In her work, Alexandra Plakias explores ‘the way awkwardness emerges from discoordinated interactions’ (p20), arising from situations where there is a discord between those interacting… Read More »Gavin, Doris and the Awkward
Jonathan L. Crane writes that “postmodern horror […] drifts back and forth between scares and laughs without warning” (p148). This brought to mind the HBO… Read More »Apocalypse jokes like there’s no tomorrow
The Truman Show is prefaced on the idea that Truman is living in the manufactured world of a reality TV show, yet he does not realise… Read More »Truman’s Absurdity
Babuscio explains that there are four key features of camp: irony, aestheticism, theatricality and humor. Irony represents “any highly incongruous contrast between an individual or… Read More »‘Mrs Coleman’ and camp
Bakhtin writes that “all [forms] of grotesque realism degrade, bring down to earth, turn their subject into flesh” (20). In other words, Bakhtin describes this… Read More »Slitheen and the Grotesque
I can remember several instances as a kid watching a children’s film and having adults laugh at moments I couldn’t comprehend, or at jokes I… Read More »“My donkey fell in your waffle hole”: Adult jokes in children’s films
Frye writes: “Thus the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the the green world, goes into… Read More »2004 as the ‘green world’: 13 Going on 30 and New Comedy
In this scene, we see what Douglas describes as “the triumph of intimacy over formality, of unofficial values over official ones” (p.98); Jake’s formality around… Read More »“I Want It That Way”: Jake as ‘the joker’
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… Read More »The sausage machine or Phoebe’s handbag?
At the opening of each Ice Age film, there is a short sequence in which Scrat attempts to obtain and hold on to his acorn.… Read More »Scrat’s Acorn and the Running ‘Gags’ of Ice Age Films