Catch Up Report

In this report I am going to review how comedy in film has changed and what the reasons behind these changes are.

Since the beginning of film comedy has always been one of the most popular genres. From the silent slapstick films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to the more modern classics such as Stepbrothers, comedy has always had a place in the hearts of film fans.

Although comedy has always been apart of film, the genre itself has changed more than any other genre of film, but has still maintained its popularity. The ability to adapt comedy and change it based on what people find funny has allowed it to remain a fan favourite for decades.

In the early days of comedy, it was based around physical comedy, mainly because there was no dialogue. Actors like Charlie Chaplin were renowned for using objects and exaggerated body movements to make films funny. They relied heavily on slapstick comedy and the ability of the actors to use their surroundings in order to make the audience laugh.

A film that highlights this is Charlie Chaplin in the Bank (1915). Although it is only a short film we can see many traits of early comedies that have been evolved and changed as the comedy genre has evolved. In terms of cinematography and editing it is extremely basic and has practically no effect on how the audience interpret the film. Also Charlie Chaplin is always centre of shot and the camera is always on him from a medium shot length. This is because the focus is on the actor and his movements and not the narrative of the film. In fact this particular film has no real narrative. It is just a number of clips of Charlie Chaplin causing mayhem in a bank with no real structure and does not follow Todorov’s narrative theory. As there is no dialogue in the film, the audience must rely on music and facial expressions to understand the overall mood of the scene. For example in a scene where Chaplin is happy the music will be quick and high pitched and he will show with his body movement and facial expressions that he is happy, and when he is sad the music will become slower and deeper, his body language will change and so will his facial expressions.  

However one trait that is found in every great comedy is how we find the misfortune of others funny. From small things like slipping over a banana peel to recent comedies when these misfortunes have become more violent, more vulgar and arguably the worse the suffering the funnier we think it is. More recent comedies have changed drastically since the days of Charlie Chaplin. They no longer rely on the body language of actors but now use violence, sex and dialogue that many would find offensive.

The best example of this in recent years is Stepbrothers (2008) starring Will Ferrell and John C Reilly. It almost the complete opposite to Charlie Chaplin’s film over 90 years before it, but still has the same effect on audiences now as Charlie Chaplin did in 1915. Stepbrothers relies on crude and explicit language to make the audience laugh, but also uses the basic principles of comedy but in a much more extreme way. There is violence as in Charlie Chaplin in the Bank, however in Charlie Chaplin it is a simple kick up the backside, whereas Stepbrothers contains a fight scene in which a rake, a bicycle and a German Shepherd all come into play, two opposite ends of the extremity scale but both effective in making the audience laugh. However some people believe that the use of extremity in films is harming the comedy genre. Jennifer Matz, who has interviewed comedians such as Lewis Black had this to say.

“They don't think it's any funnier that you can say the 'F'-word and 'goddammit' and you can talk about sex acts. None of them could point out a case where that succeeded and that being an advancement for the comedic arts."

According to Matz, being able to swear and use explicit language in any sentence and how sexual encounters are used as a source of ‘comedy’ doesn’t make it any funnier and that it was not helping to evolve comedy or advance it in any way.

Despite what Matz says recent comedies like Stepbrothers have had huge success, so why do we find extreme comedy funny? We choose to watch these films again despite knowing we are going be bombarded with explicit language, sex humour and extreme violence. In my opinion it is because we see it as breaking the taboo’s within our society. If we were to behave in the way some of our most beloved comedy characters do we would be considered rude and irresponsible, so by watching these things happen it allows us to escape from the taboos of society and enjoy these moments as though it is us who is part of them.

Are comedies becoming too extreme? One of comedies great strengths is that we see things that if we saw in real-life would make us cringe, but by making these acts so frequent and almost becoming the norm in comedy, are we not taking away comedies greatest asset, the ability to step away from the real world and shock us with something so vulgar or so insane that we could never possibly see it anywhere else? Has comedy reached its extreme limit? Or is there a new breed of comedy films ready to shock us and keep us laughing for years to come?