Film Comedy Research Articles

An Analysis of Cantonese Verbal Humor in Table for Six from the Perspective of Pragmatics

Table for Six is a Hong Kong comedy movie released in 2022. With a box office of 77 million Hong Kong dollars, it won the historical championship of Hong Kong comedy films and was well-received by the public upon its release. It is a superb example of a “Dayo Wong-style movie” , with a ton of amazing Cantonese verbal humor. The cooperation principle, a crucial pragmatics theory, is used in this study along with qualitative research methodologies to investigate the mechanism of verbal humor production in the Cantonese setting. The article strategically selects four very representative character dialogues in the movie and conducts an in-depth analysis of them using the cooperative principle’s quantity maxim, quality maxim, relation maxim and manner maxim, further broadening the scope of linguistics research in the Cantonese context.

The Analysis of the Film Triangle of Sadness from the Narrative Space

This thesis explores the use of narrative space in the black comedy film Triangle of Sadness, directed by Ruben stlund. The film reveals the hypocrisy between people and the struggles surrounding class inequality through contrasts and reversals. The thesis is based on the theory of spatial narrative and analyzes the film text through three categories of narrative space geographic space, emotional space, and metaphorical space. Geographic space is examined through the settings of the yacht and the island, reflecting modern civilization and nature. Emotional space is analyzed through intimate and confined environments that enhance the emotional tension between characters. Metaphorical space is illustrated through symbolic elements such as the octopus and the exchange of sexual capital, critiquing social and gender dynamics. In this film, spatial narrative effectively reveals and critiques issues of class inequality, using spatial construction to enhance the film s satirical impact.

Decoding pain: prediction under different emotional contexts through physiological signals

AbstractPain recognition is a challenging yet crucial problem. Common methods used to measure pain are based on self-reported tools; however, not every person can communicate it. Therefore, automatic pain detection methods have emerged. Since pain is related to the emotional state of an individual, this variable must be considered. Thus, this work proposes pain prediction under different emotional contexts. For this purpose, data were collected during a protocol designed for pain induction with previous emotional elicitation. Emotions were elicited through videos composed of excerpts of documentaries, horror and comedy films, while the pain was induced through a Cold Pressor Test. Physiological signals, such as electrocardiogram, electrodermal activity and surface electromyogram, were collected during the protocol. Furthermore, several questionnaires were answered and pain reports were also registered. Two problems were addressed: pain classification and estimation of the Pain Tolerance score. The algorithm with the best performance for each problem was found using only data from the neutral session and nested cross-validation strategy. Using only physiological data from the neutral session, a F1-score of 99.32% was obtained for pain recognition and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.29 was obtained for Pain Tolerance estimation. When considering all the emotional sessions, the physiological data were merged with scores of the Visual Analogue Scale questionnaire, achieving a F1-score of 98.60% and a MAE of 0.41, for the first and second problems, respectively. These results are promising and stress out the key role that the emotional context of the individuals plays in pain prediction.

Metabolic Cinema: From Hollywood to Socialist China

Drawing on Karl Marx’s ecological concepts of the “metabolic rift” and the “emancipation of senses”, this paper explores an alternative ecocinema that integrates the ecological with the social and the economic. Early Hollywood films, such as Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and The Good Earth (1937), represent the metabolic rift in human relationships as a byproduct of the metabolic rift with nature created in the process of urbanization; hence, they can be regarded as precursors to an alternative ecocinema, which I refer to as “metabolic cinema”. The Story of the Golden Bell (Jinling Zhuan), a comedy film produced during the Chinese Great Leap Forward in 1958, offers an intriguing case for socialist metabolic cinema as a multisensory medianature that participates in and facilitates the metabolic process between humans and nature, as well as the social metabolism among humans, despite the period’s notorious ecological record. The film not only consciously moves away from the visual-centric model associated with capitalist consumerism by using the aural to rectify the once-aberrant visual but also demonstrates how romantic love, as one of the human senses, must be emancipated along with other senses through denouncing utilitarianism and commercialism and, subsequently, returning to need-based labor as the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between humans and nature.

Politik Identitas dan Multikulturalisme

The aim of this research is to find out what happens to identity politics and multiculturalism in the film "AND MULTIUCULTURALISM IN THE FILM "THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY II" (1989). In this research the author uses a qualitative approach method. In this research, the author collected data by studying literature from journals, articles and films. The analysis technique used is qualitative descriptive. The film "The Gods Must Be Crazy II" (1989) is a comedy film originating from South Africa. Even though this film focuses more on comedy elements, there is a background of identity politics and multiculturalism that can be found in the context of this film. Identity politics relates to how individuals or groups identify themselves based on characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, language, or culture. Overall, "The Gods Must Be Crazy II" (1989) uses a comedic approach to highlight the complexity of relationships between different ethnic groups. different in South Africa.

The Practice of Body Power and Masculine Resistance of Male Actors in Indonesian Comedy Films of the Reform Era

The practice of power over male actors' bodies in comedy films is understood not as a neutral process where factual reality is conveyed directly through text or images, but as a social praxis related to the deconstruction of gender, resulting in new understandings of masculinity depicted in films from the Reform Era. To address this question, the researcher employs Norman Fairclough's critical discourse approach to comedy films as the main theoretical framework, combined with Michel Foucault's perspective on power relations and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of body language. The paradigm used in this research is the critical paradigm, with data collection techniques obtained through film text documentation studies. The research results show that the male actor's body does not merely function as a tool for visual narration but also as a powerful medium for expressing deeper themes related to power, identity, and social dynamics. For instance, in the film Arisan! 2, the narrative highlights sexual freedom and emotional vulnerability. Meanwhile, Bebas emphasizes physical changes and social symbolism through the male body.

An Approach to Audio Description of Humour in Different Cultural Settings

Audiovisual translation and, more specifically, accessibility, have a fundamental role in the multicultural world we live in. Due to cultural and social diversity, there are groups of people who depend on media accessibility services in order to consume audiovisual products because of their physical impairments, one of these services being audio description for the blind and visually impaired people (AD). The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to how humour and cultural aspects travel in audiovisual comedies, and their influence on how audio described scripts are produced in different countries. For this purpose, we will carry out a corpus analysis comparing the Spanish and the American AD versions of the original comedy film Campeones (Javier Fesser 2018) and its remake Champions (Bobby Farrelly 2023). The main findings of this descriptive study suggest that the AD practice of humorous audiovisual texts in a multicultural context is indeed a complex issue that could be addressed by Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986), as suggested by Martínez Sierra (2009), although further research is needed.

Franco-Italian Laughter. The Development of French and Italian Film Comedy in the 1950s

Franco-Italian Laughter. The Development of French and Italian Film Comedy in the 1950s

Potential and Power in Black Superhero Film Comedies

Potential and Power in Black Superhero Film Comedies

Смеховое начало и комизм в советской кинокомедии 1960–1970-х

The author of the article notes the influence of the research of Russian folklorists and cultural historians on the interpretation of the 20th century art and captures the humanitarian trend towards searching for primarily archetypal situations and images in contemporary art, Soviet film comedy included. The article highlights the importance of the concepts by V. Propp and M. Bakhtin for the current perception of works of art and urges us not to limit ourselves to this, but to place new accents — to look for differences between the ancient and modern worldviews, between the impersonal solutions to dramatic situations and characters types, on the one hand, and the author’s aesthetics and individual interpretations of the world and man, on the other hand. Based on the material of the comedy films by L. Gaidai and E. Ryazanov, the fairy tale film An Ordinary Miracle by M. Zakharov, the author shows how far the artistic messages of these directors are from the archaic concepts of laughter and comedy, from the ideas of carnival freedom and harmony, which, however, does not deny the use of satire drama structures, palliata, and paired archetypical characters. This refers to the cultural layering of the images of Shurik, Nina, Saakhov, and the comical trio of the Coward, the Fool and the Pro. In addition, the article analyses the role of the water element in the comedy The Irony of Fate... and gives a detailed interpretation of the non-normative behaviours of Zhenya Lukashin and Ippolit possessing only external signs of carnivality. Conclusions are drawn about the dramatic heuristicity of laughter in the comedy films by Gaidai and Ryazanov, which had adaptive psychological functions and also contributed to the internal self-reflection of the Soviet audience.

Национальный ландшафт в отечественных кинокомедиях о деревне 1990-х годов: «деревенская трилогия» В. Чикова

The article examines the implementation of the national rural landscape in the Russian post-perestroika comedy films about village, namely in the ‘village trilogy’ by V. Chikov. In these films, the canon of the image of a villager, as well as specific shots of rural landscapes, inherits the traditions of Russian ‘village cinema’ and everyday comedies of the 1950s — the first half of the 1980s. In the absence of stylistic and artistic experiments in Chikov’s films, the landscape is of interest as an expression of a trend in the social consciousness of the time, also being a means of social satire and criticism of the state domestic policy of that time.

When local goes global: English subtitles of two comedy films by Stephen Chow

ABSTRACT This article offers a descriptive analysis of how Hong Kong actors’ and director Stephen Chow’s comedies have been translated for English-speaking audiences. Drawing on previous studies of Chow’s films, this study highlights the translation characteristics to focus on when translating Chow’s comedies. Through discussions of Freud’s and Bakhtin’s theories of comedies, this study examines the subtitles used in Chow’s films From Beijing with Love and Flirting Scholar. The findings show that Chow’s comedies contain many mixtures and contrasts of high and low culture in Chinese, with an abundant use of sexual and vulgar language. In comparison, the English translations of the official DVD version of From Beijing with Love tend to be literal, whereas the translations in Flirting Scholar convey a stronger impression of childishness to English-speaking audiences.

The film comedies of Leonid Gaidai: student works and the formation of a style

ABSTRACT This article studies the early stage of the career of the well-known Soviet and Russian comedy filmmaker Leonid Gaidai, notably the training period at the All-Union Institute of Cinema (VGIK), on the basis of hitherto unknown archival sources. During these student years, many important stylistic lines of Gaidai’s comedy films were established: his interest in the synthesis of satire, sharp social criticism, trick comedy and eccentricity that would become well known to audiences. Firstly, new archival materials include the theoretical parts of the diploma works from the cinematographers’ faculty of Vladimir Boganov and Vadim Yusov at VGIK (hitherto unknown), and the film Darlings-Friends. Secondly, the short film and Gaidai’s coursework Darlings-Friends (1954), discovered by the film historian Sergei Kapterev at VGIK’s film library. Thirdly, the theoretical part of Gaidai’s dissertation (hitherto not known to researchers), who worked as probationer-assistant director and actor on the musical comedy Lyana by Boris Barnet. In this text, Gaidai for the first time formulates a number of principles for the creation of a comedy film and determines some important lines of his style.

A Study on the Construction of the Mother Figure in the Chinese Comedy Film “Hi, Mom”

After entering the 21st century, the scale and technology of China’s film industry have developed rapidly. In the meantime, Chinese comedy films as an important part of China’s film industry have also received more and more attention. The Chinese comedy film “Hi, Mom” released in 2021 has won numerous awards and reputations for its humorous style and tribute to maternal love. This study takes “Hi, Mom” as a typical case to deeply investigate how the film constructs the image of the mother from multiple dimensions. In addition, under the guidance of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) theory, this study focuses on five main aspects: plot design, facial expressions, background music, iconic symbols and clothing style of the mother in the film for in-depth analysis and discussion. The main findings of this study provided several new perspectives and findings for other case studies on “Hi, Mom”, and further provided more references for other studies on the theme of “mother image”. The discussion of this study shows the multi-dimensional construction of specific character images by different elements in this film, which settled an important platform for the filming of related theme films in the future.

Ideological Transformations of Family Discourses Produced in Popular Comedy Films in Turkey

The aim of this study is to discuss the ideological transformations of family discourses that becomes to visible in popular comedy films produced in Turkey. The discussions on family are shaped by three approaches that are categorized based on the narrative structures of the films. The first of these approaches is the corporatization of the family, which is discussed through the films Eltilerin Savaşı (Onur Bilgetay 2020) and Kocan Kadar Konuş 1-2 (Kıvanç Baruönü 2015, 2016). The second approach is the Oedipalization of the family, developed through the films Görümce (Kıvanç Baruönü 2016), Celal ile Ceren (Togan Gökbakar 2013) and Romantik Komedi 1-2 (Hakan Kırvavaç 2010 and Erol Özlevi 2013). As the last approach, the dissolution of the truth of the family and the emergence of the post-family discourse were discussed through the film Aile Arasında (Ozan Açıktan 2017).
 The findings obtained by the discourse analysis method used in the study, covering the corporatization of the family, Oedipalization, and the transformations of the family as a truth regime, show that popular comedy films are parallel to the breaks in today's popular discussion lines in Turkey.

Воздействие фильма-комедии на Я-концепцию зрителя

<p>The article offers a theoretical analysis, as well as the results of an empirical study of the psychological impact of a comedy on the viewer. We offer a theoretical overview and generalization of various concepts of the comic. It is revealed that the phenomenon of the comic always presupposes intersubjective interactions, competitive relations of subjects, and therefore correlates with the formation of a position of self-affirmation in relation to another (others), transformed into an object of laughter. We constructed a model of the main assumed positions in the image of the world created by comedy: "Whistleblower", "Fool", "Rogue", "Good-natured" ("Rescuer"). We hypothesized that there is a cognitive basis of the image of the world created by comedy. We assume that the world of comedy is structured as a projection space described by J. Piaget, it is one of the forms of structuring the image of space in egocentric consciousness. This means that the impact of the comedy may be associated with an increase in egocentrism in the viewer's mind. We presentede results of an experiment which helped us to study the influence of a comedy film on the viewer's Self-concept. We took an American comedy "Vacation" (2015) as an example. As a result of watching the film, the indicators of "Independence" and "Sociability" ("Q-sorting") have significantly increased (p ≤ 0,05), at the trend level (p ≤ 0,08), the factor of "Strength" in the I-real ("Personal semantic differential") has increased. There were also correlations in the I-real: between "Assessment", "Strength" and "Activity", which indicates that after the comedy film, a positive attitude towards oneself is based on an assessment of one's strength. There was also a correlation between the "Assessment" in the Real Self and Ideal Self, i.e. idealization of oneself, and the correlation between "Evaluation" and "Strength" in the anti—ideal: the more negative the anti-ideal, the weaker it is, which indicates the reliance of self-affirmation on the humiliation of a negative character. In general, the results confirm that one of the main effects of comedy on the viewer is the emergence of a state of self—affirmation as a form of consciousness shift towards egocentrism</p>

В поисках эпистем, или Научная рецепция некоторых идей М.М. Бахтина

The article examines the conceptual positions of M.M. Bakhtin in the context of further studies of laughter culture and comedy, including Soviet film comedy. Revising the tradition of universal application of Bakhtin’s ideas in the analysis of many artistic phenomena that has developed in science, the author emphasizes their ambiguity and significance only as one of the research approaches to the complex study of culture. And at the same time, the concept of ambivalence, which structured the theory of carnivality and Bakhtin’s philosophy, acquires special relevance in the conditions of the modern epistemological crisis and the paradigm of multivariance, uncertainty and nonlinearity of the world and man. It is M.M. Bakhtin’s ambiguous and incomplete philosophy that seems to be the mainstay in the development of a new methodology of cognition (also due to its “open form”).

Festival Marketing: Film Promotion Shaped by Traditional Chinese Culture Taking the Spring Festival Comedy Film as an Example

In recent years, with the continuous growth of the Chinese film market and the improvement of the cultural level and consumption willingness of Chinese residents, the holiday film market has gradually developed in China. The Chinese holiday film market has sprouted since the Spring Festival, and then developed into Spring Festival movies, National Day movies, summer movies, etc. Under different schedules, it is the background of holiday culture that highlights this film market phenomenon. How to combine the cultural background of film festivals with the film industry is an important challenge that the Chinese film market needs to face. This article adopts the method of case analysis, and through the comedic elements of Spring Festival films, it can be concluded that films should adhere to content innovation, integrate patriotism, cater to the aesthetic needs of the public, achieve a balance between business and art, in order to reflect and summarize, and promote the better development of the Chinese film market.

Gamson–Modigliani Framing Analysis on Cin(T)a and 3 Hati 2 Dunia 1 Cinta

The journey of the national film industry has a long history. Gradually, the film industry has become a mere commercial industry dominated by horror and comedy films. This has resulted in the formation of stereotypes that all national films have the same content and do not vary. The films "cin(T)a" and "3 Hati 2 Dunia 1 Cinta" present as new variations in national cinema, which carry the unusual theme of religious pluralism. Gamson and Modigliani's framing analysis sees mass media discourse as consisting of a number of packages to form the construction of an event. There are two aspects to framing. First, choose reality. Second, how the media presents that reality. Gamson and Modigliani's framing analysis consists of two elements: framing devices and reasoning devices. The research method used in this study is descriptive qualitative method. Descriptive qualitative methods produce up-to-date data that can be used in the development of science. The results of this study found that the films "cin(T)a" and "3 Hati 2 Dunia 1 Cinta" portray religious pluralism as a beautiful thing, and people should be able to live in harmony and comfort despite differences in society, but it does not deny that although the two films try to show the relationship between religions from a positive side, the relationship between religions is still something that cannot be accepted by some people. Based on the results of the study, the author concludes that religious pluralism is a beautiful thing in the lives of Indonesian people. However, many things must be considered if religious pluralism is associated in the context of romance, especially to the marriage ladder.

English Translation of Verbal Humour in Egyptian Comedy Films

Humour is deeply rooted in culture and may differ remarkably across societies. Translating humour interlingually necessitates navigating cultural variations and references, mainly because humour often relies on language-specific elements such as puns, idiomatic expressions and wordplay. Translating these linguistic features while preserving the comedic effect can be particularly challenging. This study investigates the complexity of translating humour that depends on a combination of both cultural and linguistic elements involving play with words and sounds from the Egyptian Arabic vernacular into English. To explore this area, the researchers examine three films in which humour is deemed by viewers as unique. The verbal humour investigated depends heavily on the replacement of words and sounds in a vast array of expressions that include puns, irony, jokes, spoonerisms, malapropisms, collocations, and proverbs. The results of the analysis of 34 examples extracted from the three films demonstrate that the translators of the films rejected several puns in the sense that they disregarded the translation of most puns, while resorting to communicative translation with some other puns. However, with other linguistic humorous devices such as malapropisms, irony, jokes, and spoonerisms, the translator used strategies including explicitation, transposition, literal translation (calque), and omission.