It has often been said that
ALL Comedy is rooted in FEAR --
The Things That Make Us Laugh
are VERY Closely Related to
The Things That FRIGHTEN Us.
The Physical Comedian ["Clown"]
seems fated to be
The Victim of His Own Comedy -
and not only does he suffer from Violence....
He is also constantly at the mercy --
of MAGIC.
Many of The Tricks that
The Comedian uses to AMUSE us
are similar to those
The Magician uses to ASTONISH us.
For instance, a lot of visual jokes are based on
people suddenly appearing or disappearing.
The Sudden Appearance or Sudden Disappearance
are important elements in Slapstick -
if someone falls over, it is funnier
if they DISAPPEAR at the same time.
And The Farce of People
Running In and Out of Doors is comic,
because it provides a RAPID SEQUENCE of Appearances and Disappearances -
The faster a character shoots in and out of vision, the more effective it is likely to be.
Apart from Appearances or Disappearances, the main business of The Magician
is to achieve TRANSFORMATIONS, turning ONE thing into Something Else -
A Magical Transformation becomes comic when it is ABSURD, as well as astonishing.
The first person to make
surreal jokes using FILM Magic
was Georges Melies,
working at the turn of the century.
His films are full of Sudden Appearances, Disappearances and Transformations,
achieved through simple camera tricks - of course, when The Comedy depends on tricks like these,
it has more to do with The Mind BEHIND The Camera than The Performer in FRONT of it.
He has to resign himself to becoming
A Victim of The EFFECTS.
The most commonly-used effect
is to speed up The Action -
This makes any movement
look mechanical, and therefore comic.
It was a device much used by Melies, and it has NEVER gone out of fashion.
It has often been said that
ALL Comedy is rooted in FEAR --
The Things That Make Us Laugh
are VERY Closely Related to
The Things That FRIGHTEN Us."
