Farce

15 Apil 2008

Farce

Silly, ad. [middle English: seli, sili, good, blessed, innocent (sense development: happy) blissful>unaware of reality>foolish.

FOR NEXT TIME: Read pages 41, 42 on Plautus and the New comedy. Watch film: “Smoke Signals” and watch “Holy Man” soon. Get familiar with Shakespeare's play “12th Knight”

Sarcophilia—love of the body. And Sarcophobia—fear of the flesh and body.

I.FROM DIRTY WORDS TO FARCE
The body's sites of entrance and exit reveal our fundamental openness to one another.

NOTE THE CLOWN: with exaggerated sites of entrance and exit: large noses, large ears and large butts.

Lenny Bruce: a revolutionary comic who was jailed many times over obscenity charges. He pointed out that our use of the expression “Fuck You” to abuse one another is truly insane given that it's a sacred thing that moves life along. If we were sane he argues that we would use it perhaps as a greeting or an expression of endearment.

NOTE: our serious culture—one of power and authority has been dominated by sarcophobia (fear and hatred of the body). We tend to see the body as inferior to the mind, as something to be covered up. Its normal functions are something to be ashamed of—when we are sober. Dirty words in comedy create laughter by pointing to the body, the openings of it what unites us to the cosmos. The Cosmos—the great digestive system. Creating and destroying.

Comedy's dirty words are “vulgar” the language of the common people. The Language of familiarity, the language of revelry and rebellion. The very reason that when children realize they are victims of double standard they see this very language as fun.

Sex language employed in the allows us to address sarcophilia, it allows us to see a truth denied by our sarcophobic culture.

II.FARCE & THE INDESTRUCITIBLE BODY
Farce—perhaps the most ancient and basic form of comic expression creates laughter by exposing the ridiculous lengths we got to in allowing the mind in dismissing the body in our pursuit of control. The mind vs. body conflict.

Farce accomplishes this exposure most often through the amazing indestructible body of the farcicle fool—the fool in farce. A fool who often seems to be a victim of his own body but in reality is the victim of social constructs.

In farce we see the truth that the ugliest part of our bodies is the mind—according to Frank Zappa.

In “Dumb and Dumber” we have classic farce.

The fool in classic comedy has an elastic indestructible body, suffering abuse and coming back for more.

The comic spirit reveals death and destruction as illusions.

Farce comes from the French word “Farcire” to stuff—as in stuffing a turkey.

17th century French tragedy, the most tedious and somehow generated the name FARCE.

Plautus and Terrence were Roman classic play writes using the new comic conventions.

Plautus was a commoner, born poor, educated in the theater. His comedy tended to pander to the crowd using broad humor, nothing very subtle. A lot of slapstick, beatings, crude language, extreme scenes.

Terence—an African slave who was adopted by a Roman aristocrat and given an aristocratic education. Only wrote six plays, but they became the most influential works in the whole Western Comic Tradition. Unlike Plautus he attempted to create more of an illusion of reality. His language more elevated, characters more realistic. Gave comedy a treatment more often reserved for tragedies.

In the 16th century, Shakespeare approached comedy with both methods giving his high characters in the manner of Terence and his lower characters as Plautus with slapstick and such.

1.Farce always sets out to provoke belly laughs—to pee in your pants if possible. This is not the case with all comedies.
2.Employs highly exaggerated caricatured character types.
3.Farce always employs an extremely improbable, trivial situation.
4.Makes free use of broad physical horse play & verbal humor.
Comedy can have the first four characteristics and not the last, but farce always has:

5.Farce always focuses on the inevitable frustration of human aspiration.
hoity-toity above
Hoi polloi the lower class

The first line of frustration is always the body. Farce focuses on this attack and insult on the body.

Not just physical injury we suffer on the body but those having to do with clothes styles and hair dos. Farcical actors will always exaggerate their clothing.