Machine-Age Comedy – Scoobynatural

“In a sense, the comedian needs to become part of the machine in order to extract its comic possibilities, meeting its movements with acrobatic skill, matching its split-second timing with his own. The inverted power the comedian develops out of this relationship with
the machine world is also implicitly a metaphor for the creative power granted by the machine that makes the whole process work in the first place: the movie camera.” – Michael North

North’s idea of the comedy coming not only from the repetitious actions of the machine itself, but also from the comedian as part of the machine, or in relation to the machine stemmed an interesting thought for me about the comedy of the metaphysical. As North explained, repetition and re-creations in/of movements and actions is something that becomes comedic, having these actions disrupted by the comedian or inflicted upon them also becomes an object of comedy. But when a comedian is a fictional character in themselves and the world is their machine, I think it produces an interesting opportunity for the metaphysical– in terms self-aware dialogue and actions– to be portrayed as comedic. While films like the Scream franchise does this sort of metaphysical comedy very well, I think it these movies miss a more complete interaction with the machine of film itself, which brings me to what I think is a much better example in terms of machine interactions.

The television show, Supernatural, like Scream, often has meta moments within the show, namely incorperating their entire fanbase into the show by portraying the show’s episodes as fiction novels diagetically. However, Supernatural often plays around with thier form, style, and general T.V. rules, showcased primarily in two episodes: “Changing Channels” (s5,e8) and “Scoobynatural” (s13,e16). In “Changing Channels”, Sam and Dean are transported into “TV Land” where they must survive by playing their roles– like a random doctor on a medical drama that Dean enjoys. In “Scoobynatural,” Sam and Dean are pulled into the television itself, and become a part of Scooby-Doo‘s “A Knight of Fright is No Delight” (s1,e16). Scooby-Doo, like most cartoons, is mechanical in itself and in this case acts as the machine for Sam and Dean. By animating the Winchesters into the episode and having them interact with the Scooby Gang within the episode itself, it both breaks up the repetition of a typical Scooby episode, and inflicts those rules onto Sam and Dean. Additionally, having Dean be a superfan of Scooby-Doo and knowing the episode they’re in Dean becomes more entrenched in the machine. While the entire episode highlights this idea, a stand out point would be the linked scene below. The repetition of the Scooby Gang’s catchphrases, and Dean’s subsequent disruption with his own catchprase in Supernatural.