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Popular Film and Television Comedy
by Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik
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Book Presentation:
Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik take as their starting point the remarkable diversity of comedy's forms and modes - feature-length narratives, sketches and shorts, sit-com and variety, slapstick and romance. Relating this diversity to the variety of comedy's basic conventions - from happy endings to the presence of gags and the involvement of humour and laughter - they seek both to explain the nature of these forms and conventions and to relate them to their institutional contexts. They propose that all forms and modes of the comic involve deviations from aesthetic and cultural conventions and norms, and, to demonstrate this, they discuss a wide range of programmes and films, from Blackadder to Bringing up Baby, from City Limits to Blind Date, from the Roadrunner cartoons to Bless this House and The Two Ronnies. Comedies looked at in particular detail include: the classic slapstick films of Keaton, Lloyd, and Chaplin; Hollywood's 'screwball' comedies of the 1930s and 1940s; Monty Python, Hancock, and Steptoe and Son. The authors also relate their discussion to radio comedy.
About the authors:
Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik both lecture in Film Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Press Reviews:
`Few books have been written about comedy, and this one sets out to redress the balance, defining comedy and trying to understand what makes a particular comedy popular. From sitcoms to stand-up, all types of comedy come under scrutiny by Neale and Krutnik.' - Press and Journal
See the publisher website: Routledge
> From the same authors:
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Film, Cinema, Genre (2021)
The Steve Neale Reader
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A Hollywood History
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'Un-American' Hollywood (2007)
Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era
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> On a related topic:
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The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades
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Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934-1945 (2023)
Sex, Love, and Democratic Ideals
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The Drop Dead Funny '70s (2023)
American Film Comedies Year by Year
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