Those are comedies? The King's Speech and American Beauty? Does having a few funny parts now make something a comedy? If you loo up academy award winners, the vast majority are dead serious dramas. I completely agree that comedies are short changed by the Oscars: it's hard to make someone laugh, and it's especially hard to make someone laugh with a smart story. The Coenz are masters of combining brilliant comedy with excellent narrative.
No Country For Old Man is dead serious.Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandis
The following Best Picture honorees were not only comedies but also brilliant:Brilliant comedies never win the best film Oscar.
It Happened One Night (1934)
You Can't Take it With You (1938)
Tom Jones (1963)
Annie Hall (1977)
One could perhaps make a case that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Forrest Gump(1994), and the aforementioned American Beauty(1999) are comedies. Admittedly, it's still a short list, in light of the fact that the Academy Awards go way back to their inception in 1927. But that's not counting the several "Best Pictures" that were Musical comedies--plus the multiple Oscars@ for best screenplay going to comedies, of which the original (i.e. non-musical) version of The Producers may rank among the funniest. So to say that " Brilliant comedies never win the Best Film Oscar" is flat-out wrong.
Secondly, I'm not sure whether the Academy Award is the gold standard when it comes to assessing the quality of a particular film or screenplay. On the one hand, MPAA is a respected institution -- anybody who has an inflated sense of his or her own integrity, claiming that he or she would "refuse to accept" an Oscar is either lying or demented. Even so, the Oscars are a just a tiny step up the prestige ladder from the Golden Globes, full of cheesy spectacle, bombast, and and self-congratulatory pretentiousness. There have been several neglected classics, the cliché of the critical success considered box office bombs, not to mention the unknown number of screenplays never having been produced at all, their scripts gathering dust in some file cabinet in Iowa. (The other end of the spectrum are the dreadful books and movies that are excessively praised because other people have done so--the "Emperor's new clothes" syndrome.)
But to the author's original contention --that comedy is a more realistic depiction of the human condition, I could not agree more. He is absolutely spot on about The Simpsons as well; arguably the finest comedy writing produced in the last 25 years can be found in various episodes of that show, next to which which makes the uneven comedy of Saturday Night Live pales in comparison. (Only the old SCTV show comes anywhere close to the quality of The Simpsons.) Several years ago, The New Yorker did a profile on "The Funniest Man in America." No, it wasn't Stephen Colbert or Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow or any current Hollywood funnyman--it was George Meyer, who at the time was head writer for The Simpsons.
There are two problems, as far as I can see. The first is that comedy is excruciatingly difficult to get right. As the actor said on his death bed--"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard." Either the writer (and performer) "tries too hard" and the result comes out lame, or the lines are too subtle, which "go over" the audience's head--the very real phenomenon of being "too hip for the room." (The other day a fellow LitNutter and I were discussing the difference between British and American humor, with the former "drier" than the latter, which tends to be "broad," "slapstick-y," and more than a little vulgar. Of course, there's much overlapping, as in a Venn diagram.) Although one can make a case that depiction of resonant emotion in drama is also tricky -- wherein one should avoid soap opera histrionics and bathos at all costs --I firmly believe that the comic mind is more "cerebral" than the strictly emotional one. Few people these days ever refer to Horace Walpole, except to quote his famous definition: "The world is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think."*
The second problem with considering the comic world-view to be superior to the more so-called "serious" dramatic one is that outside the realm of literary criticism-- across the spectrum of high and low-brow audiences (including the segment which the great Dwight MacDonald called "middle brow") --both the hoi polloi and the upper classes may be more likely to buy a ticket for a comedy than for a revival of, say, Mourning Becomes Electra. Despite the hard-to-get, prohibitively expensive ducat for The Book of Mormon,audiences nearly always reserve their awards (including Oscars) for what they have been led to believe is "high art," the "serious" stuff, the tragic as opposed to the comic. Because tragedy can sometimes--not always-- bring about catharsis, it is considered better than comedy, which, when it's done well, makes you feel good, not worse. Comedy is "light" (but not "trivial") and while it doesn't bring the kind of epiphany that cathartic tragedy does, it puts the world in perspective--things are not as bad as they seem. Even satire, the branch of comedy whose raison d'etre is to point out society's wrongs, stems from an optimistic motive: shining a flashlight on pomposity and stupidity is the first step in getting the world back into balance, using chaotic devices to bring order out of chaos.
And to the idea that the best literature is "comic" is absolutely true, despite the lionizing of works without one single laugh. Even a work as ponderous as Dante's Inferno has one joke--it's a fart joke, but a joke nonetheless. Shakespeare works, as has already been noted in this thread, simultaneously play with tragedy and comedy (with the misnomer "comic relief" in tragedies and dark elements in the comedies.)
Oscar Wilde is the one who said "Life is too serious to be taken seriously," and by the way, though I think the article's author does think that Joyce, Beckett, et al. are "comic"--at least I hope so!--but the notion that James Joyce is "not" comic? Maybe in some parallel universe.
And those who claim that the Bible doesn't contain any jokes either haven't really read it or failed to see the beautiful humor that can be found through both Testaments. The Good Book is full of situational comedy, multi-lingual puns and other word-play, Dionysian drunkenness, deflated pomposity, and that primary ingredient of comedy--resilence. Among modern and contemporary takes on The New Testament, I strongly recommend Man of Nazareth by Anthony Burgess. That novel looks at the Life of Christ with a respectful yet from the jaundiced view of an uncommitted witness who depicts some of the well-known and revered stories of the disciples and their Lord with a humorous perspective. The last chapter of the novel posits the
"ludic" (game-playing) nature of religion, and is an intriguing way to look at the relationship between the human and the divine.
For every excruciatingly somber opera from the Ring cycle or weighty Hardy novel, there are scores of classic works which hold a mirror up to human nature the way it really is; because of the impossibility of escaping death, there is undeniable sadness in everyone's life, yet in our day-to-day ramblings we can't obsess over the fact that we're all going to die someday. Comedy is a way of manouvering through life's rough stops and side-stepping the bumpy sidewalks strewn with banana peels by helping us back on our feet, giving us a slap on the back, and hitting us with a pie in the face.
*Just as comedy has a tendency to introduce a dash of chaos into the mix,
we can confound our argument even further by bringing in Neitzsche.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
The wiki-page includes Camille Paglia's take on the concept, wherein she views the Dionysian half of the principle as "chlonic," darker, and inferior. But if I haven't misinterpreted the German philosopher's theory, it seems to consider boththe diametric opposites of comedy and tragedy as integral components of art, or did I get that wrong?
"Comedy is tragedy plus time." --Sid Caesar
PS>(Added 4:12 pm EDT)--Woody Allen's critically-trounced Starlight Memories(1980) has a wonderful line. When Woody's character comes across some extraterrestrial aliens in the woods, he asks them how he could help mankind. And one of the aliens answers, "You want to do mankind a service? Tell funnier jokes!"
PPS: The OP has given us a refreshingly interesting thread! To those who contributed to the lively discussion I strongly recommend that they rent a DVD of the brilliant Preston Sturges's movie, Sullivan's Travels(1941.) In that comedy, the title character is an idealistic film director who meanders across the U.S. in search of material for his socially-conscious movie, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (The Cohn brothers borrowed that title for a much-later comedy of their own, a good one, I might add.) Anyway, Sullivan gets to witness much human misery, and lands in seemingly inextricable hot water of his own. But his experiences bring him a revelation--making a movie about human misery is much less effective as making his fellow man laugh!
Last edited by AuntShecky; 07-06-2012 at 03:03 PM. Reason: Not only do my subjects and verbs disagree; they engage in out-and-out warfare
Oh, yeah, comedy sure is more true to life than drama. I can't count all the times I've been in the hospital waiting to have surgery for cancer, just yukkin' it up! Good times.
Seriously, though, I don't know what kind of lives other people are living, but mine doesn't seem like a comedy or a melodramatic tragedy. It's quite dull, really. I don't think either are very good reflections of life, aside from those fw interesting people out there, and in there cases usually snippets of their lives only are interesting.
And? Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou . . . I rest my case.
Last edited by Mutatis-Mutandis; 07-05-2012 at 04:43 PM.
Good points Aunty. You could mention Some Like It Hot, The Man Who Came To Dinner, and a heap of classics that missed out on awards because of the lightness aspect. But they stand the test of time. Just those two prove that 'low brow' can also have a 'high brow' quality because they invite you to analyse the comedic process.
Actually it says more about awards ceremonies than proof of worth. The best team's victory is obvious, and the footballer may receive a best on field, but rarely the player who 'tried the hardest' with perhaps an undisclosed injury gets a deserving mention.
Awarding any artform though, so to say 'this is the best' of a selected crop, the notion of 'best' is extremely dubious. Using the painting analogy again - I like Van Gogh's Starry Night, but not all the time. Not even every day or week. There are too many other works in his catalog vying for my attention to single out just one.
At a recent portrait prize exhibition I didn't find fault with any of the 100+ submissions, but I suddenly could when the winner was announced: "What!? That one!? Why that over this!? What's so special about it!? What's wrong with this one!? Or that one!? In fact all the others are better than the stupid panel's decision!" etc
Odd how impartial and fair I'd been just a minute earlier.
Personally I thought No Country was very funny. But how should it be justly compared at say a universal award show? With Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog, Silence of the Lambs, Se7en?
And on that note if their must be a (Categorical) Academy Awards then there should also be separate categories for best film and actors, art direction and music, costume design and titles, director and producer, low brow and highbrow, etc, for all the different types and gradations of various films, retrospectively, back to the first ever motion picture. It's only fair.
The American Film Institute voted upon the following 100 films as the greatest 100 American/English Language Films:
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
The Godfather
Gone with the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
The Wizard of Oz
The Graduate
On the Waterfront
Schindler's List
Singin' in the Rain
It's a Wonderful Life
Sunset Boulevard
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Some Like It Hot
Star Wars
All About Eve
The African Queen
Psycho
The General
Chinatown
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Grapes of Wrath
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Maltese Falcon
Raging Bull 1980
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Dr. Strangelove
Bonnie and Clyde
Apocalypse Now
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Annie Hall
The Godfather Part II
High Noon
To Kill a Mockingbird
It Happened One Night
Midnight Cowboy
The Best Years of Our Lives
Double Indemnity
Doctor Zhivago
North by Northwest
West Side Story
Rear Window
King Kong
The Birth of a Nation
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Clockwork Orange
Taxi Driver
Jaws
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Intolerance
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Philadelphia Story
From Here to Eternity
Amadeus
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Sound of Music
MASH
The Third Man
Fantasia
Rebel Without a Cause
Nashville
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Vertigo
Sullivan's Travels
Tootsie
Stagecoach
Cabaret
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Silence of the Lambs
Network
The Manchurian Candidate
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
An American in Paris
Shane
The French Connection
Forrest Gump
Saving Private Ryan
Ben-Hur
The Shawshank Redemption
Wuthering Heights
The Gold Rush
Dances with Wolves
In the Heat of the Night
City Lights
American Graffiti
All the President's Men
Rocky
The Deer Hunter
The Wild Bunch
Modern Times
Spartacus
Giant
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Platoon
Titanic
Fargo
Duck Soup
A Night at the Opera
Mutiny on the Bounty
Frankenstein
12 Angry Men
Easy Rider
Patton
The Sixth Sense
The Jazz Singer
Swing Time
My Fair Lady
Sophie's Choice
A Place in the Sun
The Apartment
Goodfellas
Pulp Fiction
The Last Picture Show
The Searchers
Do the Right Thing
Bringing Up Baby
Blade Runner
Unforgiven
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Toy Story
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Very few comedies overall... and a good many of these older films. One might argue that films like Network or Casablanca might be counted as "comedies" due to comedic elements... but I'm not certain that a few jokes establish an overall comedic/satiric intent.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Martin Amis isn't the new Rabelais. He's the new Colley Cibber. However, Trey Parker is the new Aristophanes.
When I saw the examples the essayist was making I had to check it's date. 2007. Even five years ago, The Simpsons were a dated reference. Family Guy had taken it's place in the cultural zeitgeist by then, though now even that is starting to wane as people are moving on looking for the next big thing.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I'm not sure whether the Academy Award is the gold standard when it comes to assessing the quality of a particular film or screenplay.
That may be true... but then look at the rather unbalanced choices by the American Film Institute for the 100 Greatest Films. Or go beyond this an peruse the Nobel Prize Laureates for literature. Of all the Laureates since 1901, I would only think of the following authors as having an oeuvre that might be called comedic:
G.B Shaw
Luigi Pirandello
William Faulkner
Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Saul Bellow
I.B. Singer
Gunter Grass
Mario Vargas Llosa
And I have the sort of warped black humor that sees Faulkner's As I Lay Dying as comedic... but I wouldn't say much more of his oeuvre falls into that realm. What is painfully obvious is just how outrageous the omissions are of writers whose works are indeed "comedic": Franz Kafka, James Joyce, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Gore Vidal, and surely Philip Roth.
Few people these days ever refer to Horace Walpole, except to quote his famous definition: "The world is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think."
J.L. Borges suggested something similar. I don't have the exact quote at hand, but essentially he declared that we were living in a Baroque... mannered... decadent era, and all Baroque art, he continued, was self-conscious and comedic by nature.
My Jewish studio-mate has spoken of the same Jewish tradition that the article author touched upon. He suggests the obvious: that humor was a means of coming to terms with the horror of life without going insane... or wallowing in self-pity and slitting your wrists. The two of us have a "horrible" black humor... and contrary to Mutatis suggestion we have sat in the hospital awaiting surgery roaring with laughter over the absolute absurdity of things. Indeed, such a sense of humor has been a survival mechanism. I doubt that few could survive working under the conditions involved in today's inner-city schools without being able to laugh at the insanity and the absurdity of it all. The alternative is to become bitter, hateful, and jaded... or just burn out.
...across the spectrum of high and low-brow audiences... both the hoi polloi and the upper classes may be more likely to buy a ticket for a comedy than for a revival of, say, Mourning Becomes Electra... (yet) audiences nearly always reserve their awards (including Oscars) for what they have been led to believe is "high art," the "serious" stuff, the tragic as opposed to the comic.
Thus, perhaps the consolation prize for the artist of the comedic is that while he or she may be ignored when they are handing out the prizes for "serious" artistic achievement, the same artist may just be laughing all the way to the bank. Again... on a personal note... my studio mate is fully aware that his art: dark... bleak... ugly meditations on the Holocaust and sufferings of the Jews over history as a whole... has little or no chance of selling. Last Christmas there was an "Open Studio" art walk in which artists could make a little money on the side just in time for the holiday by selling little ceramic or glass works, or small decorative paintings to the artistically-minded holiday shoppers. We sat roaring with laughter over his chance of selling anything: "Nothing says Christmas like the Holocaust!"
When he is in one of his darker moods, he refers to any artist of a more comedic frame of mind... including myself... as "lightweight" and "meaningless". "It's a complete nothing!" he'll roar. Thus I am led to wonder how much of the bias against the comedic is nothing more than jealousy?
And those who claim that the Bible doesn't contain any jokes either hasn't really read it or failed to see the beautiful humor that can be found through both Testaments. The Good Book is full of situational comedy, multi-lingual puns and other word-play, Dionysian drunkenness, deflated pomposity, and that primary ingredient of comedy--resilence. Among modern and contemporary takes on The New Testament, I strongly recommend Man of Nazareth by Anthony Burgess.
Harold Bloom suggests that there is a great deal of ironic humor in the Old Testament, and the poet/translator Stephen Mitchell points out the link between the Book of Job and Kafka... with a God, who like the Greeks, takes pleasure in toying with mankind for laughs... or for some perverse reason that we are unable to discern. My studio mate finds endless humor in the notion of the Jews being the "chosen people" considering their history, as well as in the absurd covenant involving circumcision. "Let me get this straight," he'll chortle... "The Arabs get all the oil... and I have to chop off the end of my what!!!??" A year ago he attended the Bris of his nephew's first born son. he was in absolute stitches over the fact that the Moil earned some $3000 a week or more... for chopping off... well, you get the picture. He caused all the little old blue-haired Jewish women at the gathering to drop their salad forks in unison when he suddenly asked... in the middle of the first course of the meal... "By the way... what do they do with the foreskin when their done with the snipping?"
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Actually, I have had quite a few laughs in the hospital, but like you say, it's sort of a survival mechanism. The idiom "If you don't laugh, you cry," is quite true.
Man, the Simpsons quit being relevant, and funny, in the 90s--I sorta assumed that's when the article was written. Like you said, Family Guy is the current pop culture hit, and if one wants pop culture references, FG blasts them out at an unprecedented rate--a lot of times I don't even know what they're referencing. But FG, even though still funny, is past its prime. It seems like every few weeks a new cartoon is coming out to try and be the next big thing, but none have managed it yet. Daniel Tosh has a cartoon coming out in a few months, but I don't see it succeeding.
I'm glad you mentioned Trey Parker (poor Matt Stone, always sitting in Parker's shadow) because South Park was the reigning champ after Simpsons and before FG really exploded. I think South Park is probably the smartest cartoon comedy ever done (and one of the smartest comedies ever, cartoon or otherwise). It's rife with social commentary, and their ability to put episodes out that deal with current issues is unbelievable. They actually don't even begin making most episodes until a week before they're supposed to air. Talk about crunch-time. Like FG it's passed its prime, but is still pretty damn funny. Neither FG or SP have ventured into Simpsons territory of being unwatchable.
And then there was Beavis and Butthead, also a hilarious show. It didn't dethrone Simpsons, but it did take some of the spotlight away for a couple years. It's funny watching it now and remembering how big a deal was made of it, seeing as how tame it is compared to even FG, which airs on a major network.
Simpsons is better written though, something Parker and Stone agree with. Family Guy is never really going to compare with Simpsons in cultural impact, the Simpsons have actually introduced words into the everyday lexicon of most people. Family Guy is all cheap gags and non-stop allusions.
The Simpsons and Family Guy actually flip flop in ratings share, neither is much more popular than the other. Although, I think Matt Groening's best work was on Futurama instead of Simpsons.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Nah, Simpsons was better written. I don't know what the ratings are, but I don't know anyone who watches the Simpsons anymore (especially the new episodes), yet I know literally dozens of people who watch FG. I agree FG is cheap gags and non-stop allusions, but when it aired there was absolutely no cartoon that had that same kind of humor and style. Plus, it's funny as hell, cheap laughs or no.
Aside from "Doh!" what words did Simpsons introduce? They made some words that already existed popular, but I can't think of any neologisms, such as Quagmire's "Giggity."
I've heard or seen all of these get used (outside of the show and my circle of friends) more than once:
craptacular
meh
cromulent
glavin! (punctuation, at the end of a precise and geeky explanation--admittedly, inspired by Jerry Lewis Nutty Professor nonsense)
embiggen (opposite of belittle)
Okely-Dokely!
saxamaphone
Yoink!
Last edited by billl; 07-06-2012 at 04:20 AM.
American Beauty is a black comedy, although as comedies go it's probably more sophisticated and highbrow. The King's Speech is a sort of comedy-drama- hardly a tragedy anyway.
The point made was that comedies (more lightweight films, not seen as "worthy") are less well-regarded than tragedies (highbrow films, seen as "worthy") in the eyes of the Oscar committee, when they've frequently gone for the populist films. The Reader, an Oscar-type film, lost out to Slumdog Millionaire a few years ago.
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.
Yes, it is true that older comedies are more highly regarded than modern comedies; maybe a comedy has to "prove" itself more than a tragedy or serious drama does.
The reason why comedy loses out is that comedy is a very subjective thing. We can all watch King Lear and understand the tragedy, but not everybody will find As You Like It amusing whereas some might find it very funny. Black comedy can be divisive but a tragedy will never be divisive, unless it's a discussion on whether the tragedy was done well.
Another problem with comedies is that they can date. There will be people who look back on old seventies sitcoms and still find them hilarious but others will look back and find them very dated. Tragedies do not date.
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