According to me, one thing that this transition has managed to change completely is the face of Slapstick humor and the way it is made use of in today’s world.
Today, slapstick along with sarcasm, dominates the virtual humor community. Evidence to this can be witnessed over at Humor-blogs dot com , the main portal of the e-Humor community. At least eighty-percent of the humor blogs that this website links to are partially, if not completely, based on sarcastic or slapstick forms of humor in some way or the other.
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia states that,
“Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence or activities (e.g., a character being hit in the face with a frying pan or running full speed into a wall). The style is common to those genres of entertainment in which the audience is supposed to understand the very hyperbolic nature of such violence to exceed the boundaries of common sense and thus license non-cruel laughter”.
I think that the above definition relates completely to the modern form of slapstick humor.
If one was to talk about this form of humor in the past, Charlie Chaplin, without a doubt, would have to be an unforgettable example. He was surely a legend of his time.
To exemplify the old form of slapstick humor, following is a small clip featuring Charlie Chaplin, titled “Table Ballet” from You Tube.
This clip was considered to be a pure genius in the past. They called it the “Dance of the rolls”. There is a very little chance that someone who is accustomed to the present day form of slapstick humor, would be able to make out anything relating to humor from this clip. What was taken to be funny in this clip in the past was the fact that Charlie Chaplin used two forks and two potato rolls to depict two legs and make them move in a dancing sort of fashion.
However, If you were to show this clip to a person today, he/she would probably draw nothing related to humor from the clip. Heck, I think that even if Charlie Chaplin was alive today and had was accustomed to the present day slapstick flicks like the Bean series, he wouldn’t have taken another look at that “Dance of the Rolls” Clip(I find the clip to be highly un-amusing as well :-/).
The present-day form of slapstick humor is reflected in Rowan Atkinson’s famous film, Bean: The Movie.
The Plot of this film revolves around Mr. Bean who is a security guard at the London Art Gallery. Each and every employee at the museum is tired of him. He is on the verge of getting fired. In order to get rid of him for a while, the museum advisory board decides to send him to an Art Museum at Los Angeles, USA as a renowned British Artist in order to talk about their latest acquisition “Whistler’s Mother”.
Starting from the scene where he bursts open a vomit-bag full of puke on a passenger, Ensuing is a series of events in which Mr. Bean gets into one mess after another and continuously scrambles to cover up for the mishaps caused by him.
Although the storyline isn’t that appealing, this movie poses to be quite humorous at times (I stress.. “at times”). Rowan Atkinson uses quite a few elements to make certain parts of the movie very funny. The elements range from not talking at all to making various weird facial expressions that leave the viewer somewhat amused.
When I consider the above elements, it leads me to the conclusion that Mr. Bean is quite possibly a modern day form of Charlie Chaplin. However, the way in which Bean relies on physical comedy and grunting, is completely different from that used by Charlie Chaplin during his time.
The Slapstick Humor in this movie is kind of modernized, if I was to put it in one word. It is hard to explain what I mean here. For Example, some instances in the film that reflect humor would be-
When Mr. Bean bursts a paper bag full of puke onto a sleeping passenger in the aircraft,
When he wets his pants by accident in the washroom and tries to dry them using the dryer(you have to see this scene to truly understand what I mean).
When Mr. Bean doesn’t know that the mirror in front of him in the interrogation room is two-way and he starts making weird gestures.
These are some of the instances that reflect the type of slapstick humor that is made use of in this movie. Although there are many more scenes like this, they all make use of the same kind of acts to achieve Humor.
After seeing this movie, there were several questions that seemed to perplex my mind is. In order to sum them all up – Is this the Modern form of Slapstick Humor or is it a completely different genre of Humor?
This Question my friend, is for you to answer.
2 comments:
First off, the roll scene was from the movie The Gold Rush. I thought that needed to be mentioned. The film is still highly regarded. AFI (American Film Institute) ranked it at the 58th spot on the Greatest Movie of All Time list. Yeah, the scene might not make you bust out loud laughing today but I still find it amusing.
As far as Mr. Bean goes, he's nowhere near the caliber of Chaplin and I don't find him very likable. That could be just me but I wouldn't care to see any more Bean movies. I hope they aren't considered the pinnacle of modern slapstick.
What I like to see is a mixture of slapstick and dialogue-driven humor. Arrested Development was probably the best example. You've got the secrecy behind Mr. F and Tobias dressing up as Mrs. Featherbottom.
When I was younger, and even now, I loved the original Mr. Bean series. I think there are a few episodes on Youtube. If anyone hasn't seen those they are far superior to this movie. Movie wasn't terrible though, I enjoyed it.
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