Comedy and Tragedy: a fine,fine line

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Yesterday afternoon I was walking down some stairs with a mind to use the phone situated at the bottom. On reaching the bottom step I inexplicably tripped and crashed into a big tall rubbish bin that is also there. The phone book fell on my head. I heard some people in an adjacent room say "What the shyte was that?". I hid under the stairs until I stopped laughing and my head stopped hurting.

Later on that evening, I was walking home with my friend Jerkin. She was wearing mittens. We walked past a school and thoughtlessly picked a few daffodils that we saw growing by the fence. Literally two seconds later we heard the squeal of a car braking. We turned around to see a taxi driver shaking with rage and advancing towards us with the look of a man possessed. What he screamed at us was undoubtedly the worst verbal abuse I have ever recieved. Among other, unprintable things he called us "filthy animals", "bloody bastards", and said that it was people like us who make this world such a terrible place, and that if it weren't for people like him who knows what would happen...etc etc. he also said that we "get away with everything and ruin everything". I cried the rest of the way home much like a school girl with a skinned knee.

Strangely these two events seemed closely linked in my mind. My questions are: Could slapstick comedy be Divine? Which is a sin, stealing flowers from children, or screaming uncontrollably at strangers? Which of these events is comedy and which is tragedy?

I also have some half formed questions sort of revolving around karma, eye-of-god narrative and crime and punishment.

― rainy, Tuesday, 4 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I kind of think that comedy exists as a refuge from morality, and I evaluate that morally as good - due to morality just being made up anyway, it's sensible and logical to have a morality free zone. I say this despite the horror of boys using the defence of comedy to be misogynistic, and other comedy crimes - for instance last night I watched a really boring South Park-esque low-fi comedy show made by 2 boys about a world where they had killed all the girls 'to stop the bickering' and now everyone fought over porn mags and vaseline. Honestly, I am making it sound slightly better than it was, just by using correct diction to describe it; their version would have included phrases like

The boyzzzz of Vaseline Land are persecuted by their vizzious intentions ...

ha ha ha ha ...

So yeah, slapstick, i like. i mean me and the boyzz with vizzious intentions are all just playing at being human, there's that central joke ... I'm just talking to myself, that's how I'd explain and defend the excesses and barbarity of comedy to myself, all the pain is just the price you pay for the pleasure of the land where confusion is allowed ... Comedy is relativistic, there's no measuring place. Even though the intellect prefers delineation and demarcation, as Emerson said ... something else prefers blurring and confusion and surprises ...

― maryann, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh and re, is it wrong to steal off little children, you're more like a little child than most so-called children, so ...

― maryann, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

OK RAINY SAID WE SHOULD START DOING "BLIND POSTING" SO I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS THRED (NOTE HIP SPELLING) IS ABOUT. BUT I'M GUESSING IT'S ABOUT PIES. THIS IS WHAT I KNOW ABOUT PIES: 1) PIES IN AMERICA ARE NOT THE SAME THING AS PIES IN NZ. AS I UNDERSTAND IT, AN AMERICAN PIE IS SOME KIND OF DESSERT. OVER HERE A PIE IS A SMALL PARCEL OF UNIDENTIFIABLE KILLING FLOOR SWEEPINGS IN A DESPERATELY BAD "PASTRY" SHELL, WHICH IS PROBABLY ALSO MADE OF MEAT. OH, AND SERVED WITH KETCHUP, WHICH WE POETICALLY CALL "TOMATO SAUCE". 2) PIES ARE THE SYMBOL OF THE LOCAL NEANDERTHAL/JOCK/FRAT-BOY TYPE WHO IS KNOWN AS THE "RUGBY-HEAD". THUS IT SEEMS STRANGE THAT THE ULTIMATE EXAMPLE OF THE PIE-IDEA SHOULD ORIGINATE IN INDIA. I AM SPEAKING OF COURSE OF THE SAMOSA, WHICH IS BASICALLY A PIE ONLY DEEP FRIED.

― PAT KRAUS, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

1st: bring on the half-formed questions. tho yr original questions are enuf to render me hizzified.

2nd: samosas are lovely, as are pasties and all flaky baked/fried goods with meat suprises inside.

3rd: shurely you have heard of mel brooks' famous formulation: comedy is my grandmother falling down a manhole. tragedy is when i get a papercut on my finger. so by extension stealing flowers from children = great guffaws, while the screaming part, really a papercut in the scheme of your day = brooding malevolence

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I would have found the taxi driver thing funny enough. An excuse to be smart with some arsehole is always welcome as far as I'm concerned. I think I would have found falling down the stairs thing funny too though so I don't know what to tell you.

― Ronan, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

A lot of Absurdist theatre is both funny and deeply dark at the same time. Ionesco's Rhinoceros a savage, extreme version of the fairy tale 'The Emperor's New Clothes', for example. It's all about people turning into Rhinoceroses because, like, y'know, everybody is doing it. So is that a scary allegory of the kind of attitudes (fear, conformity, nobody speaking up against something that is plainly wrong) that swept Hitler and Stalin to power? Or just an excuse for actors to muck about in funny suits on the stage?

Beckett's like that, too. I'd only ever read 'Waiting for Godot', and when I saw it for the first time I was surprised how funny it was. Isn't that wierd?

In 'Titus Andronicus', Shakespeare's first play, the eponymous character responds to the death of his sons and the rape and mutilation of his daughter with maniacal laughter.

I think that it is a strange, but completely human and understandable reaction to laugh at tragedy, because its a way of regaining a sense of control (in your own mind) over uncontrollable events. It's a way of getting your individuality back. Sometimes the pressure of behaving in certain ways around people (especially on sad occasions) makes you crack, but something inside you makes you crack in the way that appears as non-threatening as possible: laughter.

― Will McKenzie, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Today got mentally busy all afternoon, so my boss asked me to use the envelope machine, generally referred to as that fucking shit envelope machine. She gave me about 400 letters to put through it and when I went down I discovered they were all printed wrongly and the windows werent showing the addresses, I came back up and as I was telling her, the situation was so hopeless and she was so mad (at noone but herself) that I burst out laughing, and she looked like she was about to kill me then everyone else laughed aswell. oh god its still funny.

― Ronan, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe the difference between the two events is malice. The first one was just an impersonal accident, but the second was mean.

― maria, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the events were linked b/c although I am not a religious person as such, I felt some sort of presence at both events. I think God was the telephone book that fell on my head, because it felt like a gift. Thats why I was wondering about eye of god narrative. it would be a gift for someone else to have seen that too, as it was very comical.

And maybe God was in the taxi drivers rage somewhere as well. The opportunity to instantly reconsider my actions, (and atone for them) in whatever crazed form it arrives, should be as welcome as a telephone book to the head.

― rainy, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

hey rainy what're you doing ... I'm in the computer laboratory with a cold. I hope you're not at home moping about some punk ...

― maryann, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No way. I am soooo not moping. I am at the DPAG, getting better acquainted with the Magnum show. Its AWESOME! And I have a special backstage access all areas pass, which is fun. I cant believe it opens tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

― rainy, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

eleven years pass...

I've started responding to stories of impersonal faraway tragedies with a knowing look and confidently stayed "aaah, there's more to that than we're being told"

― i don't have to be fair, i'm *right* (darraghmac), Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:37 (twelve years ago)

yeah i more or less do that when my dad asks me to have an opinion on some story in the Daily Mail like "i don't feel like i have all the facts to make a judgement or care tbh"

― a phenomenological description of The Eagles (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:39 (twelve years ago)

Ah no, i'm purposely doing it in the most judgemental manner possible tbh.

― i don't have to be fair, i'm *right* (darraghmac), Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:46 (twelve years ago)

ah like my internet friend who thinks the NHS has a secret plan to kill off pensioners

― a phenomenological description of The Eagles (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:50 (twelve years ago)

No like idk 'oh look this poor girl in wherever fell off a cliff and was eaten by rabbits"

*nod, taps nose* "there's more to that than's printed there mark me now"

― i don't have to be fair, i'm *right* (darraghmac), Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:58 (twelve years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.