Do good comedies have to be about losers?

[IdleRich]

Been watching Peep Show and, although it's very funny, there is something about the people involved - their constant failures, lies, the smallness of their world - that almost depresses me at the same time. And that reminded me that a friend once told me that he found Father Ted too depressing to watch, I guess for the same reasons.
But maybe all humour is punching down, is that why in Curb Your Enthusiasm even though it's about a billionaire who created the most successful tv show ever, it has to make it very clear that he fails in every single thing he ever attempts before we can safely laugh at him?
Why must humour be so negative? Or is it just me?

 

[shiels]

I think so yes. Losers you can see a little of yourself in. Because it’s pain relief, transmutation.

 

[Corpsey.]

I wouldn't call Patrick Bateman a loser.

 

[shiels]

I need bleakness, deep embarrassment, cruelty, delusions of grandeur

 

[shiels]

I wouldn't call Patrick Bateman a loser.

not funny imo

 

[Corpsey]

I wrote an essay about this at uni. I analysed the humour in Madame Bovary.

I think humour is about failure, fundamentally. It's a way of channelling and triumphing over anxiety.

The only thing that's funny about a successful person (speaking as broadly as possible) is that whatever success they have is dwarfed by the scale of time and space and (if you're a nihilist) the pointlessness of all things, or (if you're an aesthete, say) the inanity of what they've succeeded in.

Madame Bovary is a very funny book IMO. Also very cruel. It's a one sided view of the world, really. I think that's true of most comedy (e.g. peep show). Not to say there's not moments of tenderness and sympathy in peep show (actually I think there's quite a bit) but the fundamental tone of the show is cynical. Everybody's always got the worst motives for doing what they do, and their unexpressed thoughts are all horrible. But that's certainly true to a significant chunk of life, and it's a relief to share that secret, which adds to the humour.

 

[shiels]

Americans are wired differently on this

 

[Corpsey]

I wouldn't call Patrick Bateman a loser.

He's a loser in that he's less than human. When he's banging on about Phil Collins etc. we're not thinking this guy is so cool.

Also he's a slave to his compulsions. That was part of my essay, this idea that humour comes from realising briefly that humans aren't the superior species we like to think we are, but helpless automatons.

 

[Corpsey]

Terror and humour are so close sometimes. There's a lot of laughter when you watch horror films. Jumping out of your skin and then laughing at yourself. It's all ratcheting up tension that comes out in laughter or hot urine down your leg.

 

[boxedjoy]

things that are unintentionally funny are often rooted in failure - the way that they confound expectation and narrative, they fail at achieving their expected goals. "Camp" as a category.

 

[Corpsey]

Have to whip out my fave Nietzsche again

"A joke is an epitath on an emotion"

 

[Corpsey]

Sometimes you make jokes to take down a feeling as it rears up in you.

I think this is why so many comedians are depressed/anxious, etc. The anxiety is fuel for the fire. Funny people aren't always anxious people but they often are in my experience.

 

[shiels]

It’s the only good thing about being depressed and anxious. if you can trudge through and process some of it you get very slightly funnier

 

[Corpsey.]

tragedy and comedy are opposite ends of the same gradient, cant have one with getting a little of the other

 

[Corpsey]

And then there's also the fear of being laughed at.

You've become "a joke".

Also the "thank god it's not me" thing.

If a bird shits on you it might strike you as funny, but the chances are you'll just be angry. But you'll see someone else get shat on and it's a story you'll tell your grandkids.

 

[shiels]

It’s been stated many times here but There’s absolutely nothing more tragic and exhausting than someone who’s bound up in Being Funny though

I think our weariness with on the nose comedy is reflected in more slow stuff like the trip, the office with no jokes just characters, Louis, ‘dramedy’ etc

 

[Corpsey.]

He's a loser in that he's less than human. When he's banging on about Phil Collins etc. we're not thinking this guy is so cool.

Also he's a slave to his compulsions. That was part of my essay, this idea that humour comes from realising briefly that humans aren't the superior species we like to think we are, but helpless automatons.

can you talk a little more on the automations bit?

 

[boxedjoy]

It’s the only good thing about being depressed and anxious. if you can trudge through and process some of it you get very slightly funnier

there's a great quote from Carrie Lucas about this and being able to laugh at yourself - "if my life wasn't funny it would just be true and that is unnacceptable"

 

[Corpsey]

I'd have to dredge that essay up.

There's a famous scene in Madame Bovary set at a country fair. All these dignitaries bowing at each other and walking like robots. Speakers on the stand declaiming entirely in clichés, as if they're unable to choose their own words.

And in the fields beyond it all the dignified cows and the distant stars, nature completely, magisterially indifferent to all this post Enlightenment pomposity.

 

[shiels]

It’s the pressure release valve, leveller, restores balance. deflate the pomp or blow up the misery. things are getting too stiff and fixed we need to free up some energy