From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about a tone of comedy. For
information about U.S. film and TV comedies featuring characters of
African ethnicity, see
Blaxploitation and
Black sitcom. For Shakespeare's dark comedies, see
Problem plays. For the one-act play, see
Black Comedy.
Black comedy, also known as black humor
is a sub-genre of
comedy
and satire
where topics and events that are usually treated seriously —
death,
mass murder,
suicide,
sickness,
madness,
terror,
drug abuse,
rape, war,
etc. — are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms include
dark humor, morbid humor,
gallows humor and
off-color humor.
In America, black comedy as a literary genre came to
prominence in the
1950s and
1960s.
Writers such as
Terry Southern,
Joseph Heller,
Thomas Pynchon,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Harlan Ellison and
Eric Nicol have written and published novels, stories and plays
where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. An
anthology edited by
Bruce Jay Friedman, titled "Black Humour," assembles many examples
of the genre.
The
1964 film
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
presents one of the best-known examples of black comedy. The subject of
the film is nuclear war and the extinction 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 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. The film
Fail Safe, produced simultaneously, tells a largely identical
story with a distinctly grave tone; the film
The Bed-Sitting Room, released six years later, treats
post-nuclear English society in an even wilder comic approach.
Today, black comedy can be found in almost all forms
of media.
Works
Literature
(Some of these have been adapted to
television or
film as
well.)
Films
-
After Hours, about an office worker's experiences with a
wide array of criminals, psychotics, sado-masochists, mohawk-sporting
punks, and an angry mob of ice cream men trying to kill him.
-
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,
a satirical film about an insane American General who orders a
nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, filmed during the
Cold War.
-
Fight Club – described as a 'black comedy by lead
actor
Edward Norton on the DVD commentary.
-
Happiness deals unflinchingly with subjects designed to make
audiences squirm (from suicide, rape and murder to pedophilia and
childhood masturbation). The treatment of the subjects is blunt, but
also gleefully absurdist.
-
Heathers, about a disaffected, jaded teen couple who start
killing members of popular cliques at their high school.
-
The Ladykillers (1955) and (2004) versions; a criminal
professor tries to perform a sophisticated robbery while fooling an
old woman.
-
The Trouble with Harry follows several quirky residents of a
small town as they deal with a dead body that has inconveniently
turned up in a local park.
-
The War of the Roses, about a couple going through a nasty
divorce while still trying to live in the same house.
Television
Video games
-
Grand Theft Auto series, about a lowly criminal in the big
city who must rise in the ranks of organized crime throughout the
game.
-
Total Carnage
-
Twisted Metal series, about a vehicular combat contest in
which the winner gets one wish.
Board, Card and RPG Games
Example of Black Comedy in
TV
-
The popular and crudely fashioned american
cartoon,
South Park, does not contain much black comedy, with the
exception of one episode,
Scott Tenorman Must Die. In this episode, one of the main
characters,
Eric Cartman, buys pubic hair from an older boy, and later finds
out that he is supposed to grow his own. Cartman takes out his
revenge on the boy,
Scott Tenorman, by killing his parents, making them into chilli,
and tricking Scott into eating it. This episode marked the time
where Cartman turned from a spoiled little brat into a brutally evil
little boy.
