Black comedy

This article is about the style of humor. For sitcoms with a predominantly black cast, see Black sitcom. For other uses, see Black comedy (disambiguation).

"Black humor" redirects here. For the 1965 film, see Black Humor (film).

"Dark comedy" redirects here. For the album by Open Mike Eagle, see Dark Comedy (album).

"Hopscotch to oblivion" in Barcelona, Spain, alluding to suicide

A cemetery with a "Dead End" sign, creating a play on words

Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Cartoonist Charles Addams was famous for such humor, e.g. depicting a boy decorating his bedroom with stolen warning signs including "NO DIVING – POOL EMPTY", "STOP – BRIDGE OUT" and "SPRING CONDEMNED."

Black comedy differs from both blue comedy—which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity, sex, and body fluids—and from straightforward obscenity. Whereas the term black comedy is a relatively broad term covering humour relating to many serious subjects, gallows humor tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humour can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre. Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humour with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes.

Etymology

The term black humour (from the French humour noir) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often relying on topics such as death.

Breton coined the term for his 1940 book Anthology of Black Humor (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor (particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731), A Modest Proposal (1729), Meditation Upon a Broomstick (1710), and in a few aphorisms). In his book, Breton also included excerpts from 45 other writers, including both examples in which the wit arises from a victim with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim. In the last cases, the victim's suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as analogously found in the social commentary and social criticism of the writings of (for instance) Sade.

History

Among the first American writers who employed black comedy in their works were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov. The concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after the publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, edited by Bruce Jay Friedman. The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre. With the paperback, Friedman labeled as "black humorists" a variety of authors, such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Jay Friedman himself, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Among the recent writers suggested as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Warren Zevon, Christopher Durang, Philip Roth, and Veikko Huovinen. Evelyn Waugh has been called "the first contemporary writer to produce the sustained black comic novel." The motive for applying the label black humorist to the writers cited above is that they have written novels, poems, stories, plays, and songs in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. Comedians like Lenny Bruce, who since the late 1950s have been labeled as using "sick comedy" by mainstream journalists, have also been labeled with "black comedy".

Nature and functions

An 1825 newspaper used a gallows humor "story" of a criminal whose last wish before being beheaded was to go nine-pin bowling, using his own severed head on his final roll, and taking delight in having achieved a strike.

Sigmund Freud, in his 1927 essay Humour (Der Humor), although not mentioning 'black humour' specifically, cites a literal instance of gallows humour before going on to write: "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure." Some other sociologists elaborated this concept further. At the same time, Paul Lewis warns that this "relieving" aspect of gallows jokes depends on the context of the joke: whether the joke is being told by the threatened person themselves or by someone else.

Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors. According to Wylie Sypher, "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them."

Black comedy is a natural human instinct and examples of it can be found in stories from antiquity. Its use was widespread in middle Europe, from where it was imported to the United States. It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor (cynical last words before getting hanged). The concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune (lit. yellow laughing), which also has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen (lit. green laughing).

Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humour focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses (risata verde or groen lachen), and said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter. In the Weimar era Kabaretts, this genre was particularly common, and according to Luttazzi, Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it.

Black comedy is common in professions and environments where workers routinely have to deal with dark subject matter. This includes police officers, firefighters, ambulance crews, military personnel, journalists, lawyers, and funeral directors, where it is an acknowledged coping mechanism. It has been encouraged within these professions to make note of the context in which these jokes are told, as outsiders may not react the way that those with mutual knowledge do.

A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing concludes that people who appreciate dark humor "may have higher IQs, show lower aggression, and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it."

Examples

Major "King" Kong (played by Slim Pickens) rides the nuclear bomb to oblivion in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, widely considered one of the best dark comedy films.

Black comedy in film

Examples of black comedy in film include:

• Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) – A drama critic's engagement announcement is interrupted by the revelation that his spinster aunts and estranged brother have been independently committing multiple murders.
• A Bucket of Blood (1959) – A busboy achieves acclaim as a sculptor by encasing corpses in clay.
• Dr. Strangelove (1964) – A Cold War satire dealing with the attempts of government officials to avoid nuclear annihilation.
• Pink Flamingos (1972) - A Baltimore criminal known by the name Divine fights to keep her title as "The Filthiest Person Alive" against local perverts Connie and Raymond Marbles.
• M.A.S.H (1970) - A unit of medical personnel is stationed at an army hospital during the Korean War.
• Network (1976) – A TV station exploits the rantings of an insane anchorman for ratings and profit.
• Wrong Is Right (1982) – A false flag attack is used to justify war and the media is complicit in exchange for ratings.
• The King of Comedy (1982) - A delusional aspiring comedian kidnaps a talk show host to receive his dream of fame.
• After Hours (1983) - A office worker experiences a series of misadventures while attempting to make his way home from Manhattan's SoHo district during the night.
• Brazil (1985) - A low-ranking bureaucrat tries to find a woman who appears in his dreams.
• Beetlejuice (1988) – A recently deceased couple hire an obnoxious poltergeist to scare away a family who has moved into their old house.
• Scrooged (1988) - A cynical and selfish television executive is visited by a succession of ghosts on Christmas Eve intent on helping him regain his Christmas spirit.
• Heathers (1989) - A high school girl teams up with a new student to kill off the popular Heathers clique.
• Frankenhooker (1990) – After his fiancée is dismembered in a lawnmower accident, a power plant worker attempts to reconstruct and reanimate her using parts of murdered prostitutes.
• Clerks (1994) – Two convenient store clerks, tries to get through a day with their mundane jobs.
• Pulp Fiction (1994) – The lives of two hitmen, a washed-up boxer, a mob wife and a couple of restaurant thieves intertwine in 1990s Los Angeles.
• Fargo (1996) – A car salesman's plan to have his own wife kidnapped goes awry.
• Trainspotting (1996) - A group of heroin addicts in Edinburgh desperately search for their next high.
• The Cable Guy (1996) - A lonely cable installer becomes dangerously obsessed with a new customer, turning the man's life into a nightmare.
• Suicide Kings (1997) - A group of students kidnap a respected former Mafia figure.
• Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) - An assassin returns to his hometown to attend a high school reunion.
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) – A drug-addled journalist and his insane lawyer search for the American Dream in 1970s Las Vegas.
• Happiness (1998) – Three sisters, their perverted neighbor, and a pedophile therapist search for pleasure and meaning in their empty lives.
• The Truman Show (1998) - An insurance salesman whose entire life is a TV show starts to doubt his own reality.
• Office Space (1999) - A satire of work life of a typical 1990s software company, focusing on a handful of individuals weary of their jobs.
• American Beauty (1999) - An advertising executive has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.
• Election (1999) - A high school teacher tries to sabotage the student body campaign of a student he doesn't like.
• American Psycho (2000) – A young Wall-Street investment banker leads a double life as a serial killer.
• Bad Santa (2003) – A drunken, sex-addicted professional thief poses as a department store Santa and befriends a lonely young boy.
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) - A small-time thief is mistaken for an actor and thrown into a Hollywood murder mystery.
• Thank You for Smoking (2005) - Big Tobacco's spokesman tries to campaign in favour of cigarettes while also trying to become a role model for his son.
• Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) - A strange afterlife way-station that has been reserved for people who committed suicide.
• Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) – A Kazakhstani journalist heads to America and makes a documentary to learn more about their culture and improve his own.
• Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - A family goes on a road trip to support its youngest daughter in a beauty pageant.
• In Bruges (2008) - Two hitmen hide out and lay low in Belgium.
• World's Greatest Dad (2009) – A failed novelist makes his son's death from autoerotic asphyxiation look like a suicide.
• It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) – Follows a man grappling with the meaning of life in the wake of troubling events.
• The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – A depraved stockbroker uses increasingly illegal methods to make money.
• BIRDMAN (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) - A washed up actor attempts a comeback by starring in a Broadway production.
• The Brand New Testament (2015) – God exists. He lives in Brussels.
• The Big Short (2015) - Follows a group of investors who foresaw the 2008 financial crisis and exploited it for their own gain.
• The Death of Stalin (2017) – A satirical depiction of the power struggle following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953.
• Knives Out (2019) – An eccentric detective investigates the death of a famous mystery novelist.
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) - A fading TV actor tries to secure his biggest film role yet alongside his stunt double in 1969 Hollywood.
• Parasite (2019) - A poor family infiltrate the life of a wealthy family.
• Jojo Rabbit (2019) - A young German boy discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home during World War II, all while his imaginary friend - a quirky version of Adolf Hitler - gives him misguided advice.
• Red Rocket (2021) – A middle-aged adult entertainer returns to his rural hometown and begins dating a seventeen-year-old girl.
• Don't Look Up (2021) - A satire of indifference to the climate crisis, it follows two astronomers trying to warn people of a comet that will wipe out humanity.
• Triangle of Sadness (2022) – A celebrity couple on a luxury cruise with wealthy guests are stranded on a desert island.
• The Menu (2022) – A foodie and his date travel to an exclusive restaurant with a celebrity chef on a remote island.
• Saltburn (2023) – A scholarship student fixated with an aristocratic fellow student is invited to spend the summer at his eccentric family's estate.

Black comedy in television

Examples of black comedy in television include:

• Seinfeld (1989–1998) – Comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his three friends Elaine, George and Kramer deal with the absurdities of everyday life in New York City.
• Midsomer Murders (1997–present) - The seemingly idyllic county of Midsomer faces a new murder every week.
• South Park (1997–present) – Four grade-school friends have surreal misadventures in their not-so-quiet Colorado mountain town.
• Family Guy (1999–2002, 2005- present) – The adventures of the Griffins, a eccentric family living in Quahog, led by father Peter Griffin.
• Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–2024) – Larry David stars as a fictionalized version of himself as a semi-retired television writer and producer in Los Angeles and, for one season, New York City.
• Jam (2000) - An unconnected series of disturbing and surreal sketches.
• Six Feet Under (2001–2005) - A dysfunctional family runs a funeral home in Los Angeles.
• Peep Show (2003–2015) – A socially awkward loan manager and a slacker navigate their daily lives as roommates in South London.
• Arrested Development (2003–2019) - The story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.
• Desperate Housewives (2004-2012) - The seemingly perfect neighbourhood of Wisteria Lane is secretly shrouded in controversy and crime.
• Robot Chicken (2005–present) – A series of pop-culture parodies using stop-motion animation of toys, action figures and dolls.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005–present) – Five friends have various misadventures involving abortion, kidnapping, stalking, cannibalism, blackmail, etc.
• The Boondocks (2005–2014) – Based on the manga-influenced comic strip of the same name, the show focuses on a Black American family, the Freemans, settling into the fictional, friendly and predominantly White suburb of Woodcrest.
• The Thick of It (2005–2012) – Satirical spoof of the British political system, following the fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship's regular blunders and the attempts of Communications Director Malcolm Tucker to halt the damage.
• Eastbound & Down (2009–2013) - A washed up major league pitcher becomes a gym teacher at his old school.
• Wilfred (2011–2014) – After a suicide attempt, a young man sees his neighbor's dog as a profane man in a dog suit.
• Bojack Horseman (2014–2020) – A humanoid horse BoJack Horseman, struggles with his deteriorating popularity, depression, addiction, and maintaining the relationships with those he cares about after starring in a popular 80s sitcom.
• Fleabag (2016–2019) – An outspoken young woman in London tries to deal with life after suffering several personal tragedies.
• Atlanta (2016–2022) – Earn and his cousin, Alfred, try to make their way in the world through Atlanta's rap scene. Along the way they come face-to-face with social and economic issues touching on race, relationships, poverty, status and parenthood.
• Succession (2018–2023) – Multiple people vie for control of a media conglomerate from its aging patriarch.
• You (2018–present) - A charming young man goes to many extreme lengths to date women he falls in love with.
• Killing Eve (2018–2022) - An intelligence officer is tasked with capturing an assassin.
• Russian Doll (2019–present) – A woman tries to find her way out of a time loop after reliving the day of her death over and over.
• The Boys (2019–present) - Vigilantes team up to take down a group of corrupt superheroes.
• Smiling Friends (2022–present) – The surreal misadventures of a small charity and its four employees dedicated to spreading happiness.
• Slow Horses (2022–present) - A group of intelligence agents do work for MI5 at a low level due to their mistakes.
• Bad Sisters (2022–present) - 4 sisters band together following the death of their abusive brother-in-law.
• Beef (2023) – A minor road rage incident consumes the lives of two people, leading to a feud that spirals out of control.
• The Curse (2023–present) – A couple tries to improve a small community while dealing with an obnoxious producer and an alleged curse on their heads.
• The Perfect Couple (2024) - Everyone is a suspect after a dead body turns up before a wedding ceremony.

Gallows speeches

Examples of gallows speeches include:

• In Edo period Japan, condemned criminals were occasionally executed by expert swordsmen, who used living bodies to test the quality of their blade (Tameshigiri). There is an apocryphal story of one who, after being told he was to be executed by a sword tester, calmly joked that if he had known that was going to happen, he would have swallowed large stones to damage the blade.
• As Thomas More climbed a rickety scaffold where he would be executed, he said to his executioner: "I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up; and for my coming down, let me shift for myself."
• Robert-François Damiens, a French man who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV, was sentenced on 26 March 1757, to be executed in a gruesome and painstakingly detailed manner. He would first be led to the gallows, holding a torch with two pounds of burning wax. Pliers would then be used to tear his skin at the breast, arms and legs. Then his right arm, which held the knife he had used for his crime, would be burned with sulfur. The aforementioned areas with ripped skin would then be poured upon with molten lead, boiling oil, burning pitch, wax and sulfur. His body would then be dismembered by four horses, the members and trunk consumed in fire, and the ashes would be spread in the wind. After hearing the sentence, Damiens is reported to have replied: "Well, it's going to be a tough day."
• During the French Revolution, Georges-Jacques Danton, who had facial scars from smallpox, when he was about to be beheaded with a guillotine on 5 April 1794, is reported to have said to the executioner: "Don't forget to show my head to the people, it's well worth it!"
• At his public execution, the murderer William Palmer is said to have looked at the trapdoor on the gallows and asked the hangman, "Are you sure it's safe?"
• Murderer James French, days prior to his death by electric chair, said to reporter Bob Gregory: "If I were covering my execution, do you know what I'd say in the newspaper headline? ... 'French Fries'. See ya."
• John Amery, hanged for treason in 1945, said to the executioner Albert Pierrepoint "I've always wanted to meet you, Mr. Pierrepoint, though not of course under these circumstances!"
• Neville Heath was hanged for murder in 1946. A few minutes prior to his execution, as was the custom, Heath was offered a glass of whisky to steady his nerves by the prison governor. He replied, "While you're about it, sir, you might make that a double."
• Saint Lawrence, after distributing treasures of the Church to the poor rather than turning them over to the prefect of Rome who demanded them as tribute, was martyred in the year 258 by being grilled alive upon a gridiron with hot coals beneath. It is reported that after a long while of enduring this torture, he quipped cheerfully to his executioners: "I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!"

Military

Military life is full of gallows humor, as those in the services continuously live in the danger of being killed, especially in wartime. For example:

• The Imperial Japanese Navy Mitsubishi G4M (code named Betty bomber) Isshikirikkо̄ (イッシキリッコウ) bomber aircraft was called "Hamaki" (葉巻), meaning cigar by the Japanese crews not only because its fuselage was cigar-shaped, but because it had a tendency to ignite and burn violently when it was hit.
• When the survivors of HMS Sheffield, sunk in 1982 in the Falklands War, were awaiting rescue, they were reported to have sung the Monty Python song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
• Soviet pilots in World War II joked that the true meaning of the type designation of the LaGG-3 was "Лакированный Гарантированный Гроб" (romanized: Lakirovannyy Garantirovannyy Grob), "varnished guaranteed coffin".
• In World War II, American escort carriers had the hull classification code "CVE"; among their crews, CVE was sarcastically said to stand for "Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable". CVEs were called "Kaiser coffins" in honor of Casablanca-class manufacturer Henry J. Kaiser.
• American tanks of the Second World War, such as the M3 Lee medium tank, which were supplied to the USSR under the Lend-Lease program, got sarcastic name interpretations from Soviet soldiers. Thus, the letter sign BM-7 ("General Lee" model) was understood as "братская могила на семерых" (romanized: bratskaya mogila na semerykh), and similarly, BM-6 ("General Grant" model) as "братская могила на шестерых" (romanized: bratskaya mogila na shesterykh), meaning "mass grave for seven/six crewmen" – as penetrative hits would fragment inside the vehicles, killing the crew. Similar name reinterpretations were created for domestic multi-turreted tanks, chiefly the T-28 medium tank and T-35 heavy tank models, for their cramped internal layouts and poor armor protection.
• In the Battle of Jutland (31 May – 1 June 1916), the destroyer HMS Tipperary was sunk in an overnight engagement with the heavily armed German dreadnought SMS Westfalen. Only 13 crewmen survived out of a complement of 197 officers & men. The survivors were identified in the darkness by the crew of HMS Sparrowhawk because they were heard in the distance, singing, "It's a long way to Tipperary".

Emergency service workers

Workers in the emergency services are also known for using black comedy:

• Graham Wettone, a retired English police officer who wrote a book How To Be A Police Officer, noted the presence of black comedy in the police force. He described it as "often not the type of humour that can be understood outside policing or the other emergency services." For example, an officer who had attended four cases of suicide by hanging in six months was nicknamed "Albert" (after the hangman Albert Pierrepoint) and encountered comments like "You hanging around the canteen today?"
• In 2018, a Massachusetts firefighter was reprimanded for a response to a call about a cat stuck in a tree. The firefighter told the caller that the cat would probably make its own way down as he had never seen a cat skeleton in a tree before. An opinion article in Fire Chief magazine said that these kinds of jokes were common in the fire service, but would be inappropriate to share with a concerned member of the public.

Other

There are several titles such as It Only Hurts When I Laugh and Only When I Laugh, which allude to the punch line of a joke which exists in numerous versions since at least the 19th century. A typical setup is that someone badly hurt is asked "Does it hurt?" – "I am fine; it only hurts when I laugh."

See also

• Cruel jokes series
• Cringe comedy
• Blue comedy
• Comedy horror
• List of British dark comedies
• Macabre
• Satire (film and television)
• Surreal humour