The Physicists: Action Among Madmen

The play The Physicists started off with several pages of description of the setting. In the midst of this excessive description, the author offered the explanation "The action takes place among madmen and therefore requires a classical framework to keep it in shape." The author explains also that the play will adhere to the Aristotelian unities of place, time, and action. It is my understanding that these unities of Aristotle were typical for a tragedy. Therefore, I assume that this play will be somewhat tragic.
For me, the tragedy came not from the events but from the setting. All of the action, that is, all of the acts were set in the same dreary sitting room. I think the best description of this room is claustrophobic. When reading, I scrunched up my shoulders because even through the pages I could feel myself being stuck in the tiny room. The three pages of description suddenly seemed well done. Although eerie, the room was the perfect place for this comedy. It was the room, in fact, that helped me to see the humour in the play more than anything. This classical setting helped to draw out the satire in The Physicists. If the play had taken place in a larger, less eccentric room, the acts of the alleged madman wouldn't be satiric but rather only strange.
In the back of the book, there are listed twenty one points to the physicists including the points that playwrights and physicists are not able to avoid paradoxes. The cramped quarters of the room also lend themselves nicely to the paradoxes in the play.
In conclusion, the setting in the play, the sitting room in the madhouse, is the perfect setting for a play that is tragically comedic, stuffed with mad physicists and rife with paradoxes.

Tropic Thunder--for an out-of-box comedy experience!

My suggestion for a film to watch is Tropic Thunder.


The plot centers around a group of spoiled actors who are lost in the jungle while making a war movie. Ben Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, an almost washed up hero who earlier failed in his bid to win an Oscar while portraying Simple Jack, a character with an intellectual disability. Speedman’s portrayal of Simple Jack is featured as a movie within a movie. There were even fake websites and a “mockumentary”--Rain of Madness (which parodied the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse) for this movie, which was loosely based on the filming of Apocalypse Now, and how difficult the filming was for Francis Ford Coppola in 1979. 

The word “retard” is used 16 times in this movie. 

Also in the movie: 

• Mocking references to gay and fat people. 

• One character portrayed as a white man who has darkened his skin to play a black man. A black character criticizes him several times for impersonating a black man. 

• Extensive use of vulgar humor and profanity. 

• Many jokes about the shallowness, self-involvement and ignorance of actors and Hollywood executives in general.

I thought the film was hilarious, but I am sure many, many people might not like the film.

I was inspired to choose this movie after I saw an article on the news this week about people being outraged over Nick Cannon wearing white-face.

Nick Cannon on CBS

Seriously?!?!?

In the 1800s, play authors were ridiculing the government and the justice system, making fun of women and children being assaulted and potentially raped, and laughing at people dying, but there are still people in society today who make a big deal out of comedy and theater. Shakespeare performed plays dressed as women because females were not allowed on stage, and yet many people still criticize and alienate cross-dressers. How does that happen, when a society seems too go backward instead of progressing forward?

I think the lines are blurred as far as comedy and what is real for people. In today’s society, we mock people for everything. Our motto in comedy is pretty much ‘anything goes’, but there are always those 'political correctness' nazis who say, “The nerve of you people!” Needless to say, hypocrisy runs rampant in modern culture, and is widely acceptable, but a good comedy, created just to make people laugh is horrible! (insert sarcasm here).

Tropic Thunder breaks every ‘politically correct’ rule known in our culture, and I think this is an interesting movie to analyze for our class, because it gives us a hint of how viewing audiences may have felt during the eras many of our class plays were written.

I enjoy stepping out of my box, and I feel we have done that several times in this class. Keeping with the spirit of out-of-box experiences, I think this movie has all the awkwardness and uncomfortableness in the name of comedy that we can stand, and that many plays we have studied exemplified at the time they were performed.

My only concern is, this movie is quite vulgar. I wouldn’t want to offend anyone.

Naturalistic Comedy

Hauptmann’s play, The Beaver Coat, is written based on the concept of combining early European Naturalism and Realism into a comedy based on everyday life.  The author uses infinitesimal details, down to how people walk and stand, to describe the scene and set the tone for the play. Many, many elements that are defined are not necessarily pertinent to the story, but in the big picture, those details help focus the reader on the way Prussian people lived during the 1880s, and the activities that happen while looking for the truth becomes more important than actually finding the truth. I think this is one reason there is no definite ending. Sarcasm is much more common in this work than a straight answer, and people’s reactions to everyday actions are very comical. Mother Wolff is portrayed as a female ‘Robin Hood’ archetype, ‘just doing what she has to, to survive’, for herself and her family. This lets the audience be more vested in the story and the outcome, although the lack of finale is almost annoying. I feel the author portrayed this story as real life would normally happen, because real life goes on, and people find different, never-ending paths in their journey. That is extremely natural and realistic.

I replied to an earlier post that it was a little disappointing to read a story with so much detail and nothing left to the imagination, but I feel Hauptmann’s use of naturalism, realism, and comedy combined is brilliant, and really makes up for the hanging ending that the audience is not accustomed to in other comedies during that time.