A man strikes another in the back with an ax, beats him over the head with a pan, smashes his hand with a sledgehammer, and slams a wrench into his face.
This does not sound like the start of a funny story to me; it sounds like abuse.
I'm a little squeamish when it comes to violence. I'm too empathetic. When I see someone, for example, get his hand cut off on the screen, I grab my wrist. In class, during the umbrella scene, I was holding my stomach; this was the worst scene because I couldn't see the Stooge (Curly, I think) beneath the sand. Was he okay? Dead? Screaming with a mouthful of sand?
In a much earlier post (my first or second), I commented that I didn't find slapstick very funny. I also noted that I thought slapstick was funnier when it was written or when it was a cartoon. Then I posited that perhaps this was because I could imagine it rather than see something so outlandish and unbelievable on screen. Now, I have a different theory; cartoons don't get hurt.
I understand, of course, that the Stooges are not actually hurt, but they are actually people. This reminds me of America's Funniest Home Videos. I hardly ever laugh at them, especially since they've become less babies and animals doing cute things and more people falling off of roofs, riding bikes over cliffs, and getting accidentally hit with baseball bats.
Pain isn't particularly funny to me, and violence is flat out disturbing. It was mildly amusing to see one of the Stooges get accidentally (and usually less severely) whacked with a random object. It was much less amusing to see Mo (right? I don't have the names straight) beat his "friends" and threaten to "murder" them or "chop his head off."
Does anyone else feel this way? Is violence funny? Is it okay because they're not actually hurt? I remember watching the Three Stooges as a kid; is that the right impression to send to children?
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I think we can both agree that pain and violence have come a long way. It is appropriate to begin the pain train back in the Stooges era. This sort of pain has transgressed threw the generations and into today’s culture. Kid’s back then didn’t mind indulging themselves with senseless pain, also known as the Stooges. But today, pain has taken a turn for the worst. I always hear about violence studies in children. For instance, studies on children subjected to violent movies and games versus those who are not. Obviously it does not pertain to comedy, but violence plays a major role in today’s society; way more prominent than in our parents’. Today there is Halo, Mortal Kombat, Gears of War, and all their sequels to invade children’s minds. I am not going to say I wasn’t apart of that era, because I loved the X-Men. What does that mean for today’s kids? While our parents were watching the Stooges and I Love Lucy, today we are watching the WWE and COPS.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. So our violence has switched genres (and gotten progressively worse)?
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a review about one of the more recent Grand Theft Auto games. The author was convinced that because the game added repercussions to the violent decisions a player could make that it was more morally sound.
I'm not sure I buy this argument, but there does seem to be something inherently troubling about finding violence funny. To me, it's even more disturbing than just finding it interesting. When we watch COPS, for instance, the violence has a different effect than it does when it's seated in humor. (Not that I think it's any better for a child to watch COPS than to watch the Three Stooges.)