From: Sally Manton smanton@hotmail.com
Can I ask something of everyone? Does the use of violence as humour - as
'a
source of innocent merriment' - also have disturbing, if different, overtones? I'm not so much talking about real cartoon violence a la the Road Runner (which I like, though I always disliked Tom & Jerry) but that using film and therefore real people - Monty Python and A Fish Called
Wanda
come immediately to mind, but I'm sure there are others (again, graphic violence isn't my thing, so I don't watch a lot of these).
I've been a vegetarian for nearly twenty years, was vegan for about seven of them. I've marched through cities on animal rights demos. I've stood in the freezing cold leafletting against cosmetics testing, and been hauled out of shop for protesting against fur (though it wasn't until we all sat down in the aisle that we realised the shop only sold *fake* fur, which only goes to show the value of pre-mission planning). I thought the violence against dogs in A Fish Called Wanda was absolutely hilarious.
Someone else mentioned Brazil. This awesome film could only work by extracting humour from the violence, since its purpose is to illustrate the absurdity of a system that uses violence as a de facto means of preserving itself. It mirrors the disturbing reality by ridiculing it, in a thoughtful and provocative way.
So I'd say that humour and violence definitely can go together. Sometimes humour can bring home the reality of violence better than a grimly naturalistic portrayal, by making it bearable to watch (Tarantino does this particularly well).
And it's an area I *don't* recall seeing a lot of B7 fiction in
Try Passable Features in Horizon 19, by a certain Ellen A Rufkin. Packed with gratuitous cruelty to cute furry animals, and lots and lots of Avon angst. Mind you, some people persist in seeing it as a pisstake.
Neil