Critical Thinking Connection - Bergson, Comic Phenomenon, and Laughter

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While the image of a person tripping and falling might be laughable to some people at certain times in their lives, I find that as I grow older, I find trips and spills more disturbing than comic in nature.

How is it that the scene that can be so ridiculous to some can cause concern in others? How would Bergson answer this question?

Critical Thinking Connection - The Venetian Twins

While reading your posts this evening, I was struck by another connection to a recent event that might help us explore the trope of mistaken identity within dramatic comedies.

On Monday, I saw the headline below:

Here's a link to the video
Now, I am sure this is not at all a laughing matter for the reporter, though Samuel L. Jackson manages to play the moment for some modicum of comic effect, but does this mix-up of identity work in the same way as the Tonino/Zanetto confusion in The Venetian Twins? Wherein does the difference lie? How would you alter this situation for it to work within a comedy frame?



Similarly, given the following plot synopsis of the Hitchcock thriller "North by Northwest," shouldn't it be a comedy? Why doesn't the plot sound like a comedy? How does the trope of "mistaken identities" need to function within a text for it to earn the label "comedy"?

A suave, succesful New York advertising executive finds himself, through a case of mistaken identity, embroiled in a web of intrigue and murder that takes him across the country to prove his innocence to the police and get an evil crime syndicate, looking for a lost microfilm, off his tail.--Google

Critical Thinking Connection - Carnival Plays

Red Guards — high school and university students — wave copies of Chairman Mao Zedong's Little Red Book during a parade in June 1966 in Beijing's streets at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. More than 1 million people are believed to have died during the decade-long upheaval. (Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images)

While listening to the radio yesterday, I heard a report on China coming to terms with a bloody period in its history called the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which was initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong and enforced by his Red Guards.

One image from the report struck me as particularly cogent to our discussion of the inverted hierarchies in Sachs' Carnival plays: students attacking teachers. What sets this image of inversion apart from the content of the Carnival plays? Why does this action come across as particularly violent and revolutionary when much of the action in Sachs' texts seems so light-hearted and humorous? How does a comedy have to present an inverted hierarchy for it to "work" within the text?