In his work, North writes: “Many early film comedies were developed entirely out of the workings of a single machine, manufactured, as it were, as a side product of some industrial process. One of the most popular of these was the sausage machine […] The possibilities were apparently endless: put something in one end of the box, turn the crank a few times, and pull something odd and unexpected from the other end” (p10).
This extract describing the nature of the sausage machine as a comic process reminded me of this scene in Friends in which Phoebe pulls stranger and more random objects out of her handbag. This example seems to follow the comic machine’s process as North describes: Phoebe goes to her bag looking for gum, rummages around, before pulling out increasingly absurd objects which she hands to Ross to hold. The first objects she pulls out are seemingly ‘normal’ or expected objects to be in a handbag – a diary and a glasses case – but as she continues to “turn the crank” (reach into her bag) the objects become more “odd and unexpected” – a single shoe, an egg, a live goldfish in a bag of water. In this way, Phoebe’s handbag seems to serve as a stand in for the comedy of the mechanical process of the sausage machine in North’s description.
However, North further writes that “The message of the joke is that regularity, pushed to the extremes needed by an industrial economy, produces its own kind of craziness, a zany, dadaistic kind of humour that could only be produced by machines, since human beings are always restricted by their own, more or less traditional notions of good sense.” (p10). What I found intriguing in the case of this example, is that the mechanical process is fulfilled by Phoebe and her handbag, which are not industrial machines like the sausage machine; however, there is still comedy in the sequence. Thus, this kind of craziness and zany humour is not merely restricted to machine processes, as North describes, as Phoebe does not seem to be restricted by the ‘notions of good sense’ (what is ‘normal’ to have in a handbag). In this way, Phoebe seems to act as an exception to North’s conception as such, but also highlights Bergson’s description of “ a kind of automatism that makes us laugh – an automatism, as we have already remarked, closely akin to mere absentmindedness […] a comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself” (p16). In this instance, Phoebe’s ‘mechanical process’ of pulling items out of her handbag represents an automatism whose comedy arises out of her own ignorance of the peculiarity of the objects emerging.
Bibliography:
Michael North, Machine-Age Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
Henri Bergson, “Chapter 1,” Laughter, trans. Brereton & Rothwell (London: MacMillan, 1911)
This is a great example. I like your point that the comedy dervies from Phoebes ignorance as to what items she will produce out of her bag. This seems to be an example of a kind of meta sausage machine, whereby Phoebe embodies the audiences surprise at the peculiar items that are coming out of her handbag, as she is just as amazed as us. In this way, she is not in on the joke, she is not aware of what the ‘sausage’ will become.
This is such a good example like I really like how you have an understanding of North’s theory about the sausage machine that you can unpick different aspects of how it can be funny in different ways. Furthermore using this to prove Bergson’s ideas is even more impressive.