Kinds of American Film Comedy by Wes D. Gehring
What an awkward title: Kinds of American Film Comedy. How many kinds? The subtitle answers: Six Core Genres and their Literary Roots.
Author Wes D. Gehring’s point comes early on when he observes that comedy is too broad to be categorized as a genre. And so he divvies movie comedy into six categories over the course of seven chapters, always with an eye toward its connection with “print humor.” The latter term encompasses everything from Mark Twain and lesser lights of 19th century literature through the comic strips that proliferated around the time the nickelodeons began showing motion pictures.
Along the way, the relentlessly prolific Gehring—this is the Ball State University film professor’s 42nd book—connects many dots across history and media. Jerry Seinfeld’s “humor about nothing”? Gehring finds precedent in the New Yorker cartoons with their “comedy of minutiae.” Reading the memoir of silent film comedian Harold Lloyd, Gehring finds that the actor once improvised a skit inspired by Tom Sawyer.
Gehring’s chapter on “Parody” is especially enlightening. He points out that Mel Brooks was not the originator of film parody—Bob Hope’s My Favorite Brunette (1947) spoofed film noir. And that’s only starters. Mack Sennett’s Help! Help! (1912) burlesqued D.W. Griffith’s melodrama The Lonely Villa (1909).
As always, Gehring presents an abundance of research. The author dived into newspaper archives, finding the opinions of critics and others on films at the time of their release.
Kinds of American Film Comedy: Six Core Genres and their Literary Roots is published by McFarland.
Get Kinds of American Film Comedy at Amazon here.
Paid link
