Redefining screwball and reappropriating liminal spaces: The contemporary bromance and Todd Phillips' The Hangover DVD

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the central drives of the screwball genre are renegotiated in the recent spate of ‘bromance’ films — amongst them the aptly titled I Love You, Man by Hamburg (2009), Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Funny People (2009), and, most recently, Gordon's Horrible Bosses (2011) — and that Todd Phillips' The Hangover (2009) in particular — with its doubly transgressional contrivance of a road trip and weekend in Vegas — marks the zenith of a genre compelled by a distinctly Bakhtinian ‘grotesque body’. Moreover, this article suggests that Phillips’ fragmented narrative and reappropriation of the DVD text's liminal spaces (primarily its closing credit sequence and ‘extras’) may have significant ramifications for readings of contemporary ‘bromantic’ relations. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 5th Annual International Comedy Conference at the University of Salford in June 2011.