Mikhail Bakhtin explains how the carnivalesque in comedy stems from the jesting that took place at medieval feasts and markets. Comedy fit into these occasions through a need for relief for the public from their living conditions, “[the feasts] were the second life of the people, who for a time entered the utopian realm of community, freedom, equality, and abundance.” (9) It was also a mode of momentary power for common people who were able to mock others and the social structure that they lived in without serious consequences. The dynamic of comedy in the feast was striking, “the tone of the feast was monolithically serious and why the element of laughter was alien to it”, Bakhtin suggests that humankind’s nature is to be festive, and the seriousness of the feasts could not outweigh that.
More specifically looking at the ways people would jest at these feast and markets, Bakhtin explains that part of these performances was based on “giants, dwarfs, monsters, and trained animals” (5). This was building on what would have been a spectacle for most people to see, i.e. those with uncommon physical appearances and the differently abled. While it is sad to think of people being treated this way, we have not strayed far in modern times. Not only do we have the obvious example of The Greatest Showman’s glorification of PT Barnum’s treatment of people with uncommon physical traits, but specifically for the use of comedy, there is the example of Hanson from Scary Movie 2.
Hanson, a butler with a hand deformity, is used for comedy via his creepy personality, but more infamously via his hand. The hand is the butt of many jokes, many of which rely on the assumption that the viewer is disgusted and even scared by the hand. Twenty-four years later, audiences are more likely to see the problem with this and be shocked by such a joke rather than amused. This use of a person with a physical deformity as a spectacle and mode of comedy is not only a direct continuation of a trope that was a present in the medieval times, but it also highlights the same function of comedy in a serious setting. The premise of the Scary Movie franchise is to make fun of a genre that often takes itself too seriously. We can see the use of a visual spectacle, especially one that subverts the audience’s expectations, in diffusing the tension of a typical horror scene.
On top of this, the specific spectacle that is the butler is used for comedy in a “grotesque” way, by Bakhtin’s explanation of the term. Bakhtin explains how the grotesque comes from degradation, more explicitly “the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth.” (21). In order to double down on the audience’s perception of Hanson as disgusting, focus is drawn to his behind, with him bumping into things with it and passing gas. In one character, Scary Movie 2 manages to exemplify both the carnivalesque and the grotesque.
Mikhail Bakhtin, “Introduction,” Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana, 1984), 4-30.