The slapstick camera : Hollywood and the comedy of self-reference / Burke Hilsabeck.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hilsabeck, Burke, 1978- author.

Series:

SUNY series, horizons of cinema.

SUNY series, horizons of cinema

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Comedy films--United States--History and criticism.

Comedy films.

Motion pictures--Philosophy.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Production and direction--United States.

Television comedies--United States--History and criticism.

Television comedies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (220 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : SUNY Press, 2020.

Summary:

Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium—from Buster Keaton's encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx's lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis's film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which "film exists in a state of philosophy." By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them—the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

The Comedy of Self-Reference

Slapstick Spectators

Buster Keaton’s Theory of Film

Redeeming Vision

Bodies of Silence, Bodies of Sound

Hollywood, Television, and the Case of Ernie Kovacs

Nouvelles Blagues

The Apotheosis of Failure: Jackass

Notes

Bibliography

Index

The SUNY Series

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438477329

1438477325