The Dearth of Comedy?

Good comedies don't date. Maybe the references do, but here's one from the early seventies: and the slapstick relies on the oldest joke in the book

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfrShu_Lp2A


The trouble with the Academy is that it's ultimately concerned with the bottom line. The best comedies will live on, but it's actually the dramas that have a limited shelf life and have to maximise their returns before the fashion shifts. I can't say exctly how much an Oscar is worth at the box office, but it's a packet, and the entire Hollywood Who's Who have a vested interest. That is they have investments in the industry.

Okay that sounded a bit absolute, but I'm tired.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a comedy as well, albeit with the serious undertones that come with the subject of an interracial marriage in the 1960s.

So far we've been discussing the relative merits of good comedies and good tragedies, but there is another side to this coin: comedy is not taken seriously because when comedy is bad, it's awful, whereas bad drama or tragedy is usually not nearly as unbearable.

For example, I am incapable of watching Everybody Loves Raymond. Everything about that horrible show makes me sick to my stomach. Same with Adam Sandler: a mere look at his face makes me want to smash my TV. No drama or tragedy, no matter how bad, has ever been this bad, in my opinion. House is awful, but I can still watch a whole episode without a noose nearby.

Everybody Loves Raymond wasn't bad, not were the early Adam Sandler movies.

Pulp Fiction is a comedy, right? At least, it never occurred to me it could be taken another way.

All About Eve is a comedy. Singin' In The Rain is a comedy. Sunset Boulevard is a dark comedy in the grotesque vein. My Fair Lady is a comedy.

Neither the IMBd (Internet Movie Data base) nor the American Film Institute classify either All About Eve nor Sunset Boulevard as "comedies". Both are categorized as "drama" and "film noir". I doubt almost anyone would think of either as comedies. My Fair Lady and Singin' in the Rain are categorized as musicals... although they are admittedly of a comedic vein.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a comedy as well, albeit with the serious undertones that come with the subject of an interracial marriage in the 1960s.

I thought of including that as well as Cabaret... which is a musical with dark, satiric overtones... but neither the AFI nor the IMBd recognize either as "comedies". There are certain works... undoubtedly... that truly straddle the line. As I've admitted, I see As I Lay Dying as black comedy... but it might surely be seen as tragedy as well. Many take Kafka deadly serious as tragic writer... although he himself was reported to have read his works to friends while laughing hysterically... and I see the works as darkly comic as well.

So far we've been discussing the relative merits of good comedies and good tragedies, but there is another side to this coin: comedy is not taken seriously because when comedy is bad, it's awful, whereas bad drama or tragedy is usually not nearly as unbearable.

I don't know if I buy that. I always find work that has delusions of grandeur or pretensions of genius... yet which falls flat... to be far worse than something lacking such pretense.

By the way... Everybody Loves Raymond was most certainly not without moments of brilliance... especially involving the comedic genius of Peter Boyle.

Everybody Loves Raymond was an odd show. The first half of every episode was almost always hilarious, but a lot of times it devolved into these unrealistic, schoolgirl arguments among the family.

Also, I don't think anyone has mentioned this possibility, so I will: Maybe tragedy is just better than comedy.

I don't think anyone has mentioned this possibility, so I will: Maybe tragedy is just better than comedy.

Actually... I think many have suggested as much... go so far as to suggest... if only obliquely... that the comic is "lightweight". Is it? Again I would ask, what of Cevantes, Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Twain, Kafka, Gogol, Borges, Calvino, Roth, etc...?

I don't really think one is better than the other. A great piece of art is a great piece of art, be it serious, comedic, or any other adjective one would want to throw in there.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I don't know if I buy that. I always find work that has delusions of grandeur or pretensions of genius... yet which falls flat... to be far worse than something lacking such pretense.

By the way... Everybody Loves Raymond was most certainly not without moments of brilliance... especially involving the comedic genius of Peter Boyle.

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This would have to be one of those "agree to disagree" moments. I've never watched a drama or tragedy that left me disgusted or angry, but when I hear people laughing at the jokes of George Lopez, Ray Romano, or Adam Sandler, I feel repulsed.

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandis

Also, I don't think anyone has mentioned this possibility, so I will: Maybe tragedy is just better than comedy.

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I would defend that comedy is certainly the harder the write.

Also, I think the dominance of tragedy has to do with what we want from art; I think most people want to believe that life is tragic because only tragedy elevates our suffering to something resembling poetry. There's something enjoyable about a tragic view of life because it makes our little lives seem noble and epic.

Then comes comedy taking us down a notch or two, telling us life is absurd, silly, pointless, that all our suffering and complicated relationships are meaningless and that our values aren't really special and that we're just fooling ourselves by thinking that we're anything unique. Comedy is an acid, it corrodes things, especially our illusions, and it's not what people want to hear.

Tragedy is a lot more reassuring than comedy.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

The King's Speech is a sort of comedy-drama- hardly a tragedy anyway.

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I didn't see The King's Speech but the last ten seconds of this clip are hilarious.

http://youtu.be/ifgBoARGcZs

There's an amusing send up on You Tube where, instead of King George, the man under instruction is George W Bush. Now that would have been a real mission impossible.

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Originally Posted by Heteronym

I would defend that comedy is certainly the harder the write.

Also, I think the dominance of tragedy has to do with what we want from art; I think most people want to believe that life is tragic because only tragedy elevates our suffering to something resembling poetry. There's something enjoyable about a tragic view of life because it makes our little lives seem noble and epic.

Then comes comedy taking us down a notch or two, telling us life is absurd, silly, pointless, that all our suffering and complicated relationships are meaningless and that our values aren't really special and that we're just fooling ourselves by thinking that we're anything unique. Comedy is an acid, it corrodes things, especially our illusions, and it's not what people want to hear.

Tragedy is a lot more reassuring than comedy.

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I agree with you, and that s why it is hardly surprising that throughout history and in all cultures, tragedy was and is perceived as superior to comedy. Tragedy is feel good, it reminds us of the beauty and nobleness of life, it makes whatever troubles which torment us in our lives seem minuscule and trivial, it leaves us with a sense of refreshment like bathing in a stream at dawn.

Comedy on the other hand, reminds us of the ridiculous and pathetic elements of life, it shows us the flaws of the world and makes our own lives feel ridiculous. Tragedy inspires the heart, comedy leaves us thinking that life is too ridiculous to be taken seriously, the former gives us momentum the later inertia.

I am reading Dom Quixote now, and it is a book of great beauty, but when I finish reading every night I see a life devoid of life. When I read the Great Gatsby or Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, if not tears at least I was in possession of the sentiment of tears, there was no emptiness, rather there was a fullness of life. For I am quite sure that any man here, who has had a period when they were living but devoid of life; can attest to the sweetness of sadness, or anything as long as it is not emptiness. Tragedy fills, comedy hollows out.