Description
Book SynopsisThis wide-ranging celebration of the variety and complexity of international film comedy covers work from the days of silent movies to the present on a global scale, including Europe, the Middle East and Asia as well as the United States.
Trade Review“And of course, it very much is. An important subject needs an important companion. This is it. That’s all, folks.” (Reference Reviews, 1 January 2014)
“This work is indispensible for any student or scholar who, in the spirit of Rabelais, Swift, and Chesterton, will laugh while studying film images. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.” (Choice, 1 July 2013)
Table of ContentsNotes on Editors and Contributors ix
Comic Introduction: ‘‘Make ’em Laugh, make ’em Laugh!’’ 1
Part I Comedy Before Sound, and the Slapstick Tradition
1 The Mark of the Ridiculous and Silent Celluloid: Some Trends in American and European Film Comedy from 1894 to 1929 15
Frank Scheide
2 Pie Queens and Virtuous Vamps: The Funny Women of the Silent Screen 39
Kristen AndersonWagner
3 ‘‘Sound Came Along and OutWent the Pies’’: The American Slapstick Short and the Coming of Sound 61
Rob King
Part II Comic Performers in the Sound Era
4 MutiniesWednesdays and Saturdays: Carnivalesque Comedy and the Marx Brothers 87
Frank Krutnik
5 Jacques Tati and Comedic Performance 111
KevinW. Sweeney
6 Woody Allen: Charlie Chaplin of New Hollywood 130
David R. Shumway
7 Mel Brooks, Vulgar Modernism, and Comic Remediation 151
Henry Jenkins
Part III New Perspectives on Romantic Comedy and Masculinity
8 Humor and Erotic Utopia: The Intimate Scenarios of Romantic Comedy 175
Celestino Deleyto
9 Taking Romantic Comedy Seriously in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Before Sunset (2004) 196
Leger Grindon
10 The View from the Man Cave: Comedy in the Contemporary ‘‘Homme-com’’ Cycle 217
Tamar Jeffers McDonald
11 The Reproduction of Mothering: Masculinity, Adoption, and Identity in Flirting with Disaster 236
Lucy Fischer
Part IV Topical Comedy, Irony, and Humour Noir
12 It’s Good to be the King: Hollywood’s Mythical Monarchies, Troubled Republics, and Crazy Kingdoms 251
Charles Morrow
13 No Escaping the Depression: Utopian Comedy and the Aesthetics of Escapism in Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take it with You (1938) 273
William Paul
14 The Totalitarian Comedy of Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be 293
Maria DiBattista
15 Dark Comedy from Dr. Strangelove to the Dude 315
Mark Eaton
Part V Comic Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
16 Black Film Comedy as Vital Edge: A Reassessment of the Genre 343
Catherine A. John
17 Winking Like a One-Eyed Ford: American Indian Film Comedies on the Hilarity of Poverty 365
Joshua B. Nelson
18 Ethnic Humor in American Film: The Greek Americans 387
Dan Georgakas
Part VI International Comedy
19 Alexander Mackendrick: Dreams, Nightmares, and Myths in Ealing Comedy 409
Claire Mortimer
20 Tragicomic Transformations: Gender, Humor, and the Plastic Body in Two Korean Comedies 432
Jane Park
21 Comedy ‘‘Italian Style’’ and I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958) 454
Roberta Di Carmine
22 ‘‘Laughter that Encounters a Void?’’: Humor, Loss, and the Possibility for Politics in Recent Palestinian Cinema 474
Najat Rahman
Part VII Comic Animation
23 Laughter is Ten Times More Powerful than a Scream: The Case of Animated Comedy 497
Paul Wells
24 Theatrical Cartoon Comedy: From Animated Portmanteau to the Risus Purus 521
Suzanne Buchan
Index 545
