Cutting to the Punch: Graphic Stunt Comedy and the Emergence of Crisis Slapstick

Abstract

Abstract Slapstick is a mode of comedic performance whose definition has not changed much since the nineteenth century. Slaps, hits, kicks, punches, pratfalls, and other types of stage and screen violence appear to be violent and harmful. But these acts are eventually revealed and resolved to be simulative and harmless. The slapstick performer emerges, unscathed, as a required prerequisite for comedic catharsis to take place. However, the past three decades have seen a graphic, transgressive form of comedic violence emerge that challenges this understanding. Assaultive acts of self-harm performed by shock-comic performers such as Ralph “Cap'n Video” Zavadil, Tom Green, and Johnny Knoxville's Jackass crew deploy violence to transgress established screen boundaries and disrupt the norms of performance style. This subversive form of humor, which this article refers to as “crisis slapstick,” produces graphic violence as comedic shocks that break from traditional slapstick. Physical injuries, presented as comedic absurdity, critique rather than uphold the embedded presumptions of safe screen space and industrial professionalism established over decades of classic slapstick performance.