Black comedy

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This article is about a tone of comedy. For information about U.S. film and TV comedies featuring characters of African ethnicity, see Blaxploitation and Black sitcom. For Shakespeare's dark comedies, see Problem plays. For the one-act play, see Black Comedy.

Black comedy, also known as black humor, is a subgenre of comedy and satire where topics and events normally treated seriously – death, mass murder, sickness, madness, terror, drug abuse, rape, etc. – are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms created to avoid possible racial overtones include dark humor, morbid humor, gallows humor and off-color humor

Black humor is similar to sick humor, such as dead body jokes. However, in sick humor most of the humor comes from shock and revulsion; black humor usually includes an element of irony, or even fatalism. This particular brand of humor can be exemplified by a scene in the play Waiting for Godot: A man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down.

In America, black comedy as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers such as Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison and Eric Nicol have written and published novels, stories and plays where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. An anthology edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, titled "Black Humor," assembles many examples of the genre.

The 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb presents one of the most well-known examples of black comedy. The subject of the film is nuclear war and the extinction of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with gravity and seriousness, creating suspense over the efforts to avoid a nuclear war. But Dr. Strangelove plays the subject for laughs; for example, in the film, the fail-safe procedures designed to prevent a nuclear war are precisely the systems that ensure that it will happen. The film Fail-Safe, produced simultaneously, tells a largely identical story with a distinctly grave tone; the film The Bed-Sitting Room, released six years later, treats post-nuclear English society in an even wilder comic approach.

Today, black comedy can be found in almost all forms of media.

Contents

1 Works
2 People
3 See also

Works

Literature

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J.G. Ballard
Candide by Voltaire
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, and his other works.
God's Other Son by Don Imus
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, a series of children's books about three orphans who go through many tragic and unfortunate experiences.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, an anti-war speculative fiction novel loosely based on Vonnegut's experiences as an American POW.
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
The Toy Collector by James Gunn
most of the short stories contained in the collections Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
any of the six wartime aviation novels by Derek Robinson: Goshawk Squadron, Piece of Cake, War Story, A Good Clean Fight, Hornet's Sting, and Damned Good Show
M*A*S*H by Robert Hooker
How to Rent a Negro by damali ayo
The works of John Webster, an English dramatist who excelled in blackly comic, bloody tragedies.
Most works by Ambrose Bierce, a cynical American satirist.
Herbert West: Re-Animator by HP Lovecraft.
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.
Most works by Steve Aylett contain very morbid but witty humour.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., a post-apocalyptic novel that combines dark humor with more serious discussion of the consequences of nuclear war and the fallen nature of man.
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov, a tragicomedy about a middle-aged man who has sex with a 12-year old girl.

Films

A Bucket of Blood, directed by Roger Corman, is about a waiter who becomes a success in the art world after accidentally killing his landlady's cat and covering it up in plaster to hide the evidence. When he is pressured to deliver similar work, people start mysteriously disappearing. Remade in 1995.
About Schmidt A Depressed Jack Nicholson goes on a trip to stop his daughter's marriage
After Hours
American Beauty is about Lester Burnham's (Kevin Spacey) last few weeks on Earth, with storylines of affairs, paedophilia, drugs and homophobia.
American Psycho is about a self-obsessed yuppie serial killer, played by Christian Bale.
The Aristocrats is a documentary about comedians who deliver their own versions of world's dirtiest joke, too extreme to be performed in public, called The Aristocrats.
Arsenic and Old Lace is about a pair of murdering old aunts discovered by their nephew, played by Cary Grant.
Bad Santa is about a wretched, drunk, perverse thief who poses as Santa Claus to rip off department stores.
The Bed-Sitting Room, about life in England after a nuclear war.
The Big Lebowski, in which the shiftless "Dude" deals with bowling, nihilists, kidnapping, death, and having his favorite rug urinated on.
Black Cat, White Cat
Blazing Saddles, a comedy that makes fun of racism, about a clever black slave who is made the sheriff of a small Western town to drive out its citizens and ends up winning them over.
Boogie Nights
Brassed Off is a film about the brass band of a Yorkshire mining village, in the days when the mine closes. Those not familiar with the problems covered in the film often mistake it for a standard comedy film.
Brazil a comedic vision of a nightmarish 1984-like world, featuring terrorism, torture and paperwork.
The Cable Guy, a film starring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick about a man stalked by the psychotic cable company worker he makes friends with.
Catch-22, a film about the madness of war, based on the novel by Joseph Heller.
Children Of The Revolution, about the 'love child' of Josef Stalin.
The Chumscrubber
Citizen Ruth, a satire about the abortion rights battle.
A Clockwork Orange
Crazy People
La Comunidad
Dead Man On Campus, about the urban legend of a roommate's suicide and the resulting perfect grades in college
Death Becomes Her, about the downsides of immortality.
Death Race 2000
Death To Smoochy, a corrupt former children's TV icon plots revenge against his fuzzy purple replacement.
Dead Alive
The Doom Generation, three young drifters go on a killing spree.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a satirical film about an insane American General who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, filmed during the Cold War.
Duplex, a couple moves in and they find themselves stuck with an old lady who has a knack for making their lives miserable.
Eating Raoul, about a prudish couple who kill rich swingers by luring them to their apartment.
Election, a high school teacher attempts to sabotage an overachieving student's election campaign.
Envy, a man accidentally kills his friend's horse and tries to get money for its return.
Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2
Falling Down, a victim of the late 1980s recession suddenly becomes a vigilante as he encounters social annoyances and injustices during a walk across LA.
Fargo, a debt-ridden car salesman hires incompetent criminals to kidnap his wife in order to get a ransom from his rich father-in-law.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, semi-autobiographical film of Hunter S. Thompson starring Johnny Depp directed by Terry Gilliam
Fight Club, friends form "fight clubs" to escape their mundane lives. Adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk.
Four Rooms, four vignettes centered around a hapless bell boy, involving witchcraft, a rotting corpse, and a severed finger.
Ghost World
Grace Quigley, a film about euthanasia
Grosse Pointe Blank, about a hitman who returns to his hometown to attend his high school reunion.
Happiness deals unflinchingly with subjects designed to make audiences squirm (from suicide, rape, murder, pedophilia, and childhood masturbation). The treatment of the subjects is blunt, but also gleefully absurdist.
Harold and Maude, in which an alienated young man obsessed with staged suicides and the funerals of strangers falls in love with a vivacious octogenarian.
The Hospital, the story of a chief of surgery who is trying to figure out why a number of hospital employees begin dying under strange circumstances.
Heathers, about a disaffected, jaded couple who start killing members of popular cliques at their high school.
Ichi the Killer, about a pair of savage killers, one a sadist and the other a masochist.
Intolerable Cruelty About a divorce attorney and a gold-digger.
Kind Hearts and Coronets, Ealing comedy in which the main character assassinates members of an aristocratic family to inherit a Dukedom.
The King of Comedy
The Ladykillers' (1955) and (2004) versions; a criminal professor tries to perform a sophisticated robbery while fooling an old woman.
The Last Supper
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, about three orphans who go through many tragic experiences.
The Life Aquatic Bill Murray leads a group of explorers on a revenge mission to kill a shark.
The Little Shop of Horrors, also directed by Roger Corman, features a nerd who resorts to murder in order to feed his blood-hungry talking plant. Remade as a musical, which later became a film in 1986.
Little Murders, written by Jules Feiffer
The Lindsay Anderson trilogy of If..., O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.
Live Freaky!, Die Freaky!
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a Guy Ritchie film about the seedy underside of London crime.
Lolita, a film about a man who develops an obsession with a 14-year old girl. Co-written and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who adapted the notoriously controversial novel by Vladimir Nabokov, who also worked on the screenplay.
LolliLove, a mockumentary about a couple who start a charity to help the homeless, but who are really interested in only themselves.
Loot by Joe Orton, dramatist of several black comedies.
Lord of War, Nicholas Cage in a film portrayal of the gun running underworld.
The Loved One, film version of the Waugh novel.
MASH, in which the medical staff of a Korean War field hospital engage in silly mischief to alleviate the horror of war.
Man Bites Dog, a disturbing mockumentary about a merciless hitman who takes a camera crew on a tour of his routine.
Meet the Feebles
Monsieur Verdoux, about a suave serial killer who commits his crimes to support his family.
Natural Born Killers, about serial killers who become folk heroes as a result of media coverage of their crimes.
New Year's Day, two teens make a suicide pact and live their remaining days to the fullest.
Orgazmo, about a young Mormon who is recruited to act in porn movies.
Penn & Teller Get Killed, in which the comedians/magicians are tracked by an assassin trying to kill them.
The Player, a satirical look at a Hollywood studio executive who is blackmailed for murder by an unknown screenwriter.
Prizzi's Honor, in which a Mafia hitman and hitwoman fall in love.
Pulp Fiction, about the misadventures of thugs, whose stories weave into the same destiny.
Quick Change
Ravenous a comedy/western/horror about a group of American garrison soldiers who become cannibals.
Return of the Living Dead
Requiem for a Dream
Roger & Me, in which director Michael Moore explores the decline of Flint, Michigan after General Motors CEO Roger Smith closed the city's auto plants and laid off thousands of employees.
The Royal Tenenbaums A family of child-progidies grow-up and try to accept their estranged father.
The Ruling Class, about an insane British nobleman who thinks he's Jesus.
Rushmore, the story of a prep school boy who competes with a middle-aged man for the attention of a teacher.
Serial Mom, about a suburban housewife who happens to be a serial killer
Schizopolis, about a man working for a Scientology-like self-help corporation called Eventualism
Series 7: The Contenders, about a reality TV game show where the contestants kill each other
S.O.B., about a film director who turns a family-oriented flop musical into a hit psycho-sexual thriller.
Shallow Grave
Shaun of the Dead
Slither, a bloody horror-comedy about an alien plague taking over a small town.
Snatch a collection of inter-connecting mafia stories in London.
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
Swimming with Sharks
Thank You for Smoking
Throw Momma from the Train, a comedic retelling of Hitchcock's thriller Strangers on a Train.
To Be or Not to Be, about the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II.
To Die For, about murder and pedophilia.
Trainspotting, about the adventures of a group of heroin addicts.
Tromeo and Juliet, a B-movie version of the Shakespeare play set in modern day manhattan, with slapstick violence, wife-beating, and incest.
Very Bad Things
Wag the Dog, a story about a fake war, designed to salvage the election for a president who had sex with a young woman.
The War of the Roses, about a couple going through a nasty divorce while still trying to live in the same house.
Visitor Q, absurdist, taboo-laden Japanese film with surprisingly moralistic undertones about the twisted redemption of a dysfunctional family involved in incest, rape, necrophilia, murder and mother-abuse.
What Are You Doing After the Orgy?, Swedish film from 1970.
The Wrong Box, from the story by Robert Louis Stevenson about the members of a tontine.

Periodicals

The Baffler
The Beast
Might magazine
National Lampoon, especially the work of Michael O'Donoghue, Douglas Kenney, Ed Bluestone, and Tony Hendra.
The Harvard Lampoon, it is also the world's longest running humour magazine.
The Onion
Spy Magazine

Television

Andy Richter Controls the Universe
Arrested Development
Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Brass Eye
Chappelle's Show
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Daily Show
Dead Like Me
Desperate Housewives
Excel Saga
Extras
Family Guy
Get a Life
Greg The Bunny
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
Invader ZIM
Jaaaaam
Kids In The Hall
The League of Gentlemen
Monkey Dust
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Mr. Show
The Simpsons
South Park
Stella
Strangers with Candy
Titus
Weeds
Wonder Showzen

Video games

Websites

People

Authors

Comedians

Comics Artists and Writers

Filmmakers

Musicians

Radio Personalities

See also

es:Humor negro fr:Humour noir nl:Zwarte humor pl:Czarna komedia simple:Black comedy fi:Musta huumori sv:Svart humor zh:黑色幽默

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Categories: Comedy | Film genres | Literary genres

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