In my last blog
post I talked a bit about the potential for comedy in The Odyssey. Basically, my argument was that when looking back at
the text, there are many scenes that could be read as funny. I won’t (and didn’t)
mention all of them, as there are many, but when Odysseus debates hugging the
knees of the Nausicaä, when the Phaeacians’ ship is struck to stone, and even
when Odysseus commits murder in the halls, there is humorous potential. I even
attempted to write my essay on this very topic, comedy in The Odyssey, but I quickly ran out of ideas. For the life of me, I
could not think of where to go with the fact that there are some situations in The Odyssey that could be viewed as
funny. I mean, why does that matter at all? I would be very happy to hear a
response to that question, because, although it may be because I am not clever
enough, I couldn’t find any meanings to that possibility for comedy. And then
we started reading William Falkner’s As I
Lay Dying, and I realized that an
essay is not the proper place to explore that topic: it can only be properly dissected
in a work of creative writing.
I started by
asking myself, what is the same about the comedy of The Odyssey and As I Lay
Dying? Well, both include situational comedy, which is when the absurdity
of the situation causes humor. The
Odyssey has the ones that I stated above, and As I Lay Dying, has one example of it running through the whole book:
the stench of the coffin. The image of a broken old cart strolling through
town, and carrying with it a horrible stench that continuously causes people to
cry and gag is a pretty funny one. A difference, however, would be that those
scenes in As I Lay Dying were
intentionally constructed by the author, while in the Odyssey, the comedy is
accidental. Therefore, it is much easier to read the comedy in one than the
other. But the fact that both are in fact comedic suggests that it is the very
nature of hero’s journeys to put their characters in those absurd situations.
So if "creative writing" is the best way to contemplate these kinds of questions--because critical theses about jokes tend to kill jokes--then _O Brother_ can be seen as a detailed exploration of some comedic potential in Homer. The Coens definitely have fun with Odysseus's vanity, for example--for every mention of Athena lavishing splendor on his luscious curly locks, we get Everett fretting about his "coiffure" and worrying about where he'll get the next can of Dapper Dan "hair jelly." A lot of the comedic rewriting of the hero's journey in this movie can be seen as direct comments on some of the latent humor in Homer.
ReplyDeleteThat would make a good essay I think, though I worry that I will run into the same sorts of problems that I had while trying to do the other one. I guess these sorts of ideas may just be best communicated through a story rather than an essay.
DeleteI also found elements of As I Lay Dying to be comedic, especially the very end. Just when Anse said "Meet Mrs. Bundren", something about that was incredibly hilarious to me, and I laughed pretty hard. I think you're right in that it's not necessarily the actual thing that's funny, but the fact that it happens in that situation in a supposed "heroic narrative". Good post!
ReplyDeleteAs I lay Dying seemed much more comedic to me than The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, I seemed to find a few moments comedic, but only in how exaggerated and unironically hypocritical they seemed to be (Odysseus calling his men selfish when he himself is also very selfish). As I Lay Dying had many more things that could've been interpreted as funny, although the movie didn't really do so.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Chloe in that As I Lay Dying was more comedic, but its comedy is very difficult to describe. Like you said, some of it comes from the absurd situations the heroes finds themselves in, but I think that in the case of As I Lay Dying, there was another level to the comedy. I believe that the comedy served to distract us from the terrible things that were happening to this family that were ruining some of their lives.
ReplyDeleteI feel like some of the comedy in Odyssey is just because we're reading it in such a different context from when it was written and so it seems really odd to us, while in As I Lay dying it's much more intentional, as you say in your post. I also think sometimes the comedy is kind of at the expense of the hero's journey itself. A lot of the joke is just how absurd the whole situation is, especially since we can vaguely see the potential for heroics in the situation, but it's overshadowed by the ridiculous Bundren antics.
ReplyDeleteIt just occurred to me that our Odyssey play, which I meant to lack comedy, actually had some comedy relief when you played your guitar: I think people laughed at that. Nice job on that btw. Anyway, it seems that people naturally want to find humor in these types of stories.
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