “Oy! ”, and proceeds to give the most excruciating welcome address in the history of publishing. I Give It a Year: Having returned from their honeymoon, Nat and Josh show the family a digital slide show with travel pictures, not realising that their sex pictures are in the mix. Her parents still sit through the whole slide show. Cringe humour is inherently ambivalent, so that it is never clear whether we are meant to laugh with or at Bridget Jones. This is why cringe humour tends to spark controversial discussions. For every admirer of Sacha Baron Cohen’s committed performances exposing bigotry and prejudice, there are critical voices who accuse him of flirting with and perpetuating clichéd sexism and downright antisemitism (Page 2008, 26-27). Larry David’s modern-day comedies of manners have provoked a similar critical backlash. For some people, the misadventures of David’s ‘Larry’ persona merely articulate “the anger of frustrated entitlement” (qtd. in Kaplan 2004). But to suggest that cringe humour revels in unsympathetic laughter of denigration misses the point. Protected groups are not the targets of cringe comedy per se, even when scenes depict how they are subjected to more or less subtle forms of abuse. In fact, it is often hard to exactly pinpoint what triggers the audience’s laughter in cringe humour, and what kind of value system this laughter acknowledges - a situation further complicated by the mockumentary angle. In The Office, David Brent constantly fails to reconcile his actions to his words, particularly when it comes to being considerate and keeping up with the demands of political correctness. When Brent tries to highlight that he would never laugh at disabled people, he immediately reveals his patronising attitude and reluctance to interact with “the wheelchair ones” (S1E3), providing us with an example of the classic Stan Daniels Turn. The Stan Daniels Turn is named after Stan Daniels (1934-2007), a producer and comedy writer who enjoyed success throughout the 1970s and 1980s. While Daniels did not invent the technique, he used it so often that it became synonymous with him. The typical Stan Daniels turn has a character proclaim one thing and then 187 So funny it hurts! immediately contradict himself. In the third Austin Powers movie (Goldmember, 2002), Nigel Powers formulates his personal ethos: “There are only two things I can’t stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures - and the Dutch! ” In Mel Brooks’s High Anxiety (1977), Dr. Montague agrees not to tell anyone about Thorndyke’s nervous disorder, then closes the door and can be heard shouting through the corridor: “Hey, everybody, guess who has high anxiety? ” Matters are more complicated in hardcore cringe shows. Jill, the protagonist in Julia Davis’s Nighty-Night, abandons her cancer-stricken husband to pursue her neighbour, Don. Having entered a self-help group by pretending that her husband is already dead, Jill constantly plays the sympathy card in order to get licence to harass Don’s wife, Kathy, who is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Where The Office pokes fun at people who fail to successfully navigate the minefield of political correctness, Nighty-Night goes further in order to test the viewer’s allegiances, setting up grotesquely comic situations that exploit the characters’ inability to apply social protocol. Does Jill’s ‘grief ’ trump Kathy’s disability? Cathartic cringe In spite of cringe humour’s alienating effect and its innate quality of discomfort, there is something very fruitful about how it foregrounds unstable positions and articulates uncomfortable questions. Cringe may not always be clear in its allegiances, but it is also a comparatively inclusive branch of comedy, and often betrays a very strong social conscience, for instance by highlighting the contested position of minorities. Look no further than disability comedies like Jerk (2019-), which casts Tim Renkow (1989-) as a man with cerebral palsy in the Larry David role of the sociopath who thinks he can get away with anything, or My Gimpy Life (2011-2014), starring Teal Sherer (1980-) as an actor with a disability who calls out other people’s hypocrisy and patronising attitudes. Hidden-camera prank shows (I’m Spazticus, 2012-2013) have put disabled people in outrageous situations to coax horrified reactions out of bystanders. The term ‘awkwardness’ has a special history in the field of disability studies and is used to describe the helplessness experienced by able-bodied people around those with disabilities (Dahl 2018, 7). Cringe shows have done some ground-breaking work here, as the viewers’ sense of helplessness when it comes to interpreting whether it is ‘okay’ to laugh at a particular scene and where to direct one’s empathy sits well with the topic of disability. Jason Middleton has coined the category of the “unstable joke” (Middleton 2014), the target of which is by no means clear. When Sacha Baron Cohen, in the role of Borat, interviews a group of feminists and scores some easy laughs (Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 2006), what are we really laughing at? Borat’s outdated views? The interviewees’ increasingly futile attempts to keep a 188 Chapter 13 straight face when he claims that science has proven women’s brains to be no larger than those of squirrels? Or at their failure to see through the Borat persona? By the same token, some of the more elaborate set-pieces on Jackass are harder to read than their usual stunts that simply run on good old-fashioned Schadenfreude. In Jackass Number Two (2006), Ehren McGhehey dresses up as a stereotypical Islamic suicide bomber to coax a reaction out of a taxi driver - so far, so xenophobic. However, it turns out that the actual prank is being played on the actor himself, because the taxi driver has, in turn, been instructed to pull a fake gun on him, take him hostage and lock him in the trunk of his car. The viewer may laugh at the surprising turn of events, at Ehren’s genuine terror, at the fact that the whole charade exposes the underlying clichés for what they are, or at a combination of all three. Neither Borat nor Jackass require a degree in sociology to find them amusing, but they can be appreciated in different ways. When Ehren, having been released from the trunk, learns that his fake beard has been compiled from shaved-off pubes, Jackass returns to its comfort zone - or should that be, its regular discomfort zone? Cringe humour forces us to address our own value system, and it also offers us something in exchange for its uncomfortable ambiguity: a particular form of catharsis that is earned through shared suffering - something that the Jackass performers regularly experience on camera, proclaiming their love for each other once they have climbed out of the snake-pit. Other cringe comedies go for downbeat endings, reminding the viewers that comedy and tragedy are cut from the same cloth (see Chapter 3). Like tragedy, cringe comedies can “purge pity and fear from an audience” (Feinberg et al. 2012, 94). This affective response seems to be at odds with the intellectual safety distance that separates us from the cringe experience, according to some critics. But it facilitates rather intimate encounters between audience and performer, particularly those comedians who specialise in over-sharing. Many stand-up comics tell autobiographical stories in their shows, not just to build their personas but also to promote a form of activism: Tig Notaro has frequently addressed her double mastectomy in her live act, recounting how the operation left her ‘breastless’ and has led to her being often mistaken for a man. Notaro makes a point of stretching out these uncomfortable encounters for as long as possible, like when airport security cannot decide whether she should be patted down by a man or a woman. Observing how the staff members are thoroughly unable to read her body, Notaro clearly relishes her opportunity to rebel against the confines of the binary gender system: “I knew exactly what was happening. And I knew that all I needed to do was speak, and then she would know that I was female. But I just did not want to help her out at all. I was enjoying the awkwardness so much! ” (Notaro 2016). Her belief that there is something productive about cringing and awkwardness is shared by Louis C.K., the creator of one of television’s most experimental cringe comedies (Louie, 2010-2015). At one point, he recalls how he disrupted the traditional, quasi-segregated seating arrangement in his junior high school by deliberately sitting with the African-American students: “It was awkward and scary, but I made a lot of 189 So funny it hurts! black friends, and that was the only way to do it. It had to be uncomfortable. […] Sometimes discomfort is the only way through.” (qtd. in Corsello 2014) Even though watching a cringe show or a live performance may not come close to this type of encounter, cringe humour often has potentially therapeutic side-effects. Without the safety net of social protocol and with everything exposed “[t]hat we knew was there, but preferred to keep hidden under a carapace of play” (Duncan 2017, 41), cringe humour can help us arrive at a degree of insight and at a more authentic understanding of otherness that comes close to a classic epiphany. Melissa Dahl defines the cringe experience as “an unpleasant kind of self-recognition where you suddenly see yourself through someone else’s eyes” (Dahl 2018, 8), and this resonates with the Aristotelian experience of ‘pity’ and ‘fear’. As empathic witnesses to a character’s downfall in tragedy, we get to suffer ‘by proxy’, hoping to undergo the cathartic cleansing experience and to arrive at a more profound understanding of the other. Several charity organisations have tapped into this potential with their campaigns, emphasising that we should seek the potential of uncomfortable silence in order to forge a connection with people who may need help. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention built their ‘Seize the Awkward’ campaign around this argument, as did British charity Scope with their ‘End the Awkward’ videos about how able-bodied people feel around disabled people (see Dahl 2018, 97-100). Clearly, awkwardness and cringing are not to be avoided at all costs. Quite the contrary, working through the awkwardness together can have a transformative effect. By implication, awkward conversations revolving around racism and sexism are necessary in order to trigger a learning process. The success of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm is a double-edged sword in that respect. Curb has arguably never shied away from controversial topics, with episodes revolving around whether or not one should socialise with sex offenders (S5E7), whether baldness should count as a disability (S7E5), or how the suffering of an actual Holocaust survivor compares to the experiences of someone who has competed in the TV show Survivor (S4E9). Most of the time, Larry (ab)uses his privileged position to protest against the conventions of tipping, dating, or hugging. When told that it is not necessary to bring a gift to someone’s birthday party, Larry is happy to oblige, only to learn that he has offended his host, actor Ben Stiller, by obeying his wish: “Come on, Larry”, Ben tells him. “Everybody knows that’s bullshit [when you say ‘no gift’].” (S4E2) Yet there is a danger that we delegate too much of the work to Larry, who is frequently called upon to overthrow outdated social protocol and to maintain common sense, stepping on people’s toes while navigating the social minefield. In Season 8’s outstanding episode “Palestinian Chicken” (S8E3), various people ask Larry to call out other people’s annoying habits because they are too timid to do so themselves. “You know what you are? ”, Larry’s friend Jeff quips. “You’re a social assassin.” He has a point. Similar to other cringe comics, Larry acts as a vigilante who challenges the uncertain regimes of political correctness, even at the risk of disrupting social harmony and upsetting the traditional ‘community of laughter’. Curb’s ninth season even 190 Chapter 13 Fig. 13.3: Larry David’s reluctant vigilantism (poster for Curb Your Enthusiasm, 2017). made this point in its ad campaign, with the teaser poster mimicking classic Batman iconography. The image of Larry David’s grumpy face projected into the nocturnal skyline of New York City guarantees a quick laugh for the pop-culture savvy, but the joke hits deeper than that. Batman is the anti-hero that Gotham City calls upon to do its dirty work and to get rid of undesirable elements, without involving state-sanctioned law. Larry arguably performs a similar job in the context of political-correctness debates and social interaction. Curb Your Enthusiasm’s legacy also includes a rather bizarre trend that has spread over the world wide web in recent years: the ‘Directed by Robert B. Weide’ phenomenon, named after Curb’s co-creator and fre‐ quent director. People have made a habit of taking short video clips, typically of people embarrassing them‐ selves, and cutting them together with Robert Weide’s directing credit on Curb, adding the show’s musical theme. Robert Weide has nothing to do with the crea‐ tion and proliferation of these videos, but not all users seem to be aware of that. When asked about the ‘Directed by Robert B. Weide’ phe‐ nomenon, he jokily refers to himself as “a walking meme” whose digital fame is not to be taken seriously (qtd. in Schwanebeck 2021, 7). It speaks for the cultural impact of cringe comedy that the climactic moments of Curb Your Enthusiasm have become so iconic that people frame their own experiences through the show, adding the appro‐ priate paratext to their punchlines. But there is a downside to this phenomenon, too. The ‘Directed by Robert B. Weide’ meme has also been hijacked by reactionary groups and anti-feminists who use Curb’s trademark credit sequence to ridicule social activists, picking unflattering clips of them trying to take a stand against gender inequality or racial injustice. Cringe clearly cuts both ways, then - it is a deeply ambiguous phe‐ nomenon in that it must leave its affiliations unclear to provide maximum discomfort. ● The 21 st century saw the rise of cringe humour, which can be particularly painful to watch. ● Cringe humour obliterates the traditional community of laughter, as the affective responses are more complex than straightforward laughing-at or laughing-with. ● The boom of cringe comedy has been linked to the development of the ‘awkward age’ since the 1960s. ● Cringe comedy often taps into taboo subjects and comments on the politi‐ cal-correctness debate. ● Cringe has a cathartic dimension, leading both its characters and the audience towards painful epiphanies that are reminiscent of tragedy. 191 So funny it hurts! FURTHER READING : Dahl, Melissa (2018). Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness. New York: Hudson. Kotsko, Adam (2010). Awkwardness: An Essay. Washington: Zero Books. Schwanebeck, Wieland (ed., 2021). Painful Laughter: Media and Politics in the Age of Cringe. Special Issue of Humanities 110. 192 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Lessons from Medusa Not just a man’s world For centuries, comedy was almost exclusively dominated by male voices, to the extent that some simply take the genre of comedy to be a male profession - end of story. Not only were women written out of the history of the genre, the borders of comedy were policed rather rigorously to make sure that there was no ‘funny business’ from women. To explain women’s alleged failure to be funny, pundits would resort to pseudo-biological arguments or claim expertise in anthropology. Criticism of this kind is easy to dismiss, but it does not seem to be exclusive to Western societies. Clown and trickster figures are predominantly - though not exclusively - conceptualised as male, maybe because the dominant femininity scripts do not allow for the kind of uninhibited, carnivalesque behaviour that characterises the jester and the buffoon (see Apte 1984/ 2017). Speculating on the funny ‘nature’ of men and women inevitably leads to, at best, generalisation and, at worst, essentialisation. There is a fine line between a scientific look at gender-based humour and the indiscriminate attribution of ‘natural’ properties. Studies in group psychology have looked into the differences between women and men cracking jokes (see Martin 2007; Evans et al. 2019). They conclude that men use more disparaging and sexually aggressive humour to create a positive social identity and to impress others, while women are more likely to put the interests of the group above their own, and to use self-deprecating humour instead of aggressive put-downs as a consequence. However, more recent studies suggest that women have become more likely to openly confront sexist humour (Saucier et al. 2020). Self-deprecating humour has a rich history in marginalised groups including African-Americans or Jews. Funny women have often gone along and degraded themselves. Phyllis Diller (1917-2012) used the persona of the dim-witted house‐ wife, while Totie Fields (1930-1978) routinely cracked fat jokes at her own expense. Their acts reflect a history of “socialization of women into passive, powerless roles” (Bunkers 1985, 85). Lily Tomlin (1939-), Whoopi Goldberg (1955-), and other female comics would turn the tables and present less self-deprecating attitudes on the stand-up stage. 21 st -century performers have declared war on the toxic tradition of misogynist humour, with Hannah Gadsby (Nanette) calling out the ritual of marginalised groups adding to their marginalisation on stage and the audience willingly acting the role of the abuser. But it should be noted that this does not make self-deprecating humour more ‘natural’ in women; it simply means that they have internalised the cultural codifications and the respective gender scripts. A 2019 study found that listeners reacted quite differently to the same jokes when they were used by men or women in professional contexts. When a woman presented the jokes, the group was more likely to assume that she was trying to cover up her lack of skills, thus harming rather than elevating her professional performance (Evans et al. 2019). Instead of simply accepting gender clichés about self-confident men and timid women, it is more fruitful for the field of humour and comedy studies to look into the historical exclusion practices that have kept funny women under the radar. Frances Gray (1994, 8-13) identifies five major strategies that were used to discourage women from exercising their funny bones: 1. Women are reminded not to talk too much. 2. Women who object to specific jokes are dismissed as humourless. 3. Successful funny women like Marilyn Monroe are brushed off as unskilled. 4. Women receive qualified praise as merely ironic rather than really funny. 5. Female humour is paradoxically reinterpreted as proof of humourlessness, as though every female comic willing to fight back were just another bra-burning battle-axe. This powerful yet unwritten code has allowed for the routine dismissal of women as intellectual dwarves without any intellectual capacity for wit and ambivalence, or as agelastes, to use Rabelais’ word for the quintessentially humourless person (see Donovan 2011). The persistence of these stereotypes is rather baffling. Throughout history, women’s marginalised position ought to have recommended them for the picaresque role of the sceptic: the apparently innocent observer who reveals a sharp intellect and transgressive ideas by “asking the questions that reveal a different and somewhat disturbing reality” (Walker 1985, 123). But this has not been the case. Not one among the three major theories of laughter that I have discussed throughout this book properly consider funny women; they all rest on notions of subjectivity that are, by default, male. The Freudian account of humour and jokes, for example, is framed by parameters such as castration anxiety and the sublimation of desire, and the superiority theory of laughter has to assume a male subject because a privileged position of superiority over others was for a long time simply not available to most women (see Çaliskan 1995). This should be a completely historical discussion at this point, but it is still an infuriatingly contemporary one. Consider the vitriolic reactions that met the female-led reboot of Ghostbusters (2016). Its quartet of leading women, including Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Wiig (1973-) and Kate McKinnon (1984-), had dared to walk in the footsteps of beloved comedians Bill Murray (1950-) and Dan Aykroyd (1952-). While the film drew some justified criticism for simply redoing the plot of the 1984 original and for failing to develop an original quartet of lead characters, the endless trolling 194 Chapter 14 and verbal abuse that preceded the film’s release points to a more deep-seated fear of funny women. Right-wing pundits routinely go after all female comics, not just those who star in remakes of nostalgically revered 1980s films. As part of their zero-tolerance policy regarding funny women, these pundits invert the popular ‘Try not to laugh’ challenges on YouTube with ‘Try to laugh’ videos where they film themselves not cracking a smile during an entire set of Ali Wong (1982-) or Lilly Singh (1988-). No wonder that funny women do not hold out for approval from the male establishment. THREE TONE-DEAF DISMISSALS OF FEMALE COMICS A 1909 newspaper editorial proclaimed that women were “made to be loved and fondled”, but not “to be laughed at” (qtd. in Horowitz 1997, 4). Slapstick legend Jerry Lewis famously admitted that he was “[set] back a bit” by the thought of a woman doing comedy: “I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies into the world.” (qtd. in Kohen 2012, 3) Christopher Hitchens went so far as to speculate that being funny is pointless for women, from an evolutionary viewpoint; he suggests that women have no need “to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men. […] They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter.” (Hitchens 2007/ 2011, 390 and 394) … AND THREE APPROPRIATE RESPONSES Stand-up comic Marcia Belsky suggests that male comics feel threatened by the very idea of funny women: “It challenges their sense of themselves as people who are sharp and observant — how could they be missing something right in front of them? ” (Belsky 2017) Paula Bernat Bennett points out that female authors did not suddenly ‘become’ funny in the 21 st century; it was simply “the largely male literary establishment [that] didn’t get the joke” (Bennett 2004, 63). According to Sheila Moeschen, we are way past the point where we must argue for women’s right and ability to be funny: “We’re here, we’re hilarious, get used to it! ” (Moeschen 2019, 2) What makes her laugh? Ernst Lubitsch’s classic romantic comedy, Ninotchka (1939), was advertised with an iconic tagline: “Garbo laughs”. Clearly, the studio had faith that the prospect of 195 Lessons from Medusa Fig. 14.1: Garbo laughs - on her own terms (Ninotchka, 1939). seeing Greta Garbo (1905-1990), the stony-faced queen of silent melodrama, erupt into merriment would be enough to draw an audience. They also counted on patrons still remembering the tagline, “Garbo talks”, which had been used for her first talkie in 1930. The gamble paid off, not least because the film finds a clever way of framing Garbo’s transition from icy Scandinavian into fashionable screwball heroine. In Ninotchka, she plays Nina Yakushova, a seemingly cold-hearted Soviet apparatchik, who gradually succumbs to the pleasures of champagne and silk stockings while on a mission to Paris. The dashing Count who falls for her first debunks her ideology (“Comrade, I’ve been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years! ”) and then wins her heart. Making her laugh becomes an instrumental step along the way. The scene in question almost resembles a parody of the modern-day psychological studies I have addressed earlier, with the Count taking on the role of the self-confident crowd-pleaser, and her reacting in the manner of a true agelaste. When his mediocre jokes fail to do the trick, he accuses her of having no sense of humour at all. It is only when he wobbles on his chair and comes crashing to the floor that Nina starts to laugh - at him, not with him. The central argument - she will laugh, but on her own terms - is echoed in Funny Girl (1968), the Os‐ car-winning biopic of legendary Broadway star Fanny Brice (1891-1951), starring Barbra Streisand (1942-). When impresario Florenz Ziegfeld hires Fanny to sing a torch song totally unsuited to her register, she spins the song into a comedy number, bringing the house down. An angry Ziegfeld confronts Fanny in her dress‐ ing room, accusing her of making a laughing-stock of herself, but she stands her ground: “They laughed with me, not at me. Because I wanted them to laugh.” Both examples underline that funny women are not simply up against a doubtful and critical audience; they are also up against a male-dominated establishment and an institutional apparatus unwilling to rewrite the rule-book. This goes back centuries, at least to Aphra Behn (see Chapter 6), who openly spoke out against critical double standards. Funny women have persisted, though. They have always been present but they have not always been given their due (see Barreca 1996). Newspaper columnist Fanny Fern (1811-1870) was so revered for her wit and common-sense attitudes that the first collection of her writings initially outsold even Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852); actor and director Mabel Normand (1893-1930) was not only one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1910s but also acted as a mentor to young Charlie Chaplin; Jackie “Moms” Mabley (1894-1975) did pioneering work on the stand-up stage and continued to appear on America’s most popular variety shows throughout her seventies. If funny women struggled to make an impact at the box-office, it was not due to lack of talent, but because they found it hard to adjust their abilities to the limitations of the Hollywood star system. 196 Chapter 14 The realm of physical comedy, for instance, was deemed inappropriate for women because physical comedy was said to connote sexual activity (see Dale 2000); a somewhat baffling argument if you consider the child-like and predominantly asexual screen personas of Laurel & Hardy or Jacques Tati. Gifted comics such as Thelma Todd (1906-1935) were thus relegated to playing second fiddle in films starring Buster Keaton or the Marx Brothers; Mae West was the rare case of a female comic embracing her reputation as ‘not safe for marriage’, styling herself into the quintessential phallic woman dispensing bawdy one-liners (see Ivanov 1994). A qualified, more digestible version of West’s cheeky alter ego can be found in the screwball comedies starring Katharine Hepburn. Crucially, though, Hepburn’s wackiest and most daring performance, in Bringing up Baby (1938), resulted in a box-office bomb. The success of The Philadelphia Story (1940), which ends with her character ‘housebroken’ into marital submission, was taken as a sign that “the audience wants the heroine to be a fun girl, but within definite, if unstated, limits” (Dale 2000, 131). Comics who divide the crowd into devoted fans and haters are sometimes referred to as Marmite phenomena, after the well-known British yeast extract that some spread on toast and others prefer not to touch with a ten-foot pole. The Marmite metaphor has become shorthand for any kind of cultural phenomenon that splits the audience in two halves: those who love it and those who loathe it. The term is often used in connection with comics like Gilbert Gottfried (1955-2022), whose shrill voice and extravagant persona certainly are an acquired taste. Funny women known for ‘oversharing’ personal matters provoke similar reactions; the list includes Sarah Silverman (1970-), Amy Schumer (1981-), and Ali Wong. Contemporary female comics such as Tiffany Haddish (1979-) or Aubrey Plaza (1984-) need not be seen as direct descendants of these pioneering women, but they are still up against some of the same double standards, particularly when they call out institu‐ tionalised misogyny. Even before the #MeToo movement shook up the comedy scene, funny women stepped up, with female-led shows such as 30 Rock, Veep, or Fleabag finding a dedicated audience and sweeping the award shows. These programmes may not herald the age of equality, as all of them revolve around heterosexual white women with a degree of privilege and wealth, but their success has opened up spaces for other new voices in comedy to address taboo topics and to call out stereotypical assumptions. The film Late Night, written by and starring Mindy Kaling, provides a more nuanced look at battles raging within the comedy scene. Unlike previous inside takes on the world of comedy, like Punchline (1988), Late Night does not settle for a simple ‘David vs. Goliath’ story of a woman trying to succeed in the comedy business. It highlights the divisions within, as Kaling’s character first challenges and later joins forces with Emma Thompson’s experienced late-night host, after a lengthy battle of wits that is also informed by the parameters of age and ethnicity. 197 Lessons from Medusa Unruly women Most of popular culture’s enduring fools and trickster characters I have cited before (see Chapters 4 and 5) are male, but this does not mean that the carnivalesque is an inherently male quality. In her book The Unruly Woman (1995), Kathleen Rowe explores Rabelaisian women as diverse as Roseanne Barr (1952-) or Miss Piggy, who routinely go beyond the narrow confines of what passes for ‘acceptable’ feminine behaviour. These funny women do not content themselves with the subtle Mona Lisa smile, they go for the belly laugh that used to conclude the credit sequence of Roseanne (1988-1997): loud, aggressive, and unapologetic. The female body remains a particularly unruly site that constantly threatens to evade control. In his book Poop Feminism (2020), Gregor Balke highlights a rich but somewhat neglected history of scatological female humour, and he singles out the explosive diarrhoea scene in Bridesmaids as a revolutionary moment in comedy. Bridesmaids is not quite the ground-breaking, inspirational feminist film that some critics have seen in it - not least because it basically deconstructs the notion of female bonds, and it does not arrive at any “solidaric mode[s] of empathy” that could replace traditional self-deprecatory modes of laughter (Willett/ Willett 2019, 153). Yet Bridesmaids successfully subverts classic rom-com tropes and clichés of the heteronormative marriage plot. The sight of the bride and her entourage shitting in a sink and vomiting all over each other while shopping for bridal dresses makes for a memorable set-piece; it effectively erases clichéd imagery of virginal young women who always have their bodily functions under control, particularly when they present themselves on the marital meat market. Non-normative bodies can challenge hegemonic gender scripts, as is the case when Tig Notaro confronts the audience with tales and the sight of her breastless body after a double mastectomy (see Chapter 13). In her reading of Unruly Women, Rowe draws upon the Medusa figure as explored by Hélène Cixous (1937-), emphasising how comedy often taps into the perceived monstrosity and ambivalence of women. Cixous invites us to look straight at the Medusa, to realise that the Medusa is not deadly, after all: “She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.” (Cixous 1976, 885) This does not preclude carnivalesque outbursts of transgressive behaviour, large appetites, and unapologetic sexuality - quite the contrary. Consider the impressive amount of madcap energy that Rachel Brosnahan’s eponymous character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel learns to uncork, as she develops a comedy act of unrivalled frankness in the male-dominated, stifling atmosphere of the late 1950s stand-up scene. By unleashing her pent-up anger in a series of one-liners, Midge Maisel transforms herself from a submissive housewife and mother into a confident trailblazer of comedy. Her story was partly inspired by the life of Elaine May, whose career rather neatly summarises many of the pitfalls and double standards affecting women in the entertainment industry. Married at 16 and a young mother at the age of 17, May later divorced her husband and went to university, where she crossed paths with Mike Nichols. She would go on to form a comic duo with him. Nichols & May are 198 Chapter 14 widely credited with heralding a new age of comedy in the United States: out with the tedious joke-telling routines, in with elaborate character vignettes like May’s passive-aggressive Jewish mother or her semi-fascist switchboard operator. The duo became phenomenally successful with their routines, selling out Broadway theatres and going on national tour. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Midge’s manager Susie claims she once walked in on them in the bathroom: “Even their fucking was hilarious.” (S1E6) “In the mid-1950s, sketch comedy tended to be situation comedy—and the situations were generally so timeworn that audiences knew where the laughs would come before a word was spoken. […] To a form that was in serious danger of going stale, Nichols and May brought something slyer, sharper, and wholly new - a comedy rooted in deep observation of the tics, vulnerabilities, insecurities, vanities, and pretensions of others, and of themselves.” (Harris 2021, 59) What made Elaine May so outstanding was not just her unique ability as a performer. As a beautiful young woman, she also challenged the implicit assumption that women had to diminish their attractiveness in order to get a laugh. To male audience members of the era, female comics presented “a challenge in the first place; add sexual allure to her wit and the result would have been not the tension and release of humor, but pure exacerbation” (Limon 2000, 55). When Nichols & May split, both of them turned to theatre and film, though with different results. Nichols first took Broadway by storm and then conquered Hollywood, winning the Academy Award with his second film, The Graduate, which shows May’s influence in the speech rhythms and in the one or other sight gag. While Nichols continued to consistently draw A-listers in spite of the occasional flop, May was to acquire a reputation as ‘the difficult one’, locking horns with studio executives over escalating budgets and the final cut of her films. The box-office disaster of Ishtar (1987) finished her directing career, but she remained one of Hollywood’s most trusted script doctors, applying her signature wit to many successful films. She reunited with Nichols in the 1990s, writing The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998) for him, and starred in two films by Woody Allen, who called her a genius (see Lax 2013, 101). She was rediscovered by the critics in the 2000s (see Heller-Nicholas/ Brandum 2021), winning a Tony Award for Best Actress at the age of 87 (The Waverly Gallery, 2018) and an Honorary Oscar in 2022. Two can play at that game May’s work as a writer/ director underlines why funny women are so rarely embraced as feminist icons. In spite of their transgressiveness, we should be careful not to automatically assume that all funny women must automatically have a feminist agenda. 199 Lessons from Medusa Aphra Behn’s plays are as misogynistic as those of her male contemporaries; and some of the most celebrated female comic performers were successful precisely because they specialised in negative stereotypes of women instead of trying to rewrite the rule-book. Hattie Jacques (1922-1980) was one of the most prolific performers in post-war England, starring opposite Tony Hancock (1924-1968) on his radio show and appearing in more than a dozen Carry On films; Julia Davis developed her most memorable TV series around psychopathic women who give the classic ‘bunny-boiler’ stereotype a run for its money (Nighty-Night, 2004-2005). Their comedy does not set out to deliver a message, and how could it, given that comedy almost by definition favours ambiguity and the subtleties of irony over ham-fisted moralising? If these funny women are recognised as feminist icons, it is because they sustained successful careers in a male-dominated industry. Besides, ‘feminist humour’ is a contested notion to begin with. Kate Clinton (1947-) suggests that feminists do not trust humour, because they feel the need “to outserious the man” (1996, 147). Activists have often preferred a serious and non-ambivalent mode of discourse, having experienced how humour is turned against them, and because they distrust comedy’s potential as a political weapon. According to a popular joke, it takes three feminists to screw in a light bulb: one to screw it in, and two to talk about the sexual implications - or, alternatively, seven: one to change it, three to organise the potluck, and three to film an empowering documentary about the whole endeavour (see Bing 2004). This ambivalent attitude, however, has not stopped authors like Gloria Steinem (1934-) from using acerbic wit for their own ends. In one of her essays, Gloria Steinem ponders what the world would look like if men could menstruate: “Men would brag about how long and how much. Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties. Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts. Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. […] Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (‘menstruation’) as proof that only men could serve in the Army (‘you have to give blood to take blood’) [and] occupy political office.” (Steinem 1978/ 2019, 151-152) The critical take on Elaine May resonates with the reception of author Patricia Highsmith (1920-1995). The novels of the latter are revered as landmark texts in queer fiction, but there is more hesitation regarding the author herself, who routinely dismissed women as intellectually inferior to men and who wrote a short-story collection called Little Tales of Misogyny (1975). Elaine May herself was never as controversial as the misanthropic Highsmith, but her films are similarly interested in men and homosocial relationships. The central bonds in Mikey and Nicky (1976) and 200 Chapter 14 Fig. 14.2: It’s a dog-eat-dog world (A New Leaf, 1971). Ishtar are formed between luckless schmucks who cling to each other like Beckett’s stranded tramps. In these cautionary tales about the pitfalls of patriarchy, women are marginalised, used as exchange objects, exploited for sex, and then ditched. May’s films hold no illusions regarding human connections in a dog-eat-dog world, and she frames the scenes accordingly. In A New Leaf, Walter Matthau’s skint playboy" asks his uncle for a loan, only to be scorned and humiliated. May frames Uncle Harry’s boundless Schadenfreude as if to suggest that he is devouring his penniless nephew; it is one of the most memorable and expressive shots in the history of comedy. Clearly, it would be short-sighted to limit the dis‐ cussion of funny women and their impact on stage and screen simply to a few inspirational stories about fe‐ male solidarity, like 9 to 5 (1980) or Sex and the City. Instead of simply perpetuating the stereotype of the selfless woman who would rather show empathy than crack a joke at somebody else’s expense, we should re‐ main sensitive to the multitude of roles that funny women can adopt. They should also be at liberty to get their hands dirty in order to beat men at what male comics used to believe was their game exclusively. Previously, I have talked about feminist subtexts in classic comedies, like when Lysistrata suggests that military campaigns amount to enormous dick-waving contests (see Chapter 2). But the truth is that comedy itself often resembles one of these competitive battles. The participants try to outdo each other with increasingly insane amounts of derring-do. Of course, there is a collaborative dimension to this. Gags used to be widely shared among comics, with the professional code dictating “that a routine should belong to the comedian who could perform the funniest and most timely version regardless who came up with the idea first” (Balducci 2012, 5). When the competitive spirit kicks in, comics will try to improve upon existing routines in games of one-upmanship, often with a distinctly homosocial flavour. The nocturnal male-bonding scene in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) sums this up best, as the three shark hunters take turns to reveal yet another scar and to tell yet another adventure story (“I got this beat! ”). It is the schlemihl character in their midst who eventually dissolves the competition with irony; pointing at his hairy chest, he recalls the woman who broke his heart. All of this is part of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), in his seminal account of Masculine Domination (La domination masculine, 1998), describes as “the social games (illusio)” that make “a man a real man” (1998/ 2002, 25). Comedy is one of these serious games, and willingness to outdo the competition has often produced mesmerising results. Harold Lloyd’s thrilling adventures atop skyscrapers in Never Weaken (1921) and Safety Last! (1923) inspired Laurel & Hardy to climb atop a construction site (Liberty! , 1929). Food battles have kept escalating since the era of Vaudeville, until Blake Edwards, in The Great Race, choreographed a scene that did for 201 Lessons from Medusa the pie fight what the Omaha beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan (1998) did for the cinematic representation of military combat. When someone finds another and even more insane way to do it, the whole shtick will be recycled, and this is as true of World War II as it is of the pie fight. You never know what will come into fashion again; the year 1988 saw the release of no less than three major comedies (A Fish Called Wanda, The Naked Gun and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ) in which somebody gets run over by a steam-roller. Anthony Balducci’s book The Funny Parts (2012) is a wonderful encyclopaedia of some of the most cherished comic routines and their evolution. The author not only highlights forgotten comedians who came up with routines that have been credited to more famous performers, he also references female artists such as Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968) and thus shows that comedy was never exclusively a man’s game. One ongoing competition revolves around the most outrageous and well-choreo‐ graphed ways of destroying precious objects. In honour of Chekhov’s gun, we might characterise this as ‘Chekhov’s precious vase’. If a rare and fragile object is introduced in a comedy, chances are this object will be no more at the end of the scene. From the earliest days of slapstick (see Chapter 2), the fun has never been in the outcome of the situation (the what) but in the inventiveness that goes into the destruction (the how). We are in no doubt what will happen when the world’s most expensive painting is looked after by Mr. Bean (Bean, 1997) or when two complete numbskulls are in the same room as the last living specimen of an endangered species (Dumb & Dumber). The question is just: how will the coup de grâce come about? (In these two cases, a sneeze and a popping champagne cork will do the trick.) The concept of Chekhov’s gun goes back to a letter written by Anton Chekhov in 1889. He argues that the playwright should only put a gun on stage if the gun is also fired at some point; otherwise, the gun will amount to a promise that is not kept. In a wider sense, Chekhov’s gun applies to all plot elements and devices that are introduced during the story’s first act and ear-marked for a subsequent payoff. At the beginning of his mission, James Bond is always given the exact gadgets that he will need at some point (a car with an ejector seat, tracking devices, diving equipment); in comedies, the functionality of objects is carefully laid out and explained to make sure that any malfunction will be properly appreciated. In Our Hospitality (1923), Buster Keaton is followed home by two assassins, but their guns never work when they fire. Comedy, we might conclude, is the only genre where it is not just acceptable but maybe even preferable if Chekhov’s gun does not go off. If we adopt Bourdieu’s argument, the quest for the most outrageous and surprising solution in comedy is an inherently male business. So what do women have to gain from partaking in these extremely serious and at the same time rather silly games? 202 Chapter 14 Fig. 14.3: A funny woman is caught in the act (Fleabag, 2019). Does it make sense for them to prove their credentials by playing the game, or should they refuse to play and thus run the risk of being thought of as humourless? Phoebe Waller-Bridge (1985-) finds a very elegant solution in one episode of her critically acclaimed series, Fleabag (S2E3). When Fleabag is told to look after a prestigious award statue but not to touch it (“It’s worth thousands! ”), we know where the scene is going, we just cannot be sure which unlikely chain of events will trigger the elaborate choreography of destruction. We might remember the fate of the glass pane in What’s up, Doc? , which dodges several attacks like an experienced boxer before it breaks into a thousand pieces, and speculate that Fleabag will go with a variation on the rule-of-three. Or we might suspect the influence of cartoonist W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944), who specialised in outrageously complicated contraptions that continue to be referenced in science-fiction comedies (Back to the Future, 1985). As it turns out, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s solution is far more elaborate and yet astonishingly simple. Once she is left alone with the valuable statue, Fleabag simply picks it up - and immediately drops it. Her trademark stare into the camera also communicates a successful meta-joke to the viewer: You knew where this was going, so we might as well cut to the chase. This stellar form of comic pragmatism will be appre‐ ciated by an attentive audience who believe they have seen it all. And it is entirely appropriate to conclude on that image, which shifts the responsibility back to us. Fleabag’s stare into the camera seems to formulate the question: “What now? ” Will the promise that I have cited at the beginning (“something for everyone”) be‐ come true in a wider sense? Will the field of comedy continue to evolve into a more inclusive playing field? I am confident that it will. But then again, it may be ill-advised to speculate about the future of a genre that is so firmly invested in the here and now. Tragedy tomorrow - comedy tonight! 203 Lessons from Medusa ● Women have been historically marginalised in the field of comedy. ● In spite of discrimination, various funny women throughout history managed to carve out an existence of their own. ● Female comics often reject traditional femininity scripts in favour of unruly behaviour and gross-out humour. ● Female comics are not automatically transgressive or feminist, but feminism has occasionally employed humour as a political weapon. ● The #MeToo movement has changed the comedy landscape, with female performers stepping up to change what used to be a male-dominated industry. FURTHER READING : Balke, Gregor (2020). Poop Feminism: Fäkalkomik als weibliche Selbstermächtigung. Bielefeld: transcript. 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Williams, Kenneth (1994). The Kenneth Williams Diaries. London: HarperCollins. Wycherley, William (1675/ 2005). “The Country Wife.” Four Great Restoration Comedies. New York: Dover, 1-85. 1.2 Films Airplane! (1980). Dir. Jim Abrahams et al. Amarcord (1973). Dir. Federico Fellini. American Pie (1999). Dir. Paul Weitz. And Now for Something Completely Different (1971). Dir. Ian MacNaughton. Animal House (1978). Dir. John Landis. The Apartment (1960). Dir. Billy Wilder. L’arroseur arrosé (1895). Dir. Louis Lumière. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Dir. Frank Capra. Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). Dir. Jay Roach. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999). Dir. Jay Roach. Back to the Future (1985). Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Bean (1997). Dir. Mel Smith. Big Business (1929). Dir. James W. Horne. The Big Lebowski (1998). Dir. Joel Coen. Blazing Saddles (1974). Dir. Mel Brooks. Boomerang (1992). Dir. Reginald Hudlin. Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006). Dir. Larry Charles. Brassed Off (1996). Dir. Mark Herman. Bridesmaids (2011). Dir. Paul Feig. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001). Dir. Sharon Maguire. Burn after Reading (2008). Dir. Joel Coen/ Ethan Coen. Cactus Flower (1969). Dir. Gene Saks. Carry On Camping (1969). Dir. Gerald Thomas. Carry On Cleo (1964). Dir. Gerald Thomas. Carry On Doctor (1967). Dir. Gerald Thomas. Carry On Up the Khyber (1968). Dir. Gerald Thomas. Cavalcade (1933). Dir. Frank Lloyd. Chariots of Fur (1994). Dir. Chuck Jones. Chimes at Midnight (1965). Dir. Orson Welles. Chi-Raq (2015). Dir. Spike Lee. 207 1. Primary texts Clerks (1994). Dir. Kevin Smith. The Cocoanuts (1929). Dir. Robert Florey/ Joseph Santley. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Dir. Woody Allen. Dr. Strangelove (1964). Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Duck Soup (1933). Dir. Leo McCarey. Dumb and Dumber (1994). Dir. Peter Farrelly. Easy Virtue (2008). Dir. Stephan Elliott. The Evil Dead (1981). Dir. Sam Raimi. Fargo (1995). Dir. Joel Coen. Fierce Creatures (1996). Dir. Fred Schepisi/ Robert Young. A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Dir. Charles Crichton. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Dir. Mike Newell. From Soup to Nuts (1928). Dir. E. Livingston Kennedy. The Full Monty (1997). Dir. Peter Cattaneo. Funny Girl (1968). Dir. William Wyler. The Gendarme Gets Married (1968). Dir. Jean Girault. Ghostbusters (2016). Dir. Paul Feig. The Goat (1921). Dir. Buster Keaton/ Malcolm St. Clair. The Graduate (1967). Dir. Mike Nichols. The Great Dictator (1940). Dir. Charlie Chaplin. The Great Race (1965). Dir. Blake Edwards. Groundhog Day (1993). Dir. Harold Ramis. The Hangover (2009). Dir. Todd Phillips. The Heartbreak Kid (1972). Dir. Elaine May. High Anxiety (1977). Dir. Mel Brooks. His Girl Friday (1940). Dir. Howard Hawks. Home Alone (1990). Dir. Chris Columbus. Horse Feathers (1932). Dir. Norman Z. McLeod. Hot Fuzz (2007). Dir. Edgar Wright. I Give It a Year (2013). Dir. Dan Mazer. Irrational Man (2015). Dir. Woody Allen. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Dir. Stanley Kramer. Jabberwocky (1977). Dir. Terry Gilliam. Jackass Number Two (2006). Dir. Jeff Tremaine. Jaws (1975). Dir. Steven Spielberg. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Dir. Robert Hamer. The King of Comedy (1982). Dir. Martin Scorsese. The Ladykillers (1955). Dir. Alexander Mackendrick. Late Night (2019). Dir. Nisha Ganatra. Life of Brian (1979). Dir. Terry Jones. Limelight (1952). Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Love and Death (1975). Dir. Woody Allen. 208 Works cited Love Crazy (1941). Dir. Jack Conway. Lover Come Back (1961). Dir. Delbert Mann. Made in Dagenham (2010). Dir. Nigel Cole. Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Dir. The Beatles. The Mask (1994). Dir. Chuck Russell. The Meaning of Life (1983). Dir. Terry Jones. Me, Myself and Irene (2000). Dir. Peter Farrelly/ Bobby Farrelly. Midsommar (2019). Dir. Ari Aster. Mighty Aphrodite (1995). Dir. Woody Allen. Modern Times (1936). Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953). Dir. Jacques Tati. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Dir. Terry Gilliam/ Terry Jones. Movie 43 (2013). Dir. Peter Farrelly et al. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). Dir. Chris Columbus. The Music Box (1932). Dir. James Parrott. The Naked Gun (1988). Dir. David Zucker. A New Leaf (1971). Dir. Elaine May. A Night at the Opera (1935). Dir. Sam Wood. A Night in Casablanca (1946). Dir. Archie Mayo. Ninotchka (1939). Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. No Country for Old Men (2007). Dir. Joel Coen/ Ethan Coen. Noises Off (1992). Dir. Peter Bogdanovich. North by Northwest (1959). Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. The Odd Couple (1968). Dir. Gene Saks. Office Space (1999). Dir. Mike Judge. One A.M. (1916). Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Our Hospitality (1923). Dir. Buster Keaton/ John G. Blystone. Passport to Pimlico (1949). Dir. Henry Cornelius. The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006). Dir. Sophie Fiennes. The Philadelphia Story (1940). Dir. George Cukor. Pillow Talk (1959). Dir. Michael Gordon. Psycho (1960). Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Pulp Fiction (1994). Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Dir. Steven Spielberg. Rat Race (2001). Dir. Jerry Zucker. Safety Last! (1923). Dir. Fred C. Newmeyer/ Sam Taylor. Send Me No Flowers (1964). Dir. Norman Jewison. Shallow Hal (2001). Dir. Peter Farrelly/ Bobby Farrelly. Shaun of the Dead (2004). Dir. Edgar Wright. Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Dir. Gene Kelly/ Stanley Donen. Skin Deep (1989). Dir. Blake Edwards. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). Dir. Ingmar Bergman. 209 1. Primary texts Some Like It Hot (1959). Dir. Billy Wilder. Spaceballs (1987). Dir. Mel Brooks. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Dir. Lewis Gilbert. Swimming with Men (2018). Dir. Oliver Parker. There’s Something about Mary (1998). Dir. Peter Farrelly/ Bobby Farrelly. The Thin Man (1934). Dir. W.S. Van Dyke. Tootsie (1982). Dir. Sydney Pollack. Top Secret! (1984). Dir. Jim Abrahams et al. Waking Ned (1998). Dir. 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Fig. 3.2 The quintessential bittersweet ending (The Apartment, 1960). The Apartment (1960). Dir. Billy Wilder. DVD. MGM, 2001. Fig. 4.1 Nick and Nora Charles love a cocktail - and each other (The Thin Man, 1934). The Thin Man (1934). Dir. W.S. Van Dyke. DVD. Warner, 2013. Fig. 4.2 Dan Harmon’s story circle. Hannah Taylor (2021). “What Is Dan Harmon’s Story Circle? And How to Use It (with Examples).” Industrial Scripts, https: / / industrialscripts.com/ dan-harmons-story-circle/ . Fig. 4.3 Blossoming spring frames the roman‐ tic tableau (You’ve Got Mail, 1998). You’ve Got Mail (1998). Dir. Nora Eph‐ ron. DVD. Warner, 1999. Fig. 5.1 John Belushi as personified carnival (Animal House, 1978). Animal House (1978). Dir. John Landis. DVD. Universal, 2004. Fig. 5.2 Mrs. Doubtfire has some issues (Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993). Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). Dir. Chris Co‐ lumbus. DVD. Disney, 2001. Fig. 6.1 Ryan O’Neal confides in the audience (What’s up, Doc? , 1972). What’s up, Doc? (1972). Dir. Peter Bog‐ danovich. DVD. Warner, 2000. Fig. 6.2 There’s something queer about this rake (Lover Come Back, 1961). Lover Come Back (1961). Dir. Delbert Mann. DVD. Universal, 2005. Fig. 7.1 The blocking figure as comic anti-hero (The Gendarme Gets Mar‐ ried, 1965). Die Gendarmen-DVD-Box. Dir. Jean Girault. DVD. Leonine, 2019. Fig. 7.2 The honeymooners are about to be ship-wrecked (Cavalcade, 1933). Cavalcade (1933). Dir. Frank Lloyd. DVD. Cinema International, 2011. Fig. 8.1 Existentialism is a hoot (Animaniacs, 1994). Animaniacs (Season 1). Created by Tom Ruegger. DVD. Warner, 2018. Fig. 8.2 The Punishment of Sisyphus (Titian, c. 1549). Wikimedia Commons Fig. 8.3 It’s an uphill struggle for Laurel & Hardy (The Music Box, 1932). The Music Box (1932). Dir. James Par‐ rott. DVD. Universal, 2008. Fig. 9.1 Tournament between Lent and Carni‐ val (Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1560). Wikimedia Commons Fig. 9.2 The end of Mr. Creosote (The Meaning of Life, 1982). The Meaning of Life (1983). Dir. Terry Jones. DVD. Sony, 2000. Fig. 9.3 The joke as a lethal weapon (And Now for Something Completely Different, 1971). And Now for Something Completely Different (1971). Dir. Ian MacNaugh‐ ton. DVD. Sony, 2003. Fig. 10.1 United in laughter (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963). It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Dir. Stanley Kramer. Fig. 10.2 The banquet facilitates the happy end‐ ing (Passport to Pimlico, 1949). Passport to Pimlico (1949). Dir. Henry Cornelius. DVD. Warner, 2004. Fig. 10.3 Learning choreography through foot‐ ball (The Full Monty, 1997). The Full Monty (1997). Dir. Peter Cat‐ taneo. DVD. Disney, 2019. Fig. 11.1 Not a nudist colony, after all (Carry On Camping, 1969). Carry On Camping (1969). Dir. Gerald Thomas. DVD. ITV, 2003. Fig. 11.2 Farce meets existential despair (Noises Off, 1992). Noises Off (1992). Dir. Peter Bogdano‐ vich. DVD. Disney, 2004. Fig. 12.1 Edward Lear’s illustration for The Old Person of Nice (1872). Edward Lear (1872/ 1994). “More Non‐ sense.” Complete Nonsense. Ware: Wordsworth, 77-134. 114. Fig. 12.2 Three men and a woman, joined in holy matrimony (Horse Feathers, 1932). Horse Feathers (1932). Dir. Norman Z. McLeod. DVD. Universal, 2005. Fig. 12.3 Lt. Drebin lays down the law (The Naked Gun, 1988). The Naked Gun (1988). Dir. David Zucker. DVD. Paramount, 2009. Fig. 13.1 David Brent knows about the healing power of laughter (The Office, 2002). The Office (Series 2). Created by Ricky Gervais/ Stephen Merchant. DVD. 2Entertain, 2005. Fig. 13.2 Awkward silence permeates the end‐ ing of The Graduate (1967). The Graduate (1967). Dir. Mike Nich‐ ols. DVD. Studiocanal, 2017. Fig. 13.3 Larry David’s reluctant vigilantism (poster for Curb Your Enthusiasm, 2017). RottenTomatoes Fig. 14.1 Garbo laughs - on her own terms (Ninotchka, 1939). Ninotchka (1939). Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. DVD. Warner, 2005. Fig. 14.2 It’s a dog-eat-dog world (A New Leaf, 1971). A New Leaf (1971). Dir. Elaine May. DVD. Eureka, 2015. 223 List of Illustrations Fig. 14.3 A funny woman is caught in the act (Fleabag, 2021). Fleabag (Series 2). Created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. DVD. Spirit, 2019. 224 List of Illustrations Index 30 Rock 102, 133, 197, 210 The 39 Steps 40 abject 120, 125-129 → scatological humour abstinence 57, 70 absurd 30 abuse 28, 96, 113, 164, 169, 176, 187, 193, 195 Academy Award 27, 35f., 39, 63, 94, 100, 109, 121, 130, 135, 139, 142, 196, 199 → Golden Globe adaptation 19, 23, 25, 35, 45, 51, 93f., 100f., 116, 123, 128, 142, 148, 151, 163, 169f. adolescence 24 → adulthood, age, rites of passage adultery 28, 52, 81f., 150, 152 → bedroom farce, cuckold, marriage adulthood 25, 54, 59, 71, 91, 103, 152 → adolescence, age affect 13, 37, 134, 182, 189, 191 age 59, 62, 75, 84, 94ff., 102, 112, 114, 116, 143f., 150f., 155ff., 160, 164, 171, 180, 186, 197ff. → adolescence, adulthood, death agelast, agelaste 183, 194, 196 agency 74, 161ff. Airplane! 112, 173f. ALF 21, 44, 64, 102 Algonquin Round Table 81 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 168 → Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There Allen, Woody 33, 106, 110, 149, 151, 179, 185, 199 → bathos, Crisis in Six Scenes, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Irrational Man, Love and Death, Mighty Aphrodite, Take the Money and Run alter ego 44, 69, 76ff., 85, 99, 197 → cross-dressing, identity, masquerade, persona alternative comedy 122, 130 Amarcord 59 American Pie 59, 85 Amis, Kingsley → Lucky Jim Amphitruo 42 anagnorisis → tragedy anarchy 62, 65, 68, 70, 141, 160, 167, 169, 171, 178 → carnival, release theory And Now for Something Completely Differ‐ ent 124, 126f. Animal House 70, 142 Animaniacs 64, 105 animation 21, 30, 64, 105, 124, 147, 169 → Animaniacs, Terry Gilliam, Looney Tunes antiquity 91 The Apartment 45 Arden → Forest of Arden Aristophanes 15, 19-23, 25f., 127 → The Clouds, Lysistrata, Old Comedy Aristotle 30, 34, 36-39, 41, 45, 47, 152f. → Poetics, tragedy L’arroseur arrosé 39 Arsenic and Old Lace 53, 148 aside 22, 27, 62, 83, 88, 95, 102 As You Like It 43, 50, 56ff., 60, 63f., 71, 73, 76, 78, 94, 110, 136 Atkinson, Rowan 103 Attic Comedy → Old Comedy Austen, Jane 103 → comedy of manners Austin Powers 89, 188 → James Bond automaton 107, 113, 126, 158, 166, 174 awards → Academy Award, Golden Globe, Nobel Prize, Tony Award awkwardness 55, 101, 114, 117, 133, 135, 157, 179, 181-186, 188-191 Ayckbourn, Alan 160 Back to the Future 203 Bakhtin, Mikhail 67f., 119ff., 125f. → carnival, grotesque Balcon, Michael 137, 141 → Ealing banter 14, 24, 44, 53f., 80, 113f., 117 Barr, Roseanne 198 → Roseanne bathos 19, 22, 49f., 62f., 80, 82, 110, 113, 176 The Battle of the Century 29 bawdy humour 22 → double entendre Bean → Mr. Bean Bean, Richard 148 Beatles 123, 164, 169f., 179 → John Lennon The Beauty Queen of Leenane 128, 130, 165 Beckett, Samuel 28, 105, 111-114, 116f., 133, 163, 184, 201 → Endgame, Theatre of the Absurd, Wait‐ ing for Godot bedroom farce 82, 86, 152-157, 161f., 164, 166 → adultery, Carry On films, Ray Cooney, Noises Off Behn, Aphra 16, 86ff., 196, 200 → funny women, The Rover Bergman, Ingmar 161 Bergson, Henri 22, 107, 126, 158f., 166 Betrayal 117 Big Business 154 The Big Lebowski 128, 161 The Birdcage 199 The Birthday Party 114, 116 Blackadder 29, 44, 96, 103, 122 black humour 115, 127, 138, 160 → death Blazing Saddles 17, 35, 176f. Blithe Spirit 97 blocking figure 92f. → patriarchy blood 120, 126-129, 200 → abject The Boat That Rocked 142 Boccaccio, Giovanni 121 → grotesque bodily functions 198 Bond, James 24, 89, 202 → double entendre, Austin Powers, telling name Boomerang 86 Booth, Connie → Fawlty Towers Borat 186, 188f. Bourdieu, Pierre 201f. Brassed Off 142f. Brent, David → The Office Brexit 141 Bridesmaids 40, 120, 187, 198 Bridget Jones 89, 187 Broadway 54, 59, 93, 123, 150, 196, 199 → farce, West End The Broken Jug 94 Brooks, Mel 17, 34, 176f., 188 → Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, Space‐ balls, spoof The Brothers Menaechmus 28, 48 Bruce, Lenny 63, 184 Bruegel, Peter 68, 119f., 125 → grotesque, carnival Buddy Buddy 45 Bunny, Bugs → Looney Tunes Buress, Hannibal 65 burlesque 29 → chase, silent film Burn after Reading 161 Burton, Tim 128 → grotesque Butler, Judith 72, 75 → cross-dressing, queer 226 Index C.K., Louis 64, 189 Cactus Flower 59 Campbell, Joseph → monomyth Camus, Albert 105, 107f. → existentialism, Sisyphus Carlin, George 33, 64 carnival 12, 59, 67-71, 78, 87, 106, 112, 119f., 186 → Mikhail Bakhtin, fertility Carrey, Jim 69, 121 → Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, slapstick Carroll, Lewis 17, 121, 167-171, 175 → Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Jab‐ berwocky, nonsense, Through the Look‐ ing-Glass and What Alice Found There Carry On Camping 156 Carry On films 111, 155ff., 160, 200 → bedroom farce, double entendre, pun cartoon → animation catchphrase 112, 140 catharsis 37, 92, 150, 153, 189 → tragedy Cavalcade 99f. Chaplin, Charlie 29f., 35, 40, 77, 84, 107, 109, 113f., 116, 147, 172, 196 → The Circus, The Great Dictator, Lime‐ light, Modern Times, One A.M., slapstick Chapman, Graham 122f., 125 → Monty Python chase 14, 29, 40, 111, 148, 169, 203 → slapstick cheating → adultery Chekhov, Anton 184, 202 → Chekhov’s Gun Chekhov’s Gun 202 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 34, 170 Chi-Raq 23 → Lysistrata chorus 19, 21, 23, 25, 133, 149 → Old Comedy, tragedy church 36, 60, 67, 110, 123 → religion circular logic → tautology The Circus 29 Cixous, Hélène 198 → Medusa class 37, 68, 70, 78, 82, 94, 96, 101-104, 112, 152f., 180, 186 → middle class, working class Cleese, John 122ff., 126, 139, 157 → Fawlty Towers, Fierce Creatures, A Fish Called Wanda, Monty Python Clerks 115 The Clouds 20ff., 26 clown 12, 14f., 22, 29, 50, 58, 62, 94, 110, 112ff., 116f., 125, 171, 174, 186, 193 → fool, evil clown Coen brothers 128, 138, 161 → The Big Lebowski, Burn after Reading, farce, Fargo, grotesque, No Country for Old Men Cohen, Sacha Baron 180, 186ff. → Borat The Comedy of Errors 47f., 50, 56, 151f., 158 comedy of manners 81f., 93-97, 101-104, 114 → Noël Coward, Molière, Richard Brins‐ ley Sheridan, Oscar Wilde comedy of menace 114 comic mode 13, 16, 29, 130 comic plot 39, 44, 62, 78, 89, 91, 98, 143, 147, 149, 166 communality 23, 60, 122, 128, 133ff., 138, 144 → sociology community 62, 141, 144 → communality, community of laughter, sociology community of laughter 133-137, 144, 179, 181, 190f. → communality, Ealing, sociology complicity 83, 97, 101, 128 confusion 12, 20, 29, 48, 52, 85, 99, 113, 151f., 161, 164 Congreve, William 92 Coogan, Steve → Alan Partridge 227 Index Cooney, Ray 155, 158, 164 → bedroom farce, farce Cornford, Francis Macdonald 19, 22 corpse 82, 125, 165 → abject, grotesque Cosby, Bill 65 The Cosby Show 103 costume 41, 68, 70ff., 163 → cross-dressing, masquerade The Country Wife 82f., 85 courtesan → prostitute courtship 55, 57, 60f., 76, 80, 86 → marriage, marriage plot, romantic comedy coward 25 → miles gloriosus Coward, Noël 97, 99-103 → dandy, Hay Fever, Present Laughter, Cavalcade, Blithe Spirit, Easy Virtue Coyote, Wile E. → Looney Tunes Crichton, Charles 139 → Ealing Crimes and Misdemeanors 33 Crisis in Six Scenes 151 cross-dressing 71-74, 76, 78, 143 → alter ego, costume, masquerade, queer Crystal, Billy 110 cuckold 80-83, 85 → adultery, marriage, Restoration com‐ edy Curb Your Enthusiasm 184, 190f. Curtis, Richard → Blackadder, The Boat that Rocked, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral dad joke 24, 169 dandy 94, 97f. → queer, Oscar Wilde, wit Daniels, Stan → Stan Daniels turn David, Larry 184, 187f., 191 → cringe, Curb Your Enthusiasm David vs. Goliath 137, 197 Davis, Julia 180, 182, 186, 188, 200 → Nighty-Night Day, Doris 52, 84f. → Lover Come Back, Pillow Talk, Rock Hudson, romantic comedy Dead Parrot sketch 124 death 15, 19, 28, 33, 37, 39, 45, 74, 108, 110f., 121, 123, 126, 142, 147, 153, 163, 172, 175 → Problem Play, tragedy de Funès, Louis 92f., 165 → blocking figure, farce Dench, Judi 97 Despicable Me 28 Detectorists 141 devil 36, 38, 62, 82, 125 → religion Dickens, Charles 34 Diderot, Denis 28, 91 Dionysia 19, 31, 70 → fertility, Old Comedy, spring ‘Directed by Robert B. Weide’ 191 → Robert B. Weide disability 121, 135, 187f., 190 discrepant awareness 52f. → dramatic irony Dog Sees God 42 → Peanuts double entendre 19, 22ff., 31, 50, 54, 63, 82, 87, 89, 148, 155f., 158, 160, 165f. double standard → hypocrisy down-to-earth → bathos Dr. Strangelove 38 dramatic irony 53, 82, 100 drawing-room comedy 97 → comedy of manners, Noël Coward Dryden, John 81, 150 Duck Soup 64, 112, 123, 171f. → military, satire Dumb and Dumber 121 The Dumb Waiter 115 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich 38 → tragicomedy 228 Index Dyer, Richard 85 → queer Eagleton, Terry 94, 99 Ealing 137-142, 144 → Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykill‐ ers, nostalgia, Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore! Easy Virtue 101 Ebert, Roger 44, 52, 174 eccentric 15, 61, 92f., 100, 141 Eco, Umberto → The Name of the Rose Educating Rita 94 Edwards, Blake 44, 84, 86, 201 → The Great Race, Skin Deep Elizabethan theatre 48f., 73 → Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare Elton, Ben 122 → alternative comedy, Blackadder embarrassment 16, 48, 100, 120, 155, 157, 182f., 186, 191 Endgame 28, 111 Ephron, Nora 104 epigram 98 → Oscar Wilde, wit Etherege, George → The Man of Mode Every Man in His Humour 91 evil clown 171 The Evil Dead 124f. exaggeration 33, 130 existentialism 15, 105ff., 110, 114, 163 → Theatre of the Absurd, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre Falstaff 62 → carnival, fool, William Shakespeare farce 9, 13, 28, 38f., 41, 45, 48, 81f., 130, 147- 153, 155, 157-166 → bedroom farce, Ray Cooney, Noises Off, Joe Orton, William Shakespeare, twins Fargo 128 Farquhar, George 84 Farrelly brothers 121f. → Dumb and Dumber, scatological hu‐ mour, Shallow Hall, There’s Something about Mary fart → scatological humour father → patriarchy Fawlty Towers 17, 29, 126, 153, 157, 159, 186 Fellini, Federico 59, 121 femininity 24, 39, 41, 71-76, 79f., 83, 86f., 89, 120f., 144, 156, 160, 186, 189, 193ff., 197-202, 204 → funny women, masculinity Ferrell, Will 35, 176 fertility 19, 22, 59, 68, 70 → phallus, procreation Fey, Tina → 30 Rock Fields, W.C. 171 Fierce Creatures 157 The Finishing Touch 29 A Fish Called Wanda 14, 27, 109, 139, 157, 202 flat vs. round characters 34 Fleabag 83, 197, 203 Fo, Dario 35 folklore 19, 82 fool 16, 21, 35, 50, 58, 62-65, 71, 82, 110f., 113, 183, 193, 198 Forest of Arden 57f., 63, 69, 76, 136, 139, 167 → As You Like It, Green World, William Shakespeare Forster, E.M. → flat vs. round characters The Fortune Cookie 45 fourth wall 62, 64, 83 → aside Four Weddings and a Funeral 44, 60 Frayn, Michael 9, 151, 162f. → Look Look, Noises Off, Skios freedom 28, 62, 65, 69, 92, 106 → anarchy, carnival Freud, Sigmund 69, 106, 148, 153f., 157, 160, 169ff., 194 → Oedipus, psychoanalysis, release theory 229 Index Freudian slip 157 → double entendre From Soup to Nuts 109 The Front Page 53 → His Girl Friday Fry, Stephen 16, 184 The Full Monty 142ff. Funny Girl 196 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 11, 27 funny women 16, 54, 193-201, 204 Gadsby, Hannah 65, 193 gag 14ff., 18, 29f., 40, 44, 84, 142, 173f., 178, 201 → running gag, set-piece, sight gag, splurch Garbo, Greta → Ninotchka Garvin, Anita 109 → Laurel & Hardy gender → Judith Butler, femininity, mascu‐ linity, queer The General 29 genre 11ff., 18f., 34ff., 38f., 41, 43, 48, 65, 67, 70, 74, 76, 86, 91, 94, 104, 109, 130, 138, 140, 144, 147-152, 155, 157f., 160, 162, 167, 174, 176f., 184, 193, 202f. Gervais, Ricky 65, 179, 181 → The Office Ghostbusters 194 Gilliam, Terry 121-125, 128, 169 → animation, Jabberwocky, Monty Py‐ thon Glaser, Nikki 96 The Goat 14 Goffman, Erving 182 Golden Globe 35, 65 → Academy Award The Graduate 60, 184f., 199 grand guignol 128, 165 → grotesque, violence Grant, Cary 41, 53, 74, 148, 171 → Arsenic and Old Lace, North by North‐ west, romantic comedy, screwball com‐ edy gravedigger 62, 64, 110 → fool, Hamlet The Great Dictator 30, 84 The Great Race 45, 201 Greek theatre → Old Comedy Green World 56-60, 65, 70, 95, 135f., 140, 161 → Forest of Arden, William Shakespeare grotesque 21, 68, 70, 74, 119-130, 170, 188 → Mikhail Bakhtin, Monty Python, Fran‐ çois Rabelais Guest, Christopher 179 Habermas, Jürgen 93, 95 Hamlet 43, 47, 51, 56, 62, 64, 92, 110f., 151, 163 → Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Hancock, Tony 200 Hangmen 129 The Hangover 36, 71, 160 happy ending 14, 27f., 43f., 51, 60f., 76, 141, 143, 163f., 183f. → courtship, marriage plot Hardy, Oliver → Laurel & Hardy Hay Fever 100f. The Heartbreak Kid 184 Hecht, Ben → The Front Page Hegel, G.W.F. → master, slave Hepburn, Katharine 54, 197 → Bringing up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, romantic comedy, screwball com‐ edy, Spencer Tracy, Woman of the Year heteronormativity 55, 85, 155, 198 → marriage plot, procreation heterosexuality 55, 74, 76, 85f., 197 His Girl Friday 53 → The Front Page Hitchcock, Alfred 40, 101, 139, 165 → The Lady Vanishes, North by Northwest, Psycho, suspense, The 39 Steps 230 Index Hitler, Adolf 84, 126f. → World War II Hobbes, Thomas → superiority theory Hoffman, Dustin 60, 76, 185f. → The Graduate, Tootsie Home Alone 25, 71, 137, 160 The Homecoming 114 homophobia → homosexuality, misogyny homosexuality 55, 64, 85, 97, 99, 144, 164 → homophobia, queer, sexuality horror 12, 39, 60, 71, 111, 124, 127, 130, 137f., 140 → abject, grotesque Horse Feathers 123, 171f. Hot Fuzz 140, 175 Hudson, Rock 52, 84f. → Doris Day, Lover Come Back, Pillow Talk, rake, romantic comedy humiliation 22, 33, 37, 42f., 85, 94, 104, 147, 153, 163, 180, 183f., 201 → cringe, Schadenfreude humoral pathology 15, 91 → Every Man in His Humour humour → humoral pathology hypocrisy 24, 84, 88, 92, 94, 98, 121, 148, 153, 165, 188, 196ff. Iannucci, Armando 96 → In the Loop, The Thick of It, Veep Ibsen, Henrik 43, 98 An Ideal Husband 98 identity 23, 28, 41, 68f., 72, 99, 126, 158, 193 → alter ego, masquerade Idle, Eric 122f., 174, 179 → Monty Python I Give It a Year 60, 187 The Importance of Being Earnest 40, 97ff. incongruity theory 17f., 107, 183 → release theory, superiority theory innuendo 22 Inside No. 9 157 insult → invective In the Loop 96 invective 22, 42, 53, 81, 96, 101, 104ff., 113, 135, 184 → banter inversion 22, 62, 65, 67, 72, 140, 158, 163, 166, 178, 195 → parody irony 24, 36, 52, 200f. → dramatic irony Irrational Man 106 It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 40, 136 Jabberwocky 121, 125, 169 Jackass 14, 189 Jacques, Hattie 200 → Carry On films Jakobson, Roman → poetic function James, Sidney 156, 160 → Carry On films Jaws 201 Jeeves & Wooster 28, 61, 95 jester → fool Johnson, Terry 160f. joke 9, 12, 14, 17, 21-24, 27, 30, 33, 38f., 48, 50, 56, 62f., 65, 68, 70, 73, 76, 84, 88, 95, 99, 106, 111f., 125ff., 133-136, 144, 151, 154, 157f., 166, 168ff., 172-176, 178, 180, 188, 191, 193-196, 199ff. → punchline Jones, Indiana 108, 111, 139 Jonson, Ben 47, 91 → Every Man in His Humour Kael, Pauline 54, 176 Kafka, Franz 117 Kahn, Madeline 35 Kaling, Mindy 77, 133, 197 → Late Night Kaufman, Andy 184 Keaton, Buster 14, 29, 35, 41, 112, 114, 197, 202 → The General, The Goat, Our Hospitality, silent film, slapstick 231 Index Kesselring, Joseph → Arsenic and Old Lace Keystone 29 → Mack Sennett, slapstick Kierkegaard, Søren 106 Kimmel, Michael 74 → masculinity Kind Hearts and Coronets 138 King Lear 52, 62, 110 The King of Comedy 186 Kleist, Heinrich von → The Broken Jug Koestler, Arthur 107, 169 The Ladykillers 138 The Lady Vanishes 40 Laqueur, Thomas 72 Late Night 133, 197 laughter → theories of laughter Laurel, Stan → Laurel & Hardy Laurel & Hardy 21, 29, 109f., 112, 116, 152, 154, 197, 201 → The Battle of the Century, Big Business, The Finishing Touch, From Soup to Nuts, slapstick The League of Gentlemen 140, 157 Lear, Edward 167f. → limerick, nonsense Lemmon, Jack 44f. → The Apartment, Walter Matthau, The Odd Couple, Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder Lennon, John 169f. → Beatles Lévi-Strauss, Claude 60f. Lewis, Jerry 30, 186, 195 → slapstick libido 60, 69, 106, 148 → Sigmund Freud, sexuality The Lieutenant of Inishmore 129 Life of Brian 123ff., 129, 137 Limelight 113f. limerick 168 Little Britain 130 A Little Night Music 161 Lloyd, Harold 29, 162, 201 → Safety Last! Loki → The Mask The Lonely Island 179 Look Look 163 Looney Tunes 16, 21, 83 Loot 165f. Lothario → playboy Louis-Dreyfus, Julia 96 → Seinfeld, Veep Love’s Labour’s Lost 50, 57 Love Actually 9, 44, 186 Love and Death 110 Lover Come Back 85f. Loy, Myrna 52, 54 → William Powell, screwball comedy, The Thin Man Lubitsch, Ernst 54, 195 → Ninotchka Lucky Jim 138 Lumière, Louis → L’arroseur arrosé Lysistrata 23ff., 201 → Chi-Raq Mabley, Jackie “Moms” 196 Macbeth 52, 73f., 110f. Made in Dagenham 142 madness 41, 52, 62, 67, 101, 148, 168, 171 → fool malice 30f., 33, 150, 153, 168, 183, 201 → Schadenfreude, superiority theory Malvolio 33f., 43, 73, 85, 96, 136, 183, 186 → cringe, humiliation, Twelfth Night The Man of Mode 82 marriage 14, 27, 43, 52, 54, 59ff., 65, 82f., 86, 88, 101, 117, 148, 153, 155ff., 176, 197 → marriage plot marriage plot 27, 61, 65, 112, 198 → courtship, marriage, romantic comedy Married … with Children 102 Martin, Steve 112 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel 133, 198f. 232 Index Marx, Chico 64, 171f. → Marx Brothers Marx, Groucho 16, 64, 69, 107, 112, 171ff., 181 → Marx Brothers Marx, Harpo 81, 112, 171ff. → Marx Brothers Marx Brothers 123, 171ff., 178, 181, 197 → anarchy, Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera, A Night in Casablanca, nonsense masculinity 25, 27, 67, 69, 71-76, 80, 85, 87, 102, 120, 129f., 143f., 176, 186, 193-196, 198- 202, 204 → femininity, queer The Mask 69 masquerade 19, 68-71, 73f., 76ff., 99, 135 → alter ego, costume, cross-dressing master 25, 28f., 36, 110, 113, 168 → slave Matthau, Walter 45, 59, 201 → Cactus Flower, A New Leaf, The Odd Couple McDonagh, Martin 115, 128ff., 165 → The Beauty Queen of Leenane, black humour, farce, grotesque, Hangmen, The Lieutenant of Inishmore McKinnon, Kate 194 The Meaning of Life 125f. mechanical → automaton medieval period → Middle Ages Medusa 193, 198 melancholic 63f., 91f., 110 melodrama 29, 101, 114, 128, 134, 196 → affect, tragicomedy Menander 25 → New Comedy, Plautus Merchant, Stephen 179ff. → The Office The Merchant of Venice 43, 50, 55f., 61, 71 Merman, Ethel 136 → funny women Merrie England 138, 140 → nostalgia meta-comedy 133, 203 Middle Ages 35f., 38, 67f., 74, 81, 93, 121, 134, 176 middle class 80, 95, 97, 102f., 152f., 164 → working class Midsommar 60 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 47f., 50f., 56ff., 80 Mighty Aphrodite 149 miles gloriosus 24, 27f. → military, satire military 24, 44, 126, 142, 200ff. → masculinity, satire, World War I, World War II The Miser 91, 93 misogyny 41, 43, 76, 84, 88, 157, 186f., 190, 193, 197, 200 mockumentary 179ff., 187 → The Office, satire, Take the Money and Run mode → comic mode Modern Family 103 Modern Times 30, 40, 107 Molière 91, 93 → The Miser monogamy 84, 152, 155 → marriage, romantic comedy monomyth 56 Monroe, Marilyn 41, 77, 82, 160, 194 → funny women, Some Like It Hot Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday 15 Monty Python 98, 122-127, 130, 137, 164, 169, 174, 179 → And Now for Something Completely Dif‐ ferent, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, grotesque, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Michael Palin Monty Python’s Flying Circus 98, 157, 169, 173 233 Index Monty Python’s Life of Brian → Life of Brian Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life → The Meaning of Life Monty Python and the Holy Grail 123, 176 → Middle Ages, Monty Python morality 36, 80, 84, 97, 128, 150, 165, 200 mortality → death Mr. Bean 202 Mrs. Doubtfire 75f., 78 Mrs. Warren’s Profession 43 Much Ado about Nothing 47, 50, 52f., 72 Müller, Heiner 127 Murphy, Eddie 16, 86, 104 → Boomerang Murray, Bill 194 My Fair Lady 94, 139 → Pygmalion The Myth of Sisyphus → Sisyphus The Naked Gun 16, 173f., 202 → Police Squad! The Name of the Rose 31, 36 National Lampoon 173 New Comedy 20, 24-27 → Plautus, Terence Nichols, Mike 112, 184f., 198f. → The Birdcage, The Graduate, Nichols & May Nichols & May → Elaine May, Mike Nichols Nielsen, Leslie 169, 173f. → The Naked Gun, spoof, Police Squad! , Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker Nietzsche, Friedrich 27, 105f., 112 A Night at the Opera 107, 123 A Night in Casablanca 172 Nighty-Night 182, 188, 200 Ninotchka 195f. Nobel Prize 35, 94 No Country for Old Men 161 Noises Off 162f. nonsense 16f., 99, 109, 113, 123, 133, 167-171, 178 Normand, Mabel 196 North by Northwest 41 nostalgia 128, 137f., 140, 155, 157, 195 → Ealing Notaro, Tig 64, 189, 198 The Odd Couple 45, 185 Oedipus 38, 42, 165 → Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis The Office 179ff., 183, 187f. Office Space 84 Old Comedy 19-22, 25f. → Aristophanes, Dionysia One A.M. 109 one-liner 14, 87f., 96, 102, 110, 127, 134, 171, 174, 197f. One Man, Two Guvnors 148 Orton, Joe 125, 163-166 → black humour, farce, Loot, satire, scan‐ dal, What the Butler Saw Oscar → Academy Award Our Hospitality 202 Palin, Michael 109, 122 → A Fish Called Wanda, Monty Python parasite 19, 25, 64, 176 → parody Parker, Dorothy 81 parody 13, 19, 123, 176f., 196 → inversion, satire, spoof Partridge, Alan 101, 180, 182, 186 Passport to Pimlico 140f. patriarchy 24, 56, 74, 86f., 100, 165, 201 pause 22, 101, 114f., 117, 128, 157, 184 → awkwardness Peanuts 42, 69 → Dog Sees God Pepys, Samuel 79f. peripeteia → tragedy persona 41, 51, 67, 69, 71, 73ff., 77, 85, 104, 109, 164, 171, 173, 185, 187, 189, 193, 197 → alter ego 234 Index phallus 21ff., 85, 121, 144, 180 picaresque 28, 69, 84, 194 pie fight 29, 202 → slapstick Pillow Talk 84f. Pinter, Harold 114-117, 128, 163, 184 → Betrayal, The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, The Homecoming, pause, Theatre of the Absurd Plato 30 → superiority theory Plautus 24f., 27f., 31, 42, 48, 62, 80, 91, 151 → Amphitruo, The Brothers Menaechmus, New Comedy, The Pot of Gold, The Swag‐ gering Soldier playboy 59, 80, 84, 201 → promiscuity, rake, sexuality The Play That Goes Wrong 163 plotting → comic plot poetic function 167 Poetics 30, 34, 36f., 41, 45, 152 → tragedy Police Academy 142 Police Squad! 173 → The Naked Gun political correctness 130, 187f., 190 postmodern 76, 83, 103, 130, 161f. The Pot of Gold 24 Powell, William 52, 54 → Myrna Loy, screwball comedy, The Thin Man prank 39, 43, 68, 96, 136, 142, 188f. Present Laughter 101 Problem Play 42f., 45, 50 → The Merchant of Venice, William Shake‐ speare, tragicomedy procreation 22f., 37, 41, 59, 153, 170 → fertility, marriage promiscuity 61, 83 → playboy, raunch-com, sexuality prostitute 49, 84, 88, 95, 149 Psycho 165 psychoanalysis 16, 69, 106, 134, 153ff., 170f. → Sigmund Freud, Oedipus, Slavoj Žižek psychology 17, 40, 135, 154, 157, 182, 193, 196 Pulp Fiction 115 pun 9, 16, 24, 62ff., 113f., 151, 155f., 158, 169, 172f., 175, 178 → dad joke punchline 12, 14, 21, 23, 39, 58, 77, 100f., 109f., 122f., 126, 142, 168, 178, 185, 191 → joke, sketch Pygmalion 94 → My Fair Lady queer 43, 51, 55, 76, 85, 97, 99, 170, 200 → cross-dressing, homosexuality Rabelais, François 67f., 119, 194, 198 → Mikhail Bakhtin, grotesque, carnival racism 86, 130, 186, 190 Raiders of the Lost Ark 108 Raimi, Sam → The Evil Dead raisonneur 28, 148 → farce rake 80-87, 89, 94 → raunch-com, Restoration, wit raunch-com 22, 79, 86, 89, 104, 121 → sexuality Reduced Shakespeare Company 51 release theory 17f., 68, 154, 166 → incongruity theory, superiority theory religion 31, 105f., 110, 123, 200 → church repartee → banter repetition 30, 72, 109, 111f., 115, 117, 158f., 166 → running gag Restoration comedy 80f., 83, 86-89, 93f. revenge → tit for tat Rickles, Don 96 rites of passage 67f. ritual 19, 22f., 25, 31, 55, 59, 67, 70, 86, 96, 103, 134, 136, 140, 193, 200 Rock, Chris 63 235 Index Roman theatre → New Comedy romantic comedy 13, 22, 53, 55, 60f., 64f., 80, 186, 195, 198 → courtship, marriage plot, screwball comedy, William Shakespeare Roseanne 198 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 163 → Hamlet Rothwell, Talbot 156 → Carry On films round character → flat vs. round characters The Rover 87f. Royal, Bert V. → Dog Sees God rule-of-three 12, 203 running gag 42, 102, 112, 124f. → repetition Rushdie, Salman 35 Safety Last! 201 Sartre, Jean-Paul 105f. → existentialism satire 16, 20, 22, 26, 31, 39, 49, 83f., 88f., 93ff., 104, 124, 129f., 155, 165, 172, 176, 179 Saturday Night Live 64, 194 scandal 94f., 125, 164 → satire scatological humour 17, 22f., 38, 42, 48, 59, 61, 70, 74, 86, 92, 95, 104, 113, 120f., 126, 129f., 151, 176, 198 → abject Schadenfreude 30f., 52, 91f., 122, 136, 150, 154, 181ff., 188f., 191, 201 → malice The School for Scandal 95f. Schwarzenegger, Arnold 75 → masculinity scorn → malice screwball comedy 54f. → romantic comedy Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky → queer Seinfeld 96, 103f., 116f., 133, 184 Sellers, Peter 126 → Blake Edwards, Dr. Strangelove Sennett, Mack 29, 56 → Charlie Chaplin, Keystone, slapstick seriality → sitcom servant → slave set-piece 14, 17, 40f., 85, 172, 174, 189, 198 → gag Sex and the City 86, 89, 104, 201 sex comedy → bedroom farce sexism → misogyny sexuality 14, 23f., 53, 72ff., 86, 88f., 128, 148, 153f., 157, 161, 187, 190, 198, 201 → double entendre, libido, phallus Shaffer, Peter 160 Shakespeare, William 9, 14, 20, 27, 29, 33, 42f., 45, 47f., 50-65, 67, 70-74, 76, 78ff., 82, 85f., 88, 93, 95f., 104, 110, 113, 117, 127, 136f., 141, 149, 151f., 156f., 161, 163, 168, 171, 183, 186 → As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Green World, Hamlet, King Lear, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Problem Play, romantic comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night Shallow Hal 122 Shaun of the Dead 71, 175 Shaw, George Bernard 43, 94, 149 → Mrs. Warren’s Profession, My Fair Lady, Pygmalion, You Never Can Tell Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 94f. → The School for Scandal sight gag 14f., 102, 108, 112, 172-175, 199 silent film 29, 54, 56, 101, 109, 116, 169, 196 → Charlie Chaplin, chase, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, slapstick Simon, Neil 45, 185 → Broadway, comedy of manners, The Heartbreak Kid, The Odd Couple The Simpsons 15, 127 Singin’ in the Rain 35, 53 236 Index Sisyphus 103, 107ff., 111, 116f. sitcom 12, 17, 25, 57, 96, 101-104, 116, 133f., 136, 144, 157, 179ff. → comedy of manners, seriality sketch 25, 29, 34, 56, 98, 102, 122-126, 130, 135, 164, 199 Skin Deep 86 slapstick 13f., 21f., 29ff., 45, 50, 54, 84, 109, 112, 114, 116f., 126, 136, 147, 154, 158, 164f., 169, 195, 202 → Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Mack Sennett, slave-whacking, violence slave 11, 25, 28f., 43, 61ff., 67f., 76, 82, 92, 96, 103, 113, 126, 148, 170, 172 → master, slave-whacking slave-whacking 28f., 31, 113 → slapstick, slave, violence Smith, Kevin → Clerks Smith, Maggie 97 Smith, Zadie 180 social contract 60, 171 sociology 72, 182, 189 Some Like It Hot 39, 41, 45, 74, 76f., 82, 147, 149 Sondheim, Stephen 11, 16, 27, 37, 128, 161 → A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd Spaceballs 177 Spencer, Herbert → release theory Spielberg, Steven 108, 139, 201 → Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark splurch 84 → gag spoof 51, 74, 163, 174, 176-179 → Mel Brooks, parody, Zucker-Abra‐ hams-Zucker spring 42, 44, 59f., 108, 114, 182 → winter Stallone, Sylvester 75, 93 → masculinity Stan Daniels turn 187 stand-up 22, 33, 64f., 88, 134, 155, 184, 189, 193, 195f., 198 → Lenny Bruce, Louis C.K., George Car‐ lin, Hannah Gadsby, Tig Notaro, Chris Rock Stoppard, Tom → Rosencrantz and Guilden‐ stern Are Dead Streisand, Barbra → Funny Girl, What's up, Doc? Sturges, Preston 30 superiority theory 17f., 30f., 154, 194 → incongruity theory, release theory suspense 39f., 45, 52, 114 → Alfred Hitchcock The Swaggering Soldier 27 Sweeney Todd 128, 130 → grand guignol, violence Take the Money and Run 179 The Taming of the Shrew 43, 47, 50, 56, 72 Tarantino, Quentin 115, 128 → Pulp Fiction Tashlin, Frank 30 → slapstick Tati, Jacques 15, 126, 197 → Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday tautology → circular logic telling name 85, 156 → double entendre Terence 25 → New Comedy, Plautus Thatcher, Margaret 142, 144 Theatre of the Absurd 30, 38, 103, 105-112, 114-117, 119, 128f., 135, 161, 167, 184 → Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter Theophrastus 25 theories of laughter → incongruity theory, norms, release theory, superiority theory There’s Something about Mary 187 Theweleit, Klaus 24 → masculinity, military, psychoanalysis The Thick of It 96 237 Index The Thin Man 54f. This Time with Alan Partridge 186 three → rule-of-three Three Stooges 30 → slapstick Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There 168 → Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tit for tat 12, 43, 127, 154 → slapstick Tomlin, Lily 193 Tony Award 148, 199 Tootsie 74, 76 Top Secret! 169, 174 tragedy 11, 19, 22, 33f., 37ff., 41ff., 45, 47, 79, 87, 92, 97f., 110f., 127, 143, 147, 149f., 153, 164, 184, 189ff., 203 → Aristotle, Poetics, Problem Play, tragi‐ comedy tragicomedy 42-45 → melodrama, Problem Play trickster 41, 51, 69, 181, 193, 198 Truffaut, François 139 Twelfth Night 33, 43, 47, 50, 56, 60ff., 67, 71, 73, 76, 96, 110, 136, 183 twins 51, 53, 84, 122, 151, 158 → The Comedy of Errors, farce, Twelfth Night, You Never Can Tell Ullman, Tracey 34 → sketch Veep 96, 197 verbal humour → banter, one-liner, pun vice 81f., 91, 149 → morality, virtue violence 21, 29, 113, 124, 128ff., 164 → grotesque, slapstick, slave-whacking virtue 29f., 36, 58, 61, 80f., 84, 95, 107, 110, 116, 124, 140, 142, 150f., 153, 164, 171, 181 → morality, vice visual humour → sight gag Waiting for Godot 105, 111-114, 116, 163 Waking Ned 142 → communality Waller-Bridge, Phoebe 83, 203 → Fleabag Weekend at Bernie’s 165 Weide, Robert B. → Curb Your Enthusiasm West, Mae 88, 104, 197 West End 99, 150, 155 → Broadway, farce What’s up, Doc? 40, 83, 203 What the Butler Saw 165 When Harry Met Sally … 53 Whisky Galore! 139, 141 Wilde, Oscar 40, 94, 97-100, 102 → dandy, An Ideal Husband, The Impor‐ tance of Being Earnest, queer, wit, A Woman of No Importance Wilder, Billy 16, 39, 44f., 54, 82, 147 → The Apartment, Buddy Buddy, The Fortune Cooke, Some Like It Hot Williams, Kenneth 111 → Carry On films Williams, Robin 75, 112 → The Birdcage, Mrs. Doubtfire Windsor, Barbara → Carry On films winter 42, 44, 59f., 182 → spring wit 14, 16, 20, 25, 28, 36, 44, 50f., 53-56, 62, 64f., 71f., 80ff., 87, 89, 92, 94f., 98f., 107, 110f., 114, 117, 134, 139, 147f., 150, 153, 165, 168, 171f., 181, 194, 196f., 199f. → comedy of manners, Restoration com‐ edy, Oscar Wilde Withnail and I 137 Wodehouse, P.G. → Jeeves & Wooster A Woman of No Importance 98 Wong, Ali 195, 197 Woolf, Virginia 86f. wordplay → pun working class 101, 142, 144 → middle class 238 Index World War I 44, 69, 99, 103 → military World War II 55, 97, 105, 110, 126, 138, 140ff., 161, 180, 202 → military Wright, Edgar 140, 175 → Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead Wycherley, William → The Country Wife Yorick 111 → Hamlet You Never Can Tell 149 YouTube 185, 195 ZAZ → Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker Žižek, Slavoj 171 → psychoanalysis Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker 173f., 176 → Airplane! , The Naked Gun, Leslie Niel‐ sen, Police Squad! , Top Secret! 239 Index BUCHTIPP Dirk Siepmann, John D. Gallagher, Mike Hannay, Lachlan Mackenzie Writing in English: A Guide for Advanced Learners 3., vollständig neu bearbeitete Auflage 2022, 526 Seiten €[D] 29,90 ISBN 978-3-8252-5658-6 eISBN 978-3-8385-5658-1 This book offers practical advice and guidance to German-speaking undergraduates and academics who aspire to write in English. It also provides valuable assistance to editors, examiners and teachers who conduct English courses for intermediate or advanced students. It consists of four modules and is rounded off with a subject index and a glossary. Making extensive use of authentic texts, the authors adopt a contrastive approach and focus on the major problems encountered by Germans writing in English. This second edition has been revised, updated and expanded to include, among other things, a new section on coordination and listing as well as new lexico-grammatical material that writers can put to immediate use and benefit. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (0)7071 97 97 0 \ Fax +49 (0)7071 97 97 11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de ISBN 978-3-8233-8533-2 This book provides readers with a detailed and accessible introduction to the genre of comedy. It chronicles the history of comedy from the ancients to the present day, addressing key chapters in Anglophone literary history, such as Shakespearean comedy, Restoration comedy, and Theatre of the Absurd. The book summarises key comic techniques (including slapstick, puns, and running gags) and the most important theoretical accounts of laughter. Moreover, current scholarly discussions revolving around awkwardness, cringe humour, and funny women are addressed in detail. Over the course of its 14 chapters, Comedy on Stage and Screen connects traditional comic tropes (like the fool or the marriage plot) to plenty of classic and up-to-date examples. These include the works of playwrights like Aphra Behn, Noël Coward, and Martin McDonagh, as well as iconic comedies on the big and small screen, such as Some Like It Hot, Home Alone, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Fleabag.