Table Of ContentHistorical Comedy on Screen
Historical Comedy on Screen
Subverting History with Humour
Edited by Hannu Salmi
intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2011 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover Image: The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), ITV Studios Global
Entertainment.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: Rebecca Vaughan-Williams
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-367-7 / EISBN 978-1-84150-522-0
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Mad History of the World 7
Hannu Salmi, University of Turku
PART I: Comedians and Comic Representations 31
Chapter 2: Buster Keaton’s Comedies of Southern History: Our Hospitality and
The General 33
Susan E. Linville, University of Colorado Denver
Chapter 3: Comedians and Romance: History and Humour in Kalabalik 53
David Ludvigsson, University of Uppsala
Chapter 4: From Ideal Husbands to Berserk Gargoyles: A Survey of Period
Comedies Representing the British Past in the 1950s and 1960s 79
Harri Kilpi, University of Helsinki
Chapter 5: Forms of History in Woody Allen 101
Maurice Yacowar, University of Calgary
PART II: No Laughing Matter 111
Chapter 6: No Laughing Matter? Comedy and the Spanish Civil War in Cinema 113
David Archibald, University of Glasgow
Chapter 7: A Killer Joke? World War II in Post-War British Television and Film Comedy 129
Rami Mähkä, University of Turku
Chapter 8: ‘ Holocaust-Nostalgia’, Humour and Irony: The Case of Pizza in Auschwitz 153
Hagai Dagan, Sapir College
Chapter 9: Comedy and Counter-History 175
Marcia Landy, University of Pittsburgh
Index 199
Chapter 1
Introduction: The Mad History of the World
Hannu Salmi, University of Turku
‘H
istory is about the most cruel of all goddesses’, wrote Friedrich Engels in 1893,
‘she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in
“peaceful” economic development’ (cit. Carr 1961: 105). In Engels’s view, history
is a cruel tragedy, and the conception of history as something profoundly tragic has made
our image of the past grim and joyless. Although one might assume there would be plenty of
amusement to be found in the past, historians rarely laugh at the objects of their study. The
same can be said for historical films: there is no doubt that the majority of filmed portrayals
of the past paint a sombre tone. Examples from the past decades include such films as Oliver
Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot (2000),
Ridley Scott’s The Gladiator (2000) and Luc Besson’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
(1999). While the past is always noble and majestic, it is, first and foremost, tragic.
This linking of history and tragedy can be traced far back into the history of Western
civilization. While the tragedians Euripides, Sophocles and especially Aeschylus wrote
exclusively about an ancient era of heroic deeds, the comic playwright Aristophanes found
his subject matter in everyday life and politics. The contemporary environment of the
author’s audience was considered more appropriate raw material for merriment than the
past. Methods of characterization would also vary in tragedy and comedy. In the Poetics,
Aristotle considered tragedy – like the epic – ‘an imitation in verse of characters of a higher
type’, while comedy would mainly portray ‘characters of a lower type’ (1449a, 30–35; 1449b,
5–10). Because we normally have no reason to laugh at human beings suffering from ethical
dilemmas, the overall tone of tragedies is therefore serious. Aristotle does not appear to
have had a particularly favourable opinion of satirists and comic authors. In the Rhetoric, for
example, he calls them ‘evil-speakers and tell-tales’ (1384b, 10–15).
Ancient Greek notions of gravitas and ridiculousness, the tragic and the comic, are
so deeply ingrained that they still affect our ways of imagining and portraying the past.
Filmmakers – like historians – have no desire to appear as ‘evil-speakers’ when it concerns
history and those who are no longer with us. Nevertheless, films do manage to laugh at the
past surprisingly often. This collection of essays is devoted to exploring this comic treatment
of history on screen.
Only little has been written on historical comedy so far. This book aims at offering new
insights and openings on this rarely discussed theme, not only on historical comedy as a
generic entity but, more broadly, on the role of the comic in the audiovisual representation
of the past. The first part of the book deals with comedians and comic representations:
Susan E. Linville analyses Buster Keaton’s silent comedies on Southern history, especially
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