Those of you who watch a lot of comedy and entertainment programs will find a logical corollary. It doesn’t matter what kind of comedy show it is, or how funny it is at first. When a comedy show comes to an end or needs to be elevated, its creators will invariably push the comedy to what they perceive to be its core, tragedy or deep emotion.
Nowadays, under the premise that comedy, as a special kind of drama in film and television creation, gradually fixes the framework, the core of tragedy and the core of touching emotions are slowly becoming mainstream.
What kind of influence does this mainstream have? As far as the development of comedy is concerned, this mainstream has solidified the overall development of comedy. When it is solidified, comedy slowly loses its richness. As a result, the comedy we see is no longer an art of humor, but of sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism and performance for the sake of performance, losing the creative richness that comedy should have had, and becoming narrow.
Of course, if you’ve been exposed to this kind of comedy since birth, you wouldn’t have a problem with it. And yet, strangely enough, we used to have a lot of good theater.
Why the richness of our theater has waned over the decades has always been a mystery to us all. It doesn’t matter. Let’s look at what the comedies of the early years were saying. Maybe they can give us a sense of direction in finding the answer.
Today’s film is a French comedy film from 1978. The film is called “The Mayor and his wife”, and it is a comedy about the contradictions in capitalist society, and it gives the audience a chance to think deeply about them in a laugh-out-loud performance.
The irony of this film is very strong in the present. It goes far beyond the accepted theme that “the core of comedy is tragedy”. It says something, but it’s also something that makes us think, and ultimately it’s a comedy that unfolds and makes us laugh, and that’s a rare thing.
The Husband and Wife Mayor is about a mayor of a French city who, in his spare time, is a capitalist inventor who invents a machine that can be used to improve environmental pollution. One day at a sales event, he meets a Japanese entrepreneur. As a result, the mayor received the big order of his life.
He had to produce 3,000 machines in 3 months. But to his dismay, there was no more free space around his factory, so the mayor set his sights on his own home and his wife’s vegetable patch. Eventually, the tug-of-war between capital and individuals began.
From the point of view of irony, there are too many points of irony in this film. According to the logic of today’s understanding, such a film could be classified as black humor, but this film is indeed a comedy. It depicts the contradictions of capitalist society through exaggeration. We can proceed to analyze them one by one.
First of all, we see what kind of social system the bourgeoisie advocates in an era when employment is king. As mayor, his election slogan is employment, and no matter what kind of stupid moves the mayor makes, he can ultimately use the banner of employment to make a case for himself, which is ridiculously useful at all times.
In a capitalist insider’s deal, when the mayor asks the governor to plan his land, he doesn’t hold a meeting to discuss it, but instead goes to the governor’s billiard hall to talk things over. During that time, the mayor used economic growth as a blackmail to force his boss to approve the site for himself. This was also nakedly ironic.
What follows is the capitalist frenzy in carrying out the process of industrial production. In order to fulfill orders, the capitalist is willing to sacrifice his own living environment to fuel production. At this point, the love of husband and wife, the environment, and pollution are no longer important, and everything translates into money.
Not only do we see the irony reproduced in the building of the factory, but the encounter with the check shows the absurdity of the capitalist, as the mayor’s obsession with money is reflected.
This is naturally followed by the discrimination that women face in a capitalist society and the problems that feminism needs to address. The mayor believed that his wife should not be elected. Nearly everyone was suspicious of the woman elector. When the final victory came, however, the mayor’s wife did not applaud herself for winning the election.
She gave back to the man the political rights that she had fought so hard for. It is ironic that she returns to her family with what appears to be a happy ending. Women in a capitalist society are no longer aware of the power they should have. Through these main core ironies, we can see that the richness of comedic film development exists, but nowadays many people are gradually forgetting that comedies still have such a function.
Instead, they are riding high on the road to sensationalism. When are we going to really expand the breadth of comedy in a good way. When do we really stop trying to be tragic and sensationalistic?
Drama has always been comedy, and drama is not the spokesman for vulgarity. Not all the sensational tragedy is the original purpose of comedy, but comedy should have richer expression, such as irony, such as dislocation effect, etc. Why these characteristics are nowhere to be found? Why these characteristics are nowhere to be found is the core of our thinking.
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