Dumb and Dumber & Plautus

17 April 2008

“Qhardo il gioco e finito, it pedino e il re si ritoria nella stessa scatolo.” Italian Proverb
Roughly translates to: “When the game is over the King and Pawn go into the same box.”

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matt. 19: 20

“The gods only smile when men pray to them for wealth.” Japanese proverb

I.DUMB AND DUMBER & The Big Question: “Who is dumbest?”
Eirons are relatively egoless and the comic spirit is able to use them to advance.

Americans make up about 1/60th of the world's population.
Americans control 1/3rd of the world's resources.

Within the United States the top 1 percent control about 45 percent of wealth.

Cuter ironies:

1.ExxonMobile CEO retired with 147,000 for each day he served. This places him in the top 1 percent. Meanwhile, thanks to global warming the polar bear and others species, they. People like CEO of ExxonMobile spend their winters in places like Aspen, CO—where Harry and Lloyd are trying to plug-in to society.
Harry and Lloyd—two eirons—want to become alazons in Aspen and join the self-destructive society.

When we first see Lloyd—it is obvious his Alpha-Chimp syndrome. While working as a limo driver he pretends to be a limo passenger in an attempt to “pickup” an Austrian woman.

Providence—God's grace and foresight.

Harry and Lloyd will continue to be lost but lovable fools—this is the film's true happy ending.

The Aspenoides are the dumbest. The social elite are the target of the film's critique. While most audiences probably miss this point, being blinded by the trees and missing the forest.

Even thought the film goes out of its way to reveal the sad state of affairs the Aspenoids find themselves in. Their very wealth poisons their personal relationships and leads them to the very self-destructive hypocrisy.

Mr. Andre—the central alazon is a very close friend of the Swansonn family is a replication of what Lloyd attempts when he tries to pick up the Austrian woman.

Wealth tends to create isolated, distant individuals.

In terms in of wealth blinding the Aspenoids blinding of their own self-destructive hypocrisy. The behavior of the Aspenoids has lead to the very endangerment of Snow Owls.
Mr. Andre leads them into celebrating the the Snow Owl, his henchman is decapitating off of poor little “Petie”

Later the show Current Affairs leads the hunt for the person who sold dead1 Petie to a blind boy. While 1Mr1. 1An1dr1e 1an1d1 hi1s 1gu1ys1' 1be1ha1vr1io1s 1go1 u1nn1ot1ic1ed1.

INTERVENTIO OF CHANCE: Lloyd sees Mary Swansonn leave the briefcase behind crashing the limo.

What Harry and Lloyd have at the end of the film is what the Aspenoids never have—true friendship and love.

The hermaion is the briefcase.

II.Plautus & New Comedy (p. 41 in course notes)
Menander is the one who developed the “new comedy”

The new comedy features:

1.NO frontal assaults on authority
2.2. NO personal attacks on public figures.
3.3. NO social disruptive figures
4.4. NO moving of social status by end of plays
Rationalism assumes skepticism. Knowledge does not come from divine sources nor from handed-down sources.

The idea was that all men (not women) were capable of rational thought.

III.New Comedy Love & “Stock Characters”
Specific examples of character types or stereotypes appearing in different guises and becoming regular conventions of the new comedy.

Literary or theatrical conventions recur repeatedly in works of different types.

ARDUOUS LOVERS—lovers that the comic spirit must be united by the end of the work. They represent the happy conclusion.

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.