It seems that entertainment has become a hunt for comedy, which seems a shame to me. Comedy is a great tool for lightening the mood of a serious story, but too often comic relief becomes the focus of what should be a serious production. Not the focus of the writer; if the writer wants to write a comedy, by all means they should. But audiences most often take the serious and ignore it, searching only for comic relief.
This is, in a way, an attack on the high school theater scene. I love to act, sure, but I don’t always like the way the audience reacts to our productions. Take my spring one-act from last year as an example, F.J. Hartland’s “Auto-Erotic Misadventure”. In the spirit of our spring one act plays, the show had sexual themes, as the title blatantly suggests. However (and surprisingly), it was easily the most serious and dramatic of all of the one acts. I do not mean to suggest that it was a better play for this reason than the others, but it did not elicit the response it would have in a higher level of production. Sure, there were funny parts, but overall it was a drama, and though it was met with high praise, it was dominantly met with inapropraite giggles. But we can chalk that one up to an audience with a high school maturity, right?
Wrong. The truth is, this hunt for humor exists on even higher levels. Let’s take, for an example, a specific show I’ve been watching (on Sundays at 10 ‘o clock on AMC, because of course you wouldn’t know that). It is what is classified as a “dark comedy”, a genre title which I believe epitomizes all which is wrong with this hunt for humor. Dark comedies are, essentially tragedies. There rarely is any outstanding humor in them (but then again neither is there really any in most sitcoms either), but to recognize that your show is a hardcore drama is to condemn it to cancellation, especially in its early years. After all, the only channel that makes blatant claims of drama is TNT, and who the hell watches that? No, this specific show is not a comedy. Rather, it is clever in its writing, which apparently is enough justification for “comedy” classification. I heartily chuckle while watching it once, maybe twice in each hour episode, but it is still gripping. So why classify it as a “dark comedy”? Are all audiences really so addictively fixated on laughs that every performance ever must be some freak mutation of comedy, even the completely depressing?
Oh, and as far as “Auto-Erotic” goes, apparently it offended some faculty members so much that there is going to be extra supervision of our one acts this year. Needless to say, I’m pissed. The last thing I want to be cast in is your run-of-the-mill one act: a campy, horny sex comedy, but ours last year was smart and thought-provoking, and people saying differently must be taking it at crude face value.
-OSK
FCFTSOFC
These stupid abbreviations have to stop.
3 comments:
How can you say drama is on the way out when people are OBSESSED with medical dramas like House and Grey's or Crime dramas like CSI? Not to mention nip tuck and all those other FX shows, Lost, and lot's of other shows that even try to mimic dramatic movies. In the past, drama has done well too (eg the Sopranos) If drama ever had it's day, this is it baby.
Have you ever noticed that when watching Friends or Everybody Loves Raymond, there is rarely any more than a 10 second gap between canned laughter noises, even if the event or comment isn't really that funny? I'ts unnervingly regular if you listen for it...
I suppose you're right about some of those shows; it's likely that these fake comedies are the only thing I really expose myself to. And I don't necessarily think drama is on the way out so much as I think networks are afraid to package and promote it. I mean, even if your comedy is bad, the sad fact is that some group of people find your lame jokes funny. However, I'm not so sure the same thing is true for lame dramas. And the laugh ltrack thing is exactly what I'm talking about. We're basically being told something is funny to keep our interest up, even though it may not be funny in the least.
Some of those named shows have little drama in most of their episodes and are really just sitcoms in a particular setting, but that's another issue entirely.
And I'm totally with you on the auto-erotic, if the one acts end up crappy because of them I'm going to snap. Well... ok probly not, but I'll still be pissed.
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