Dark comedy and the genre model

A Tragedy is a reminder that to be human is to be weak. These stories deal with the loss and pain of the human experience, and are reflections of our own struggles.

The comedy could almost be considered the opposite of a tragedy. Rather than a reflection, comedy is a celebration of the

It is the Human nature to disassociate, which causes the duality of an extreme situation. It is this duality that Dark Comedies use to make us feel uneasy about what we‘re laughing at. A Dark Comedy is one which deals with somewhat taboo ideas such as insanity, murder, ideas not usually found in a comedy, and makes light of them. A good example of this is Death to Smoochie, a movie starring Edward Norton and Robin Williams. In this movie Robin Williams plays a deranged, psychotic ex kids-show host who attempts to kill Smoochie to get his job back. What sounds like the makings of a Tragedy is made Comedic by the extremes present in the personality of Williams’ character. The situation seems so unlikely that we take the permission to laugh. In essence the Dark Comedy is an example of Tragedy to the extreme, probably unrealistic, degree. This is what makes it funny. The ending of Death to Smoochie is in fact happy, but many Dark Comedies’ endings are not this cut and dry. The Cable Guy starring Jim Carrey is one such movie. In this movie Carrey plays a psychotic cable guy raised by TV, which he now hates, who just wants a real friend. He then meets a customer who he befriends and more or less stalks. This sounds like a very scary real-life situation, but is considered funny because of the absurd way in which Carrey presents himself. The Cable Guy’s life is extremely Tragic yet we take the permission to laugh, because of its seeming absurdity. This movie ends with Carrey’s character falling onto a cable transmission antenna, knocking out all of the cable in the city, and dieing. Even though he dies he, temporarily, kills TV. In death he is free from his Tragic life and the thing he hates the most, TV. The Tragedy is that he dies without a friend. Not your usual happy ending a comedy would have.

One may argue that a Dark Comedy is a Tragicomedy renamed, but this would be a false argument. A Dark Comedy has a clear sense of resolution unlike the Tragicomedy. A Tragicomic story has both happy and sad, but its humor is of the comedic form, not of the extremely T

Some topics in this essay:
Comic Comedy, Dark Comedy, Dark/Black Comedy, Obsession Distortion, Comedy Tragedy, Tragic Stooges, Romeo Juliet, Cable Guy’s, Jim Carrey, Extreme Comedy, dark comedy, extremely tragic, permission laugh, genre model, tragic life, example tragedy, human experience, human nature, tragic comedic, free tragic life, leads conclusion, example tragedy purely,