BUI301F2022/Verbal Humor

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Narrative

  1. “Stanley Cavell: "the comedy of remarriage" (from Pursuits of Happiness)
    • “...the couple as separated in the initial stages, only to be reunited by the end of the film after discovering that they still love each other"
  2. "...the couple experiencing love at first sight yet being unable to be together, due to factors beyond their control.
  3. "...unrequited love.
  4. "...the couple who are at war with each other from the start”

Tropes

  • “mistaken identity, disguise and masquerade, intimate tete-a-tetes (often meals), public humiliation, brides bolting from the altar, a race against time, confiding in friends and the 'meet-cute'."
    • What are our films' "meets cute" and how are they "prophetic"?

The screwball heroine

  • “crazy and unpredictable, she is capable of throwing a man's life into complete chaos, and has excessive energies and exuberance. In this respect she is a threat to society and needs to be contained by the restraints of marriage."
    • How is the threat of the independent woman contained? Is that containment what you take away from The Lady Eve or Always?

The screwball hero

  • "two main types: the innocent and the father figure.”
    • Hopsie Pike (The Lady Eve): "the naive innocent who needs to be guided by a woman in order to find happiness. Yet in turn all of these men have lost their way and need to be transformed by love into fully functioning, emotionally intelligent adults."
      • Does this apply to Marcus?

"The comedy of romance"

  • Geoff King: "...comedy as hinging on 'departures of a particular kind from what are considered to be the normal routines of life', the comic impact of which is created through:
    • difference from what is usually expected in the non-comic world
    • incongruity
    • exaggeration
    • displacement; sense of things being out of place, mixed up or not quite right.”
    • How does this relate back to Carroll's types of humor?
  • "anarchic disruption of the norm, manifested in an exhilarating rush of verbal wit and slapstick comedy, the chemistry between the couple having been the catalyst for this comic abundance.”
    • What is the function of slapstick in Eve and Always?
  • Geoff King and Raymond Durgnat: "The audience laugh with relief that it is not us on the screen, even to the point of feeling superior to the characters in all their foolishness and humiliation, yet we can laugh with a sense of recognition, or in sympathy with the character with whom we have been aligned.”
    • Did you feel superior to any of the characters in the two films? Was that superiority a source of humor?
  • Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik: "distribution of narrative knowledge between the characters and the spectator in order to create comic suspense and surprise."
    • What phrase does Carroll use for this?
    • What types of disguises are there in Eve?
    • Surprise: "The unexpected gives delight to the spectator, in contrast to the pleasure created by following the predictable narrative path of the genre, applying Barthes's distinction between jouissance and plaisir. Jouissance (delight) is an uncontrolled pleasure which is difficult to rationalise, creating a more intense relationship between the film and the spectator."
  • "The gag"
    • What functions do gags serve in romantic comedies? E.g., Jean dropping an apple on Hopsie.
    • Do they serve the narrative or distract from it?

Texts & resources

  • Claire Mortimer, Romantic Comedy (New York: Routledge, 2010).