dagblog - Comments for "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"

I really don't think I'd say

MrSmith1 — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:11:07 +0000

I really don't think I'd say this is the same topic, AA.

The violence the reviewer is talking about is coming from a totally different place and is meant to elicit an entirely different emotional response. In my opinion, comedic violence can't be put into the same category as dramatic violence or judged in the same way. The reviewer seems to be complaining that the network surrounds violence with comedic characters, but that, to me, is a whole different issue. Inspector LaStrade in the Sherlock Holmes stories is often used as comic relief, but that doesn't take away from the mystery. The use of such characters is a way to keep the plot going, or offer the reader or viewer a moment to catch their breath while their brains digest the dramatic plot point they've just read or witnessed.

A far different issue, it seems to me, is, can we really make an equivalency between Wile E. Coyote dropping a safe on the roadrunner with the season ending episode of Boardwalk Empire (spoiler alert), in which the disfigured hit-man character takes down an entire house of gangsters in the most bloody way possible?

The use of violence to shock and or make a dramatic point, (if it is effectively created), has an inherent gravitas and a revulsion to the violence that keeps us from laughing at the actions even when they are done in comedic surroundings. Think back to that scene in Clockwork Orange where someone is beaten and stomped to death while the Malcolm McDowell character sings an upbeat tune. (was it Singin' in the Rain? I forget.) The scene, though tinged with an ironic comic element is revolting, and there is no instinct to laugh at what happens or if there is one, it is quickly snuffed out as the reality of the violence overwhelms us.

The juxtaposition of humor and violence in a scene is not the same thing as a scene of comedic violence. In one, the effect of the violence is magnified, in the other the violence is undercut or de-fused completely.

In comedic violence, the circumstances and/or the context in which the violence takes place allows us to laugh. It bypasses the serious reaction instinct, by signaling to us that it's okay for us to laugh rather than be concerned for the victim's safety. It's the 'slipping on the banana peel' theory; if you see the banana peel on the sidewalk and then see a fat pompous man come along and slip on it, you'll most likely laugh, because you rationalize that a) he should have seen it, and b) he 'deserved' it. If you aren't shown the banana peel and a pregnant young woman comes along and slips and falls down, most likely your first instinct is not to laugh, but to be concerned for her safety. Context and circumstances determined whether or not what happened was funny, even though the situation was the same. In Life, if your worst enemy slips on the banana peel, it's funny, if you slip, not so much.

So, when we talk about a comedic scene of escalating violence we're talking about a whole other animal than a scene of dramatic violence with comedic window dressing.

It's a subtle distinction perhaps, but humor lives in such subtle distinctions.

While I've never seen the

artappraiser — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:04:55 +0000

In reply to It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

While I've never seen the movie, I just noticed Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times getting into your topic in her review of the TV show "The Following;" some excerpts to illustrate:

[....]It’s hard to turn off and even harder to watch.

And it could be that precisely because it is so bleak and relentlessly scary, “The Following” offers a more salutary depiction of violence than do series that use humor to mitigate horror — and thereby trivialize it.

CBS has a formula for making crime dramas viewer-friendly. Most of its shows blunt the impact of mutilated corpses and revolting autopsy procedures with almost cartoonish comic relief, usually the banter of good-looking investigators or a wackily eccentric computer nerd who prattles while doing all the Internet legwork. Cable, which has to offer something different, inverts the formula, creating villains who are amusing or intriguingly self-aware even while their crimes are terrifying [....]

Carroll’s obsession with Poe gets a little silly, especially when characters use literary exegesis to decipher clues. (The raven, one says, symbolizes “the finality of death.”) But there is nothing funny or arch about “The Following.”

Like so many prime-time shows it traffics in gruesome depictions of death, but it also takes its violence seriously. And that’s not such a bad thing these days.

The other half is being able

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:42:32 +0000

In reply to Baseball is 50% dedication

The other half is being able to hit a curve ball.

Baseball is 50% dedication

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:25:11 +0000

In reply to "There are two types of

Baseball is 50% dedication and 90% perspiration.

"There are two types of

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:27:25 +0000

In reply to There are two types of people

"There are two types of people in the world. the ones who....."

I was once charged with a twist on that formulation. A friend said, "There are two kinds of people in the world...and you aren't either one of them".

I saw it more then once at

trkingmomoe — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:57:05 +0000

In reply to It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

I saw it more then once at the drive-in movie theater on dates. We thought it was really funny and worth watching again.

Yes, that is one of the great

MrSmith1 — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 06:20:43 +0000

In reply to I have a longer response to

Yes, that is one of the great endings, isn't it? LOL

I think one of the first moments I realized that I had comedic instincts was when I was about nine years old and we were in Toledo, Ohio to visit my father's sister. We were in a car, driving along a highway when I noticed out the window the headquarters for the Otis Elevator company. I started laughing and no one understood why until I pointed out that the elevator company was in a one story building.

I have a longer response to

Elusive Trope — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:57:50 +0000

In reply to Excellent blog. The

I have a longer response to your response, but as soon as you said

The art of creating a situation from an innocent beginning to complete nuclear annihilation isn't easy...

I immediately thought of this great moment in cinematic annihilation comedy, and just had to post now

There are two types of people

Elusive Trope — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:49:15 +0000

In reply to Basically decent people. It

There are two types of people in this world. Those who play tennis and those who don't.

I'm not sure where I heard this, but I was around the first grade. It was probably my first moment of "getting" what can be considered New Yorker cartoon humor. The "humor" is that in the end, one can do this kind of breakdown with everything, and be correct. The layer to it in this particular case is that the individual saying this truism is placing tennis as the priority by which we separate people into the implied good and bad. Obviously tennis is frivolous, so dividing people into such groupings is outlandish, or humorous.

But the extra layer is that we do this in all facets of life. We may laugh behind the back of the person who divides the world into those who play tennis and those who don't, but we do this to everyone around us: those who are successful, those who are not. Those who are sane and those who are not. Those who have value and those who do not.

While Manson and Lanza are as unique to one another as you are to me, as a society we lump them together as one those "crazed lunatics" whose path leaves behind dead bodies. So the saying can modified to read:

There are two types of people in this world. Those who leave a wake of dead bodies behind them and those who don't.

Excellent blog. The

MrSmith1 — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:04:31 +0000

In reply to It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Excellent blog. The escalation of violence as a comedic device has a long tradition in theatre and the movies. One of the things that struck me about your description of the plot of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is that I realize it is very similar to the plot of The Treasure of Sierra Madre. One a screwball comedy, one a more serious take on the situation.

I think my first lessons in the comedic theory of escalating violence were learned from watching Laurel and Hardy, two masters of it Here they are as door to door Christmas tree salesmen in California:

And here they are as two sailors on shore leave that get stuck in traffic:

Comedy is always built on either comparison or exaggeration. The art of creating a situation from an innocent beginning to complete nuclear annihilation isn't easy, but when it's done right, the audience is able to suspend their disbelief and accept the ludicrousness of the escalating violence.

I was turned onto Milan Kundera in the late 80's too. I loved the Book of Laughter and Forgetting so much, I immediately raced out and got The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and when I finished that, everything else that he wrote. I think his humor often has such wonderfully ironic touches; the small joke written on a postcard that ends up destroying a man's life, and that great image of the two political leaders on the balcony exchanging hats, then having their picture taken, and when one of the men becomes persona non grata and is air-brushed out of all the government photos, all that remains is his hat on the other man's head. That one image has stayed with me for all the years.

Anyway, thanks for this blog. It got me thinking.