Slipping on Banana Skins and Falling Through Bars: “True” Comedy and the Comic Character

Jack Black

doi:10.46539/gmd.v3i3.172

Abstract

From Basil Fawlty, The Little Tramp and Frank Spencer; to Jim Carey, Andy Kaufman and Rowan Atkinson… comedy characters and comic actors have proved useful lenses for exploring – and exposing – humor’s cultural and political significance. Both performing as well as chastising cultural values, ideas and beliefs, the comic character gives a unique insight into latent forms of social exclusion that, in many instances, can only ever be approached through the comic form. It is in examining this comic form that this paper will consider how the ‘comedy character’ presents a unique, subversive significance. Drawing from Lacanian conceptions of the subject and television ‘sitcom’ examples, the emancipatory potential of the comedy character will be used to criticize the predominance of irony and satire in comic displays. Indeed, while funny, it will be argued that such comic examples underscore a deprivative cynicism within comedy and humor. Countering this, it will be argued that a Lacanian conception of the subject can profer a comic efficacy that not only reveals how our social orders are inherently inconsistent and open to subversive redefinition, but that these very inconsistencies are also echoed in the subject, and, in particular, the ‘true comedy character’.

Highlights

Comedy remains a useful tool for exposing the nullity and averring the absurdity in what we would otherwise consider to be the mundane triviality of a variety of day-to-day social interactions and norms
Much like the baron, there is not much to confirm Del’s (David Jason) image, apart from his excessive attempts to belong to a symbolic order which confers such authority. This is emphasised when we consider that the series was set during 1980s Thatcherism, and, though the social context was rarely acknowledged, ‘the rise of the yuppie and the struggle of working class communities to scrimp and scrape in face of the neo-liberal onslaught’ (McKenna, 2015, p. 200) was a narrative that proved salient in the show’s storylines and its lead characters: Del Boy and Rodney Trotter (Nicholas Lyndhurst). It is against this context that, rather than be excluded from this world, Del seeks to be a part of it, and it is in this way that Del’s comic performances work to highlight the inherent inconsistences and modes of excess of the period
The underlying purpose of this paper has been to introduce and apply Zupančič’s analysis of comedy and the comic character so as to help highlight comedy’s subversive potential. Central to this process is the role of the comedy character, who, in a ‘true’ comic performance, renders explicit the concrete universal

Summary

Блэк Джек

Комедийные персонажи и комические актеры послужили увеличительными стеклами для успешного исследования и выявления культурного и политического значения юмора. Комический персонаж, изображая, а также и критикуя культурные ценности, идеи и убеждения, уникально выявляет латентные формы социального отстранения, к которым во многих случаях можно приблизиться только через комическую форму. Освободительный потенциал комедийного персонажа будет применен, с опорой на концепцию субъекта Ж. В самом деле, хотя такие комические примеры забавны, здесь будет доказываться, что они усиливают депривационный цинизм комедии и юмора. В противовес этому утверждается, что лакановская концепция субъекта может предложить такой комический эффект, который не только раскрывает, в какой мере наши социальные порядки по своей природе непоследовательны и открыты для революционного переопределения, но и что сами эти несоответствия также отражаются в субъекте и, в частности, в «настоящем комедийном персонаже». Это произведение доступно по лицензии Creative Commons «Attribution» («Атрибуция») 4.0 Всемирная

Introduction

True and false comedy

Comic subjectivity

Conclusion