“When humour can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it’s just wonderful.”
Francois Truffaut
I propose that dark humour finds its anchor in three different areas which go against the conventions of typical comedy – death, man’s cruelty to others and natural absurdity. I will devote particular research to the screenwriting techniques in each of these areas.
i. Death
People tend to treat death with great delicacy, which is why we feel uncomfortable when it is confronted head on. Joel and Ethan Coen have never been known for following Hollywood conventions, and their film Fargo (1996) is no exception.
A paid kidnapper has just killed his partner and his client’s wife. He is in the process of disposing of their bodies by feeding their body parts through a wood chipper in an almost casual manner. As can be seen in Apropos of Nothing (Buckner, 2014), the humour here is derived from the apparent familiarity of the scene. At first glance, he is dressed like an outdoorsman or a lumberjack and it seems like he is chipping wood. However we see that the “chipped wood” is a sickening red colour. We then notice the second body lying on the ground beside him in a pool of blood. His casual nature is shocking as it totally contradicts the situation, at which we are looking. The blood is on snow to make it stand out and to emphasise it. This should be the first thing we notice because of how blindingly obvious it is. However, it isn’t. The kidnapper carries out this gruesome task with the air of a man who is literally chipping wood, therefore we initially think nothing of it. Bloody murder is presented here in a casually over the top manner.
Another aspect of the humour within this scene is the emptiness. The kidnapper stands before a dead body feeding his partners leg into a wood chipper wearing a goofy looking hat. There is no redemption. There is no lesson to be learned. These deaths aren’t even harrowing. They are pathetic! Pointless! The complete lack of reason and understanding within the plot of Fargo is why these murders are utterly meaningless. We are shocked at the sudden deaths, but we don’t really care that much about the character making this very darkly humorous.
ii. Cruelty
The second situation in which dark humour is often found is in people’s cruelty to each other. In nature, animals act by instinct to get what they need to survive. They are not cruel by nature. Only people seem to have the capacity to be cruel for whatever reasons they imagine. Again we are shocked about how people can be indiscriminately cruel towards others, but we worry that deep inside we could be like that too. When the cruelty is told with humour it plays with our emotions. We know we shouldn’t laugh but we can’t help ourselves.
Again in Fargo, the two kidnappers have just made their money from the crime. They are arguing over something trivial - who gets to take the better car. It’s a totally verbal argument, there is no physical fighting. They had been arguing throughout the film and this looked like another verbal spat just like the others. Then out of the blue, one kidnapper lifts an axe and kills his partner. It is an example of extreme cruelty as the man had no chance for redemption, he was instantly wiped out. We should feel horrified and shocked by it, but at the same time, it amuses us because it is so unnecessary and we didn’t see it coming. This extreme cruelty is so unexpected that it leaves us in shock trying to catch up with the plot.
The directorial skills of Joel Coen are put to great effect here. In one camera shot, probably Steadicam, we follow one of the kidnappers as he angrily leaves the other one behind. He walks away. This motion that the camera takes lulls the viewer into a false sense of security. We assume that we are safe, yet suddenly we are confronted with the cruelty of a man, who for the entire movie we have been unable to take seriously. Despite the shocking nature of this scene, the Coens still squeeze in the humour with subtlety as the kidnapper still makes time to pull on his stupid hat and gloves. To increase the shock factor further, the editor, Roderick Jaynes (a pseudonym for Joel and Ethan Coen), immediately cuts to black to emphasise the character’s sudden death and to allow the audience time to process what they have just witnessed.
Banksy’s Follow your Dreams work shows an initial happy, life-affirming optimism being dashed. The billposter has pasted a cancelled notice over it to indicate that the government, the system, or society itself has cruelly beaten us down so that we can no longer expect to realise our dreams. The billposter’s face shows resignation, defeat and hopelessness. The cruelty of the implied oppression and the fun of the billposter’s action produce another shocking piece of dark humour.
iii. Absurdity
The final situation, which often produces dark humour, is absurdity. Filmmakers present to us unbelievable situations or coincidences. Sometimes they might introduce everyday things out of their usual context. The thing itself may be totally normal, but the context gives it a certain unsettling strangeness, which shifts us out of our comfortable viewing perspective. When this happens within an otherwise serious situation, the contrast emphasises the absurdity and makes us laugh. Director, David Lynch, says it like this;
“I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.”
In 1996, Danny Boyle released Trainspotting (1996), a harrowing film about a drug addict in Edinburgh. When I say harrowing, it is also very funny in places, with the humour cleverly being used to emphasise the depressing nature of the subject. This particular scene shows Renton hanging out with his mates and playing football. It also shows them being chased presumably after shoplifting. These are the sorts of things that we might expect a gang of youths to get up to in any inner city environment.
Renton’s voiceover talks about ‘choosing life’ and gives examples of the sorts of things that people chase after in modern life e.g. “Choose a big f****** television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.” Gradually throughout this section we start to hear that he is disillusioned with these things. He feels that chasing after them is absurd.
However, then we see him passing out after taking heroin. The voiceover explains “I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” Chasing after life is absurd to him, and at times understandably so, but passing out on heroin seems even more absurd to us. Here, the humour comes from the fact that he rejects one absurdity for another even more absurd course of action.
In the David Lynch television series, Twin Peaks (1990), FBI agent Dale Cooper is in a small town investigating a horrific murder. The details surrounding the case are gory, sinister, puzzling and maybe point to a murderer living among the townsfolk. He visits the local Police Sheriff and they go into an interview room to talk. On the table is lying a moose head. It is totally incongruous with the gravity of their conversation and remains in the foreground throughout the scene. An explanation is given that “it fell down” but it is never mentioned or acknowledged again.
We are trying to listen to the case details and get clues to the complex plot, but all the while our eyes are drawn to the moose head. The absurdity is in the contrast between the serious police investigation and the complete randomness of the moose head. Lynch often attaches meaning, however tenuous, to visual statements like this, but here it seems to be completely pointless. It is absurd for its own sake.
Watching the scene, we assume that there will be a return to the moose head and there is going to be a reason behind it, because that is the way Hollywood usually works. But no! The head is never mentioned again. It served no purpose within the narrative. We find ourselves laughing at the moose head, when we should be absorbing the serious plot points in the background conversation.
Detectorists (2014) is a sitcom written, directed and starring Mackenzie Crook. The main character, Andy, is a detectorist. That is, he uses a metal detector to search for treasure. He seems like a complete loser, spending all his spare time any energy walking through fields sweeping the ground with his detector. His life seems boring.
He is studying archaeology and takes various low paid jobs for living expenses and to fund his hobby. We see him briefly at each of his jobs, and each one coincidentally features him employing the same sweeping motion he uses when he is detecting e.g. vacuuming hospital floors, strimming grass verges etc. His jobs are not connected in any way with his hobby, but they all look the same. We want him to experience the great one in a million discovery that will change his life. But when we see how his jobs reflect his detecting we see that he is probably destined to sweep fields until the day he dies.
Banksy’s piece Anarchist and Mother is brilliantly absurd. We see an anarchist going out for his day’s anarchy and his mum is dressing him before he goes out, as if he might catch a cold if she doesn’t dress him properly. She has even made him a packed lunch to make sure he eats properly. He will need to keep his energy levels up, if he is to engage in anarchy all day. Absurd dark humour at its best!
It is notoriously difficult to describe in a few short sentence what defines humour, let alone dark humour. However the examples I have studied show clearly how it is manifested in the final artwork.
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