Slapstick Comedy: The Three Stooges Or Charlie Chaplin

Slapstick comedy, That may bring to mind the Three Stooges or Charlie Chaplin. Slapstick is often thought of as a low humor style of comedy filled with farce and a touch of animated violence. And yet, that doesn't tell the whole story and slapstick is much older than you might think. Slapstick comedy is primarily a physical kind of comedy based around pratfalls and mild comic violence, smacks in the head, pokes in the eyes, people falling down, etc. While it is often thought of as low comedy, some of the best at slapstick have made it into what some critics call 'high art.' Also known as 'physical comedy,' slapstick is more action than words and for the longest time, many slapstick comedians didn't talk. This style of comedy requires great timing, animated facial expressions, and quite a bit of acrobatics to pull off. With comedy routines based almost entirely around hitting one another and falling down, The Three Stooges are considered the masters of slapstick. However, they are just one example and they certainly were not the first. …show more content…
The phrase comes from the term battocchio called the 'slap stick' in English. There are records of clownish performances in Egypt from 2500 B.C. and in China from 1800 B.C. Later in history, in the Middle Ages, groups of people would travel around Europe to juggle, dance, perform magic, walk the slack rope, or present funny business. Slapstick comedy became popular in 19th-century music halls and Vaudeville theatres. And now some of the most recent films that are slapstick are movies like “Happy Gilmore” or “Monty Python and the Holy