Life is a tragedy/comedy...
“Life is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think.”
It’s been attributed to several thinkers like Moliere and Albert Camus (who I thought it was). But not to Charlie Chaplin. We can find humor in the tragic, or in the painful. Like someone slipping on a banana peel. Apparently, the comic genius was asked to help with a screenplay that struggled with visual jokes. How does one get a laugh about a fancy woman walking down 5th Avenue and slipping on a banana peel. The playwright asked the comic genius, “what’s the best way to get the laugh…lady first, then banana peel, or banana peel first, and then the lady? Both end with her slipping on it.” Hilarity (apparently) ensues
Chaplin said, “First, show the banana peel, then the lady, then the peel and the lady together. Then show how she steps over the peel. And then she disappears down a manhole.” That joke, if you like slapstick, is funnier than simply slipping on a banana peel.
I’m not a fan of farce, but I do like Chaplin’s juxtaposition of humor:
the set up gets you thinking one way (she’s going to slip on the banana peel)
relief that she didn’t fall (stepping over it)
the juxtaposition of going from relief (she didn’t slip) to going down a manhole.
This kind of visual humor can produce laughter or anxiety. I’ll spend more time thinking about humor and how it intersects with tragedy, but for now I’m going to appreciate Chaplin’s “celebration” of the Great Dictator and how that is prescient today.
