conspiracy of the week: Chaplin: Will the Real Charlie Chaplin please stand up
EWagner382
Chaplin. Illuminatus! seems to prefer Laurel and Hardy to other comedians. I
think RAW today favors the Three Stooges. Fortunately, we don't need to reach
any rigid hierarchy and can enjoy all of them.
1132
EvolverTCB
The Stooges have consistently been the most popular for the last 30 years,
thanx to TV. And though Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy were huge in their day, and
though a respectable amount of their work is also available to be rerun, today
only the Stooges elicit a response anywhere near what they did when new. The
Three Stooges, considered 'low' comedy in the 1930's, have proven incredibly
durable.
Chaplin, hailed as the great genius of silent film comedy, made some of the
seminal early comedies (Modern Times, City Lights, The Great Dictator). He
dealt with Big Themes when nobody else would. Woody Allen, Monty Python, and
Kevin Smith all owe him that.
But being mostly silent, his oeuvre is recherche (I'll bet you can smell that
Cahiers du Cinema crit-lit-fart all the way where you are reading this right
now! What I mean is that beer-guzzling ordinary Joes do not watch too much
Chaplin. He's got an artsy air and it takes patience to read subtitles).
Laurel and Hardy were very popular too, they talk, and (I think) one seems to
see their films on the tube a little more than the Little Tramp's. They're less
work than Chaplin, and less edgy than some of their contemporaries. They get a
lot of their mileage out of being likeable. They, too, seem something of a
period piece to modern audiences. Their successors might include: Martin and
Dean (huge in the '50's and 60's, now a period piece also), and possibly all
the buddy cops in comedy/action films such as Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour.
Other important early film comedians include Buster Keaton, probably Chaplin's
high-art equal; Keaton didn't do Big Themes, but did personify one: his Great
Stone Face is a zen constant in a stream of absurd, balletic, and ingeniously
constructed visual events. Like Chaplin he's working silent, but his style goes
down a little better now because while Chaplin is trying to pluck your
heartstrings between laughs, Keaton is more apt to just show you something
amazing. The General showcases all this perfectly: okay, he's a Confederate
soldier, and they deserved to lose, but it's a damn good story with solid
laughs and some dangerous stunts. They say that locomotive is still rusting in
the river...
His style is unique, so that the only modern equivalents may be people like
Robin Williams, Jim Carrey or John Leguizamo, who likewise are utterly unlike
anyone else.
W. C. Fields and Mae West give you a bit of the bootlegging, carousing, cynical
antidote to starchy mores. Needless to say, they wear well. Carriers of this
flame include Cheech and Chong, and many SNL alumni.
Harold Lloyd is another early figure who gets more lip service that actual
viewers. Like Chaplin and Keaton he's known for silent work. He, too, is very
stunt-driven, and deserves attention, but is not arresting to the modern eye.
He's a normal-guy character with few odd mannerisms, so he blends into the
story rather than busting out of it. By definition, it's hard to think of who
personifies the modern version of his style since it's under one's nose the
whole time. Any comedian in an Everyman role is an update of Harold Lloyd.
The other early comedy source we all recall is Hal Roach's studio, where many
early comedians started in film. Best known for the Keystone Kops and the Our
Gang kids. Hal Roach comedies, especially the Little Rascals, got rerun on
television about as much as the Stooges. Their staying power has a few of the
same factors, but the Stooges have an edge now.
And of course we have the Marx Brothers. Like the Three Stooges, people still
find them funny (see Duck Soup). Also considered a bit disreputable, their
legend has grown, thanks to anarchic wit, perfect timing, and amazing
musicianship. Like the Stooges, they lack the stink of sentimentality that can
cloy Roach, Chaplin and others. A modern equivalent might be Steve Martin, who
could have been Jerko Marx, their banjo-playing cousin with multiple
personalities.
Which brings me back to the Three Stooges. After about seventy years, they are
still giving belly laughs to people who won't sit through any of the other
pre-World War Two comedy. The Farrelly Brothers are doing a Stooges movie.
What's going on here?
I think they were ahead of the curve and didn't even know it. Popular they
were, but deemed the lowest and stupidest of all popular comedy teams.
Stupidity was their grand theme. Protean, omnipresent stupidity. A stupidity
for every occasion. They were the Britannica of stupidity. A burning keg of
stupid just waiting to explode in the middle of all the normals' well-laid
plans. They sired Beavis and Butthead, as well as the Farrellys.
The Marx Brothers work some of the same turf but the Stooges's early
confinement to the short-subject ghetto now works to a perverse advantage.
People who don't have time to watch Duck Soup will spare 15 minutes for the
Stooges, and the short format leaves no room for fat. Even after 60 years we
find the Stooges to be fast-paced, when most contemporary work drags.
Also, they most closely mirrores the avant-garde of the day. A Stooges clip
tends to be ridiculous, absurd and surreal. One can imagine them working with
Dali and Bunuel. And the acting is not only ill-mannered but unmannered. The
Three Stooges don't engage in Acting, which modern audiences hate. Look at
Curly explode in a rage at the mere mention of Niagara Falls. Watch Larry
desperately try and fail to understand, well, anything. Feel Moe's pain as he
tries to control them. Id, ego, superego. (Props to Shemp Howard, Joe Besser,
and Joe DiReda. People only dislike them because Curly is an icon. They were
good too). The Stooges bring Freud, dada, and Method acting into the mix, they
move as fast as MTV, and they are cleverly stupid. And like the media of the
21st Century, they are violent toward each other and toward the audience. They
will butcher Art, Respect and Dignity (especially their own) in order to force
the audience to laugh. They are self-destructing pop art, and took their fame
in 15-minute pieces. Where they were, we are.
Tom Buckner
EWagner382
I think Groucho has also continued to influence contemporary audiences through
his influence on Woody Allen, Hawkeye on MASH, Welcome Back Kotter, etc.
1132
Dan Clore
Bugs Bunny!!!
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
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_Detective Comics_ #608
EWagner382
ought ta read Ovid and Catullus!"
I sometimes think of T. S. Eliot as Elmer Fudd. "Be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm
saving Western Civilization."
I yearn to become the Bugs Bunny of poetry. "What's up, il milior fabro?"
1132
nikolai kingsley
> And of course we have the Marx Brothers. Like the Three Stooges, people
still
> find them funny (see Duck Soup). Also considered a bit disreputable, their
> legend has grown, thanks to anarchic wit, perfect timing, and amazing
> musicianship. Like the Stooges, they lack the stink of sentimentality that
can
> cloy Roach, Chaplin and others. A modern equivalent might be Steve Martin,
who
> could have been Jerko Marx, their banjo-playing cousin with multiple
> personalities.
my god! if only they'd thought of this back then. they could have authorised
a franchise of "cousins". the spin-offs would have been, well, spin-offs, i
guess.
nikolai
---
sorry. i got all enthusiastic for a second there.
RMJon23
regarded as a great pianist, to say the least. Entertaining? Oh yea, I think
so.
In a famous book influenced by Uncle Tim Leary, called _Games People Play_, by
Dr. Eric Berne, my little "quibble" above (actually, Rmjon23, you're not quite
right: it's more of a "cavil") qualifies, IIRC, as the game of "blemish." (See
other areas of Usenet for many examples, right where you are sitting now.)
I loved Buckner's post.
rmjon23 de Los Angeles
"TV is no worse than smack and coke, the slobs just don't know how to use it,
that's all." -Wanda Tinasky, who many thought was Pynchon, but she was really
Hawkins, while Hawkins thought Gaddis and Pynchon were green.
EvolverTCB
>From: "nikolai kingsley" nik...@broadway.net.au
>Date: 6/4/03 3:17 AM Atlantic Daylight Time
>Message-id: <newscache$pn3yfh$8ge$1...@bartleby.maths.monash.edu.au>
Nyuk, nyuk! Hell yeah.
Tom
EvolverTCB
>Date: 6/3/03 7:19 PM Atlantic Daylight Time
>Message-id: <3EDD1EF8...@columbia-center.org>
>
>EWagner382 wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Tom Bucklner for your thoughtful piece.
>>
>> I think Groucho has also continued to influence contemporary audiences
>through
>> his influence on Woody Allen, Hawkeye on MASH, Welcome Back Kotter, etc.
>> 1132
>
>Bugs Bunny!!!
>
>--
>Dan Clore
Hmmmm. Bugs might be even more ahead of the curve. When in a fix, he Changes
The Rules (like Neo in the Matrix.)
Maybe the future is a cartoon.