Popular Film and Television Comedy

Add to my list

by Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Comedy/Humor

Keywords

comedy

Publishing date

2016

Publisher

Routledge

Collection

Popular Fictions Series

1st publishing

1990

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 304 pages
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches (14 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-138-14217-6

User Ratings

(0 vote)

X

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Book Presentation:
Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik take as their starting point the remarkable diversity of comedy's forms and modes - feature-length narratives, sketches and shorts, sit-com and variety, slapstick and romance. Relating this diversity to the variety of comedy's basic conventions - from happy endings to the presence of gags and the involvement of humour and laughter - they seek both to explain the nature of these forms and conventions and to relate them to their institutional contexts. They propose that all forms and modes of the comic involve deviations from aesthetic and cultural conventions and norms, and, to demonstrate this, they discuss a wide range of programmes and films, from Blackadder to Bringing up Baby, from City Limits to Blind Date, from the Roadrunner cartoons to Bless this House and The Two Ronnies. Comedies looked at in particular detail include: the classic slapstick films of Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin; Hollywood's 'screwball' comedies of the 1930s and 1940s; Monty Python, Hancock, and Steptoe and Son. The authors also relate their discussion to radio comedy.

About the authors:
Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik both lecture in Film Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Press Reviews:
`Few books have been written about comedy, and this one sets out to redress the balance, defining comedy and trying to understand what makes a particular comedy popular. From sitcoms to stand-up, all types of comedy come under scrutiny by Neale and Krutnik.' - Press and Journal

See the publisher website: Routledge