Comprehensive Analysis of Genre - Comedy

There are a lot of sub genres for comedy movies.

Black comedy is adapting disturbing situations like death, drugs, and sexual violence for the a comic story. This is usually targeted for much older and mature audiences. An example of a director who works on dark comedies is Quentin Tarantino. Films like True Romance, Pulp Fiction, and Django Unchained have a lot of heavy themes presented, and Tarantino likes to explore the comic effect of those themes. 

In True Romance, he depicts the treatment of woman as objects, because one of the lead characters in the film is a prostitute and she is beaten up viciously by men, and usually doesn’t have much clothing on her. But he likes to make fun of those themes with cheesy dialogue, and one liners. However the way he gets comedy out of the situations is not mocking women. 

Pulp Fiction makes fun of a lot of serious topics from drug overdoses to racism. A similar depiction of woman is shown in the movie like True Romance. Ving Rhames character sends John Travolta character to take care of his wife, portrayed by Uma Thurman. This is depicting woman as constantly attention-seeking. Later on in the movie, she has a drug overdose and when John Travolta and other characters are trying to save her, the other characters are mocking John Travolta for not knowing where to take the adrenaline shot.

In Django Unchained, they focus on the topic of slavery. The main character Django, portrayed by Jamie Foxx and his wife who is portrayed by Kerry Washington are snatched by middle-aged white men who treat black people like they are objects by selling them to extremely wealthy white people. In the film, the comedy is drawn from the exaggerated fight scenes and particularly the character of Stephen portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson.

Character comedy is another sub-genre of the comedy genre. This focuses on character development and showing the character doing funny things that is actually lighthearted which has the intention to make the audience laugh, not be in shock like what black comedies tend to do. 

One example of a character comedy movie is Borat. Borat follows a Kazakhstan reporter portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen, navigating around America and we explore his approach to life outside his home country. This is kind of a mockumentary as well because other people in the film are playing themselves, not other characters. 

Another example of a character comedy is Dumb and Dumber. Dumb and Dumber follows two friends, Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne portrayed by Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels who have seriously low IQs. Similar to Borat, they are navigating around a city which they are not familiar with and are getting into silly situations which a normal person would know best to not get involved with. 

The final example for character comedy is Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day follows a weatherman who is played by Bill Murray. After mocking the seasonal day, Groundhog Day he gets caught in a time wrap in the same day. The only way he can break this time wrap is if he lives the day correctly. Throughout the film, he explore his antics when he's repeating the same day, and does funny stuff which is aiming to make the audience laugh, 

There are many character stereotypes in comedies, however two types have become popular over the last decade. These character stereotypes are:

The stereotype of a “nerd” is they're quite small, wear glasses, very smart, and like mythical stuff. At the start of the movie they are classified as a “loser” no one else is really friends with them and are hated by a lot of people. They are also depicted as working class, does not have enough money and is not very privileged. However, these nerds do have friends who come together due to being bullied and depicted as “outcasts”, there interests in nostalgic franchises like Star Wars and superheroes, and being very smart and favoured by all the teachers/boss 

The people who are classified as “jerks” however, are a different story. They are depicted as attractive, fit, and usually very mean.  They are also depicted as upper class and have more a privileged lifestyle to focus on sport and spare leisure activity. Another general stereotype is they are extremely fit, are good at sports, and have a lot of friends. Usually, their friends have the same personality traits and background. In groups of people who are classified in comedy movies as “jerks” there is usually one boy/girl who is the ring leader of the group, and at the end of the film they are usually embarrassed by the nerd figure, and often lose their friends.