Awkward! The Politics of Awkward Comedy
Tom van der Krieke 10550003
Research Master Thesis Department of Media Studies University of Amsterdam 28 June 2019
Supervisor: Abe Geil
Abstract
This thesis seeks to trace the politics of an emotion that has become all too common in the Western world: the feeling of awkwardness. The popularity of awkward comedy since
television series like The Office (2001-2003) and Curb Your Enthusiasm has been enormous. What does this popularity say about the current political and economic systems? Part of this investigation is into the notion of awkwardness itself. Film reviews from the early 20th century
mostly refer to awkwardness when discussing certain physical features. Not only does this thesis seek to trace the political roots of awkwardness, but it also seeks it in the ontology of the medium of film and television as well with the help of theories on film by Giorgio
Agamben and Siegfried Kracauer.
To come closer to an understanding of the political meaning of awkwardness this thesis also seeks to gain a better understanding of the link between comedy and
awkwardness through the humour theories of Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson. These theories will provide an answer as to why we laugh at awkward comedy as well as provide an understanding of the relationship between awkwardness and society. Awkwardness also has a certain affective and contagious quality to it. That is why this thesis also seeks to
understand how awkwardness works as a negative affect through the works of Sianne Ngai and Laurent Berlant. Ultimately all these different sides of awkwardness together show how it is a notion, which is constantly changing with the politics and economics of the era. It will be argued that research on the subject of awkwardness ultimately can lead to understanding of power, through its many qualities.
Table of Contents
1. An Awkward Introduction………..p. 4 2. A Brief History of Awkwardness in Film and Television………...p. 8 2.1 The Use of the Term Awkwardness in Early Film Reviews………p. 8 2.2 Slapstick and Physical Awkwardness……….p. 10 2.3 Television and Social Awkwardness………...p. 15 2.4 I Love Lucy………..p. 17 2.5 The Party……….p. 18 3. Awkwardness and Comedy………...p. 22 3.1 Bergson and Awkward Laughter………...p. 23 3.2 Freud and The Awkward Ego……….p. 25 3.3 The Office……….p. 27 3.4 Curb Your Enthusiasm……….p. 30 4. Awkwardness and Affect………...p. 34 4.1 Cringe Comedy………..p. 34 4.2 Eighth Grade………..p. 38 5. Conclusion………p. 44 Bibliography………..p. 45
1. An Awkward Introduction
Life for many people often feels like a string of awkward moments. This awkwardness can be found in the workspace, romantic relationships, or friendships. It often expresses fears of doing something wrong in a social context. This particular feeling has become popular over the last twenty years or so. In shows like The Office (2001-2003) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-) humour shifted to a sole focus on awkward moments. MTV even created a show with the name Awkward. (2011-2016). This show undoubtedly helped popularize this particular phrase by describing certain moments in once life. An exclamation of the word awkward indeed has become a term of its own. Memes with the phrase “that awkward moment when …” have also been and are still a popular way to describe certain pains from daily life. While many people recognize awkwardness in their own life, or even defining big parts of their life, awkwardness has not yet been recognized as a defining emotion of our time. Emotions like anger (Pankaj Mishra), fear (Heinz Bude), and anxiety (Sianne Ngai), have become
recognized as emotions that define the post 9/11 Western world. Awkwardness could easily be added to this list, as it is a dominating force in daily life, as well as dominating popular culture.
Adam Kotsko undertakes one of the few investigations into this phenomenon in his book “Awkwardness”. Kotsko investigates awkwardness from a philosophical and a political perspective. The etymology of the word awkwardness contains the words ‘awk’ and ‘ward’. Awk is a medieval English word for something that has been turned into the wrong direction, while the -ward part implicates some form of movement, as in backward or forward.
Awkwardness is thus a movement in the wrong direction (Kotsko 6). Kotsko believes that we are currently in “a state of cultural awkwardness” (17). This awkward state according to Kotsko is to be traced back to the 1960s and post-Fordism. Fordism had been a fairly stable economic system that created a huge (white) middle-class in the United States. In the mid 1960s however it became clear through social unrest that this economic system had hugely neglected the African-Americans and women in its growth (Kotsko 18). What the social movements in the 1960s provided was considerable improvement for women and African-Americans, but any radical changes were halted. For Kotsko the origins of the awkward age are to be found here. The normative social model saw some great changes, while “they did not produce any viable positive alternative” (Kotsko 19). What then came into being was a world where people do not know how to attain and retain equality, as well as a world where people do not really know their place anymore. In the 1970s a lot of the foundations that helped create a middle class through the model of Fordism, became depleted by decreasing the power of the unions, and deindustrialization (Kotsko 20).
This thesis seeks out to trace the political implications of awkward comedy. Kotsko already heads into this direction with his focus on the economic conditions into which awkwardness came into being. Kotsko dives into the political and economic forces that created awkwardness but fails to trace this awkward comedy through the history of film and television. This thesis will seek an answer to the following question: what are the underlying politics and economics that have created the subgenre of awkward comedy in the early twenty-first century?
This question will be answered by looking at three relatively unexplored areas of awkwardness, namely tracing the history of awkwardness, explaining the link between awkwardness and humour theory, and tracing the affective qualities of awkwardness. Each chapter will deal with one of these topics paired with a focus on particular political and economic systems. In the analysis of various films and television series with awkward comedy these theories will be further explained.
The first chapter looks at the origins of the word awkward and how this word has been used since the start of comedy film. Unsurprisingly, the meaning of the word awkward in describing comedy has immensely altered. In early film reviews the use of the word awkward was almost exclusively used to describe a form of physical comedy. This physical comedy in the form of slapstick already has some mimesis that can also be found back in the type of humour that we have now come to describe as awkward comedy. This chapter attempts to trace the roots of awkwardness by both looking at the ontologies of film and television, while simultaneously also focussing on the economic systems. In this chapter the focus will be on Fordism and post-Fordism as economic systems that first allowed a certain awkwardness to grow. To trace back the politics of awkwardness in history it is crucial to find a moment where this form of comedy finds a shift. To do this the first chapter will be
analysing an episode of the well-known television series I Love Lucy (1951-1957). I Love
Lucy is one of the first television sitcoms, and was the first sitcom to introduce several
techniques that can still be recognized to this day in the genre; these are the three-camera setup and the use of a live audience. The other object that this chapter will be analysing is the ground-breaking and in some ways radical comedy film The Party (1968). This is one of the first films to deal with awkwardness on a much more social level. What this chapter will attempt to provide is trace the histories of awkwardness through both film and television, as these are the places where the awkward comedy can predominantly be found today.
In the second chapter we jump to the early 21st century, where a wave of
awkwardness hit the sitcom genre with The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. This chapter will try to gain a better grip on the philosophical relationship between awkwardness and comedy. To do this, this chapter will be mainly focussed on the field of humour theory, where there is a philosophical inquiry in why we laugh at certain types of comedy. There is an
explicit link between comedy and awkwardness. Just try to think of watching a show filled with social awkwardness without having to laugh at it. This would be pure torture! Henri Bergson’s Laughter provides key insights into the reason why we laugh at something. Traditionally there have been three theories of humour: superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity theory (Critchley 2). According to the superiority theory we laugh at something or someone because there is a feeling of being superior. This is the theory that dominated philosophical thinking on laughter until the eighteenth century. The relief theory argues that there is a certain tension that gets released through laughter. This is where Freud’s theory on humour also fits in. Incongruity theory argues that humour is created through a felt
incongruity between what we know to be true and the reality that takes place in the joke (Critchley 3). Bergson’s theory on laughter partially tries to make this incongruity theory more precise with his notions of the living and the mechanical, but it must be said that a big part of Bergson’s theory on laughter is also to be traced back to the superiority theory. Bergson seems to think that humiliation is a very important function of humour. Focus will be on neoliberalism in this chapter, and the alienation of the neoliberal subject. Although Kotsko solely uses examples of comedy shows and films in his essay, he fails to explicitly link the relationship between awkwardness and comedy together. The Office and Curb Your
Enthusiasm will be analysed, which have had a central role in popularizing awkward comedy.
While the American remake of The Office has also become very popular, the focus in this chapter will be on the original British version, as this is much more relentless in its
awkwardness than the American version. These two series are also the prime examples of awkwardness in Kotsko’s book. Analysis of these two shows will provide a better
understanding of the link between awkwardness and comedy, as well as help understand the link between neoliberalism and awkwardness.
Chapter three will discuss the affective qualities of awkwardness. When we witness something awkward happening in our lives, it often has a very contagious quality. This negative affect will be further explored in this chapter with the theories of Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai. Awkward comedy is often also referred to as ‘cringe comedy’. This name also implies some form of an affective relationship towards this awkwardness. The theories of Ngai and Berlant will help to gain a better understanding of the The main political focus here will be on the awkwardness that is linked to the use of social media. Analysis of the film
Eighth Grade will help to understand how affect and awkwardness work together, and that
the affective response to awkward comedy has the possibility for a brief moment critical understanding of power structures.
Ultimately all these chapters will provide important insights into awkwardness and it’s social, political, and economic roots. This will be an exploration of awkwardness through history, the ontology of media, as well as economic systems. All chapters separately provide
explorations of different aspects of awkwardness, and show how this particular feeling has become such a predominant one over the last twenty years. This research will provide key insights into not only the political roots of awkwardness, but also the political and subversive power that awkward comedy might have.
2. A Brief History of Awkwardness in Film and Television 2.1 The Use of the Term Awkwardness in Early Film Reviews
The word awkward as we have come to use it in relation to comedy, or embarrassing
situations, has been attached this meaning over the last twenty years or so. If one before this era were to talk about an awkward film, this would have probably indicated that it was not very well made. The awkwardness would then have related to the bad aesthetics of a film. In the present awkward film and television is recognised as a particular subgenre of comedy. The fact that the very idea of awkwardness has shifted can tell a lot about the era of the early 2000’s where awkward comedy accelerated through series like The Office and Curb Your
Enthusiasm. The focus of these shows and their particular form of comedy that solely stems
from awkward situations kick-started a whole subset of comedy films and series that we now have come to recognize as awkward comedy. This awkwardness of course does not appear out of thin air. There is a large history throughout multiple decades of awkward comedy. Mr.
Bean (1990-1995) is for example a very famous example of a character getting in all kind of
awkward situations. The big difference between shows like The Office and Mr. Bean is that
The Office extracts its awkwardness from social interactions and situations, while Mr. Bean is
more about awkwardness stemming from the physical actions from its protagonist. This chapter attempts to trace back awkwardness throughout the history of film and televisual comedy to find how this particular subgenre has come into being. As far as I am aware no attempts at tracing awkwardness through film history have been undertaken. Doing this will give crucial insights into the subgenre as it stands now, as it will provide the opportunity to trace back certain techniques and tropes of awkwardness. This will also allow gaining a better understanding of the politics in which awkwardness is able to arise. It will be argued that an important precursor to the current wave of awkward comedy is Blake Edward’s The
Party (1968). Analysis of this film will shine light on the tropes and techniques that directors
use to film awkwardness, as well as help place awkwardness in the era of post-Fordism. A good place to start in researching how awkwardness was perceived in earlier films is to do research into old film reviews. The Media History Digital Library is a great help in this respect as it provides many scanned in magazines from the early 20th century. This will give
an understanding of how the word awkwardness was used in that era with regards to film. I have used the terms ‘awkward’, ‘awkwardness’, and ‘awkward comedy’ to find relevant reviews. Starting with the results of the word ‘awkward’ it is first of all very striking that a lot of articles are about the “awkward age” of teenage and child actors. In the Motion Picture Magazine, dated somewhere between 1917 and 1918 there is a photograph of Charlie Chaplin to be found, with a caption under it reading: “from this picture it will be seen that
Charlie Chaplin is not the homely, awkward clown that he appears to be, but a really handsome, charming young man” (May 45). This article clearly refers to the appearance of this film star, and is quick to claim that the star persona of Chaplin is not in any way
appearing to be awkward in their real life. The same goes for a small piece in Photoplay of 1932. This little article is about the breakthrough of Danish actress Gwili Andre. There is a referral to the life before the actress had the big breakthrough in film. The article reads: “a few years ago this girl begged for a job posing for commercial photographers. Then she was awkward, badly dressed, glum” (Photoplay 20). There is a lot of effort from these magazines in showing that film stars are not awkward. This idea of awkwardness does not have much to do with what we now recognize as something awkward. Now we recognize certain social behaviour or social interactions as being awkward, but these articles seem to refer much more to physical appearance. In a film review from March 1924 in Photoplay for the film The
Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924) there is a comment of how much the leading actor
resembles Abraham Lincoln; “the resemblance is striking, both in the face and the tall
awkward figure” (Photoplay 45). This film review is again using the term ‘awkward’ to refer to a physical aspect. While most of the uses of the word ‘awkward’ seem to refer to the physical appearance, there is one exception that is worth mentioning. In the Moving Picture World of February and March 1920 there is an advertisement piece on a film called The Amateur Wife (1920). This advertisement describes the plot of the film. A part of this description reads: “fresh from a French convent she was so awkward and shy that it hurt” (Moving Picture World 8). Here the word awkward seems to denote more of a meaning that is closer to how it is currently used. This sentence appears to use the term awkward here in a more social context, as it is mentioned along with the character’s shyness. The other uses of the word awkward were all about physical appearance, so it could as well be that ‘awkward’ here refers to physicality. Along with the word shyness it appears to be more social though. It is also very interesting that this advertisement says that the main character was “so awkward and shy that it hurt.” This seems almost directly related to the cringe comedy that is popular now, where it hurts to watch the awkwardness evolve on screen. It is fair to say though that this still refers more to the appearance of the character, as this was still a silent film. The rest of the plot states that the main character undergoes some form of transformation or
makeover. Although this use of the word ‘awkward’ seems to be a lot like how we use it now, it still reflects more of a physical awkwardness.
Using the term ‘awkward comedy’ will help find out whether or not people used to describe comedy as awkward in the first half of the 20th century. In The Film Daily of
September 12, 1920 there is a film review of Merely Mary Ann (1920). The final sentence of the film review reads: “Babe London, a fat girl, gives a demonstration of awkward comedy that is very effective” (The Film Daily 11). This use of the word awkward in relation to comedy
implies that in the twenties there was already some acknowledgement of an idea of awkward comedy. But what this sentence also seems to indicate is that this awkwardness mainly comes from physicality. Babe London was a comedy actress who became famous in the silent era. It was indeed because of her big physical appearance that she was cast as the fat girl very often. She is most remembered for her role in the Laurel and Hardy film Our Wife (1931). Babe London was always cast as the ‘fat girl’. After she had lost weight she never received a big part in a comedy film again. This awkward comedy thus seems directly related to the physical appearance of Babe London. Physicality was of course much more important in silent film. The gags and the humour in early comedy was also much more physical. In two reviews from the 1940s the actors Al “Fuzzy” St. John and George “Gabby” Hayes are described as adding awkward comedy to Westerns. These actors were famous for playing the crazy sidekicks of cowboys. The sidekicks were often weird hillbillies with strange
catchphrases. The awkward comedy in these works could very well be based on them being outsiders, and them being very different from the hero of the story. With these reviews from the 1940s we are already closing in what we recognize as awkward comedy now. What can be gained from the reviews where this phrase has been used is that awkward comedy was first perceived as being a form of comedy that was mainly physical and that this has slightly shifted more towards something that ‘outsider’ characters are able to provide. In this latter case awkward comedy is not something that affects the audience directly, but is more about an outsider being awkward and weird to the protagonist.
2.2 Slapstick and Physical Awkwardness
The most common trait in describing awkwardness of all the reviews above is that there is some form of physicality in awkwardness. To further understand this particular form of awkwardness it will be crucial to look at slapstick comedy, as this is the genre that thrives on this physicality. Slapstick comedy derives from the Italian comedy form of commedia
dell’arte, a fifteenth century form of comedy where touring players would play an efficient and speedy kind of farce (Jeffers McDonald 87). The players saw plot as less important to their act. According to Jeffers McDonald the comedy in slapstick lies in the tension between “control and its loss” (87). Charlie Chaplin for example displays control and unnecessary niceties while his surroundings are one of chaos and poverty. The name slapstick comes from a wooden stick with two flat sides. When one would hit another performer with this stick this would produce “a satisfyingly big noise but only a small amount of actual discomfort” (McDonald 87). During the World War I period the slapstick genre had become very popular (Thompson & Bordwell 63). The physical gags were presented in a longer program of short films. The big names connected to this form of comedy are Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton,
Harold Lloyd, and Laurel & Hardy. Sound film has gradually lessened the interest and impact of the slapstick film, but elements of slapstick comedy still persist within comedy films to this day. According to Siegfried Kracauer comedy film even died with the appearance of sound in film (216). Kracauer sees the root of filmic comedy in its concern with “alienated physical existence” (216). The awkwardness in the physicality of the characters in early film comedy could very well be attributed to this alienated physical existence. Giorgio Agamben sees cinema as the place where society tries to reclaim its lost gestures. Agamben argues that the late nineteenth century is the age where bourgeois society has lost its gesturers (49). As a primary example of the way we lost our gestures, Agamben uses the example of the writing of the scientist Gilles de la Tourette. De la Tourette tried to analyse movement by separating and segmenting the different stages of a movement. This is of course what Muybridge also famously tried to do by capturing the movement of a horse. These examples are precisely the place where gesture got lost according to Agamben. Silent film is than the prime example of the space where society tries to regain these gestures. Agamben goes as far as to state that not the image, but the gesture is at the heart of cinema. This means that cinema no longer belongs to the area of the aesthetic, but to that of the “realm of ethics and politics” (Agamben 56). This is because the gesture is “the exhibition of mediality: it is the process of making a means visible as such” (Agamben 58). Agamben argues that the gesture itself hints at it being a mediality; a true purposiveness without a purpose. Where a word shows us our being in language, a gesture in film has the same effect. What does this mean with regards to the awkward physicality of the slapstick genre? A society that has lost its gestures is surely to feel a certain bodily awkwardness. Slapstick is of course filled with gestures and creates a gag out of it. It offers a complex relationship with our lost gestures. Especially in slapstick a complex relationship towards our gestures can be found. Slapstick does not only show the absurd and mechanical aspects of our gestures, it also deconstructs and fragments these gestures. Slapstick is indeed filled with the tension between control and loss, and this is especially true for the movements and gestures of the characters. The characters
desperately try to hold on to their gestures in a world of chaos where they are threatened to lose these gestures altogether.
The embarrassment or awkwardness in slapstick partly comes from the physicality and gestures, but there is also already a certain societal embarrassment to be found in slapstick comedies. Slapstick from the beginning saw people striped from their clothes among other fully clothed people for example (Kracauer 213). Instances like this already have some deep social fears and anxieties built into it. The pleasurable thing in slapstick comedies according to Steven Shaviro is the “transgression of rules of propriety, and the joyous destruction of regulations and norms” (110). This destruction or rather deconstruction of regulations and norms is what can be found back in awkward comedies of today. Shaviro
uses the comedies of Jerry Lewis as example in his text, for example the film Cracking Up (1983). In this film the protagonist visits a museum and is desperately trying to make sense of the many masterpieces that are hanging on the wall. At one point a horse on one of the paintings pees over the protagonist and other paintings come alive as well. The
respectfulness towards the artwork of the protagonist quickly turns to embarrassment. Chaos ensues in Jerry Lewis’ films because of his hyperconformism (Shaviro 111). This is
something that is to be found as well in the character of Larry David in Curb Your
Enthusiasm for example, by trying to adhere to a set of social rules, chaos ensues.
Characters trying to adhere to the rules rather then defying them can be found in many slapstick comedies. Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, although a lower-class figure, is constantly trying to adhere to the rules and norms of the bourgeoisie. A large part of the embarrassment in the work of Jerry Lewis also comes down to his physical comedy. Shaviro sees Jerry Lewis’ gestures as “overdetermined, twisted and turned, fragmented and exploded” (120-121). What happens to the body of Jerry Lewis is embarrassing because of the pain that is inflicted on it while he is trying to respect the rules, paired with his “anxious and incompetent personas” (Shaviro 121). Slapstick comedy already has a focus on the social world, but gestures and movement are their main concern. In awkward comedy of the last twenty years or so these roles have shifted. Awkward comedy’s main concern is the world of social norms, and traces of slapstick and the physical discomfort can be found back here as well.
As stated earlier, Kracauer sees the end of silent film as the end of film comedy. In Kracauer’s theory of film he finds two tendencies that have been there since the very start of the medium: realistic and formative tendencies. Kracauer seeks to find an ontology of film, by comparing it to that of photography. These tendencies are what sets film apart from
photography. Kracauer finds the films of the Lumière brothers to be the example of the realistic tendencies, while the formative can be found in the work of Georges Méliès. Kracauer describes the realistic tendency of the Lumière films as “nature caught in the act” (31). These films tried to capture daily life on camera. Méliès on the other hand used film to create great illusions and dream worlds. Kracauer writes on the films of Méliès that they substitute “staged illusion for unstaged reality, and contrived plots for everyday incidents” (32). What Kracauer finds to be the key aesthetic in the realistic tendency of film is
movement. The static camera of the Lumière brothers was capturing movement. Workers
Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895) is one of those films that is just about capturing
movement. When the mobility of cameras later changed cinema became more about the movement of cameras themselves. Also part of creating a realistic setting for the film is staging, as “a staged real-life event evokes a stronger illusion of reality on the screen than would the original event on if it had been captured directly by the camera” (Kracauer 35). A formative quality of film on the other hand is one where reality is altered in a significant
manner. More often than not these tendencies are combined in films, but the formative qualities of film in the theory of Kracauer seem to be more in favour of creating a good depiction of reality. Kracauer sees the essential role of film in a focus on physical existence, which affords “insight and enjoyment otherwise unattainable” (37). Movement is thus what makes a film cinematic. When comedies moved away from their focus on physicality, it died in the theory of Kracauer exactly because of this lack of movement. According to Kracauer this was not because any social conditions, but because of a shift in the medium of film itself: the rise of sound film (216). Although Kracauer is fairly strict in his views on the sound film, there is something here to be found that we find in modern awkward film as well. First of all, all the awkward projects that are described in this thesis do follow the realistic tendency. A big part of awkward comedy actually comes from the fact that it is very close to reality. Formative qualities of film are used to create even more realism in these comedies. As we will see with I Love Lucy and The Party is that movement is a very big part of awkward comedy. Speech created different social layers that could be perceived as awkward. If gestures were what the bourgeoisie had lost in the late nineteenth century, from the 1960s onward the bourgeoisie seems to have lost its grip on controlling the social norms.
The reason for this changing cannot only be found in the medium itself, but is also because of a change in socio-economic systems. While slapstick has its roots in Taylorism and Fordism, the change toward a social awkwardness is deeply rooted in post-Fordism. Fordism is a particular form of capitalist production. Henry Ford effectively created a division of labour to make standardized consumer goods (Jessop 2). This form of production not only drastically altered labour, but also had a huge societal impact. Fordism was able to spread wealth among the population, which created a middle class (Jessop 7). Within Fordism consumption saw two trends: “first, growing private consumption of standardized, mass-produced commodities in nuclear family households and, second, provision of collective goods and services by a bureaucratic state” (Jessop 7). Slapstick reflected this machinery and mechanics, while itself also being a commodity of modern industrialization. The American slapstick of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon was greatly respected by many avant-gardists in Europe (Jacobs and D’Haeyere 31, Hatherley 15), especially because of their reflection on Fordism. The Keystone FilmCompany was most famous for their elaborate gags involving machinery. At the time there was much concern on the enormous growth of machinery, and Keystone was able to re-appropriate “technology as sources of pleasure, not anxiety, offering carnivalesque images of out-of-control machinery that bracketed off the more distressing aspects of American culture’s encounters with the machine” (King 278). Viewed from this angle Keystone did as much fetishizing of the
machinery as Fordism itself, but as one places gestures and movements as being central to the silent film era, it would be more fair to say that the almost mechanical acting of the
slapstick actors resembles the fragmented body that suffers from the rise of technology and machinery. With the technological advancements that allowed speech other issues of Fordism could come to the foreground. Speech turned away from alienated physical
existence and was able to allow more attention to the social world. This was still in the era of Fordism of course, and it was a change in the medium of film itself that allowed this shift to happen. It was in the sound era “when the highly specific social codes involving speech were added to more general codes of governing behaviour and dress, that comedies moved beyond slapstick caricatures of middle-class and upper-class society and began to reflect more nuanced social distinctions” (Beach 2). From the sound film onwards the focus
became less on the body and more on social distinctions. Charlie Chaplin’s silent films were of course already pointing in this direction, but remained somewhat of a caricature of the lower classes. While early sound film was still a highly transgressive genre (Beach 5), in the screwball comedies of the 1930s one can find this new focus on the social world. Many of these films still involve some physical elements of slapstick comedy, but their main focus is a battle of the sexes. Not only are screwball comedies spoofing love stories, the most common plots of the screwball comedy revolve around “an upper-class heiress involved with a middle-class man or a wealthy man involved with a women of working- or middle- middle-class background” (Beach 50). Not only is there more of a focus on the social status of gender in screwball comedy, this genre is also increasingly using speech to denote the difference in class between the characters. These focuses on cross-class relations can be traced back to Fordism. The 1930s not only saw a huge rise in consumer culture, they also were a time of growing disparity and poverty. Ironically enough it was the growing consumer culture of Fordism that brought different classes closer together in their shared interest (Beach 50).
But it is not until the 1960s that we can finally speak of a new form of awkwardness, and the roots of this new awkwardness are to be found in post-Fordism. Fordism did create a middle-class in the United States, and helped create a consumer culture, but this was
notably only a white middle-class (Kotsko 18-19). The oppression of Afro-Americans, and women still not having a good place in society led to a lot of unrest in the 1960s, paired with the Vietnam war, the “sexual revolution” and an experimental drug culture, this was a decade of many changes” (Kotsko 19). There was much needed emancipation for these groups, but failed to have any radical changes. The seeming stability that Fordism had provided lost its grip, and people became more aware of their place in society. This is one way in which post-Fordism is used in this thesis, literally denoting the moment that post-Fordism had lost its cultural grip. Fordism remained somewhat intact for a decade, but the seeming cultural stability of Fordism quickly lost footing (Kotsko 19). This created an awkwardness extending to the social world, where the white middle-class male does not know his place in the world anymore. It is not until the late 1970s and the early 1980s when the economic system shifts
to a post-Fordist mode as well (Albertsen 348). A growing complexity of class fragmentation creates even more awkwardness. It is in The Party that the cracks in the model of Fordism can be found, and this film also identifies a move towards an awkwardness of a bourgeoisie that has lost its grip on social norms. Before diving into The Party it is also crucial to do a brief history of the root of awkwardness in television as well, as The Office and Curb Your
Enthusiasm were frontrunners in having a comedy that solely had its focus on the
awkwardness of social norms in daily life. To do this a brief examination of the sitcom genre will follow paired with an analysis of I Love Lucy.
2.3 Television and Social Awkwardness
The relationship between awkwardness and television is a complex one. Television quickly found its way into the routine everyday life of people as both a disturber and a comforter (Silverstone 3). Without getting to deep into the ontology of television there are of course a number of big differences between television and cinema. The ontology of television is more to be found within its liveness (Couldry), seriality (Mittell), and flow (Williams), which makes it a very different medium than cinema. The sitcom genre in particular shows the unique liveness of television. Although the sitcoms are of course not a direct live broadcast, they do pertain some sense of liveness in their use of the laugh track. This use of the laugh track is “an obvious demonstration that television is a medium sold on its ‘liveness’, and is able to respond to real world events quicker than film and newspapers” (Mills 50). The laugh track also has a clearly comical purpose, in the fact that it tries to reclaim laughter as a social event, but the laugh track also points to a different point that makes the medium of television fairly different than that of film. Cinema mostly remains a visual medium, whereas the
placement of the television in the living room also makes it much more a medium of sound. That is not to say that sound is immensely important to cinema, but the role of sound in television definitely sets itself apart from cinema. Fictional television not only draws much of its aesthetic qualities from film, the radio also had a huge role to play in the development of television (Hilmes 155). Many sitcoms also choose to film in front of a live audience instead of using the laugh track to create even more of a sense of liveness. It is somewhat of a strange device the laugh track. With television having a central place in the living room and daily life of people it can be on at any time without people actually watching what is evolving on screen, but listening to it anyway. While one may miss some of the more physical jokes if one does not pay full visual attention to the television, one can still laugh at many of the jokes and follow a large part of the storyline. The laugh track points to something very essential within the medium of television, namely its duplicating of the social sphere in the living room.
Much less a medium of gesture, the medium of television is more one where people try to reclaim their social life.
How to define the sitcom and its relationship to awkwardness? Sitcom, which is short for situation comedy, has its roots in radio, and has been a relatively stable genre since it first appeared on television (Hartley 65). The industry could fairly easy make a lot of money out of a sitcom, by only using a few sets, and having in-house producers and screenwriters
produce a lot of work in little time (Hartley 65). The sitcom genre can generally be placed in two different categories: family sitcoms and workplace sitcoms. Family sitcoms distinguish themselves “from serials and drama series by their focus on internal family roles” (Hartley 66). The stories of these sitcoms are mostly about fairly unusual family setups. These unusual families, like The Addams Family (1964-1966) suggest that “like modernity, progress, science, and reason themselves, the modern suburban family was shadowed by darker and mostly unspoken ‘others’ from pre-modern and irrational traditions” (Hartley 66). Family sitcoms were able to highlight some of the grittier underpinnings of a seeming stable consumer culture (Hartley 66). The workplace sitcom traditionally tended to focus on sexual chemistry, with an “almost obsessive focus on ‘situations’ that occurred in relationships rather than in workplaces as such” (Hartley 67). Of course later on a lot of hybrids between these two genres appeared; like Friends (1994-2004), and Seinfeld (1989-1998). These shows of course did not have to focus on either family or work anymore as they revolved around a group of friends. In these friend-centred shows the groups of friends still give the feeling of a family (Feuer 70). Traditionally the plot structure of an episode in a sitcom would start with the familiar status quo, then a ritual error would be made, followed by a lesson learned from this error, and finally the familiar status quo would again be restored (Marc 190-191). Only sitcoms that were more radically breaking with the genre would break this
formula, like Seinfeld. In Seinfeld the characters never seem to learn their lesson. Co-creator Larry David had the motto while writing of: no hugging, no learning. Later shows like The
Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which will be discussed in depth within the next chapter,
would extensively deal with awkwardness within the sitcom genre. Let’s see the influence of some of the characteristics of slapstick in the early sitcom genre, by analysing an episode of
I Love Lucy. This sitcom from the 1950s has made some crucial technical developments of
which some are still prevalent within the genre today. The most important invention is the three-camera setup. This setup allowed for three cameras to film a scene from three angles at the same time. A brief analysis of this sitcom will help to gain a better understanding of the genre from which later awkward sitcoms have stemmed.
2.4 I Love Lucy
Other than being a family sitcom, I love Lucy can more specifically be seen as an “unruly woman sitcom” (Rowe). This specific subgenre of the sitcom evolves around “an icon of a grotesque female whose excesses break social boundaries” (Feuer 68). I Love Lucy is thus very much already in the sphere of displaying the strict boundaries of American society in the 1950s and constantly breaking these. The precise political power of the unruly woman is unclear, but this figure has also helped make disobedience of the social order thinkable (Rowe 83). At the same time I Love Lucy is very much indebted to physical slapstick. Many of the laughs come from the physical comedy displayed by Lucille Ball. Technically speaking,
I Love Lucy was the first series to use the famous three-camera setup that the sitcom is
famous for. This development made the sitcom less stiff and makes it feel less like watching something on stage (Mills 39). The three-camera setup also was able to create two jokes out of one joke, “one from the funny thing that is said and another from someone else’s reactions to it” (Mills 39). This technological development highlights a shift towards more of a comedy that is aware of the reactions to others to what is being said. Notably, I Love Lucy was also unique in its use of a live audience. This was chosen by the producers to create more of a unique reaction of the audience to Lucille Ball (Elrick). The sitcom genre from the beginning already is more concerned with the social world then the previous comedy genres.
In the first episode of the second season of I Love Lucy, “Job Switching” (1952), both elements of slapstick and a comedy that is more concerned with the social world can be found. In this episode Ricky finds that Lucy is spending too much of his money. After they have an argument about this, the men, Ricky and Fred, decide to take on the housework, while the women, Lucy and Ethel, try to find a job. The reversal of the gender roles does not end up as planned. While the men are clearly struggling with the housework, the women find a job at a candy factory. At this factory Lucy and Ethel have to wrap candies at an assembly line. In this Fordist factory there is a clear labour division, where there are many different stations in which every job has a vital role to the end product. In the scene that is most reminiscent of slapstick in this episode, Lucy and Ethel try to wrap chocolates, while the assembly line is working at an extremely fast pace. The women cannot keep up with the line, and decide to eat some of the chocolates and hide them so that their boss will not fire them. This scene is very reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s struggles with the assembly line in
Modern Times (1936). Like Chaplin the women cannot keep up with the speed of the
machine. Where Chaplin gets caught up in the machinery itself, the women try to gain a grip on the machine, but ultimately fail. The use of gesture here is one of fragmentation and loss. Like slapstick film Lucy here displays a loss of gesture, but what the rest of the episode besides the slapstick gags displays is a significant awareness of the social world and the
roles that are assigned in this world. The women are clearly assigned the role of housewife, while the men have jobs and are supposed to provide for their wives. Lucy disobeying these social norms has the potential for showing other women in a similar position that this
disobedience is an option. The social status quo at the end of the episode is restored, with the men and the women both realizing that they belong back in the role that they were assigned. This makes it difficult to ascribe true feminist or political meaning to this episode. While I Love Lucy does not induce much awkwardness in the audience, the gender reversal does display an awkwardness of sorts in the characters. It especially displays the inability of the men to adapt to their newly assigned roles. Real social embarrassment is not to be found in this show yet, but I Love Lucy does reveal that the sitcom from its start already started to move towards a more social awkwardness.
2.5 The Party
The pivotal moment when awkwardness finally moves to the realm of social embarrassment can be found in Blake Edwards’ The Party from 1968. In The Party an Indian actor
accidentally blows up a film set. The producer of the film tries to have the actor blacklisted from Hollywood, but instead the actor accidentally gets invited to a Hollywood party. This is basically the entire plot there is to this film. The rest of the The Party sees the actor, Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers), trying to blend into the party that consists of a world with social norms that seems entirely strange to him. The Party displays awkwardness in its gestures and slapstick comedy, but shifts its focus more to a social awkwardness. In the Pink Panther films where Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers had already worked together traces can
already be found of this shift happening, but these inspector Clouseau films were much more centred on a figure of chaos. Inspector Clouseau “exudes logical disconnectedness”
(Lehman & Luhr 79), and is almost an alien to the logical world. Hrundi V. Bakshi is also a source of much chaos, but is also a very recognizable character in the way that he is just trying to fit in with the rest of the party. The very premise of this film would already induce much anxiety in people. Going to a party of a big Hollywood producer without knowing anybody there, would make a lot of people feel awkward.
When Hrundi enters the enormous mansion for the first time there is already some form of discomfort there. One of the shoes of Hrundi is muddy and he desperately tries to clean his shoe. He does this in a pool of water that is flowing through the house. When Hrundi puts his shoe in the water he quickly loses it. A shot-reverse shot of Hrundi and the guests of the party already establishes the mood. The other guests of the party see Hrundi struggling while he is looking for his shoe, while Hrundi laughs back at the other guests somewhat embarrassed. Hrundi remains a real outsider throughout the party. When Hrundi
has finally retrieved his shoe he is trying to mingle with other people. When a group is laughing because of an anecdote Hrundi joins in with the laughter, without having heard the anecdote. The moment he joins in laughing, the other people stop their laughter altogether. When he then tries to join a conversation with a different group of people he again starts laughing without having heard the entire story. The state senator tells that he has been robbed. Again, Hrundi does not seem to fit in very well with the rest of the party. When he is later invited to dance with a girl his classical way of dancing makes it awkward for the girl dancing with him. It could be said that the radical difference in norms comes down to Hrundi coming from a totally different cultural background, and this is in part true of course. But there is also an inherent awkwardness to the bourgeois and privileged setting that Hrundi ends up in.
Hollywood itself is portrayed as a conservative place in The Party. The precredit sequence of the film starts of at the desert, where the style of filming is recognizably an action epic. Vast plains are seen, while colonial troops are moving through it. Then Hrundi is blowing a horn, and thousands of native troops are appearing from their hiding places. Hrundi is being shot multiple times, but is still blowing the horn. This sequence is parodying adventure films like Gunga Din (1939) (Lehman & Luhr 139). It quickly turns out that the world that was understood to be the diegesis has been a film set. Both the director and the producer of the film scold Hrundi for his bad acting. The producer, C.S. Divot, angrily walks up to his trailer, where he snaps his fingers to a woman bathing in the sun, demanding to have sex with her. After he had already been scolded, Hrundi accidentally blows up an expensive film set. Not only does this opening sequence show what kind of film The Party is not going to be, it also shows the worst behaviour of the people working in the industry. Knowing the social upheaval of the 1960s these guests must be even more aware of their privileged position. To a large extent the awkwardness at this party is caused by the refusal of these privileged people to give up their norms. In the first half of the film most of the awkwardness stems from Hrundi having a different cultural background, while in the second half it is caused more by the refusal of the privileged to adapt. The curiosity of Hrundi leads him through the first half of the party. He does not seem to make a lot of new friends or make connections with the people there. The only one who he has a conversation with at the beginning of the party is ‘Wyoming Bill’ Kelso, who is a famous actor that plays in westerns. Hrundi asks for Wyoming Bill’s autograph, and he gets one. But Wyoming Bill Kelso seems rather condescending in constantly calling Hrundi “little fellow”, or pretending to shoot Hrundi because he thinks Indians and Native Americans are the same. The one person Hrundi does seem to have a connection with is Michele Monet. This French aspiring actress is like Hrundi a true outsider to the party. She has come to the party with the same producer that
sequence Divot was already seen on set having a blonde woman around to just have sex with, which he is also being very rude to. Now C.S. Divot is trying to do the same with Michelle, offering her a role in his film in exchange for sex. When Michelle rejects his
advances, he blacklists her just like he has tried to do with Hrundi. While Hrundi is trying his best to be kind and respectful, the rest of the party does not really seem to care about him. Hrundi largely gets ignored, or forgotten altogether. This becomes most prevalent in the dining scene. All the guests are seated along a long table. When Hrundi tries to get a chair there seem to be no chairs left. A chair is found for him, but it is much lower than the rest of the table. Even worse is that the chair is placed next to the kitchen door, which opens to both sides. This table placement is rather humiliating for Hrundi. But ultimately Hrundi and
Michelle get their revenge. Although they are not explicitly looking for revenge, they both have been humiliated in different ways at the party. When Hrundi has fallen into the pool, and Michelle has rescued him from the pool, both of them have wet clothes. Hrundi is forced to drink alcohol, which makes him less interested in the social norms. Michelle tells C.S. Divot that she wants to stay at the party, and not go home with him. When they both decide to stay, they clearly do not want to adhere to the rules in the house anymore, and enjoy the party on their own terms. In their rejection to conform, their awkwardness quickly disappears. When the daughter of the Clutterbucks arrives with her hippie friends and a painted elephant the social order of the party has definitely shifted. Hrundi wants the elephant washed, as he says it is disrespectful to his culture to have slogans on an elephant. This event leads to the mansion being filled with foam. Now the social order has totally broken down. Alice
Clutterbuck cannot handle this, and faints multiple times. The very presence of the counter-culture with a different set of norms, makes Alice Clutterbuck panic. Fred Clutterbuck on the other hand seems more concerned with the presence of Russian dancers in his house. Both are forced to deal with their prejudices and are not handling it very well.
Blake Edwards effectively uses multiple techniques and tropes to create
awkwardness. In The Party Edwards often makes use of reaction shots. When Bakshi just got totally wet because of the sprinkler installation in the garden, he walks in to a room where they are all listening to Michelle sing. When he appears soaking wet, behind Michelle, a reaction shot is seen from everyone at the party just staring at Bakshi. These shots are almost never just of one person, but multiple people staring back at Bakshi. This works very well in making the audience feel this embarrassment as well. Edwards does the same through the placement of Bakshi in the frame. Often Bakshi is not at all in the centre of the frame, but in the background or on the side. When Bakshi is feeding the bird for example in the foreground Clutterbuck is seen talking to someone, and Bakshi appears behind him in the frame feeding the parrot. This framing device again gives the possibility to see the reactions of other people to the behaviour of Bakshi. It is exactly in shots like these that a
shift from physical to awkward comedy is created. It is not yet social awkward comedy to the extreme, as Bakshi often manages to escape towards the other side of the mansion when something really awkward has happened. Later on, in especially Curb Your Enthusiasm, these confrontations would be the primary focus of the awkwardness. According to Peter Lehman and William Luhr, The Party “may be the single most radical film made in Hollywood since D.W. Griffith’s style came to dominate the American cinema” (163). They argue this because it goes directly against the bourgeois modes of representation that has been the standard since D.W. Griffith. This style is about well-constructed plots and a centred narrative action, but in The Party Edwards rejects this. Even the dialogue often cannot be fully heard, and does not have a central role within this film. What makes The Party even more radical is the shift of awkwardness towards the social realm. The Party breaks with the social norms, and at the same time the narrative constructions of the bourgeoisie. This indeed makes The Party one of the most radical films ever produced in Hollywood.
This chapter has been trying to find the roots of awkwardness through the history of film and television. What old film reviews revealed was that awkwardness in the early stages of film was more understood as a physical awkwardness. This directly correlates with the theories of Agamben and Kracauer who placed gestures and movement at the centre of film. The loss of gesture of the bourgeoisie can be found at the heart of the ontology of early cinema. Kracauer goes as far as to state that film comedy died with the appearance of sound in film. Although gesture and movement do remain at the heart of cinema, there is a change that can be detected with sound in film. Speech allows for more focus on differences in class, for example. This means a shift towards the social world. The invention of television created even more change towards the social world, but also hinted at somewhat of a loss of the social world. With post-Fordism and the social upheaval of the 1960s, the bourgeoisie lost its control over the social and cultural norms. Here the true definition of awkwardness as we now know it can be found. The Party is deeply embedded in this era and effectively shows the loss of control over its norms from the bourgeoisie. The Party can be seen as not only a precursor of awkward comedy today, but already recording the very origins of this
awkwardness. The decades that followed saw even more growing awkwardness. Woody Allen shows a person very anxious and awkward about his position in society for example. This awkwardness would reach a crucial point in the early 21st century, where it became a
3. Awkwardness and Comedy1
The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm were both series from the early 21st century that
shifted comedy to an almost exclusively socially awkward position. As we are moving towards the 21st century with this chapter, we are now coming even more in the territory of
post-Fordism, and neoliberalism. While Kotsko has his main focus on post-Fordism, which is a helpful term in acknowledging the radical shifts that have happened in economics and society after Fordism, this chapter will try to focus on neoliberalism to explain the political side of awkwardness. Neoliberalism better explains the economic situation of the early 21st
century then post-Fordism. Neoliberalism represents “the post World War II renewal of the capital’s attempts to empower its position on society” (Wrenn 506). This has meant a shift from the state as a space that cared for the employment and protection of its citizens against the market, to a state that propagates individual responsibility and the protection of the free market. This economic model that has dominated society created a neoliberal identity that is “isolating, disconnected from any larger community, and as such leaves the individual alienated” (Wrenn 507). The alienation that takes place within neoliberalism will be the central theme running through this chapter, accompanied by an exploration of humour theory, which will further explain how this alienation is linked to awkwardness and comedy.
Kotsko’s essay on awkwardness already implies that there is a link between
awkwardness and comedy in his essay, since all his examples are comedies. But nowhere does he make this link explicit. Kotsko does not further investigate why awkwardness seems to be predominantly found within comedy. Kotsko places awkwardness within the era of post-fordism, but the exact political meaning of awkwardness remains somewhat vague in his work. To gain a better understanding of the politics of awkwardness, this chapter will turn to the influential works on humour by Bergson and Freud. With the help of these theorists a greater understanding of awkwardness in relation to comedy can be formed. A theory of comedy is able to provide a better understanding of the comedy series that Kotsko discusses, and will also help to gain a better grip on the subject of awkwardness itself. Getting a better grip on why we laugh at certain things, and in particular why we laugh at awkward humour, helps to provide a better understanding of society in the early 21st century.
Analyses of The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm will help to explain these theories of humour as well as help understand the political implications of awkward comedy.
1
Part of this chapter comes from an earlier student paper I have written on this subject
3.1 Bergson and Awkward Laughter
In 1900 Bergson attempted to gain a serious philosophical understanding on the issues of laughter and comedy with a series of three essays on laughter, which would in 1924 would be bundled together in one book. For Bergson laughter is caused by “something mechanical encrusted upon the living” (16). Within this formula there are already traces to be found of the central duality within Bergson’s work on laughter, on the one side of this duality there is rigidity, automatism and repetition, while on the other side there is vitality, elasticity, and changeability. This tension between the mechanical and the living has its roots in Bergson’s broader philosophical project of élan vital, which is the on-going movement and life force of all living things. This movement is temporarily halted when the mechanical wins it from the living through which a moment of comedy is created. Noticing certain mechanical repetitions within a person’s behaviour could be very funny for example (Bergson 15). This is not just because this is a moment where the mechanical is encrusted upon the living, but also because this is a moment where a person appears to be a thing or a machine. An example that Bergson gives is that of the jack-in-the-box. According to Bergson a lot of comedy comes down to the fundamental principle that a jack-in-the-box displays. When one tries to close the lid on a jack-in-the-box it will only jump higher. On the one hand, there is the mechanical tool that is the jack-in-the-box itself, and on the other there is the life force that is trying to close the lid on the toy (Bergson 23-24).
The Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupancic criticizes the mechanical-living duality for being too much of an oversimplification of comedy (114). Zupancic claims that this duality is not just the starting point of comedy, but might also be an effect of comedy (114). Going back to the example of the jack-in-the-box, Zupancic suggests that the repetition might not just stem from the mechanical, but that the human who is trying to get the toy in the box is just as much being engaged in repetition (124). As Zupancic rightly shows here, this repetition could just as well be part of the living. This questions the core of Bergson’s argument of “something mechanical encrusted upon the living”, as the example of the jack-in-the-box showed that it could as well be that the living is encrusted upon the mechanical. That is not to say that Zupancic argues for a simple reversal of the matrix that is put forward by Bergson, she rather tries to prove the point that through “‘mechanical’ repetition […] life can rise in front of us in all its vivacity, as well as produce the comic pleasure and the effect of ‘indestructibility’ associated with comedy” (126). In other words, comedy holds the possibility of a temporary revelation of the force of life, through the use of mechanical repetition.
There could be a strong argument made for the fact that laughing at awkward humour shows the mechanical side of everyday life and society. At the same time there is inelasticity to be found within the characters in these awkward comedies as well. It could be said that a
lot of the comedy within the awkward comedies is created through the fact that characters try to fight the mechanical, like the jack-in-the-box, and the living are thus trying to overcome the mechanical in these instances. The tension between the living and the mechanical are pivotal in understanding awkward humour, but it will be necessary to use his duality in both ways, and not just in the “something mechanical encrusted upon the living” manner, but also in the way of the living trying to fight the mechanical.
This is where Bergson’s work could be linked with more societal forces. When Bergson is writing on society his idea of laughter as a humiliating moment comes to the foreground. For Bergson society is a force that is almost always felt. He writes: “society holds suspended over each individual member, if not the threat of correction, at all events the prospect of a snubbing, which, although it is slight, is none the less dreaded” (Bergson 39). The function of laughter is then a means for society to enforce itself. This is very humiliating for the one at whom the laughter is directed. Laughter thus has a humiliating function for Bergson, because in laughter “we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed” (Bergson 39). According to Bergson this is also why comedy is much closer to real life than drama. This idea of laughter as a corrective is very interesting with regards to awkward comedy. Within awkward comedy there is also a strong form of societal pressure. The characters of these comedies are battling with these societal norms, but it might also be the case that we laugh at some characters exactly because they do not conform to the ruling norms. For the main characters in The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm it certainly seems to be the case that they either refuse to live up to society’s norms, or do not recognize that they are breaking these norms. The characters Larry David and David Brent are often not realizing their own position and have a certain refusal to feel ashamed about their behaviour. With Bergson’s notion of comedy as “a study of other men”, he might have already predicted that something as awkward comedy could come into being (Bergson 46). With the big difference being that Bergson sees comedy as a space where no other emotions come into play. Bergson writes: “depict some fault, however trifling, in such a way as to arouse sympathy, fear, or pity; the mischief is done, it is impossible for us to laugh” (40). In awkward comedy the faults of humans are exactly what is at display. This does not necessarily mean that sympathy is invoked, but there is a feeling of awkwardness that accompanies this humour. As can be read from his position on society Bergson sees it as being on the side of the mechanical, as it is a force that repeatedly corrects the behaviour of people.
3.2 Freud and The Awkward Ego
Sigmund Freud also has his ideas about the pressures of society in the form of the superego. Although Freud is writing around the same time as Bergson he has a different approach to the theory of humour. Freud’s writing on humour not only provides key insights into comedy, but it also means a break with his earlier writings. Where in previous works of Freud the superego was kind of a harsh master or parental figure to the ego, in his work Humour from 1927 the superego becomes able to “laugh at oneself” (Critchley 103). The superego for Freud was punishing the ego whenever the ego did not rise to the expectations of society. This punishment of the ego is reminiscent of Bergson’s humiliation in laughter. A feeling of humiliation would come from the superego punishing the ego for doing something that falls out of society’s strict norms. With his writing on humour Freud finds that it is through humour that the superego achieves a more soothing role. Freud clearly distinguishes between jokes and humour. Jokes provide a momentary relief in laughter, while humour seems to transcend the moment. According to Freud, humour is even rebellious, as it marks the triumph of the ego against the superego. Humour becomes a coping mechanism to deal with the real world, without it becoming a mental health issue like neuroses or intoxication (Freud 4543). This coping does not necessarily become a problem as it can be experienced as “especially liberating and elevating” (Freud 4545). Through humour the parental superego becomes less harsh towards the ego that is intimidated by the world, and becomes more of a comforting parent figure. The superego is through humour able to provide a soothing way to cope with reality. Simon Critchley sees Freud’s Humour as a sense of knowing one’s limitedness in the world, which becomes acknowledged with a smile. This is a smile instead of laughter for Critchley, as Freud opposes the idea that humour involves hearty laughter. But Freud never uses the term smiling, and Critchley seems to take Freud’s point too far as he finally claims that “we smile and find ourselves ridiculous” (111). Although Freud is explicitly talking about mockery when he is writing about humour, he is in no way implying that this is a self-deprecating type of humour. On the contrary, this self-mockery is a rebellious victory of the ego, which means that there is no ridiculing of the self going on, but rather a coping with the world. Freud’s distinction between humour and jokes seems quite problematic though, as shows like The Office clearly show that things can be laugh out loud funny without having to resort to the mere telling of jokes. This means that the transcending humour does not just resolves into smiling, but that it can also be the source of much hearty laughter.
The soothing superego does become relevant in understanding the laughter at awkward humour. Within the awkward comedy there seem two different feelings fighting each other: that of feeling awkward and the need to laugh at this awkwardness. The
norms become heavily under attack by the awkwardness displayed in awkward comedy. As the ego finds itself in an awkward situation the superego might again strike as a parental figure telling the ego what to do differently. This conflict between the superego and the ego might be the cause of much of the awkward feeling, as the superego is telling the ego that it is not adhering to the social norms. The same might be true for the position of the spectator of the awkward, where the superego tells the ego that something that goes against all norms is happening. This is especially the case in the radical awkwardness, in which all previous forms of social norms have been abandoned altogether. The ultimate laughter at this awkwardness can be seen as the ego in turn trying to cope with this punishment from the superego, which then transforms the superego into the more comforting parent figure. Awkward humour ultimately provides a relief from social pressure. This does not explain everything about the awkward humour, but it does provide some insight into the way social norms impact us as individuals, and how the ego is impacted by these norms. There has to be some form of relief to this awkwardness, otherwise this would be an absolutely exhausting exercise for the ego to endure.
Series that both provide the awkwardness and temporary relief from this
awkwardness through their comedy are The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. What makes these series worth analysing is that Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office were the first shows in the early 21st century predominantly dealing with awkward humour. Both shows
made a big break within the sitcom genre. Sitcom has been a very stable genre in which not much of the techniques had changed, but Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office noticeably shifted in form. Sitcoms most of the time made use of a three-camera setup, and were either filmed in front of a live audience, or made use of laugh tracks. Curb Your Enthusiasm
noticeably broke with these traditions, by not making use of laugh tracks, and by using a more documentary style of filming instead of the three-camera setup. The Office followed
Curb and went even further by creating a mockumentary sitcom. By steering away from the
traditions of sitcoms, it could be said that these shows in their techniques already try to create more of an uncomfortable feeling then was previously the case in the sitcom genre. The content of both the shows is also way more radical than previous sitcoms. Larry David already changed the sitcom genre with Seinfeld, by completely changing the content of the sitcom. As we have already seen in the previous chapter, sitcoms traditionally were either family oriented or workplace oriented (Hartley 66-7). What these sitcoms shared was some form of emotional pay-off at the end of an episode where things would be restored to their previous order, or there were love arcs throughout the entirety of the series. In Seinfeld this has disappeared altogether. Instead of showing us the people we need to aspire to be,
Seinfeld shows us characters that are deeply flawed. For a large part this came down to
