Today we have a special post from Bill Costanzo, one of our most active SIG members! If you didn't already know, he is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of English and Film who has a fabulous new book out called When the World Laughs: Film Comedy East and West. This post is a reflection on what brought him to this most recent book project and an overview of what it contributes to the field of comedy and humor studies.
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A common lament within the SCMS is that scholarly discussions of comedy rely on the same outmoded theoretical models. Again and again, the words of Bergson, Bakhtin, Bataille, and Freud are recycled to define humor and explain how it works. Rarely do we hear about non-western traditions or more recent efforts by the many sociologists, neuroscientists, or evolutionary biologists who are actively engaged in humor studies. Another troubling limitation is our overwhelming focus on Hollywood and English language media. How often do we acknowledge developments in the rest of the world? How much do we really know about the traditions of comedy in Asia or Africa, in Scandinavia or South America?
It is with these questions in mind that I set out to form a more global view of comedy and humor. My research led me to discover alternative cultural conceptions of comedy (Confucian, Daoist, Zen, Islam) as well as the many recent studies in cognitive psychology or neuroscience that are contributing important insights to our understanding of when and how we laugh. It led me well beyond the usual American and Euro-centric film cannon to the world’s great traditions of movie comedies East and West, North and South.
These explorations deepened my conceptions of humor, enabling me to look at funny movies, sitcoms, or standup in a different light. As the “In Focus” editors of JCMS recently observed, “comedy and humor should be at the very front and center of our attention as interdisciplinary media scholars.” (Hennefeld et al. 2019) Comedy is much more than a genre or a cycle. It is, arguably, a state of mind and a survival strategy. The comic imagination encourages flexible thinking, embraces multiple perspectives, and increases our options for action. In contrast to the straight line of Aristotle’s plot structure (the tragic hero’s single-minded quest for the prize, the monster’s unalterable pursuit of the quarry in a horror tale), the zig-zag momentum of comic narratives more closely follows the episodic twists and turns of Homer’s Odyssey than his Iliad. The protagonist of comedy often is a trickster figure, capable of assuming multiple identities, shifting between the social strata of a community and questioning its values, often slyly subverting them.
What emerged from all this—the wider, transnational investigations; the deeper, multi-disciplinary forms of analysis--was a conception of comedy and humor that underlies When the World Laughs: Film Comedy East and West. In this book, just published by Oxford University Press, I have sought to apply the lessons learned from studying hundreds of films in over a dozen different languages from different regions of the world.
Part One provides a framework for understanding these films: the most helpful theories and research, the major comic forms (from slapstick and farce to parody and satire), archetypal characters (clowns, tricksters, comic duos), historical developments (from Egyptian graffiti to the Internet), and the aesthetics of comedy (techniques and styles for being funny on screen).
Part Two applies these insights to specific movies and traditions, spanning four nations (Britain, France, Italy, Russia) and four regions (Scandinavia, Africa, South America, East Asia).
Case Studies explore individual films in depth, applying concepts from the book to great movies from eight countries. For example, Shaun of the Dead (Britain, 2004) demonstrates how comedy can be both national and transnational. Bienvenue Chez les Ch`tis (Welcome to the Sticks, France, 2008) illustrates the challenges of translation and shows how comedy can deal with prejudice and stereotypes. La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful, Italy, 1998) tests the limits of dark comedy, an opportunity to explore history and controversy. Ivan Vasilievich (1973) a Russian movie from the Soviet era, shows how comedy can serve both as a critique of and compromise with the status quo. Other case studies include Taafé Fanga (Skirt Power, Mali, 1997), a film about gender roles, Elling (Norway, 2001), Tampopo (Japan, 1985), and Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales, Argentina, 2014).
My hope is that When the World Laughs will contribute to our field in several ways, that it will help to restore significant international films and viewpoints to their rightful place within cinematic studies, that it will provide important cultural contexts for our understanding of comedy, and that it will offer our students an informative, entertaining introduction to the many roles that comic movies play on planet mirth.
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