Popular Film and Television Comedy

Frank Krutnik, Steve Neale

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134946853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik take as their starting point the remarkable diversity of comedy's forms and modes - feature-length narratives, sketches and shorts, sit-com and variety, slapstick and romance. Relating this diversity to the variety of comedy's basic conventions - from happy endings to the presence of gags and the involvement of humour and laughter - they seek both to explain the nature of these forms and conventions and to relate them to their institutional contexts. They propose that all forms and modes of the comic involve deviations from aesthetic and cultural conventions and norms, and, to demonstrate this, they discuss a wide range of programmes and films, from Blackadder to Bringing up Baby, from City Limits to Blind Date, from the Roadrunner cartoons to Bless this House and The Two Ronnies. Comedies looked at in particular detail include: the classic slapstick films of Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin; Hollywood's 'screwball' comedies of the 1930s and 1940s; Monty Python, Hancock, and Steptoe and Son. The authors also relate their discussion to radio comedy.

Section 1

1
Definitions, genres, and forms

Perhaps the most striking thing about comedy is the immense variety and range of its forms. Historically, these forms have included narrative poems and plays, novels and short stories, comedia erudita and commedia dell’arte, slapstick and the comedy of manners, the jig, the droll, and the afterpiece, and pantomime, flyting, and farce.¹Even within the more restricted fields of cinema and television, comedy is, and always has been, marked by its formal diversity. From the variety show to the short, from the sketch to the narrative feature, from cartoons to sit-coms and from double-acts to stand-up routines, the range of forms it can encompass is probably greater than that of any other genre.

Given that this is the case, any single definition of comedy, or any definition of comedy based on a single criterion, is bound to be limited in application, and therefore insufficient. This is true even of definitions based on the criterion of laughter. For while the generation of laughter seems to be the only element common to forms as different as sit-coms and stand-up routines, and to films and television programmes as diverse in structure and content as The Good Life, Rowan and Martin’s Laughin, The Philadelphia Story (1940), A Night at the Opera (1935), Cops (1922), Screwball Squirrel (1944), and The Rory Bremner Show, there are occasions when things are not quite so straightforward. For example, a number of comedies – like Going my Way (1944), or It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), or The Apartment (1960) – are only intermittently funny, and seem designed as much to make us cry as to make us laugh. Equally, many films – The Big Sleep (1944), El Dorado (1967), and Stakeout (1987) among them – contain plenty of funny lines and funny moments, but are not conventionally categorized as comedy. These instances point to the fact that the generation of laughter is not always enough, in and of itself, to define a film – or a television programme – as a comedy. Other criteria can come into play.

This is borne out if we turn to the dictionary for a definition. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, for instance, begins its entry on comedy as follows:

comedy, n. Stage-play of light, amusing and often satirical character, chiefly representing everyday life, & with happy ending (cf. TRAGEDY);

This entry usefully highlights a number of points, not only about the multiplicity of criteria comedy can involve, but also about the contexts in which those criteria have often been formulated and comedy traditionally defined.

The first thing to note is that laughter as such is not even explicitly mentioned – though ‘amusing’ is perhaps an obvious synonym for it. More important is the fact that criteria of content and structure are specified, in addition to criteria of affect and tone, and that equal emphasis is laid upon them. A comedy is not just ‘light’ and ‘amusing’, it is marked also by a ‘happy ending’ and by its concern with the representation of ‘everyday life’. This has always, in the west at least, been considered an important aspect of comedy. From Aristotle on, and in contrast to tragedy (a contrast marked by the entry itself), comedy was for centuries the most appropriate genre for representing the lives, not of the ruling classes, of those with extensive power, but of the ‘middle’ and ‘lower’ orders of society, those whose power was limited and local, and whose manners, behaviour, and values were considered by their ‘betters’ to be either trivial, or vulgar, or both. Silent gag-films, the tradition of slapstick, the Carry On series, television performers like Arthur Haynes and Benny Hill, and sit-coms like Steptoe and Son and Til Death Us Do Part are all evidence of the continuing relevance of this particular convention. However, it is worth stressing that the dictionary marks this convention as neither universal nor definitive: comedy is only ‘chiefly’ concerned with the representation of everyday life. The comedy of manners, many of Shakespeare’s comedies, (As You Like It, for instance, and Twelfth Night), films like Forbidden Paradise (1924) and Holiday (1938), and television programmes like To the Manor Born and Yes, Prime Minister, all of them centred on ruling or upper-class characters, or ruling or upper-class life in general, are evidence of that. (So too, of course, as a corollary, are films like Looks and Smiles (1981) or Death of a Salesman (1985), and programmes like Edna, the Inebriate Woman, which represent lower-class characters or everyday life within a generic context quite different from that provided by comedy.) It is worth pointing out, though, that in these instances it is very often the case that upper-class life is represented in its more ‘private’ (and therefore more everyday and ‘trivial’) aspects.

A happy ending, meanwhile, is also a crucial, but partial, convention. Usually, as in films like Moonstruck (1987), or in television programmes like The Cosby Show, it exists alongside, and in combination with, other key conventions, such as the consistent generation of laughter through the multiple use of gags, funny lines, and funny situations, and, in these instances at least, the representation of lower-class characters and everyday life respectively. (The characters in Moonstruck are mostly of Italian immigrant stock. The family in The Cosby Show is resolutely professional and middle-class, but the programme centres on what it marks as the ordinary misunderstandings, conflicts, and routines of everyday domestic existence.) However, in certain instances, like those cited above as examples of films marked only intermittently by funny moments, a happy ending can be the primary – occasionally, even, the only – convention involved. In these instances, comedy can come surprisingly close, in its concerns as well as in many of its structural features, to the genre we tend now to think of as melodrama. Thus, but for the intervention of God, a comic angel, and a happy ending, It’s a Wonderful Life, centred as it is on a man who comes to feel so trapped by the pressures and circumstances of his life that he contemplates suicide, would be a melodrama about the frustrations of domesticity and small-town existence. But for a happy ending, The Apartment, concerned as it is with a man who falls in love with his boss’s mistress, would be a melodrama about unrequited love.

The kinship between comedy and melodrama is evident not just in isolated, individual examples, but in a whole tradition of ‘genteel’ or ‘sentimental’ comedy exemplified by films like State Fair (1933), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935), and the various versions of Little Miss Marker. It is evident, too, in various strands of romantic comedy, particularly those in which a melodramatic crisis is resolved by means of a happy ending. Examples here include Why Change Your Wife? (1920), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and The Goodbye Girl (1977). This generic kinship has its origins in the theory and practice of high bourgeois theatre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A new hybrid genre emerged at this time in a number of European countries. It tended to feature characters of a lower rank and status than those appropriate to tragedy, and the domestic settings, romance plots, and happy endings of comedy. But the characters and the situations they found themselves in were treated seriously, their tragic potential emphasized, in a way inappropriate to comedy hitherto. The genre acted in part as a vehicle and focus for the cult of sensibility and sensitive feeling that was an important component in the formation of a new, ascendant bourgeois culture. One of its major aims was to encourage audiences to empathize with its protagonists, to identify with their plights and dilemmas, to feel sorry for them, and to weep on their behalf – happy ending or not – rather than to laugh at them. Labels for the new genre tended to vary. It bore some resemblance to the older tradition of tragi-comedy. It was sometimes called, simply, drame or drama. We would now call it melodrama. In France it was called comédie larmoyante, tearful comedy.²

This term is indicative not only of the extent to which comedy can be found and classified on the basis of criteria pertaining to narrative characteristics in general, and a happy ending in particular, but also of the extent to which the criteria, and the forms to which they refer, can exist separately from, at times even in contradiction to, those based on the generation of laughter. The theatrical provenance of comédie larmoyante, and of the theory that sustained it, is indicative of the extent to which definitions and theories of comedy have their basis in the theatre, a point borne out by what is perhaps the most striking feature of the dictionary definition quoted above: its specification of comedy as a type of ‘stage-play’.³

Many of these theatrically based theories, definitions, and forms have their roots in Aristotle’s Poetics, and in the neoclassical theory and practice of the post-Renaissance period (which borrowed from Aristotle, and reworked and refined his ideas and formulations).⁴ Neoclassical theory, based as it was in an aristocratic cultural milieu, and concerned as it was to emulate the principles laid down in the Poetics, tended to erect a distinction between high and low comedy, and to promote the importance of narrative considerations in general, and the criterion of a happy ending in particular. It tended, as a corollary, to downplay or to denigrate non-narrative forms of comedy, and the importance of the criterion of laughter.

Neoclassical concepts still have their uses, as we shall see in later chapters of this book. But the existence – and importance – of non-narrative forms of comedy, whether historical, like the jig, or contemporary, like the stand-up routine, reveal the limitations both of neoclassical theory, and of the criterion of a happy ending. For, on the one hand, a happy ending necessitates a preceding narrative context, a context lacking, by definition, in non-narrative forms. On the other hand, non-narrative forms clearly qualify as comedy. They do so, however, not on the basis of the way they end, nor on the basis of any other structural features. They do so because, and only because, they are designed to make us laugh. They qualify as comedy on the basis of the very criterion neoclassicism tended, along with nonnarrative forms themselves, to undervalue.

This is a key point, not because of what it tells us about the limitations of neoclassical theory, but because of what it tells us about the heterogeneity of forms and conventions comedy can involve. It is indicative, in particular, of two sets of divisions which traverse the field of comedy as a whole – and which require very careful separation. One is the division between the criterion of a happy ending and the criterion of laughter. The other is the division between narrative and non-narrative forms. Although there tends, within neoclassical theory to be a coincidence between them, the two kinds of division are logically distinct. Moreover, they do not always, in practice, correspond with or accompany one another. For while the criterion of laughter can apply only to narrative forms, and while non-narrative forms only qualify as comedy because of the criterion of laughter, the symmetry between the different forms and the different criteria is incomplete: the criterion of laughter is not, like the criterion of a happy ending, restricted to one type of form; it can apply to narratives, as well as to non-narrative forms like double-acts and stand-up routines.

Comedy and the comic

These differences and divisions are to some extent marked in the common terminological distinction between ‘comedy’, on the one hand, and ‘comic’ on the other. If we consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary again, we find that the principle meaning of ‘comic’ is ‘causing, or meant to cause laughter’. The term therefore embodies one, and only one, of comedy’s major generic criteria. It can refer, though, to any of its forms. Indeed, its field of potential reference is extensive – so extensive that it stretches beyond the province of comedy, and beyond the province of aesthetics as a whole. A real event can be comic, as can a real person or an instance of everyday discourse. So, too, insofar as the term refers to effects as well as intentions, to ‘causing’ laughter as well as meaning to cause it, can a horror film, a war film, or a drama (for reasons we consider later).

‘Comedy’, on the other hand, is an aesthetic term. (Its use in reference to non-aesthetic events and situations tends always to be explicitly metaphorical, in a way that the use of the term ‘comic’ is not.) It has two distinct kinds of meaning. It can refer to the genre as a whole, in which case it either explicitly or implicitly includes each of its various criteria, each of its various forms, and each of its various works (as in ‘there are many kinds of comedy on television’, or, ‘comedy is hard to define’). However, it can also refer to particular works (as in, ‘Some Like it Hot is a comedy’, or, ‘I saw a comedy on television the other day’). In these cases a much more restricted notion of comedy comes into play, as is evident from the fact that certain forms and programmes cannot be referred to by using the indefinite article – ‘a’. Thus, The Two Ronnies may be comedy, but it is not ‘a comedy’. Nor is a Harry Enfield monologue, or a Smith and Jones cross-talk routine. These examples are all, of course, instances of non-narrative comedy. As such, they are an indication of the fact that the use of the indefinite article tends to imply a definite – narrative – form, and definite – narrative – criteria.5 (This fact incidentally helps to explain why comic avant-garde films like Buñuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1928) and Michael Snow’s So Is This (1982) are not usually referred to as comedies: they lack a conventional narrative structure, as well as a conventional institutional base.)

In considering comedy, then, we are confronted by a set of terminological distinctions, a variety of forms, and a number of different generic criteria, all of which only correspond with one another to a limited degree. A happy ending and the generation of laughter, the two main criteria, are simply not of the same order. A happy ending implies an aesthetic context; the generation of laughter does not. A happy ending implies a narrative context; the generation of laughter does not. And so on. These differences mean that the conventions involved can either co-exist without impinging on one another, as they do in most instances of narrative comedy, or can remain entirely separate, as they do in non-narrative comedy on the one hand, and in the descendants of comédie larmoyante on the other.

In addition, the generation of laughter, as a convention in its own right, accounts to a considerable extent for comedy’s formal diversity. For although the generation of laughter depends upon certain principles and certain devices, it does not require any particular type of structural context. The forms designed to give rise to laughter are local, specific, and, often, momentary: the funny line, the joke, the wisecrack, the gag, and so on. These local forms can, of course, exist on their own. Many of the earliest comic films, and many sketch-like interludes in TV variety shows, are simply gags. They can also function as the culminating point in restricted and simple narrative forms like the sketch. They can exist, within the context of a stand-up act or a cross-talk routine, as self-contained units, or as units linked loosely into sequential (rather than consequential) strings. And they can also be introduced into full-length narrative forms like the sit-com and the feature film. Inasmuch, then, as the generation of laughter is a defining generic convention, it can mark all kinds of forms as comedy.

It can also mark all kinds of genres as comedy. Thus there exist comedy westerns, like Support Your Local Sheriff (1968), comedy thrillers, like North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963), comedy detective films, like The Thin Man (1934), comedy horror films, like The Cat and the Canary (1939), and, of course, musical comedies like Top Hat (1935), Carefree (1939), and Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Hybrids like these illustrate the extent to which the features of comedy can be combined with the features of nearly all the other major genres. Hybridization is not, of course, unique to comedy. There exist combinations of the western and the horror film (Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1965)), the western and the musical (Oklahoma (1955) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)), the musical and the horror film (The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)), and so on. Comedy, however, seems especially suited to hybridization, in large part because the local forms responsible for the deliberate generation of laughter can be inserted at some point into most other generic contexts without disturbing their conventions. There are limits, of course, but they are determined largely by considerations of tone, and most genres do not require any single tone to predominate throughout the duration of a narrative. (Some individual generic films do, but that is another matter.)

Parody and satire

Generic hybridization should be distinguished from parody. None of the examples given above involve more than momentary instances of generic parody. They are true generic combinations. There are, of course, many examples of generic parody, from Blazing Saddles (1974), a parody western, to Carry on Cleo (1964), a parody epic, to East Lynne with Variations (1919), a Ben Turpin comedy which parodies both one particular melodrama (East Lynne) and the conventions of melodrama in general. But parody is a special case. In contrast to generic hybrids, which combine generic conventions, parodies work by drawing upon such conventions in order to make us laugh. As Linda Hutcheon has argued, parody need not always be comic.⁶ However, when it is, and when it occurs within the context of a comedy, laughter is consistently produced, not just by gags and funny lines (as may, of course, be the case with a hybrid), but by gags and funny lines which specifically use as their raw material the conventions of the genre involved. The result is not the combination of generic elements, but the subordination of the conventions of one genre to those of another. Blazing Saddles is not a comedy western, but a comedy, albeit one which relies upon a knowledge of the western to work.

We return to the topic of parody later in this book. In the meantime, though, it is worth stressing here that parody is a mode of comedy, not a form. Parody has its own techniques and methods, but no particular form or structure. The instances cited above happen all to be narrative feature films. But there exist countless examples of parody in sketch form (like Victoria Wood’s ‘This Week’s Film’ sketch, which parodies British stiffuppe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• POPULAR FICTIONS SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series editors’ preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Notes and References