In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin defines several distinguishing features of folk carnival humor. Popularized by Francois Rabelais in the 16th century, carnivalesque comedy often centers around a ritual spectacle, like a feast, a performance, or another gathering. Often, it involves parody, including parodic performances of these serious rituals and parodies of well-known stories and compositions which wouldn’t have been originally comedic in nature. In the pre-romantic period, carnival was seen as a temporary liberation from truth and order – a space where everyone was equal, collectively laughing at themselves as much as everyone else.
This episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “Flowers for Charlie”, is a clear parody of the well-known short story Flowers for Algernon, in which a man undergoes a scientific treatment to make him smarter. The original story is a tragedy, very serious in nature; in the tradition of carnivalesque parody, the Always Sunny episode is decidedly not. Throughout the episode, Charlie seems to get progressively smarter after taking a pill to increase his intelligence, seemingly learning Mandarin Chinese in just two days and losing interest in his previous “unintellectual” hobbies, even walking away from a date with a woman he’s been in love with for years because he thinks he’s too smart for her. In this final scene, he gives a presentation to a gathering of scientists (and his friends) but is swiftly interrupted by the conductors of the experiment, who reveal that they had given Charlie a placebo pill and his intelligence hasn’t actually increased at all. Quickly, he’s brought back down to earth, and in the spirit of the carnivalesque, he immediately begins to laugh at himself; he is no longer “above” anyone else, as his friends had thought; now, they’re all back down to the same intellectual level, and thus able to hang out together as they used to. In this way, the scientific gathering acts as the “feast”, or the event that brings people together in collective laughter while subverting the serious nature of the original story.
Additionally, Bakhtin identifies elements of the “grotesque” as relating to the physical body, especially the lower body, and its proximity to the processes of birth and death. As Charlie was experiencing the imagined effects of the intelligence pill, he claimed to suffer from aches and pains; by the time he gives the presentation, he can’t walk without a cane and speaks with the cadence of an older man. While not grotesque in a visceral way, this does incorporate elements of Bakhtin’s definition, as Charlie’s imagined bodily deterioration signifies his rapid advancement toward death.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1968. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge, Mass.: Mit Press.
Attias, Dan, dir. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Season 9, episode 8, “Flowers for Charlie.” Aired October 23, 2013, on FX.
I love this interpretation! I actually didn’t know that this episode was a parody of a short story but that doesn’t surprise me too much considering IASIP tends to subvert and mock popular stories and their formats.
This interpretation of the cycle of life through grotesque is fascinating. The effects of placebo on the physical body are one which lends itself to comedy well, as all sympathy is reversed when the audience discovers there was never a serious impairment.
In a way, the clip also reinforces Bakhtin’s idea of a space of equality and collective laughter by including the audience. The scientific gathering makes the audience laugh not just at the situation, but with the characters.