CI5472 Teaching Film, Television, and Media
Module 7: Film/Television Genres ~ Different Genre Types
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Comedy has been one of the most consistently appealing genres. |
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Comedy films | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Television comedies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
www.museum.tv [domestic settings] |
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There are a number of different comedy subgenres that vary according to differences in the comic techniques employed. |
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Mime |
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Early film comedy that emerged in the silent film era focused on non-verbal pantomime, in which exaggeration and physical dexterity functioned as comic elements. Early stars of this genre were Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. In Charlie Chaplin’s films, he typically employed sight gags to ridicule and challenge social norms, particularly the pretentiousness of the powerful. For example, in The Rink, he literally runs circles around his opponent, portrayed as a clumsy bully. As such, he represented the “little guy” in society who is able to use his skills to assert his own power. With the development of sound, Chaplin turned to more serious movies, often raising tough questions about social values. |
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Slapstick |
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Slapstick involves blatant, overt physical pranks — slipping on a banana peel or attempting to carry a piano up steep stairs, as evident in the early films of Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and The Three Stooges, and then later films with Jerry Lewis, the Pink Panther series, and Jim Carrey, which added verbal repartee. Also, much of animation, such as the Road Runner films, consists of physical slapstick. |
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Parody/satire |
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Films by Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and the Marx Brothers, as well as Saturday Night Live engage in parody or ridicule of institutions, traditional social norms, and other genres. In the Woody Allen films such as Bananas, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives, and Bullets Over Broadway, Allen uses witty dialogue to mimic and parody different discourses of therapy, religion, business, sports, and academia. For example, a character who, in standing in line with Allen outside a movie theater, employs pretentious academic language to discuss a film. Television shows such as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, The Smothers Brothers, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Beavis and Butthead, and Saturday Night Live consist of sketches ridiculing a range of topics, including various television genres. |
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| Woody Allen sites: |
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Situation comedy |
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Television situation comedies have made up a large bulk of prime-time television since the 1950s with shows such as I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Phil Silvers Show, Father Knows Best, The Dick Van Dyke Show The Ossie and Harriet Show, My Three Sons, and the later shows, Cheers, Frasier, the Beverly Hillbillies, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show , The Cosby Show, Murphy Brown, Ellen, Family Ties, The Jeffersons, Roseanne, Married…With Children, Seinfield, Absolutely Fabulous, Frasier, Friends, Home Improvement, The Simpsons, Mad About You, South Park, King of the Hill, Sports Night, Ed, and Sex and the City. In the typical comedy storyline, there is a movement from equilibrium to disequilibrium back to equilibrium. Consistent with classical theater comedies of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Wilde, equilibrium is disrupted when characters are confused about each other’s true intentions or their actual status in society. In The I Love Lucy Show, Lucy was often caught up in schemes that led to difficulties with Ricky. Coping with these challenges creates further confusions and disruptions. However, the confusions and mixed identities are eventually straightened out, leading to a happy ending in which challenges to institutional equilibrium are mitigated and society is restored. This means that comedy entails more than just humor — it also represents a basic stance towards institutions. As Northrop Fyre argued, comedy celebrates the restoration of society, in contrast to tragedy, which challenges society. |
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The roles in comedy are typically one-dimensional prototypes, as opposed to tragic characters who are complex and contradictory. There is often a “buffoon” who is oblivious to what’s going on, the “straight man” who serves as an audience for the main character’s comic lines, the “trickster” who creates pranks, and the “wise elder” who straightens out problems or issues, leading to resolution. In the 1950s, programs such as Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best portrayed fathers as omniscient, central, but one-dimensional white-middle class figures. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and The Cosby Show portrayed fathers and mothers a somewhat more realistically. Producer Norman Lear in All in The Family portrayed Archie Bunker as a conservative, bigoted working-class father who is out of touch with changes in contemporary beliefs and attitudes towards class, gender, and race. However, many viewers actually perceived him in a positive light as defending their own conservative values (Pungente & O’Malley, 1999). And, Bill Cosby had hoped that the portrayal of an idealized, successful, upper-middle class Black family on The Cosby Show would enhance race relations in the 1980’s. However, a study of black and white viewer response found quite different reactions from the two groups (Jhally & Lewis, 1992). The Black audiences responded positively to the portrayal of intelligent, independent Huxtable family members as challenging stereotypes of Blacks. At the same time, the program served to reify conservatives’ attitudes towards Blacks. During the Reagan era of the 1980s in which affirmative action, civil rights, and economic support for Blacks were being reduced, the White audience perceived the program as evidence that Blacks were successful as an economic class and did not need further support. They also assumed that if Blacks “worked harder,” they could “make it on their own” as did the Huxtables (Jhally & Lewis, 1992). In the 1980s, comedies such as Married With Children and Roseanne dealt more realistically with issues of sexuality, gender, and class identities. |
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Comedies often occur in two settings — the family home or the workplace (Hartley, 2001). While earlier comedies of the 1950s to 1970s focused more on the family, later comedies of the 1980s and 90s focused more on the workplace — to some degree the workplace became more of a site for “family” interpersonal conflicts. Moreover, programs such as Married…With Children, Roseanne, and The Simpsons began to portray darker, problematic aspects of family life that was never portrayed in the often Pollyannish, idealized homes of early shows (Pungente & O’Malley, 1999). This raises the question, as some critics have charged, whether “negative” portrayals of the family on The Simpsons lead viewers to assume a more negative perspective on the family in lived-world contexts. Portrayals of work-place comedy focus on tensions associated with confusion between work-place and personal lives, as well as challenges to status roles in the workplace. |
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Romantic comedy |
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Romantic comedy films — Groundhog Day, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Four Weddings and a Funeral, When Harry Met Sally, Sixteen Candles, Moonstruck, Sleepless in Seattle, Clueless, Notting Hill, and While You Were Sleeping — remain one of the most popular genres since the heyday of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s, to 50s, that produced Some Like it Hot, rated the funniest film on the AFI list. In romantic comedy, a couple is coping with challenges to their relationship — for example, lovers begin to suspect that the other person has not been faithful in the relationship. In My Best Friend’s Wedding, the two main characters are convinced that they are not right for each other — and their friends perpetuate that perspective. However, as in situation comedy, the young couple discovers their true love for each other, leading to a resolution and often marriage. The underlying value assumption is that the traditional family/love relationship is a viable institutional norm |
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In a more serious form of the romantic comedy, the female heroine initially engages in a stand-offish, impersonal male, who has difficulty knowing how to express his feelings for the heroine. The heroine functions to bring out his more romantic, emotional side, so that, by the end of the story, the hero demonstrates or declares his love for the heroine. This storyline is manifested in Dirty Dancing, in which the strong-silent male returns at the end of the film to express his love for the heroine in a final dance scene. A variation of this theme is the male lover who expresses himself through surrogate whom the heroine rejects for the true love (Roxanne) or who openly shares the process of learning to articulate his love, as did the John Cusack character in High Fidelity. The film and television adaptations of the Jane Austen novels, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma, and Clueless, a modern adaptation of Emma, demonstrate the 19th century origins of this romance storyline. |
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In contrast to romantic comedy, in tragic romance films such as Love Story, Fatal Attraction, House of Mirth, The Bridges of Madison County, The English Patient, The End of the Affair, Titanic, Romeo and Juliet, and Jungle Fever the heroine/hero seeks forbidden love, thereby violating social norms associated with class, race, religion, or family ties. For Romeo and Juliet, their love is more important than allegiances to their families. In contrast to comedy, they suffer for their violation of social norms and institutions, serving to interrogate the conservative nature of institutions. |
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Ironic/critical comedy |
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There a number of comedy films, including M*A*S*H, Dr. Strangelove; Men in Black, Working Girl, The Truman Show, The Full Monty, The Van, Lost in America, Broadcast News, Raising Arizona, Fargo, Life is Beautiful, and Pleasantville that contain comic elements, but also raise larger questions about the break-down of institutions. For example, The Full Monty and Snapper portray the plight of unemployed blue-collar workers in Britain whose work is no longer valued in the new “service/information” economy, leading to depression, family conflicts, and attempted suicides. To maintain their sense of dignity, they create new forms of work — creating a strip show, running a mobile restaurant, and playing in a band. The comic element derives from the fact that the heroes’ the familiar skills were no longer applicable to operating in these new modes. And, films such as The Truman Show and Pleasantville raise questions about media constructions of reality and the blurred distinction between a media reality and a lived-world reality (see also reality TV shows). |
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University
of California, Berkeley, Bibliography on Television situation comedy |
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For further reading: |
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Cavell, S. (1981). Pursuits of happiness: The Hollywood comedy of remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. |
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Gehring, W. (1999). Parody as film genre: Never give a saga an even break. New York: Greenwood Press. |
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Gehring, W. (2002). Romantic Vs. screwball Comedy: Charting the difference. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. |
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Harries, D. (2000). Film parody. London: British Film Institute |
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King, G. (2002). Film comedy. New York: Wallflower Pres. |
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Neale, S., & Krutnik, F. (1990). Popular film and television comedy. New York: Routledge. |
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Rickman, G. (Ed.). (2002). The film comedy reader. New York: Limelight. |
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Voytilla, S., & Petri, S. (2003). Writing the comedy film: Make 'em laugh. New York: Michael Wiese Productions. |
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Comedy |
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Teaching activities on genre developed by students in CI5472, Spring, 2004 |
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