Slapstick

the danger of the radiations (Hendershot, 115). The ignorance about radiation allows Martinsons to portray a survivor of an atomic explosion in a playful way. The over-exaggerating physical comedy adds to Blix’s boyish quality, and the film uses slapstick humor to create a fantasy particalr to that time period when fun and nuclear weapons coexist in Las Vegas. As Blix uses his radioactive superpower to hack slot…

(Parker and Stone). Other characters come into play when he starts converting people to his faith in the government (starting with two followers of the Jehovah’s witnesses) and going to the DMV to confess his sins where the producers include some slapstick comedy. Allegedly, “once I (Butters) came clean with the government, I no longer had anything to hide. Then I found peace” (Parker and Stone). The way that Butters is treating the government as an entity to worship seems to criticize those who…

Michael Sweeney’s Earth and Sky, commissioned for the 2013 Nebraska All-State Eighth Grade Band, celebrates the Omaha tribe’s belief that the sky and earth are interconnected. Prior to the 1800s, the animistic union between sky and earth permeated all aspects of Omaha culture. In fact, the tribe even developed a social structure based on the belief. During this time, the Omaha tribe was divided into two half-tribes: the Sky People (know as the Insta’shunda) and the Earth People (known as the…

Homunculus Theatre Company successfully created a Commedia Dell’Arte piece through the utilisation of conventions of commedia and the dramatic elements to effectively produce dramatic meaning. ’20 lazzi’s in a hat’ “showcases numerous masked stock characters, hilarious burle and 20 of Commedia’s famous traditional lazzi consisting of verbal asides on current political, social and literary topics, pratfalls and acrobatics (Homunculus Theatre company, n.d.).” Commedia Dell’Arte is a form of…

Even in his relationship with Mary, John seems to have a bizarre notion of importance and that goes beyond the fact that this was made in 1928 and he was the man in the relationship. On numerous occasions, we see John acting as if he is more important than Mary and his infuriating notion that bad things seem to happen to him more than anyone else, which Mary calls him out at times. There are two particularly domestic scenes in which this is particularly noticeable and which highlight the way…

incarnation of the purohita or the bráhman-priest, whose mythical prototypes like VasiSTha and Agastya were also incarnations representing the Vedic ‘dual-divinity’— Mitra-Varuna. In her book The Comedy of Philosophy: Sense and Nonsense in Early Cinematic Slapstick, Lisa Trahair observes, “it is not simply a case of contingent reality being subordinated to the mechanical or vice-versa; rather the comic emerges in many instances from the imbrication of the mechanical and the vital. The tension…

Because of its easy language and humoristic cause of death it could be comparable to a cartoon. Cartoons are commonly quite macabre and dark, nonetheless it is considered humorous for kids because of the slapstick comedy and amusing for adults since they will understand the darker, hidden jokes. “The Pardoner’s Tale” even though it has a deeper meaning to it, could easily be visualized as a cartoon mainly due to the way all three young men die. “The Pardoner’s…

The Auteur Theory, is the idea that the true author of a film is the director. The director leaves an implicit remark on the film and because of this cinematic, literary, or thematic signature, they are credited as the author of the film. While there are numerous people involved in the production of a film, with some directors it is truly prominent who can be described as the author of the film. Mel Brooks, renown comical director and screenwriter is one instance of the undeniability of the…

The buddy comedy Daddy’s Home 2 (Sean Anders, 2017), features two of the biggest faces in Hollywood – Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. This film portrays the difficulties that come with having divorced parents during the holidays. However, behind the main focus of the public eye, this film introduces the overuse of technology and the way our lives revolve around it. Anders presents his two main characters, Brad Whitaker (Ferrell) and Dusty Mayron (Wahlberg), as two men on the opposite ends of the…

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Through the Existentialist Lens Tom Stoppard decided to pick up where Shakespeare left off. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the untold tale of two minor characters from the play Hamlet. A theme not covered much in Hamlet is existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, choices, possibilities, the unknown, and the vastness of the universe. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, despite…