The Demise of Physical Comedy

Has the author of this piece never been on youtube, or worldstar, or twitter, vine, tiktok... Physical comedy still exists, the risks have just been relegated to the masses, rather than the comedian who wants to have a long career free of pain.

Further, slapstick still has a lot of life in cartoons. The old Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies were chock full of physical comedy, and modern cartoons continue to carry that torch.

Physical Comedy isn't in decline, it's just moved out of the mainstream.

> has been moralized out of existence.

I don't find slapstick, pratfalls, etc., funny anymore for different reasons. It just isn't funny. But I still enjoy Laurel & Hardy, but not for the slapstick.

It's more for the irrational logic the L&H characters use, which is on great display in the one where they move the piano up the stairs, and in the one where they sell Christmas trees door to door.

The running gags are funny because you know what is going to happen. You know the piano is going to get destroyed (who would hire L&H to move a piano, and the sound effects as the piano gets insulted are very funny in foretelling its impending demise), but somehow that makes it even funnier. You know when Ollie steps in a puddle it'll be 5 feet deep, and the funny part isn't so much him getting wet it's his long-suffering expression looking directly into the camera when he surfaces. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Monty Python's pratfalls aren't funny, either, but when they have a knight in armor fall down the stairs, it's not the fall that's funny, its the foley sound effect of a metal garbage can going down the stairs that's funny.

> a new Harold Lloyd is unthinkable because physical comedy depends on the proximity and possibility of death

I don't agree with that.

Gwyneth Paltrow is amazing at physical comedy. I can't remember the movie but there's a scene where she's getting out of a cab and she just falls over and it's friggin' hilarious. No death in sight.

Certainly death, properly appreciated, is funny. The only thing more absurd than death is sex.

The reason physical comedy is so physically dangerous is that, generally, it's only funny if you go for it and that naturally causes injuries. Like playing football, or WWE wrestling. Half-assing it isn't going to be entertaining.

In a way, physical comedy still exists, but it's not official. The popularity of "instant karma" gifs or subreddit, youtube pranks, freak accidents. I think the last great slapstick actor was Jackie Chan though. I mean the need is there, but no one caters to it.

I think physical comedy just has a broader audience, which worked well in silent movies and thereafter. The broadness is also why it’s considered cheap and used sparingly. It’s like shouting. As Friends went on and the writing got lazier every character was shouting all the time.

But a recent example of a well done pratfall I saw in a show mostly about dialog and editing was Modern Family (season 2) where Cameron turns to give his husband a kiss who pulls back (due to discomfort with public displays of affection, the theme of the episode) and Cameron overleans and falls head over heels over the back of the sofa quite roughly; he’s a big guy too. I laughed a lot partly in surprise because I basically never see a pratfall in comedy shows I like.

This article focuses wholly on the death-related or injury-related aspects of physical comedy and none of the others, for example the excellent use of a non-functional set in The Play that Goes Wrong (which The New Yorker reviews quite highly [0]).

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-play-that...

Physical comedy is still prevalent in mainstream culture. I would argue that the best comedians use it sparingly, but they do use it.

For example the show "The Trailerpark Boys" have reoccurring gags which depend on slapstick physical humour, and they always make me laugh.

The slapstick comedy of the 1930's could be viewed with no context or even sound. I think it's evolved since then, the context (characters, plot, motivations) of the physical comedy matters a lot more now...

I love this video from "Every Frame a Painting" which also mourns the loss of physical comedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOzD4Sfgag

Chris Farley as Matt Foley on Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LyqPdZjQTY I think the ending of this sketch is a kind of masterpiece.

Meredith MacNeill from the Baroness Von Sketch show does a lot of physical comedy:

https://www.facebook.com/cbc/videos/healthy-eating-is-simple...

I think Brooklyn Nine-Nine nails physical comedy for a modern era. Andy Samberg in particular has some great moments of physical comedy in it.

My suspicion is that physical comedy is less relatable because the modern audience is less acquainted with physicality in general. Slapstick doesn't have quite have the same point if you've never given or received a slap, and making light of grievous injury and workplace accidents doesn't have the same ring when those aren't everyday facts of life.

Here's my counterexample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkBb4FWHxhI

Here's where you know Bill Irwin from, depending on your age:

- voice and motions for TARS in Interstellar

- repeat character on Law and Order: SVU

- Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street

- main cast member in Legion (one of the Cary Loudermilks)

Bill is proof that physical comedy is still relevant.

Zach Galifianakis uses a fair amount of physical comedy. Some of the gags most likely to make me laugh in his show Baskets are physical, but it also has lots of situational humor and pathos. I think physical comedy used well can show what's funny about a character on a deeper internal level.

I'm puzzled by this take. Just because we don't have daredevils like Buster Keaton letting houses fall on top of them doesn't mean physical comedy is dead. Someone in the thread has already pointed out Kaitlin Olson's excellent work on IASIP and I'd second her with a recommendation for The Mick. Similarly, there's the wonderful Inside No. 9, which often features great physical performances (not all episodes are comedy though.) Just because we don't see it as often doesn't mean it's dead. The trends ebb and flow but good physical comedy still exists.

We still have some of this in the UK: Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean), Lee Evans (There's Something About Mary).

Comedy is about surprise.

As culture evolves, and as new ideas grow, you can mine intellectual and verbal discourse for comedy that will continue to be surprising.

Can you do the same with physical comedy? Are there new boundaries or new frontiers to mine there?

I'd argue physical comedy is more difficult than spoken comedy, because any fool can deliver a line but it takes a master to sell you a fall. Is it any wonder that physical comedy was more popular in the silent film era?

Gender this, ethnicity that...

I feel nothing reading that. Should I? I mean, isn't that... reinforcing isms we were striving to overcome as a society?

The article seems to have overlooked the Blue Man Group. Their schtick definitely has elements of physical comedy.

Mmmh, I don't know about this stunts arguments. Cartoons have had success with physical comedy for decades. Yet, everybody knew that no real coyote flew off a cliff...

I think that slapstick is simply overdone. We've seen so much of it that it's just not funny anymore...

A Johnny English released last year. And there’s always Pink Panther.

People are no longer satisfied by simple comedy, they don't get their kicks as easily due to faster paced life, they need more, dirty jokes etc

Good! Ill see videos where there are dozens of people just laughing at videos of people falling over or getting kicked in the nuts or something else painful to them... It's so cringe. When I see a video of a tree fall on someone's head I cringe and feel terrible, not laugh. People are psychopaths, maybe I'm just an empath.

Staged slapstick doesn't have the same appeal to a generation accustomed to people recording others doing stupid things with their cell phone, which is the new physical comedy (even though many of those viral clips are staged too).

The demise of comedy in general is a much more pertinent issue. Political correctness and outrage culture has hobbled the ability to confront hard subjects through humor.