COMEDY GENRE OVERVIEW

TYPES OF COMEDIES - Slapstick• Slapstick was predominant in the earliest silent films

• Highlighted by physical comedy such as violence, horseplay, and light vulgarity.

• Slapstick often required exquisite timing and well-honed performance skills. 

• Most commonly seen in the films of

• Laurel and Hardy

• Abbott and Costello

• W. C. Fields

• The Three Stooges

TYPES OF COMEDIES – Dark Comedy

•Mixing elements of comedy and tragedy

•Dark comedies often have death, war or illness as a central theme.

•Dark comedies tend to use sophisticated techniques like irony and innuendo

•Some dark comedies have successfully blended broad humor as well

TYPES OF COMEDIES – Romantic

•Romantic comedies frequently feature couples that seem completely wrong for each other at the start of the story yet fall madly in love by the conclusion.

•Romantic comedies often use mistaken identity, strong supporting character roles, and plot twists to make the plot more dynamic because the genre is very formulaic as is.

TYPES OF COMEDIES – Parody

•By making fun of the stereotypes, conventions and clichés of a particular genre, parody comedies often poke fun at certain types of genres.

•Examples are Airplane! (1980)-which made fun of early disaster movies, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)-which spoofed spy films and Scary Movie (2000)-which took on modern horror movies.

TYPES OF COMEDIES – Musical

•Many comedies often have their own musical numbers whether or not they were musicals.

• The Marx Brothers' movies included a musical number in nearly every film.

•Used the “other world” feeling of musicals to portray comedy in a new light

HYBRID/SUBGENRE COMEDIES

DramedyHorror-comedyComedy-thriller

Crime/caper comedySports comedy

Coming-of-age comedySocial-class comedy

Military comedyFish-out-of-water comedy

Gross out comedy

HISTORY OF COMEDY

FACTS

•Genre of comedy began in Theater

•A performance that relies heavily on humor

•Hybrid/Sub genres tend to be used more since comedy can be put into almost any other genre

EARLY FILMS/SILENT FILMS COMEDY

•Silent films started with Physical Humor and made most silent films what they were

•Silent film comedies began in the late 1800's

•1912 first American Comedies first began with Key Stone Studios

•Mainly Slapstick comedies in this time period

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

•Recruited by Keystone pictures

•Resisted "talkies" most of his career except for 2 films

•Was a if comedian for the movies from 1914-1952

•Died in 1977

JOHN HUGHES AND COMEDY

•Made huge comedy hits in the 1980's

•Big hits consisted of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Home Alone, Etc.

COMEDIES GOALS

•To amuse its audience

•Make the audience laugh

•Have a happy ending

COMEDY RULES

•Don't have someone in danger

•Nobody gets hurt

•Only exception to someone getting hurt is Black Comedy

VIDEO EXAMPLESOF DIFFERENT TYPES

OF COMEDIES