While
putting together the script for my film, I found a fascinating article written
by Cynthia M. King that focuses on the need for humorous heroes and villains in
violent action films. This is an extremely relative article because while
drafting the script, I wanted to add humor to a lot of the lines. My problem
with this is that I didn’t want to add so much that the film comes off s a
spoof. One thing this article mentions is that in violent films such as Lethal Weapon or Die Hard, there’s a certain kind of humor being used.
 |
| "You have the right to remain unconscious" |
King
discusses how Freud defined nontenditious humor and disparaging humor.
Nontenditious is a form of joke work that has no hostile intentions.
Disparaging humor, on the other hand, emphasizes “the victimization of one
party by another” (King, p. 6). Its intention is to humiliate or harm the other
party through hostility. Disparaging humor is evident in many action films as
of late. One example of disparaging humor can be found in Lethal Weapon 3, when Officer Marty Riggs, played by Mel Gibson,
finally catches a villain after a long and brutal armored-truck chase. When the
truck crashes, the villain slams through the windshield, and landing on the
fender. Riggs gets out, runs up to the body, raises the villain’s head and
asks, “you ok?” before slamming it back down into unconsciousness. Riggs takes
out a cigarette, lights it, and nonchalantly says, “You have the right to
remain unconscious. Anything you have to say ain’t gonna be much.” The idea of
the wisecracking character helps to emphasize the persona of the tough guy of
the 1990’s.
 |
| Too much violence? |
I’ve always
been a fan of action films, whether they are superhero action movies like Sam
Raimi’s Spider-Man series, hard
R-rated action films such as Saving
Private Ryan or the Rambo series.
But, I have always favored the comedy movies that have some sort of comedic
relief to them. I think it all started when I was a kid, and was told by my
grandmother that I wasn’t allowed to watch shows like The Three Stooges or Tom and
Jerry at her house. Why? Because they were too violent for me. SERIOUSLY? If
we were able to fast forward and show her what’s on TV now, Tom and Jerry would be the least of her
worries. Last semester, I took a Sociology class that focused on the sociology
of humor. One thing I learned in that class had to do with the physicality of
one of my favorite forms of humor, slapstick. Slapstick is no longer slapstick
when you introduce sympathy to the character. Sure, you feel bad when Moe pokes
Curly in the eye, but that feeling goes away when he laughs and feels better
almost instantly. How do you add sympathy to slapstick? You can either: A.)
Have the victim cry, which is hardly seen or B.) Add blood. Once an injury is
evident, slapstick becomes null and void. You have entered the realm of violence.
For my
film, I wanted to make the two heroes very different from each other, therefore
adding to the cliché of “odd pair has to work together”. On the same coin, my
villain is scary and intimidating, simply by staying calm 80% of his scenes.
When he gets mad, he GETS MAD. The idea was to have him blow up at the most
inopportune times. When I think about it, I believe that I did write in a line
or two that expressed some sort of disparaging humor, but it didn’t happen
often. I focused more on one-liners because, as I said, I didn’t want it coming
off as a spoof. In conclusion, adding comedy to violent action films is very
important to me because I feel like, without it, we don’t release some kind of
catharsis, leading us to a more violent nature. Sure, I know the film is
violent and shouldn’t be replicated, but no, I don’t feel like humor added to
these films makes light of the situation or action. Humor in action films’ sole
purpose is to humiliate the villain and show that justice will always prevail,
or something like that.
Resource:
No comments:
Post a Comment