{"id":3248,"date":"2013-09-13T05:06:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T09:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3248"},"modified":"2013-09-14T05:07:46","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T09:07:46","slug":"not-all-movies-should-have-jokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/not-all-movies-should-have-jokes\/","title":{"rendered":"Not All Movies Should Have Jokes, But All Movies Should Have a Sense of Humor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fargo2\"<\/a>
\nClick for bigger version.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a moment in Fargo<\/a> (I\u2019ll never stop talking about Fargo) that makes me die with laughter every single time I watch it. The movie is packed with black comedy and irony and brilliant deadpans (the license plate joke, holy shit) and some basic but perfect physical gags (Jean Lundegaard bursting out of the shower draped in its curtain like a kid in a homemade ghost costume), but I ain\u2019t talking abaout all that stuff. I\u2019m talking about the stills above. This moment seems to be more of an editorial in-joke than an actual written joke, but of course you never can tell with the Coen brothers. After Jean\u2019s dad and Stan Grossman and Jerry discuss the plot\u2019s central ransom over breakfast, Jerry is at the counter. The beaming cashier asks how Jerry\u2019s meal was. After he answers rather shortly, he comes back with an affable \u201cHow you doin\u2019\u201d and when it cuts back to her, we see her cock her head to the side before it cuts again. All she does is cock her head to the side. No response, no change in expression, just a slight pitch. It\u2019s hilarious<\/i>. It\u2019s insanely funny.
\n
\nThe Coen brothers stuff their movies full with this sort of thing. Their movies have jokes, and the jokes are funny, but even if you took the jokes out, their movies would still be funny. I think all movies should be funny. Not all movies should be comedies, but all movies should make you laugh now and then, or at least smile. Yes, even Schindler\u2019s List<\/a> and Saving Private Ryan<\/a> should make you laugh and smile\u2014and both do, because Spielberg gets it. Even the most \u2018important\u2019 and didactic and pedantic of movies should make you laugh and smile. Why exactly they should, I will leave for later. First I want to explain how they can<\/i>. I call it Structural Humor, and only because I want to sound academic and haughty for once.<\/p>\n

Structural Humor is, according to the definition I just made up right now, anything in a movie that makes you laugh that isn\u2019t a Joke or in the service of a Joke.<\/p>\n

Jokes in movies are a definite thing. And they aren\u2019t easy to make successful. A lot goes into a good joke, from blocking to lighting to timing of cuts to perfectly-controlled facial expressions to choreography to etcetera. When a movie tells a Joke, you know it. But Structural Humor is easily overlooked. You could call it tacit humor, unspoken humor, whatever, but I like Structural Humor because I\u2019m really talking about humor that is built into the very fabric of the movie itself. It doesn\u2019t announce itself in the same way Jokes do, and it isn\u2019t necessarily made to elicit the same sorts of responses. In fact, a lot of structural jokes are, I imagine, in-jokes by those behind the scenes. In the Fargo example, I picture the Coens and producers and Roderick Jaynes (who is, himself, an in-joke<\/a>) sitting in the editing room, chuckling themselves to death as they slip in their sly little gags. I know this happens because I have edited many (terrible) things myself, and few things are as satisfying as amusing yourself by sneaking things in that you\u2019re sure only a handful of people will ever notice. In fact, that practice has defined my own sense of humor.<\/p>\n

I like Raimi\u2019s Spider-Man 3<\/a> a lot<\/i>. Yes, the first two are \u2018real\u2019 movies, are \u2018better\u2019 movies, but I laughed out loud in the theater watching Spider-Man 3 more than almost any other movie I\u2019ve seen in a theater. And Raimi wanted<\/i> me to. After Spidey\u2019s chase scene with the Sandman, he swings up to sit on a skyscraper and empty the sand from his boots and such. He makes some quip like \u201cWhat\u2019s his deal?\u201d and following that there is a jump cut shot of him spitting sand out of his mouth that cuts away again almost instantaneously. It\u2019s hilarious. It\u2019s like something outta Looney Tunes or whatever. Yes, the movie\u2019s a total mess, it\u2019s basically Raimi throwing his hands in the air and not giving a fuck, which is why he got away with it.<\/p>\n

You might be thinking, given that example, that the reason I\u2019m laughing is because it\u2019s actually really bad<\/i>. And yes, I would say \u2018unintentional humor\u2019, which gives rise to the wonderful \u2018so bad it\u2019s good\u2019 phenomenon (which includes gems such as Andrew Nichol\u2019s tragicomically bewildering In Time<\/a> to classics like Troll 2<\/a> and The Room<\/a> and Fight Club<\/a>) is also Structural Humor. Movies that are structurally incompetent end up being funny. But I\u2019m not laughing at<\/i> intentional Structural Humor, but absolutely very much with<\/i> it, and with the filmmakers<\/i>. Because most of the time, you have to have faith that filmmakers are aware of what\u2019s happening on the screen. And even if you don\u2019t, you must understand that nothing<\/i> gets by the editor(s). Nothing<\/i>. If something about a cut\u2019s timing or a pregnant pause makes you raise an eyebrow, the editor gets it. He\/she knows. He\/she meant<\/i> for it to. Editors are the ultimate cinematic gatekeepers; the eyes in the sky. Even less experienced editors are nearly omniscient about how their movies move and flow and behave. In a competently made movie, nothing<\/i> you see on the screen (or hear or whatever) is truly accidental or \u2018out of place\u2019. With the Coen brothers and Sam Raimi, this should be obvious, since they\u2019re known experts in film language and comedy and such. I don\u2019t mean that literally every single thing making up a mis\u00e9-en-scene is \u2018meaningful\u2019 or symbolic or any bullshit like that\u2014but somebody<\/i> heavily-involved with crafting the movie knows it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

But if it\u2019s intentional, then, why do they do it? Well, I\u2019m glad I asked. It\u2019s all about tone. (Yes, I\u2019m beating a dead Smug Film horse here, but tone is everything<\/i>, and it\u2019s also very elusive and hard to define, so the more we talk about it the better.)\u00a0 As has been reiterated many times on this site (as in my Compliance<\/a> and Life of Pi<\/a> reviews) there are movies that can be taken seriously, and then there are movies that take themselves<\/i> seriously. When a filmmaker sneaks in Structural Humor, they are throwing a little wink to the more attentive audience members that says \u201cHey, we aren\u2019t taking this whole thing too seriously, so neither should you. You can relax.\u201d At that moment, you can sit back and let come what may, knowing at the very least that the filmmakers are being up front about where they sit in relation to the audience. It reveals a lack of pretension. No<\/i> movie is so deserving of your undivided intellectual commitment that it should get away with suffocating gravitas. Art is absurd, this is known (It is known, Khaleesi) and the most truth a movie can reveal is about movies themselves. So fuck off with your \u2018lessons\u2019, Compliance\u2019s and Life of Pi\u2019s of the world.<\/p>\n

Yes, you can know within the first few scenes\/minutes\/shots\/frames what a movie has in store for you. There are different tests you can perform when you press play to ascertain this, such as Greg\u2019s 50\/50 rule<\/a>\u00a0and Cody\u2019s 15 Minute Rule<\/a>. For me, it\u2019s Structural Humor: are the filmmakers mindful enough to send me understated clues early on that let me know that they get it<\/i>. I can\u2019t tell where the plot will take me, or what some character might end up doing, but I can tell whether the movie itself<\/i> has a sense of humor about itself or not\u2014even without knowing whether or not it will have any Jokes. Raimi and the Coens get it. David Lynch also gets it. There is a bloated, overlong shot near the beginning of Wild At Heart<\/a>, in which Lula\u2019s wicked witch of a mother downs a martini (or something in a martini glass) in one overblown dramatic gulp after hanging up on Lula\u2019s just-out-of-prison boyfriend Sailor. It\u2019s an odd little moment; it makes me chuckle. And it loosens me up and puts me in the mood to endure a Lynchian road trip. Structural Humor is a way to subtly lighten the mood, using the tricks of the trade of film, rather than overt comedy.<\/p>\n

My examples so far just include editing tricks, but Structural Humor goes way beyond that, practically into the cinematic aether itself, where the myriad filmic elements nebulously coalesce and idiosyncratic tonal effects emerge. Twin Peaks<\/a>‘\u00a0obsession with coffee and pie is Structural Humor, and may be my favorite example of it. (In fact all David Lynch stuff has it, which is why his weirdness is so bearable. Even Inland Empire<\/a>, that wreathing nightmare slog, is chock full of little hilarious Lynchian winks. Lynch is the least serious serious filmmaker in Hollywood.) In Ki-duk Kim\u2019s ethereal Buddhist masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter\u2026 and Spring<\/a>, two cops go from watching a murderer on the lamb scratching repentant messages into some floorboards with a knife, their guns drawn, to being on their knees helping him paint in the engravings, all within a few quick shots. It\u2019s not hilarious, but it almost makes you laugh with its absurdity and good nature, and it\u2019s accomplished with a jump cut. Ki-duk\u2019s movies tackle issues ranging from realms of the spirit to Capitalism to identity\u2014better than any American or European contemporary I can think of\u2014and they are funny<\/i>. They don\u2019t have Jokes, but they are funny, and they are better and more interesting and more effective because<\/i> they are funny.<\/p>\n

Not all movies need Structural Humor to be successful. P.T. Anderson and Kubrick construct their tones with such nano-scale precision that I guess there isn\u2019t much room to goof around (unless I\u2019m missing something in their movies that\u2019s even more<\/i> subtle). But I hazard to say no movie would be worse without it. It can\u2019t save a shitty movie, but it can make otherwise middling movies rather enjoyable. For instance, nobody understands why I like Premium Rush<\/a>, but it\u2019s precisely because it screams nonpretention, and accomplishes such because it bleeds Structural Humor out of every orifice and pore. In its case, much of it comes from light-hearted nuances in the performances and some good-humored editing. The Lords of Salem<\/a> is a very similar case.<\/p>\n

And further, going in the face of all the sullen pretentious didactic propagandic shit out there, I would argue that movies About Things You Should Take Seriously (read that with a rumpled brow and a pouty frown for full effect) need Structural Humor even more. Nobody likes a humorless protagonist. It\u2019s hard to be sympathetic with their personality and their motivations if they take everything seriously and somberly all the time. It\u2019s easier to sense what makes them tick if they act like a human being, and every actual human being has a sense of humor\u2014yes, even in the direst and bleakest of situations, since humor is, after all, a coping mechanism (a theme explored beautifully and humorously in Roberto Benigni\u2019s Life is Beautiful<\/a>). If the protagonist is selling a message, it\u2019s important that they don\u2019t act like a robot.<\/p>\n

Analogously, a movie that Has Something To Say hurts itself (and by extension, its message) by insisting on a mechanical, stilted, self-serious tone. Humor helps the medicine go down. We let our mental guard down if we\u2019re enjoying ourselves, and we are more likely to accept an intellectual message if we are emotionally compromised. And nothing compromises your state of mind like a good laugh. Structural Humor is thusly important because some movies can\u2019t lighten the mood with Jokes. And even if you don\u2019t notice a structural gag, your brain will (to borrow a phrase from the wonderful Mike Stoklasa<\/a>), and your brain understands tone better than you do. It would not be tasteful or thematically coherent for United 93<\/a> to throw in a dick joke or a banana peel slip to lube up our temperament. But it would help if the movie didn\u2019t feel so fucking inhuman. It pummels you with desaturated shakycam and provides no narrative anchor or any differentiable characters, so while you might be exhausted at the end, you certainly won\u2019t recommend the movie to anyone. It\u2019s about as unlikeable as movies come. It takes itself too seriously. It has no sense of humor. And again, if you think some subjects \u2018shouldn\u2019t\u2019 be approached with humor, watch Life is Beautiful, or listen to Louis CK defend \u2018offensive\u2019 humor (he\u2019ll give the same reasons).<\/p>\n

Herein lies the magic of my favorite genre, the horror-comedy. Horror movies that lack humor lack humanity, which renders their shocks flaccid. The shock treadmill the horror industry is currently on necessitates ever increasing dependence on the visceral impact of kills, so we\u2019ve gone from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/a> to the Saw<\/a> movies to Hostel<\/a> and beyond. Most straight horror genre exercises are mind-bendingly tedious, because they don\u2019t understand how to relate their scares to the audience. The best horror-comedies do <\/i>understand. It\u2019s all about a built-in sense of humor that entertains you while simultaneously keeping you off your guard\u2014not to scare you, but to surprise<\/i> you. Kills in horror-comedies are orders of magnitude more fun than kills in horror movies that play it straight. This is why the best horror-comedies accomplish perfect tone better than 99.9% of all other movies: The \u2018Burbs<\/a>, Tremors<\/a> (Hi, Greg!), Night of the Comet<\/a>, Stir of Echoes<\/a>, Fright Night<\/a> (1985), Shaun of the Dead<\/a>, From Dusk Till Dawn<\/a>, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil<\/a>, The Evil Dead<\/a>\u00a0(1981), Slither<\/a>, and the crown jewel of them all, one of the most tonally exquisite movies ever crafted, An American Werewolf in London<\/a>. These movies are perfect entertainment because they get<\/i> it.<\/i><\/p>\n

The worst tonal offenders of all are comedies<\/i> that lack a sense of humor. The Hangover<\/a> is the worst of all. It is a movie full of puerile, witless, grating Jokes, but is also blunderingly oblivious to its own rigidity and blandness (also see Greg\u2019s brilliant piece on Jokes<\/a>). Pacific Rim<\/a> could have been saved if it had a sense of humor, but del Toro approaches it like an adult playing with toys for the benefit of children, when he should have approached it like an actual child. The movie has Jokes (plenty of lame<\/i> Jokes) but it has no Structural Humor, so it just lumbers along with dull characters and a dull story, without offering the little things that truly matter. The devil is in the details. The Dark Knight<\/a> trilogy has no sense of humor. The Iron Man<\/a> trilogy does. Oblivion<\/a> has no sense of humor. Moon<\/a> does. Source Code<\/a> does not. Airplane<\/a> does. Get Him To The Greek<\/a> doesn\u2019t. See a pattern yet? People don\u2019t understand why I cannot stand Breaking Bad<\/a>. Well, now ya do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"fargo2\"<\/a>
\nClick for bigger version.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a moment in Fargo<\/a> (I\u2019ll never stop talking about Fargo) that makes me die with laughter every single time I watch it. The movie is packed with black comedy and irony and brilliant deadpans (the license plate joke, holy shit) and some basic but perfect physical gags (Jean Lundegaard bursting out of the shower draped in its curtain like a kid in a homemade ghost costume), but I ain\u2019t talking abaout all that stuff. I\u2019m talking about the stills above. This moment seems to be more of an editorial in-joke than an actual written joke, but of course you never can tell with the Coen brothers. After Jean\u2019s dad and Stan Grossman and Jerry discuss the plot\u2019s central ransom over breakfast, Jerry is at the counter. The beaming cashier asks how Jerry\u2019s meal was. After he answers rather shortly, he comes back with an affable \u201cHow you doin\u2019\u201d and when it cuts back to her, we see her cock her head to the side before it cuts again. All she does is cock her head to the side. No response, no change in expression, just a slight pitch. It\u2019s hilarious<\/i>. It\u2019s insanely funny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,25],"tags":[2691,2692,1797,46,2708,2689,2100,32,2229,418,586,1520,1526,1696,2705,326,2712,37,2373,330,2690,2694,2709,2683,1519,2695,1674,2698,486,2068,870,2701,2710,2703,2377,2697,2372,60,99,2696,2699,1528,2688,1861,39,2685,1869,2194,104,185,2711,2687,2686,1679,2684,836,67,2704,2682,1707,409,268,2707,903,2069,462,2702,579,463,2706,1388,2700,2693],"class_list":["post-3248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alexsessays","category-allposts","tag-15-minute-rule","tag-5050-rule","tag-airplane","tag-alex-hiatt","tag-an-american-werewolf-in-london","tag-andrew-nichol","tag-breaking-bad","tag-cody-clarke","tag-coen-brothers","tag-compliance","tag-david-lynch","tag-ethan-coen","tag-fargo","tag-fight-club","tag-fright-night","tag-from-dusk-till-dawn","tag-get-him-to-the-greek","tag-greg-deliso","tag-guillermo-del-toro","tag-hostel","tag-in-time","tag-inland-empire","tag-iron-man","tag-jean-lundegaard","tag-joel-coen","tag-ki-duk-kim","tag-kim-ki-duk","tag-life-is-beautiful","tag-life-of-pi","tag-lords-of-salem","tag-louis-ck","tag-mike-stoklasa","tag-moon","tag-night-of-the-comet","tag-oblivion","tag-p-t-anderson","tag-pacific-rim","tag-paul-thomas-anderson","tag-premium-rush","tag-pt-anderson","tag-roberto-benigni","tag-roderick-jaynes","tag-sam-raimi","tag-saving-private-ryan","tag-saw","tag-schindlers-list","tag-shaun-of-the-dead","tag-slither","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-source-code","tag-spider-man-3","tag-spiderman-3","tag-spring-summer-fall-winter-and-spring","tag-stan-grossman","tag-stanley-kubrick","tag-steven-spielberg","tag-stir-of-echoes","tag-structural-humor","tag-texas-chainsaw-massacre","tag-the-burbs","tag-the-dark-knight","tag-the-evil-dead","tag-the-hangover","tag-the-lords-of-salem","tag-the-room","tag-the-texas-chainsaw-massacre","tag-tremors","tag-troll-2","tag-tucker-and-dale-vs-evil","tag-twin-peaks","tag-united-93","tag-wild-at-heart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3248"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3255,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions\/3255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}