In which I answer my own questions.
Jun. 15th, 2007 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fr_defenestrato1. Who thinks Clue is funny, and why? What are the funny bits?
I believe I've made it clear by now that I find that movie not merely unfunny, but insultingly so. Like its makers went out of their way to say, "You people are so fucking stupid you'll laugh at anything."
2. Do you believe that repeated viewings can turn un-funny movies into funny movies in your consciousness? Is it possible we/I have movies we/I think are hilarious that are really just as dumb and badly written as I find Clue to be? What are examples that might fit that description in your experience?
2a. Are we susceptible to a lingering affection/respect for movies we found funny in our childhood?
I have long suspected both of these phenomena (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rozebud?). Hence the questions. Peer pressure ties into it as well and might have formed question 2b: when we watch something in the company of others whose opinions we typically are in synch with and/or respect, it tends to rub off. We enjoy ourselves more seeing them enjoy themselves. Perhaps. In any case, I don't think I phrased 2a well, as evidenced by eloquentwthrage's response citing a recent viewing attempt of the old animated Charlotte's Web, in which all adults found it pretty much unwatchable. I meant to ask, Is it possible that as adults we deem movies funnier, even upon re-viewing them, than they deserve because our laughing at them began in childhood? EWR's response was yes, but to the question I meant to ask he meant No: we think they're funnier (or better in whatever regard) until we see them again and go WTF, I used to like this? Holy crap!
Another way of casting both questions may be: Is our estimation of something's funniness at least partly contingent upon a process that begins on first viewing and continues—substantially altered by the addition of memory—on subsequent viewings; a process by which we "learn"/"decide" what parts, elements, lines, etc. are funny, and why they are funny?
And here's where I think this plays into EWR's experience with C's Web: it had been a very long time since he saw this movie and he had all but forgotten WHAT he liked about it or what used to make him cry. I submit (as a theory only or point of discussion) that had he watched this movie annually or biennially since childhood, his fondness for it today would still be greater than his actual, recently plummeted esteem—because he would still have the threads of memory, of WHY he liked it, which, as long as they were retrievable, would require active questioning to override.
Not that we don't actively question and reassess things, but I believe there's still a kind of "inertia of influence" that our entertainments have on us. It takes more effort to change your mind about a movie's funniness if you have active memory of why you've always found it funny, rather than simply remembering THAT you used to find it funny. N'est-ce pas?
Movies that I have been mulling over in this context are Yellowbeard, The Producers (Mel Brooks's original) and Young Frankenstein, Murder by Death (astutely cited byperegrin8), and, in the realm of TV, a bizarre early 1970s Canadian-produced syndicatastrophe called "The Hilarious House of Frightenstein," which EWR and I used to watch after school on UHF (ye dogs we're old) and which, recollection assures me, we found aptly named. It was almost like a "magazine" format show, where an ongoing plot involving vampire Count Frightenstein and his servant Igor was interspersed with segments hosted by recurring characters: Grizelda, the Ghastly Gourmet hosted a cooking show; the Librarian read silly poetry thinking that it would scare his audience; Bwana Clyde Batty and Dr. Pet Vet both did informative bits (no outright humor intended) on various wild and domesticated animals, respectively; and an aging Vincent Price recited short, arguably clever poems about these characters. Oh, and a gorilla repeatedly walked out of the jungle and got hit in the head with a white ball. Billy Van played a good many of these characters.
I recently purchased a DVD collection of four episodes of HHoF and watched them all in a sitting... Oh, the hilarity! Where did it go? It had been 30 years since I had seen any of this show, and while certain bits of Price-spouted doggerel have stuck in my brain these three decades and still warrant at least a smirk, the vast majority of it is just plain not funny. Case in point: a DJ who's a parody of Wolfman Jack by virtue of being a real Wolfman. Not funny. Now it might be funny if he were given something funny to say. He is not. Not ever. Not once.
I'm less inclined to dis the other movies I listed, but I don't quite trust that inclination. I sincerely find Yellowbeard funny, despite rather monumental evidence (at least opinion) to the contrary. Same with the early Mel Brooks movies, though I can see in them the ancestral roots of the type of broad, obvious, gimmicky humor that wholly ruins—at least for me—his later movies.
But Murder by Death, especially given its clear similarities with Clue, is really where I need to be think-think-thinking (Pooh-like, batting my own head). P8 a raison: this isn't a terribly funny movie, and I sometimes toy with the notion that I can remember the process by which I arrived, circa 16 years old, at finding it a roaring barrel of laughs. The explicit memory to back this up isn't there, and what 25-year-old memories ARE there re this movie are pretty hazy, less to do with why I found it funny than with the good times Marge Homan and her mentally ill family and I had watching it.
But I also don't want to succumb to self-imposed backlash of opinion: I will never concede an inch, for example, on how richly, genuinely funny Maggie Smith is in this movie: "I don't understand: why would anyone want to steal a dead naked body?" "Well, dear, there are some people who [whisper whisper]." "Oh, that's tacky! That's really tacky!" And she delivers the perfect wrap-up ("Dickie, leave it be. I've had enough.") for that silly conversation about the butler Bensonmum's name and lineage. Also, I cannot help but roar when the moose head corrects Inspector Wang's observation, "Ah! Voice come from cow on wall!" with "MOOSE! Moose, you imbecile!" Just the juxtaposition of the mounted moose head visual and Truman Capote's fey-yet-infuriated voice is, to me, one of the great moments of movie sillidom.
In an attempt to be as dispassionate as possible, I surmise that this movie has its share of great lines and physical humor and facial reactions and whatnot, but also has enough "groaner" moments (most of them assigned to Peter Sellers—e.g., the Chinese menu recitation—and James Coco—e.g., "The man was shop-ped?") to keep it from being anything like a comedy gem. In the end, I suspect this will always be a pleasure, even if an ever more guilty one: how can I just discard Maggie and Truman, and Elsa Lanchester and Estelle Winwood and Peter Falk and Eileen Brennan and Alex Guinness and Nancy Walker?
3. Name some movies that you think are some of the funniest movies you've ever seen. Can you quantify or describe the humor in these movies such that there's a common element or thread? Or are there many different kinds of funny that you appreciate?
Pass. This was a dumb question.
4. Name a movie or movies you have never found funny but most other people seem to.
History of the World Part I. I think I found the whole thing dreadful from first viewing except the Inquisition musical sequence. And perhaps Madeline Kahn's selection of eunuchs. Oh, and ONE joke in the intro material (paraphrased):
Since its release, friends of mine have various quoted "Knight jumps queen! Pawn jumps queen!" etc. and "Oh, piss boy!" and "It's good to be the king" and "I love my subjects... PULL!"; but I never found the Louis XIV scene remotely funny. Just stupid and obvious as nearly all later Mel Brooks. (Hated Spaceballs, hated Robin Hood: Men in Tights, had to be physically restrained watching Dracula: Dead and Loving It from throwing the television out the window...)
I've also always been behind the curve on Raising Arizona, one of my least favorite Coen Bros. flicks. And I think—kinda on the same "more is funnier" theme—that I reluctantly acquiesced on the funniness of Better Off Dead back when that was showing twice weekly in Maggott Manor: basically, "If I'm going to have to watch this all the time, I might as well start laughing at it." That's an exaggeration, but... It never was a favorite.
5. Put these in order of funny (leave out any you don't know):
The Marx Brothers
Burns and Allen
W.C. Fields
Abbott and Costello (definitely learnt in childhood!)
Charlie Chaplin
Laurel and Hardy
Our Gang
The Three Stooges (all the Stooges in the world in childhood couldnae convince me)
And I think I'll follow P8's lead and declare Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton off by themselves as true originals, clearly comedians but not traditionally haha funny.
6. Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show really as stupid as the "oh that's so old what were we thinking" backlash would have it?
I don't know, that's why I asked! Sheesh.
I believe I've made it clear by now that I find that movie not merely unfunny, but insultingly so. Like its makers went out of their way to say, "You people are so fucking stupid you'll laugh at anything."
2. Do you believe that repeated viewings can turn un-funny movies into funny movies in your consciousness? Is it possible we/I have movies we/I think are hilarious that are really just as dumb and badly written as I find Clue to be? What are examples that might fit that description in your experience?
2a. Are we susceptible to a lingering affection/respect for movies we found funny in our childhood?
I have long suspected both of these phenomena (
rozebud?). Hence the questions. Peer pressure ties into it as well and might have formed question 2b: when we watch something in the company of others whose opinions we typically are in synch with and/or respect, it tends to rub off. We enjoy ourselves more seeing them enjoy themselves. Perhaps. In any case, I don't think I phrased 2a well, as evidenced by eloquentwthrage's response citing a recent viewing attempt of the old animated Charlotte's Web, in which all adults found it pretty much unwatchable. I meant to ask, Is it possible that as adults we deem movies funnier, even upon re-viewing them, than they deserve because our laughing at them began in childhood? EWR's response was yes, but to the question I meant to ask he meant No: we think they're funnier (or better in whatever regard) until we see them again and go WTF, I used to like this? Holy crap!Another way of casting both questions may be: Is our estimation of something's funniness at least partly contingent upon a process that begins on first viewing and continues—substantially altered by the addition of memory—on subsequent viewings; a process by which we "learn"/"decide" what parts, elements, lines, etc. are funny, and why they are funny?
And here's where I think this plays into EWR's experience with C's Web: it had been a very long time since he saw this movie and he had all but forgotten WHAT he liked about it or what used to make him cry. I submit (as a theory only or point of discussion) that had he watched this movie annually or biennially since childhood, his fondness for it today would still be greater than his actual, recently plummeted esteem—because he would still have the threads of memory, of WHY he liked it, which, as long as they were retrievable, would require active questioning to override.
Not that we don't actively question and reassess things, but I believe there's still a kind of "inertia of influence" that our entertainments have on us. It takes more effort to change your mind about a movie's funniness if you have active memory of why you've always found it funny, rather than simply remembering THAT you used to find it funny. N'est-ce pas?
Movies that I have been mulling over in this context are Yellowbeard, The Producers (Mel Brooks's original) and Young Frankenstein, Murder by Death (astutely cited by
peregrin8), and, in the realm of TV, a bizarre early 1970s Canadian-produced syndicatastrophe called "The Hilarious House of Frightenstein," which EWR and I used to watch after school on UHF (ye dogs we're old) and which, recollection assures me, we found aptly named. It was almost like a "magazine" format show, where an ongoing plot involving vampire Count Frightenstein and his servant Igor was interspersed with segments hosted by recurring characters: Grizelda, the Ghastly Gourmet hosted a cooking show; the Librarian read silly poetry thinking that it would scare his audience; Bwana Clyde Batty and Dr. Pet Vet both did informative bits (no outright humor intended) on various wild and domesticated animals, respectively; and an aging Vincent Price recited short, arguably clever poems about these characters. Oh, and a gorilla repeatedly walked out of the jungle and got hit in the head with a white ball. Billy Van played a good many of these characters.I recently purchased a DVD collection of four episodes of HHoF and watched them all in a sitting... Oh, the hilarity! Where did it go? It had been 30 years since I had seen any of this show, and while certain bits of Price-spouted doggerel have stuck in my brain these three decades and still warrant at least a smirk, the vast majority of it is just plain not funny. Case in point: a DJ who's a parody of Wolfman Jack by virtue of being a real Wolfman. Not funny. Now it might be funny if he were given something funny to say. He is not. Not ever. Not once.
I'm less inclined to dis the other movies I listed, but I don't quite trust that inclination. I sincerely find Yellowbeard funny, despite rather monumental evidence (at least opinion) to the contrary. Same with the early Mel Brooks movies, though I can see in them the ancestral roots of the type of broad, obvious, gimmicky humor that wholly ruins—at least for me—his later movies.
But Murder by Death, especially given its clear similarities with Clue, is really where I need to be think-think-thinking (Pooh-like, batting my own head). P8 a raison: this isn't a terribly funny movie, and I sometimes toy with the notion that I can remember the process by which I arrived, circa 16 years old, at finding it a roaring barrel of laughs. The explicit memory to back this up isn't there, and what 25-year-old memories ARE there re this movie are pretty hazy, less to do with why I found it funny than with the good times Marge Homan and her mentally ill family and I had watching it.
But I also don't want to succumb to self-imposed backlash of opinion: I will never concede an inch, for example, on how richly, genuinely funny Maggie Smith is in this movie: "I don't understand: why would anyone want to steal a dead naked body?" "Well, dear, there are some people who [whisper whisper]." "Oh, that's tacky! That's really tacky!" And she delivers the perfect wrap-up ("Dickie, leave it be. I've had enough.") for that silly conversation about the butler Bensonmum's name and lineage. Also, I cannot help but roar when the moose head corrects Inspector Wang's observation, "Ah! Voice come from cow on wall!" with "MOOSE! Moose, you imbecile!" Just the juxtaposition of the mounted moose head visual and Truman Capote's fey-yet-infuriated voice is, to me, one of the great moments of movie sillidom.
In an attempt to be as dispassionate as possible, I surmise that this movie has its share of great lines and physical humor and facial reactions and whatnot, but also has enough "groaner" moments (most of them assigned to Peter Sellers—e.g., the Chinese menu recitation—and James Coco—e.g., "The man was shop-ped?") to keep it from being anything like a comedy gem. In the end, I suspect this will always be a pleasure, even if an ever more guilty one: how can I just discard Maggie and Truman, and Elsa Lanchester and Estelle Winwood and Peter Falk and Eileen Brennan and Alex Guinness and Nancy Walker?
3. Name some movies that you think are some of the funniest movies you've ever seen. Can you quantify or describe the humor in these movies such that there's a common element or thread? Or are there many different kinds of funny that you appreciate?
Pass. This was a dumb question.
4. Name a movie or movies you have never found funny but most other people seem to.
History of the World Part I. I think I found the whole thing dreadful from first viewing except the Inquisition musical sequence. And perhaps Madeline Kahn's selection of eunuchs. Oh, and ONE joke in the intro material (paraphrased):
Voiceover: "Primitive man treated death with a great deal of awe."
Hominids: "Awwwww!"
Since its release, friends of mine have various quoted "Knight jumps queen! Pawn jumps queen!" etc. and "Oh, piss boy!" and "It's good to be the king" and "I love my subjects... PULL!"; but I never found the Louis XIV scene remotely funny. Just stupid and obvious as nearly all later Mel Brooks. (Hated Spaceballs, hated Robin Hood: Men in Tights, had to be physically restrained watching Dracula: Dead and Loving It from throwing the television out the window...)
I've also always been behind the curve on Raising Arizona, one of my least favorite Coen Bros. flicks. And I think—kinda on the same "more is funnier" theme—that I reluctantly acquiesced on the funniness of Better Off Dead back when that was showing twice weekly in Maggott Manor: basically, "If I'm going to have to watch this all the time, I might as well start laughing at it." That's an exaggeration, but... It never was a favorite.
5. Put these in order of funny (leave out any you don't know):
The Marx Brothers
Burns and Allen
W.C. Fields
Abbott and Costello (definitely learnt in childhood!)
Charlie Chaplin
Laurel and Hardy
Our Gang
The Three Stooges (all the Stooges in the world in childhood couldnae convince me)
And I think I'll follow P8's lead and declare Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton off by themselves as true originals, clearly comedians but not traditionally haha funny.
6. Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show really as stupid as the "oh that's so old what were we thinking" backlash would have it?
I don't know, that's why I asked! Sheesh.
