EN 3191 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Martial, Screwball Comedy Film, Erving Goffman
Monday, April 29th, 2019
Lecture One: Introduction
Comedy vs. Tragedy:
• An old saying: “When I fall down, it’s tragedy. When you fall down, it’s comedy.”
• Tragedy: in literature, specifically refers to a dramatic genre and is defined as a form
of drama that deals with human suffering (often caused by the characters’ own
flaws). Its goal is to provoke in the viewers the feelings of pity and fear, ultimately
leading them to experience catharsis (emotional release and renewal).
• As our syllabus shows, the genre of comedy is much more slippery:
o comedy as a dramatic genre (i.e. plays)
o comedy as a performative mode (e.g. stand-up comedy)
o works that use verbal or physical humour can be described as comedic
o sub-genres or satellite genres: satire, black comedy, screwball comedy
Theories of Laughter:
1) Superiority theory (probably the oldest, dating back to Plato and Aristotle) argues
that we laugh because we are amused by the suffering of others (today, this feeling
is popularly known as
Schadenfreude
). Recently extended by Charles Gruner in his
game theory of humour.
Consider Charlie Chaplin’s
The Tramp
(1915):
2) Relief theory → release of psychological tension or of aggression (Sigmund Freud).
3) Benign violation theory (A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren) → something
threatens our sense of the world and its norms but the threat seems benign (or can
be reduced to being benign).
4) Humour as a defense mechanism.
5) Incongruity theory → expectations subverted; incompatible points of view or
frames of reference brought into sudden collision. Sociologist Erving Goffman
suggested that we interpret situations through “framing” – using complex systems
to organize our experience.
6) Arthur Koestler called the production of humour in a joke “bisociation,” imagining
this moment as an intersection of two geometrical planes. He suggested that one
plane is the body of the joke, the set-up itself, while the punchline suddenly reverses
our expectations and reveals another plane of meaning.
7) In Koestler’s view, this sudden reversal forces us to make a mental leap in order to
bridge the gap between the two planes of meaning.
Questions to Consider:
i. Is loss of control essential to comedy?
ii. Can comedy avoid being subversive?
iii. If the role of dramatic/literary works is to instruct, can we actually control what
comedy is teaching its audience?
Marital Epigrams:
Marcus Valerius Martialis 1st century AD
Lydia is as loose as a horse’s rear,
as a swift-spinning bronze hoop,
as the wide wagon-wheel through which the acrobat leaps,
as an old shoe soaked in a foul puddle,
Document Summary
Lecture one: introduction: tragedy: in literature, specifically refers to a dramatic genre and is defined as a form, an old saying: when i fall down, it"s tragedy. When you fall down, it"s comedy. of drama that deals with human suffering (often caused by the characters" own flaws). Theories of laughter: superiority theory (probably the oldest, dating back to plato and aristotle) argues that we laugh because we are amused by the suffering of others (today, this feeling is popularly known as schadenfreude). Recently extended by charles gruner in his game theory of humour. He suggested that one plane is the body of the joke, the set-up itself, while the punchline suddenly reverses our expectations and reveals another plane of meaning. bridge the gap between the two planes of meaning. They say i fucked her in a pool by the sea-side; As he unloads boxes into his new cabin, an old pick-up.
