PhD: Dark Matters
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:57 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_comedy wrote: <<Black humour (from the French humour noir) is a term coined by Surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935, to designate the sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism. The terms black comedy or dark comedy have been later derived as alternatives to Breton's term. Topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo, specifically those related to death, are treated in an unusually humorous or satirical manner while retaining their seriousness; the intent of black comedy, therefore, is often for the audience to experience both laughter and discomfort, sometimes simultaneously.
Although the two are interrelated, black comedy is different from straightforward obscenity in that it is more subtle and does not necessarily have the explicit intention of offending people. In obscene humour, much of the humorous element comes from shock and revulsion, while black comedy might include an element of irony, or even fatalism. For example, the archetypal black-comedy self-mutilation in English appears in the novel Tristam Shandy. Tristam, five years old at the time, starts to urinate out of an open window for lack of a chamber pot. The sash falls and circumcises him; his family reacts with both chaotic action and philosophic digression. A related theme is frustrated suicide. For example, in the play Waiting for Godot, a man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down.
Black comedy is a prevalent theme of many cult films, television shows and video games. The 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove presents one of the best-known mainstream examples of black comedy. The subject of the film is nuclear warfare and the possible annihilation of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with gravity and seriousness, creating suspense over the efforts to avoid a nuclear war, but Dr. Strangelove instead plays the subject for laughs. For example, in the film, the fail-safe procedures designed to prevent a nuclear war are precisely the systems that ensure that it will happen. Plotwise, Group Captain Mandrake serves as the only sane character in the film, while Major Kong fills the role of the hero striving for a harmful goal.>>
