(Warning: minor spoilers follow.)
Now, before anyone lays into me about not grokking British comedy: oh, boy, I do. I love Monty Python, Red Dwarf, lots and lots of Pratchett, Faulty Towers, etc., etc., ad infinitum. That particular brand of dry humor resonates in a particular way with my brittle old funny bones.
Parts of Good Omens made me laugh out loud. (Pollution (the horseman) getting teary-eyed and proclaiming some capital bit of filth "damn beautiful," and a minor demon being particularly proud of Manchester just set me off.) But so did parts of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. There were some truly zany moments in there - and there are some in Harry Potter as well. There were touching, poigniant moments in each. So what's the big difference?
My current hypothesis is that the premises dictate whether a story is comedy much more than laughter rate. Good Omens premises: end of the world is near, the Anti-Christ is mixed up at birth by bumbling Satan-devoted nuns, the angel and demon in charge of arranging the whole affair being on great business terms, etc., etc. Lots to build on. Harry Potter premises: scabby young orphan discovers he's really a wizard and is whisked away to another, better world to train for his eventual showdown with Darth Vad - um, the Principal Bad Guy. Nothing funny about that, but the book manages plenty of humor notwithstanding.
I'm pretty sure that's correct, but my big question is whether there's anything else. What am I missing?
Omens, however, I laughed about every page. I love that kind of writing and definitely saw it as out-and-out comedy. Actually, I saw it as very funny satire.
But, the funniest books I've read were Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series, and Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat series. "Slippery Jim" diGriz is so funny because he's so flaming outlandish in his capers.
Most things that are designed to be funny, like Steve Martin movies or most stand-up routines, or late-night shows, I am deadpan or even bored during. Though I admit to a deep and abiding fondness for Dave Barry. He's different from most other comedians to me.
I think humor is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder almost as much as beauty is.
quote:
Dave Barry is nearly a deity in my eyes. I'm not making this up.
"Deity in My Eyes" would make a great name for a band.
"I'm sorry, but I can't see properly to get that speck of dust out of your eye. I've got a deity in mine."
I submit that everything should have comedic qualities to it. But there is a special catagory of art/literature where it has no value if you're not laughing. Think about the social commentary and witty observations about human nature and the perversity of nature in general which we find in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and other Douglas Adams books. Would any of that seem anything other than purile ranting without the comedy? Of course not.
The key is that in comedy you're free to agree or disagree as much or as little as you like with what the author is saying. Whether it's a totally implausible plot device or a comment on the human condition, you can enjoy it whether or not you agree. Like when The Simpsons portrayed the local meeting of the Republican party as a cultic gathering of vampires and satanists hosted by Montgomery Burns, it didn't matter whether you think well or ill of Republicans, the portrayal was funny.
In a really good satire, you can't tell how close the author thinks the portrayal is to the truth, it's funny whether you think it's a polar opposite or very near the mark. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal is hilarious whether you think that the wealthy would be genuinely horrified or secretly impressed by the cold logic of it (and truth be told, there are probably persons of both persuasions amongst both the rich and the poor...but probably not many among the middle class ).
In good comedy, you're free to laugh at everything, even the bits that genuinely strike a chord of melancholy in your heart. That liberation from sifting through the "meaning" of art is what gives comedy it's power. In other literature and art, the comic moments exist to release the tension so that the audience can bear to watch without turning away. In comedy, there should never be any tension, only complete liberation. The bad guy can win, and it's just funny. It doesn't always work, though. Mostly Harmless didn't pull it off that well, partly because I don't think that Adams really found the Vogons all that funny...he couldn't bring himself to see that he was as much one of them as anyone else was, so the humor fails. If the guys who actually pulled the trigger had been the real bad guys, it would have been funnier, because they were funny, and the paradoxically hopeless action they take to prevent what actually occurs as a result of their actions is a good ending note.
Anyway, that's what I think.
For me, getting the laugh is as important, and maybe more so, than making my point. It's probably impossible to write a humorous story without injecting at least a little of your opinion and making a point.
Those Hatrackers who read the entire manuscript for my story Return to the Moon were pretty unanimous that the story was funny, though disagreed to what extent. The other thing was that I did make some very valid points about our space program and disguised them in a funny situation. I made the points short and consise with a quick jab, where in a serious piece each point would probably take a good 250 words at least.
Humor is difficult to write well, but it is very rewarding if you can pull it off.
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited February 11, 2006).]
quote:
In other literature and art, the comic moments exist to release the tension so that the audience can bear to watch without turning away. In comedy, there should never be any tension, only complete liberation.
I don't think that's always true. I think a funny moment generally requires a simultaneous serious interpretation - that the reader has moral stake in - with a silly one. In satire, the serious thing is what's being poked fun at, so your statement might hold there. You can get away with no tension at all, because all the serious, morally-invested stuff is outside the story.
I'll provide a counterexample from something I wrote recently. My POV character takes over a team of software engineers, and the first hour ends in a fight between two of them. One, a jolly, merry person, finally goads the other into attack by repeatedly using the word "garrulous" wrong on purpose. (The other is a bit touchy.) The happy guy thinks the whole thing is hilarious even while being choked out. The POV character dances around, distressed.
It's got some punch when you're reading it. The above paragraph isn't really funny (though you might see how the situation could be funny) because you don't know any of the characters. In fact, the humor requires that you empathize with the POV character's recent stresses and overwhelming desire to prove herself as a leader. If she had simply witnessed it in another lab, it would have been more silly or comical, less funny. You need some moral stake in the situation.
EDIT: Late night last night. I can't believe I forgot about romantic comedy. That stuff thrives on tension.
When I posted this, I just slapped down the first thing that popped into my head. Here's another example, probably better, because it draws from shared experience.
Consider Alan Rickman's character in Galaxy Quest, Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus. Alexander wants to be a serious actor, but he's stuck in a dead-end job. Everyone understands wanting to climb a little higher. When you couple empathy for his plight with this over-the-top way of dealing with it (fully understanding that, by golly, you just might do the same thing if in his shoes), it's really funny. His melancholy line, "By Grabthar's hammer... what savings" sets me off every time I watch it. It wouldn't be nearly as funny if I couldn't empathize.
[This message has been edited by trousercuit (edited February 11, 2006).]
"You'll laugh, you'll cry" is a different promise from "You'll laugh till you cry." I don't think of it as a subtle difference at all. It's easy to identify a comedy when you have an unhappy ending (for the character) simply by whether or not you laugh. It can be a difficult question when you look at a very comedic narrative work that has a happy ending. The main way to tell is whether the happy ending was inherently funnier than any "unhappy" ending that comes immediately to mind.
For Galaxy Quest, there simply isn't any unhappy ending that would be funnier than having the crew successfully come back and restart the show. Alexander Dane isn't supposed to be taken seriously, he's too much of a parody of the "serious" actor for me to take his character seriously. I mean...
quote:
"I'm not going back in there, and nothing you say can make me.""The show must go on."
"...""...""Damn you!"
Therefore one could say that comedy is taking the bad parts of a story and embracing them.
I know I am using film to illustrate a writing principle. Here the principle applies to both. I try to only use such illustrations when the wider reach of film vs written word helps me make a connection with my audience (you).