In a way, physical comedy still exists, but it's not official. The popularity of "instant karma" gifs or subreddit, youtube pranks, freak accidents. I think the last great slapstick actor was Jackie Chan though. I mean the need is there, but no one caters to it.
Yes. For the longest time I did not watch any "martial arts" movies, because I was not interested in people fighting. But Jackie Chan's movies are really primarily physical comedy: https://youtu.be/0ZFr4uiR5x0
Indeed! There is a great video essay about Jackie Chan's style (and how it differs from standard Hollywood action movies) on "Every Frame a Painting" Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ
I love Jackie Chan, but I don't recall laughing at any of his jokes. Mostly I'm amazed at the creativity and athleticism of Jackie and his stunt team.
I miss the days when stuntmen got top billing. Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn and Buster Keaton were all awesome.
The talking heads have made it illegal to be a great stunt performer in Hollywood. If you're into that kind of thing you need to get a Red Bull sponsorship, join the Cirque du Soleil, or take up skateboarding.
I don't know if Jackass was slapstick. The only parts I remember finding funny weren't the stunts. The stunts were more about shock, going over the top, and showing the real outcomes.
I think part of the issue is the cost of those kinds of movies.
I heard Jackie Chan talk about in an interview. All those great funny stunts aren't really due to anyone's amazing talent. They would just shoot as many takes as they had to. And that's just more expensive.
This might be the reason behind the disappearance of professional physical comedy. I mean, practical (special) effects have largely disappeared too because computer (special) effects are usually cheaper. Slapstick requires not just a sense of humor but also fitness and real effort.
I didn't get the impression Jackie said there wasn't talent. Talent is part of the equation, but yes, he openly stated it still took a lot of tries to get right. Most of his movies feature failed tries at the end to give you an idea.
Staged slapstick doesn't have the same appeal to a generation accustomed to people recording others doing stupid things with their cell phone, which is the new physical comedy (even though many of those viral clips are staged too).
The demise of comedy in general is a much more pertinent issue. Political correctness and outrage culture has hobbled the ability to confront hard subjects through humor.
Do you really need to make fun of someone disadvantaged to have comedy? Do folks not approach things like rape and discrimation and dealing with American cops with comedy?
Have you not seen the bit by.. Josh Johnson? ... where he accidentally catfishes the KKK?
Or watched Frankie Boyle? Or the Mash Report?
It is pretty obvious there is plenty of comedy out there that approaches difficult and tough subjects through humor. Society is becoming less tolerant of racism and sexism and homophobia and things like that - you know, the political correctness of it. If your comedy includes making fun of men for being too "gay" or women for being too manly... sure, political correctness has caused a demise in your sort of humor, and good riddance.
In order to confront truths, you're going to risk being offensive.
There are plenty of logical inconsistencies, fallacies, half-truths, that every social tribe adopts that need a mirror to reveal their ridiculousness. Some may only be observed as an outsider from the group.
I specifically mentioned Frankie Boyle because folks tend to find him offensive. He also hosts a show talking about serious-ish topics, generally in a funny tone. The others were just comedic takes on more serious stuff.
But really, they were examples of comedy that the person claimed was hobbled as a result of political correctness - and I don't see it as the case at all. Comedy simply isn't what it was 30 years ago, but at the same time... comedy isn't what it was 50 years ago either.
>If your comedy includes making fun of men for being too "gay" or women for being too manly... sure, political correctness has caused a demise in your sort of humor, and good riddance.
The very idea that there couldn't be any funny perspectives left on the above topics shows that the idea of being emotionally protected has been elevated above free speech.
You can still find a lot of people confronting hard subjects through humor, it is just that lately these things are better received if you are a part of the group you are making fun of. I know lgbt comedians who are great at confronting the hard subjects of being lgbt for example.
I feel like the "demise of comedy" is overstated. Every time I see a comedian complaining about that, his netflix special is just a few clicks away.
> these things are better received if you are a part of the group you are making fun of
Or at least know something about their experiences and come from a place of those experiences being real. I think a major reason that e.g. anti-LGBT jokes don't land the way they used to is simply that too many people know anything at all about LGBT experiences. Comedians can't get away with just making stuff up or leaning on cartoonish stereotypes, because it just rings hollow to so many people now. Likewise, "white guy does X like this / black guy does X like this" jokes are so dead that even jokes about the ineffectiveness of those jokes are trite.
> Every time I see a comedian complaining about that, his netflix special is just a few clicks away.
Also, even when comedians are ostensibly telling actual jokes about "political correctness" or "safe spaces", it often comes off as somewhere between inept trolling and outright whining. Somebody could probably make a "Stand-up comedy bit about political correctness or Rush Limbaugh rant?" quiz.
Contrary to what it seems like on the internet, most people are not actually getting outraged about every little thing. Even the people that are posting about being outraged on the internet usually don't really care that much. If anything, the popularity of standup comedy is at an all time high. It's just that some critics have a slightly louder voice than they used to.
This article focuses wholly on the death-related or injury-related aspects of physical comedy and none of the others, for example the excellent use of a non-functional set in The Play that Goes Wrong (which The New Yorker reviews quite highly [0]).
Indeed, physical comedy is alive and well in the theater.
It may be that physical comedy has a better impact in theater, where it's live, and they're taking the (apparent) risks right in front of you. On film, modern wire work enables a lot of great action, but undercuts the immediacy of it. Jackie Chan did amazing physical comedy on film, because you knew that he was taking Harold Lloyd-type risks.
Physical comedy in the theater is a bit like stage magic: it's practiced carefully and controlled so that they can do it safely every single time. Professional wrestling is also a kind of live physical comedy, taking much bigger risks than any actor would do (and way more than the actors' unions would tolerate).
Well, there he mourns visual comedy, which is not exactly the same (you can have visual comedy without physical comedy -- well, aside from the performer doing its thing).
Visual comedy could be made in the editing, backgrounds, etc (as in many examples given in the video) even if the actors don't do physical comedy at all.
True of course, though the video does have some examples of physical comedy as well; no 7 in his list for example. Personally I love this example from Hot Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30kUNex1cuI
> a new Harold Lloyd is unthinkable because physical comedy depends on the proximity and possibility of death
I don't agree with that.
Gwyneth Paltrow is amazing at physical comedy. I can't remember the movie but there's a scene where she's getting out of a cab and she just falls over and it's friggin' hilarious. No death in sight.
Certainly death, properly appreciated, is funny. The only thing more absurd than death is sex.
The reason physical comedy is so physically dangerous is that, generally, it's only funny if you go for it and that naturally causes injuries. Like playing football, or WWE wrestling. Half-assing it isn't going to be entertaining.
To me physical comedy is about physicality: the body, its gestures and movements.
Can it involve pain or the possibility of death? Sure, but that's not essential.
I was always a fan of John Ritter in Three's Company. He'd flail about in every episode, almost falling or tripping or just making crazy expressions with his face.
Kaitlin Olson did a very funny pratfall on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that ends with her running full-speed into the door of a taxi. Part of what makes it funny is that it's so real, but she had to regularly see a chiropractor after that.
While I believe she may have suffered genuine impairment, chiropractors are charlatans who's entire business model is signing you up for a recurring treatment plan.
They are not physiotherapists, who actually practice useful rehabilitation.
"Possibility of death" is terrible wording, but I generally agree with the statement.
A big draw for the old timey sketches used to be "how did they do it?!", even though the audience was aware that the performers weren't literally an inch away from death. Today it would just be written off as mediocre CGI.
Mmmh, I don't know about this stunts arguments. Cartoons have had success with physical comedy for decades. Yet, everybody knew that no real coyote flew off a cliff...
I think that slapstick is simply overdone. We've seen so much of it that it's just not funny anymore...
I don't find slapstick, pratfalls, etc., funny anymore for different reasons. It just isn't funny. But I still enjoy Laurel & Hardy, but not for the slapstick.
It's more for the irrational logic the L&H characters use, which is on great display in the one where they move the piano up the stairs, and in the one where they sell Christmas trees door to door.
The running gags are funny because you know what is going to happen. You know the piano is going to get destroyed (who would hire L&H to move a piano, and the sound effects as the piano gets insulted are very funny in foretelling its impending demise), but somehow that makes it even funnier. You know when Ollie steps in a puddle it'll be 5 feet deep, and the funny part isn't so much him getting wet it's his long-suffering expression looking directly into the camera when he surfaces. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Monty Python's pratfalls aren't funny, either, but when they have a knight in armor fall down the stairs, it's not the fall that's funny, its the foley sound effect of a metal garbage can going down the stairs that's funny.
Sam Kinnison as the history professor is not to be missed, either! He actually managed to upstage Rodney. Kudos to Rodney being such a great person that he allowed that.
Part of the reason it's funny is the resolute failure of King Arthur to understand that he's not actually riding a horse. Or maybe I shouldn't try to analyze what funny is.
Physical comedy isn't just "pratfalls". Consider Cleese's Ministry of Silly Walks, Blackmail, Lancelot storming the wedding, Arthur's duel with the Black Knight, or Brian's graffiti on the Roman Garrison.
Good! Ill see videos where there are dozens of people just laughing at videos of people falling over or getting kicked in the nuts or something else painful to them... It's so cringe. When I see a video of a tree fall on someone's head I cringe and feel terrible, not laugh. People are psychopaths, maybe I'm just an empath.
I'm puzzled by this take. Just because we don't have daredevils like Buster Keaton letting houses fall on top of them doesn't mean physical comedy is dead.
Someone in the thread has already pointed out Kaitlin Olson's excellent work on IASIP and I'd second her with a recommendation for The Mick. Similarly, there's the wonderful Inside No. 9, which often features great physical performances (not all episodes are comedy though.)
Just because we don't see it as often doesn't mean it's dead. The trends ebb and flow but good physical comedy still exists.
I think physical comedy just has a broader audience, which worked well in silent movies and thereafter. The broadness is also why it’s considered cheap and used sparingly. It’s like shouting. As Friends went on and the writing got lazier every character was shouting all the time.
But a recent example of a well done pratfall I saw in a show mostly about dialog and editing was Modern Family (season 2) where Cameron turns to give his husband a kiss who pulls back (due to discomfort with public displays of affection, the theme of the episode) and Cameron overleans and falls head over heels over the back of the sofa quite roughly; he’s a big guy too. I laughed a lot partly in surprise because I basically never see a pratfall in comedy shows I like.
Yeah, using it sparingly is key. Tobias in Arrested Development would occasionally have pratfalls that always got me. And just yesterday I saw this video, where the physical comedy caught me off guard and had me laughing harder than I have in a long time: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzwVIakdxks
Of course my wife was only mildly amused, and she loves Oh Hello. No accounting for taste in humor, I suppose.
I'd argue physical comedy is more difficult than spoken comedy, because any fool can deliver a line but it takes a master to sell you a fall. Is it any wonder that physical comedy was more popular in the silent film era?
My suspicion is that physical comedy is less relatable because the modern audience is less acquainted with physicality in general. Slapstick doesn't have quite have the same point if you've never given or received a slap, and making light of grievous injury and workplace accidents doesn't have the same ring when those aren't everyday facts of life.
Has the author of this piece never been on youtube, or worldstar, or twitter, vine, tiktok... Physical comedy still exists, the risks have just been relegated to the masses, rather than the comedian who wants to have a long career free of pain.
Further, slapstick still has a lot of life in cartoons. The old Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies were chock full of physical comedy, and modern cartoons continue to carry that torch.
Physical Comedy isn't in decline, it's just moved out of the mainstream.
I do not know. If it’s out of the “main” stream then almost by definition it would be in decline. Unless the mainstream was more of a small plurality rather than a large one, which could be the case?
Zach Galifianakis uses a fair amount of physical comedy. Some of the gags most likely to make me laugh in his show Baskets are physical, but it also has lots of situational humor and pathos. I think physical comedy used well can show what's funny about a character on a deeper internal level.
Physical comedy is still prevalent in mainstream culture. I would argue that the best comedians use it sparingly, but they do use it.
For example the show "The Trailerpark Boys" have reoccurring gags which depend on slapstick physical humour, and they always make me laugh.
The slapstick comedy of the 1930's could be viewed with no context or even sound. I think it's evolved since then, the context (characters, plot, motivations) of the physical comedy matters a lot more now...
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadNext time you watch one, try tapping your feet to the moves. You'll see :-)
In the one in Shanghai Nights, they didn't even leave it to your imagination, the whole scene was choreographed to Singin' in the Rain.
I miss the days when stuntmen got top billing. Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn and Buster Keaton were all awesome.
The talking heads have made it illegal to be a great stunt performer in Hollywood. If you're into that kind of thing you need to get a Red Bull sponsorship, join the Cirque du Soleil, or take up skateboarding.
I heard Jackie Chan talk about in an interview. All those great funny stunts aren't really due to anyone's amazing talent. They would just shoot as many takes as they had to. And that's just more expensive.
I didn't get the impression Jackie said there wasn't talent. Talent is part of the equation, but yes, he openly stated it still took a lot of tries to get right. Most of his movies feature failed tries at the end to give you an idea.
The demise of comedy in general is a much more pertinent issue. Political correctness and outrage culture has hobbled the ability to confront hard subjects through humor.
Have you not seen the bit by.. Josh Johnson? ... where he accidentally catfishes the KKK?
Or watched Frankie Boyle? Or the Mash Report?
It is pretty obvious there is plenty of comedy out there that approaches difficult and tough subjects through humor. Society is becoming less tolerant of racism and sexism and homophobia and things like that - you know, the political correctness of it. If your comedy includes making fun of men for being too "gay" or women for being too manly... sure, political correctness has caused a demise in your sort of humor, and good riddance.
There are plenty of logical inconsistencies, fallacies, half-truths, that every social tribe adopts that need a mirror to reveal their ridiculousness. Some may only be observed as an outsider from the group.
This is the service comedy has always provided.
We are humans. We are fallible.
But really, they were examples of comedy that the person claimed was hobbled as a result of political correctness - and I don't see it as the case at all. Comedy simply isn't what it was 30 years ago, but at the same time... comedy isn't what it was 50 years ago either.
The very idea that there couldn't be any funny perspectives left on the above topics shows that the idea of being emotionally protected has been elevated above free speech.
The vocal minority of Twitter do not represent the general public. https://www.pewinternet.org/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-use...
If these are not examples of what you claim are being hobbled, please better explain what you mean. Have I misunderstood you?
I feel like the "demise of comedy" is overstated. Every time I see a comedian complaining about that, his netflix special is just a few clicks away.
Or at least know something about their experiences and come from a place of those experiences being real. I think a major reason that e.g. anti-LGBT jokes don't land the way they used to is simply that too many people know anything at all about LGBT experiences. Comedians can't get away with just making stuff up or leaning on cartoonish stereotypes, because it just rings hollow to so many people now. Likewise, "white guy does X like this / black guy does X like this" jokes are so dead that even jokes about the ineffectiveness of those jokes are trite.
> Every time I see a comedian complaining about that, his netflix special is just a few clicks away.
Also, even when comedians are ostensibly telling actual jokes about "political correctness" or "safe spaces", it often comes off as somewhere between inept trolling and outright whining. Somebody could probably make a "Stand-up comedy bit about political correctness or Rush Limbaugh rant?" quiz.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-play-that...
It may be that physical comedy has a better impact in theater, where it's live, and they're taking the (apparent) risks right in front of you. On film, modern wire work enables a lot of great action, but undercuts the immediacy of it. Jackie Chan did amazing physical comedy on film, because you knew that he was taking Harold Lloyd-type risks.
Physical comedy in the theater is a bit like stage magic: it's practiced carefully and controlled so that they can do it safely every single time. Professional wrestling is also a kind of live physical comedy, taking much bigger risks than any actor would do (and way more than the actors' unions would tolerate).
Visual comedy could be made in the editing, backgrounds, etc (as in many examples given in the video) even if the actors don't do physical comedy at all.
I don't agree with that.
Gwyneth Paltrow is amazing at physical comedy. I can't remember the movie but there's a scene where she's getting out of a cab and she just falls over and it's friggin' hilarious. No death in sight.
Certainly death, properly appreciated, is funny. The only thing more absurd than death is sex.
The reason physical comedy is so physically dangerous is that, generally, it's only funny if you go for it and that naturally causes injuries. Like playing football, or WWE wrestling. Half-assing it isn't going to be entertaining.
To me physical comedy is about physicality: the body, its gestures and movements.
Can it involve pain or the possibility of death? Sure, but that's not essential.
I was always a fan of John Ritter in Three's Company. He'd flail about in every episode, almost falling or tripping or just making crazy expressions with his face.
His fight scenes and stunts are riddled with humor.
They are not physiotherapists, who actually practice useful rehabilitation.
A big draw for the old timey sketches used to be "how did they do it?!", even though the audience was aware that the performers weren't literally an inch away from death. Today it would just be written off as mediocre CGI.
I think that slapstick is simply overdone. We've seen so much of it that it's just not funny anymore...
I don't find slapstick, pratfalls, etc., funny anymore for different reasons. It just isn't funny. But I still enjoy Laurel & Hardy, but not for the slapstick.
It's more for the irrational logic the L&H characters use, which is on great display in the one where they move the piano up the stairs, and in the one where they sell Christmas trees door to door.
The running gags are funny because you know what is going to happen. You know the piano is going to get destroyed (who would hire L&H to move a piano, and the sound effects as the piano gets insulted are very funny in foretelling its impending demise), but somehow that makes it even funnier. You know when Ollie steps in a puddle it'll be 5 feet deep, and the funny part isn't so much him getting wet it's his long-suffering expression looking directly into the camera when he surfaces. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Monty Python's pratfalls aren't funny, either, but when they have a knight in armor fall down the stairs, it's not the fall that's funny, its the foley sound effect of a metal garbage can going down the stairs that's funny.
Thank you, Jim, for that great laugh!
'Austria? Well g'day, mate!'
Flash Gordon (1980) has lots of physical comedy, but that isn't the real funny stuff. It's Ming's dry wit that is comedy gold.
"Are your men on the right pills?"
Sam Kinnison as the history professor is not to be missed, either! He actually managed to upstage Rodney. Kudos to Rodney being such a great person that he allowed that.
Does the guy running behind Graham Chapham in the Holy Grail knocking two coconut halves together to mimic a horse count?
But the funniest is the crazy logic where they're trying to determine a scientific procedure to unmask a witch.
"She turned me into a newt! .... .... uh, I got better."
Part of the reason it's funny is the resolute failure of King Arthur to understand that he's not actually riding a horse. Or maybe I shouldn't try to analyze what funny is.
noun: patsy; plural noun: patsies a person who is easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something.
So, there's that as well.
As culture evolves, and as new ideas grow, you can mine intellectual and verbal discourse for comedy that will continue to be surprising.
Can you do the same with physical comedy? Are there new boundaries or new frontiers to mine there?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkBb4FWHxhI
Here's where you know Bill Irwin from, depending on your age:
- voice and motions for TARS in Interstellar
- repeat character on Law and Order: SVU
- Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street
- main cast member in Legion (one of the Cary Loudermilks)
Bill is proof that physical comedy is still relevant.
But a recent example of a well done pratfall I saw in a show mostly about dialog and editing was Modern Family (season 2) where Cameron turns to give his husband a kiss who pulls back (due to discomfort with public displays of affection, the theme of the episode) and Cameron overleans and falls head over heels over the back of the sofa quite roughly; he’s a big guy too. I laughed a lot partly in surprise because I basically never see a pratfall in comedy shows I like.
Of course my wife was only mildly amused, and she loves Oh Hello. No accounting for taste in humor, I suppose.
https://www.facebook.com/cbc/videos/healthy-eating-is-simple...
Further, slapstick still has a lot of life in cartoons. The old Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies were chock full of physical comedy, and modern cartoons continue to carry that torch.
Physical Comedy isn't in decline, it's just moved out of the mainstream.
I feel nothing reading that. Should I? I mean, isn't that... reinforcing isms we were striving to overcome as a society?
For example the show "The Trailerpark Boys" have reoccurring gags which depend on slapstick physical humour, and they always make me laugh.
The slapstick comedy of the 1930's could be viewed with no context or even sound. I think it's evolved since then, the context (characters, plot, motivations) of the physical comedy matters a lot more now...