Sullivan's Travels: Screwball Comedy

Reaching notoriety during the Great Depression, Screwball Comedies developed the idea of strong female characters in society being the equals of Men. Focusing on the film “Sullivan's Travels” this theme of equality amongst the sexist is aggrandised through use of ScrewBall techniques including use of repartee, the inclusion of a strong female role, and strategic use of slapstick between hero and heroine.

Correlating crime to its appropriate punishment often differentiates based on the crime committed and impacts felt by those affected. Criminals are not always fully punished and on occasion are able to escape persecution without receiving any measurable punishment. A theme of justice connects punishment and crime in Agatha Christie’s detective novel, Murder on the Orient Express. Set on a snow-trapped train, Christie tells the story of detective Hercule Poirot’s work to determine who murdered Mr. Ratchett. As he finds, Mr. Ratchett, a fugitive running from the murder of Daisy Armstrong under his previous name Cassetti, is murdered through a story of justice to appropriately persecute the crime Cassetti committed. The murderers follow a system of justice to validate the previous murder and right the criminals wrong. In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Hercule Poirot validates a positive vigilante justice system akin to the legal methods of trial by jury. He shows fitting punishment can be brought to criminals when due, allowing those effected to settle their ongoing grief.

Comedy and tragedy would not seem to mix well, as they have opposite conclusions of happiness or sadness. To have comic and tragic plots within one play, then, can be argued as being too distinct to be coherent. In The Insatiate Countess, however, it is the differences between the tragic plot of the countess, Isabella, and the comic plot of Abigail and Thais, that strengthen the play’s message supporting loyalty in friendship.

Screwball comedy has elements of gender identities that are contrasting to those of film noir. First, there is the charming, self-confident woman in screwball whose optimistic, carefree tendencies contrast with film noir’s self-serving, manipulative seductress. Secondly, we have the screwball male. Ultimately he ends up with the charming female, but fate does not make his endeavors easy just as it does with the noir detective (citation). Despite the character similarities, a strong sense of synergy is evident with the sarcastic humor of screwball and the cynicism of film noir. The tempo of

It effectively engages the audience throughout the comedy through the double love story line (Hitchcock,

The comedy is character organic and there are some really nice laugh-out-loud moments, especially the quip about “John Lennon” and when Beethoven says, “How do you spell Rawkus?” Beethoven interacting with nature and “orchestrating” them is delightful. The psych hospital sequences are also fun.

Launched in 1975, the musical Chicago, created by a talented pair of composers and producers that included both John Kander and Fred Ebb later known as Kander and Ebb. Kander was born on March 18, 1927 in Kansas City, Missouri. His exposure to music began at an early age as a result of having had tuberculosis as a baby. During this time, Kander was cut off and not allowed to be around other people, that separation developed his ability for sound. Kander started piano lessons at the age of six. His parents and brother would often spend evenings playing the piano and singing. Kander’s first successes came while he was a student at Oberlin College, where he attended with James Goldman, a lyricist he had known since childhood

To his credit however, Gracia does, however offer to distinguish between the sad and the funny. We laugh, claims the author because we see in it “the significance of the insignificant, while we cry because through it we grasp the insignificance of the significant”. Not a new concept states Gracia, given that we are so often faced with both emotions on a regular basis. This simple statement is the core of Gracia’s argument. By stating this, he is necessarily saying that laughter derives from a new perspective on ourselves. One that illuminates, idiosyncrasies, customs and peculiarities which are given minimal attention during day to day activities, but which have great significance. Comedy draws on these factors to identify the ordinary as extraordinary. Thus Seinfeld lives up to its moniker ‘a show about nothing’. The show necessarily underscores that the commonplace is indeed pertinent, this is reinforced by the audience being aware of the significance of what is happening while the shows characters remain in the dark.

In Parker’s film adaptation, his emphasis of the sub-plot between Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism, while becoming more entertaining, further detracts from Wilde’s concerns and only serves to strengthen the film as a romantic comedy. In Wilde’s play, Chasuble and Prism’s

This type creates humor by the plot taking sharp twists like whenever the boy was sent home but come back. “…Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.” found in paragraph 85. What this quote means is that their plan back fired on them because they were supposed to be getting money from the boy’s father but instead they paid him to take the boy back. To me this was amusing since they had worked

The director's interpretation of the story and his ability to choose actors and direct them to perform adds so much to this film. The humor—though dry and sometimes hard to get—makes this a lighthearted enjoyable

How can someone endure so much pain alone, and not be excused for poor behavior? In the novel Flight, violence, vulgarity, and humor are behavioral themes employed by author,

The play having the name Trifles is ironic in that the men assume that the women are concerned about petty womanish things that would never be of assistance to the investigation, when in fact the womanish things turn out to be the evidence that would be necessary to prosecute Mrs. Wright. The men search for what they suspect to cause the motives in similar situations with the typical mindset of a man. While the men are wasting their time thinking like typical men of the time, they ignore the obvious clues within Mrs. Wright’s daily activities, such as her sewing, the dirty table, and looking through the cabinets where they would have found the broken canary cage. As the men believe that the “women are used to worrying over trifles” it appears that these trifles actually lead to the women finding the

Today in schools we are taught about the triumphs of human civilization. Our history classes focus on our greatest accomplishments and a plummeting downfall. Wither that be during war or times of enlightenment and great thinking, we view history as our teacher. This trimester alone we learned about the great discovery of the scientific method, ideas of truth and the revolutionary ideas from the paradigm which questioned the meaning of democracy in society. The word revolutionary means: involving or causing a complete dramatic change. Engaged in or promoting political revolution. Revolutionary does not mean heading in the “right” direction. Therefore, if change in happening, revolution is occurring. Each revolution follows the same timeline.

The Complete History of Comedy (Abridged) is a play written and directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, produced by The Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC). The entire play was about a Chinese comdy book called “The Art of War” written by A Chu and a missing Chapter thirteen. This show has very simple stage set and lighting effect, also performed by only three actors. Dave Cunningham, a reviewer said, “One of the running jokes common to productions by the Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) is the claim that the trio are experts in subjects about which they are clearly clueless.” It is true, the structure of The Complete History of Comedy (Abridged) is like