If you trace the roots of comedy films you will likely find yourself swimming in a bowl of Duck Soup. The Marx Brothers were known for their anarchist comedies in the 1930s. During a period in American History that was overwhelmingly ruled by “The Great Depression,” their brand of humor cast witty glances at every conceivable form of authority firmly taking their place among the ranks with the average guy.
Although Charlie Chaplin was working since the silent era perfecting his famed character, The Tramp, his first speaking film, The Great Dictator marches into the 1940s as a satire of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. After The United States entered the war, comedies began to focus on life in the service and the war itself.
After the war and into the 1950s television was seen largely as a threat to the film business as it gained popularity in the homes of American citizens. Walt Disney continued to pump out family friendly films as other studios began to focus on more adult themes. The families were staying home with their new sets. It wouldn't be long before sexually tinged films like The Graduate (1967) along with darker satirical films like Dr. Strangelove (1964) would be the rage.
Into the 1970s, the sexual revolution saw the success of Woody Allen and his strictly adult themes and later the first of the gross-out films, Animal House, in 1978. The late 1970s and early 1980s were packed with films described as Teen Raunch usually illustrating the curiosities of sex and drug abuse with examples like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Porky's (1982). These are the films your parents didn't want you to see and which had them remarking about “clean comedy from the good old days.”
If we can determine from the above examples that comedy in Hollywood mirrors the state of society, what then can be said about the new age of raunch comedy that is characterized by bathroom humor and flagrant sexual misconduct. Does the seeming lack of morality in American film making denote a lack of morality among its fans?
Notably, the Farrelly Brothers ushered in the newest and raunchiest forms of comedy to date (at the time). These films unabashedly take on everything from disabilities to bodily functions. And topics that were once only discussed in the privacy of one's home are suddenly on the movie screen, larger than life where you find them difficult to ignore. Subjects that once earned sideways glances from those of the older set are now celebrated loud and proud in Technicolor and surround sound. Films like Dumb and Dumber (1994) and of course, the box office smash There's Something About Mary (1998) became theatrical phenomena. “Mary” was the first time I had ever witnessed a film gaining so much popularity that it was re released almost as soon as it left the theaters. Audiences proclaimed they were not yet finished watching Cameron Diaz do her do with goo while Ben Stiller was having some most unpleasant experiences with his nether regions.
And then Hollywood smelled blood and along came American Pie (1999) and its sequels followed by the likes of Van Wilder, Road Trip, Knocked Up, Super Bad, Grandma's Boy and Wedding Crashers to name a few in no particular order. Throw in Austin Powers, its sequels, Deuce Bigelow, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut and we are suddenly swimming in bodily fluids and all the toilet humor we can stand plus more. And somewhere along the way, Tom Green enjoyed a stint of success revolving around Freddy getting fingered.
While I personally have no issue with the direction of comedy today and laughed just as hard as everyone else when Stiffler drank the discarded ejaculate, it does make me wonder what is left. If films bring everything to the table for our consideration, leaving nothing to the whisperings of naughty, rebellious preteens in the wee hours of weekend nights, how long before we grow bored with having our most intimate moments shoved in our faces?
Comedy has always been successful because it allows us to see ourselves in the often hapless characters on screen. By showing us that everyone thinks the same thoughts, goes through the same trials of life and suffers the same embarrassments at the hands of our peers comedy gives us the vents we require to make it through daily life. For in the end there is nothing left but to laugh at them as well as ourselves. But the taboo of these subjects is what keeps us snickering long after the credits have rolled. Witty one-liners wind their way into the dialog of the masses and every film fan knows exactly what is the “most annoying sound in the world.”
If we continue to strip away the inhibitions, thereby stripping comedy of its power to shock us with what they'll do next, what in the end will we find funny?
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