Laughter & the grotesque
In my practice, I wanted to explore where the use of facial expressions specifically the types of over-exaggeration performed in the 1920s-1940s influenced the way we define “comedy.” For me, this practice started out very vague and unclear. One of the first tasks we did as a class was to write down a series of words or phrases about things I was interested in researching. Some of the research I started conducting was based on this original list. This is why in my final question or framing statement, I chose to put “comedy” in air quotes because I think in order to begin this research I first had to define comedy and laughter for myself by starting with the question what makes us laugh?
To answer this, I started with an observation task of people in different social settings and taking note of all the interactions which produced laughter. For example, some of the observations included, the spontaneity of movement or noises, uncomfortably or nervousness, and laughing based on relation meaning the group of people relate to the comedic reference of the person speaking. Another example was funny faces or exaggerated movements. This brought me to ask myself which part of the interactions I was observing caused the laughter, or was laughing a natural phenomenon like yawning or breathing?
In order to answer this question, the next phase of my research was to remove the “comedy” and just focus on laughter and laughter practices. In The One Hour Laugh, by Barbara Cleveland (www.mca.com.au, n.d.), performers stand in front of a video camera and laugh continuously for one hour. The performers are dressed in dunce hats, paper collars, and thick fake eyebrows to “enhance the absurdity of their performance, recalling the anarchic theatrics of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 and the subversive comedy of Groucho Marx.” (www.mca.com.au, n.d.) Throughout the performance, the laughter goes through many different phases from genuine to forced or strained, and sometimes even boredom. As an audience member, I found myself laughing at certain instances but similar to my original observations it was unclear whether I was laughing in response to something “comedic” the ridiculousness of the task or the exaggerated costuming of performers
Another laughter practice I researched was Lachen a durational work by Antonia Baehr (www.reactfeminism.org, n.d.). For the performance, Baehr worked in collaboration with friends asking the question “what is my main feature”(www.reactfeminism.org, n.d.) and in response, they said her laughter. Then using scores of her laughter generated by her friends she performed it live. “Baehr explores laughter as a form of expression in its own right, independent of causes, by focusing on the act itself: the sound, the form, the rhythm, and the gestures of laughter. Although comedy may not be her intention, the mechanism of shared laughter is a performative element. (www.reactfeminism.org, n.d.) This again, referenced comedy as not always the intention but the product of this performative experience.
After watching these two similar but different types of laughter practices I realized that perhaps my question was not really about laughter. In both examples, it brought up questions for me surrounding performance and laughter as being performative, which is not really what I was interested in researching. However, something that caught my attention from the One Hour Laugh, was the reference made to Groucho Marx and the exaggeration of facial expressions in the use of the costuming. At this point in my research I decided to shift gears and narrow in on the particular time period of comedy and comedic acts starting around the early 1920s and spanning until the 1940s. Something that I discovered was during this time period the use of exaggeration as a comedic device was a popular form of comedic relief in performance. I watched many examples of this referenced in part one of my digital submission. Some of these examples included “The mirror Scene” featuring the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, 1933) and Humorous faces (Library of Congress, 2009).
From here, I decided to develop a new task for generating this specific type of “comedic” facial expression. Referenced in part two of my digital submission, I developed a movement task in three parts. In the first part, I focused solely on exaggerated movement, having my dancer choose three basic movements and repeat them for 1-2 minutes 5 times. The first time, at 0% exaggeration then 20%, 50%, 80%, and 100%. In the second part of the task, I just focused on 3 facial expressions and/or emotions and again repeated them for 1-2 minutes at each percentage range. Then the last part of the task I had my dancer combine the 100% form of exaggerated movement which is the part shown in my video submission. What became interesting for me at this final stage of the research is how the comedy of exaggeration moved from funny to grotesque in a lot of different ways almost referencing the original work I researched by Baehr and Cleveland.
Library of Congress (2009) Humorous phases of funny faces. 8 October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGh6maN4l2I (7 Nov 2022).
Duck Soup (1933) Directed by Leo McCarey [Feature film]. United States: Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures.
www.mca.com.au. (n.d.). The One Hour Laugh | MCA Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/2011.18/.
www.reactfeminism.org. (n.d.). re.act.feminism - a performing archive. [online] Available at: https://www.reactfeminism.org/entry.php?l=lb&id=12&e= [Accessed 23 Oct. 2022].
