“A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.” In comedy, the only characteristic shared between comedies is their want to make people laugh, and it can be difficult to pull off such a seemingly simple task. As defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary, Category: A class or division of people or things regarded as having particular shared characteristics. Comedy itself falls into a category as a class of things regarded as having a particular shared characteristic, that is wanting to
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Such a film that can be looked at as a category killer is Todd Phillips 2009 comedy “The Hangover” , grossing over $450 million and receiving positive responses from both critics and audiences. The Hangover was widely praised for its story, dialogue, comedic effect, and its leading actors, with Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times stating “[the film is] filled with moments as softhearted as they are crude, as forgiving as unforgivable” The hangover remains a film that many other productions look towards in trying to find ways of creating successful films, due to its box office success and positive reviews. The same cannot be said about the films sequels, “The Hangover Part II” and “The Hangover Part III” . While still remaining profitable and box office successes, the two sequels in the hangover trilogy were poorly received …show more content…
These comedies can be considered as Category Mistakes. As defined by oxford, “Category Mistake: The error of assigning to something a quality or action that can properly be assigned to things only of another category.” A mainstream comedy that seemingly mislead audiences with this category mistake would be “Observe and Report” . The 2009 “comedy” directed by Jody Hill and staring Seth Rogen regards itself with a mall cop wanting to become a police officer. The film was marketed in a similar way to another 2009 film “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”, however the actual film falls more along the lines of a police drama, rather than a slap stick mall cop comedy. The film does concern itself about making its audience laugh, however it takes a backseat to character development and a dramatic plot. It would seem as though the filmmakers were not to blame for the marketing deception, but it still remained that the film was received with mixed receptions and a low overall box office take. Found within a study done at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa titled “Intertextuality, mediation, and members’ categories in focus groups on humor”, “Assembling two contrastive sets of attributes as social types of Local and non-Local
Such a film that can be looked at as a category killer is Todd Phillips 2009 comedy “The Hangover” , grossing over $450 million and receiving positive responses from both critics and audiences. The Hangover was widely praised for its story, dialogue, comedic effect, and its leading actors, with Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times stating “[the film is] filled with moments as softhearted as they are crude, as forgiving as unforgivable” The hangover remains a film that many other productions look towards in trying to find ways of creating successful films, due to its box office success and positive reviews. The same cannot be said about the films sequels, “The Hangover Part II” and “The Hangover Part III” . While still remaining profitable and box office successes, the two sequels in the hangover trilogy were poorly received …show more content…
These comedies can be considered as Category Mistakes. As defined by oxford, “Category Mistake: The error of assigning to something a quality or action that can properly be assigned to things only of another category.” A mainstream comedy that seemingly mislead audiences with this category mistake would be “Observe and Report” . The 2009 “comedy” directed by Jody Hill and staring Seth Rogen regards itself with a mall cop wanting to become a police officer. The film was marketed in a similar way to another 2009 film “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”, however the actual film falls more along the lines of a police drama, rather than a slap stick mall cop comedy. The film does concern itself about making its audience laugh, however it takes a backseat to character development and a dramatic plot. It would seem as though the filmmakers were not to blame for the marketing deception, but it still remained that the film was received with mixed receptions and a low overall box office take. Found within a study done at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa titled “Intertextuality, mediation, and members’ categories in focus groups on humor”, “Assembling two contrastive sets of attributes as social types of Local and non-Local