Absurd Comedy
The absurd comedy is a film full of nonsensical, almost stream-of-consciousness humor which more often than not attacks or lampoons some form of authority or social mores. Jokes and visual gags fly fast and furious, usually in a non sequitur manner that eschews narrative for sheer absurdity, and no subject is sacred or taboo. In the '30s, the Marx Brothers were the kings of anarchic comedy, the proponents of their own brand of no-holds-barred humor captured for prosperity in films like The Cocoanuts, Duck Soup, and Horse Feathers. They had a knack for complex wordplay, double entendres, outrageous slapstick, and being able to walk into a room full of society people and leave the place in shambles. There was also W.C. Fields, a vaudeville comedian who made the switch to film in the early '30s and worked his own twist on the "up-the-society" theme. In such classics as You Can't Cheat An Honest Man and Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, Fields perfected an everyman persona who fights the world of henpecking housewives, bumbling bureaucrats, and obnoxious children with made-up words, a shyster's sense of chicanery, and a steady stream of liquor. The '40s produced Olsen and Johnson, two comedians whose Hellzapoppin manages to spoof Hollywood musicals, the aristocracy, and the entire notion of narrative linearity. The '50s and '60s belonged to England, whose rigid sense of tradition and respectability made them the perfect target for anarchic comedy and managed to sire both the Goon Show (featuring Peter Sellers) and Monty Python. Though the two groups flourished doing ensemble sketch comedy, it was the Python group who made a bigger splash in cinema; and in such films as Monty Python And The Holy Grail and The Meaning Of Life, they bring down institution after institution with deadly accuracy. The '70s became the Golden Age of absurd comedies, as the American populace lost faith in the government and the church, the general public embraced a style of comedy that wasn't afraid to bite the hand that fed it. Movies such as Animal House, Stripes, and Caddyshack wore a thin veil of narrative over the basic theme of the slobs vs. the snobs and attacked the upper crust of society, while the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team kept the stream-of-consciousness comedy alive with Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane!. The surreal stylings of humor that mark the absurd comedy still reigned supreme in the comedy of the '90s; as long as there are sacred cows to be mocked and ridiculed, the subgenre will continue to live long and prosper well into the millennium.
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