The nature of comedy has interested many thinkers, from Plato to Freud, but film comedy has not received much theoretical attention in recent years. The essays in
Comedy/Cinema/Theory use a range of critical and theoretical approaches to explore this curious and fascinating subject. The result is a stimulating, informative book for anyone interested in film, humor, and the art of bringing the two together.
Comedy remains a central human preoccupation, despite the vagaries in form that it has assumed over the centuries in different media. In his introduction, Horton surveys the history of the study of comedy, from Aristophanes to the present, and he also offers a perspective on other related comic forms: printed fiction, comic books, TV sitcoms, jokes and gags.
Some essays in the collection focus on general issues concerning comedy and cinema. In lively (and often humorous) prose, such scholars as Lucy Fischer, Noel Carroll, Peter Lehman, and Brian Henderson employ feminist, post-Freudian, neo-Marxist, and Bakhtinian methodologies. The remaining essays bring theoretical considerations to bear on specific works and comic filmmakers. Peter Brunette, William Paul, Scott Bukatman, Dana Polan, Charles Eidsvik, Ruth Perlmutter, Stephen Mamber, and Andrew Horton provide different perspectives for analyzing The Three Stooges, Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Dusan Makavejev, and Alfred Hitchcock’s sole comedy,
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as well as the peculiar genre of cynical humor from Eastern Europe.
As editor Horton notes, an over-arching theory of film comedy does not emanate from these essays. Yet the diversity and originality of the contributions reflect vital and growing interest in the subject, and both students of film and general moviegoers will relish the results.
The nature of comedy has interested many thinkers, from Plato to Freud, but film comedy has not received much theoretical attention in recent years. The essays in
Comedy/Cinema/Theory use a range of critical and theoretical approaches to explore th
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Acknowledgments
Introduction
Andrew Horton
Problematics of Film Comedy
Notes on the Sight Gag
Noel Carroll
Penis-size Jokes and Their Relation to Hollywood’s Unconscious
Peter Lehman
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child: Comedy and Matricide
Lucy Fischer
In Search of Radical Metacinema
Stephen Mamber
Mock Reallsm: The Comedy of Futility in Eastern Europe
Charles Eidsvik
Comic Occasions
Charles Chaplin and the Annals of Anality
William Paul
The Light Side of Genius: Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the Screwball Tradition
Dana Polan
Cartoon and Narrative in the Films of Frank Tashlin and Preston Sturges
Brian Henderson
The Three Stooges and the (Anti-)Narratlve of Violence: De(con)structive Comedy
Peter Brunette
Paralysis in Motion: Jerry Lewis’s Life as a Man
Scott Bukatman
Woody Allen’s Zelig: An American Jewish Parody
Ruth Perlmutter
The Mouse Who Wanted to F-k a Cow: Cinematic Carnival Laughter In Dusan
Makavejev’s Films
Andrew Horton
Selected Bibliography and Works Cited
Contributors
Index
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Andrew S. Horton is Professor of English at Loyola University, New Orleans. He is the author of George Roy Hill and the forthcoming Soviet Cinema under Glasnost.
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