Is there such a field as historical social psychology? Because if there is, I think someone should do a study of how and why humor has gotten more sophisticated through the years.
Now before you guffaw too loudly, I do realize that there countless examples of current highly unsophisticated humor around. But I just watched "Bringing Up Baby" and I'm convinced that early movies simply weren't as complex and nuanced as many of them are now.
"Bringing Up Baby" stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. I think I'd seen it once before (now that I've watched it, it feels vaguely familiar). But I got it from Netflix this time because of how it was talked up on a set of Katharine Hepburn postage stamps I bought recently. They made it sound like her signal achievement. Which is sad. Because it's basically a ridiculous caper movie in which she pretty much acts surreally hysterical most of the time. It's not very funny. At least not to me.
But I wonder. Were things more rigid back then? Were social categories so much stricter that these caper stories seemed the height of hilarity? I just think someone should do a study of how the current state of a culture affects its humor.
Part of humor is surprise. This movie was highly predictable, to me. But would it have been to its original audience in 1938? The medium was relatively new. When a medium is new, are the mechanisms for giving an audience the satisfaction of being in on a surprise more heavy-handed than they have to be now that we're so familiar with film devices?
I have had this experience quite a few times, where I hear such incredible things about some classic film, and then it disappoints. I'm not very good at appreciating films for the impact they had when they first came out. I am not a product of 1938.
Anyway, if anyone knows of any historical studies of humor, please let me know.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment