Black comedy

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This article is about the tone of comedy. For other uses, see Black comedy (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Black sitcom.
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Hopscotch to Oblivion, Barcelona
Hopscotch to Oblivion, Barcelona

Black comedy, also known as black humour or dark comedy is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously (death, mass murder, suicide, domestic violence, disease, insanity, fear, drug abuse, rape, war, terrorism, etc.) are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms include dark humour and morbid humour. Although very similar, it is not to be confused with gallows humour and off-colour humour.

[edit] Humour

Black comedy should be contrasted with obscenity, though the two are interrelated. In obscene humour, much of the humorous element comes from shock and revulsion; black comedy usually includes an element of irony, or even fatalism. This particular brand of humour can be exemplified by a scene in the play Waiting for Godot: a man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down. Another example comes from a scene in the play "Grandma's in the Wedding Cake": the recently deceased Grandmother's ashes continually get accidentally moved around, ending in the Wedding Cake at the Wedding. A musical example is The Velvet Underground's story/song The Gift in which a college student in love mails himself to his beloved far away in Wisconsin with very funny dark results.

Black humour is also parodied. A common gag is the humorous reaction to something that is supposedly serious but clearly is not. One example of this are Kenny's deaths on South Park.

Writers such as Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, Eric Nicol and Jeff Lindsey have written and published novels, stories and plays where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner.Dark Comedy can be seen in such comic books as Mark Sable Grounded & Hazed,and such other like Manga's Princess Resurrection and Grant Morrison cult classic Kill Your Boyfriend.Warren Ellis Anti Hero Comic Transmetropolitan has many dark funny moments in the story and many Black Humour characters such as Yelena Rossini & Mitchell Royce.

[edit] Genre

In America, black comedy as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. An anthology edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, titled "Black Humour," assembles many examples of the genre. Current writers and directors employing the art of black humour in their work include author Chuck Palahniuk, director Todd Solondz, cartoonist Jhonen Vasquez, and writer/essayist David Foster Wallace.

Major "King" Kong riding a nuclear bomb to oblivion, from the film Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Major "King" Kong riding a nuclear bomb to oblivion, from the film Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

According to John Truby, when black comedy is used as a basis for a story's plotline, it involves a society in an unhealthy state and a main character wanting something which, for whatever reason, is not a thing that will be ultimately beneficial to himself or society. The audience should usually be able to see this for themselves, and often a supporting character within the story also sees the insanity of the situation. The main character rarely ever learns a lesson or undergoes any significant change from the ordeal, but sometimes a relatively sane course of action is offered to them. One such example of this sane course of action being taken is in the comic series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, which ends with the title character voluntarily leaving town and checking himself into a mental institution.

The 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb presents one of the best-known examples of black comedy. The subject of the film is nuclear warfare and the annihilation of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with gravity and seriousness, creating suspense over the efforts to avoid a nuclear war. But Dr. Strangelove plays the subject for laughs; for example, in the film, the fail-safe procedures designed to prevent a nuclear war are precisely the systems that ensure that it will happen. Plotwise, Captain Mandrake serves as the one sane character in the decayed society, and Major Kong fills the role of the hero striving for a harmful goal. A more modern film based upon black comedy is 2003's Bad Santa, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Willie, an alcoholic who uses his job as a mall Santa for the harmful goal of robbing the mall every Christmas Eve. While the film shows a society jaded and interested in Christmas only for reasons of greed, The Kid serves as the one sane character who believes faithfully in Santa and the spirit of giving. By the close of the film, though Willie is little improved by the events that befall him, he does ultimately find himself a new career and escape from the world of avarice.

Notable directors of black comedy films:

Films containing Black/Dark Humour:

[edit] See also