Black comedy

Black comedy, also known as black humour is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously — death, mass murder, suicide, sickness, madness, terror, drug abuse, rape, war, etc. — are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms include dark humor, morbid humour, gallows humour and off-color humour.

In America, black comedy as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers such as Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison and Eric Nicol have written and published novels, stories and plays where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. An anthology edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, titled "Black Humour," assembles many examples of the genre.

The 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb presents one of the best-known examples of black comedy. The subject of the film is nuclear war and the extinction of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with gravity and seriousness, creating suspense over the efforts to avoid a nuclear war. But Dr. Strangelove plays the subject for laughs; for example, in the film, the fail-safe procedures designed to prevent a nuclear war are precisely the systems that ensure that it will happen. The film Fail Safe, produced simultaneously, tells a largely identical story with a distinctly grave tone; the film The Bed-Sitting Room, released six years later, treats post-nuclear English society in an even wilder comic approach.

Today, black comedy can be found in almost all forms of media.

Works

Literature

(Some of these have been adapted to television or film as well.)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring, is about a dramatic critic, who discovers that his two spinster aunts (who are always praised for their charitable work and generosity) take in lonely old men and murder them by serving poisoned elderberry wine.
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, a crudely illustrated satire about the destined meeting of an obscure science fiction writer and a pontiac dealer who is slowly going insane.
Candide by Voltaire
Le Jardin des supplices, 1899, by Octave Mirbeau (The Torture Garden (novel)).
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
Chimera and other novels by John Barth
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, the "true" story of his drug fueled trip to Las Vegas with his "attorney".
Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, and his other works.
M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker
Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance by Irvine Welsh,A tongue in cheek,dark romantic comedy.A transformation love story from the love of Ecstacy,to the ectasy of love.

Films

After Hours, about an office worker's experiences with a wide array of criminals, psychotics, sado-masochists, mohawk-sporting punks, and an angry mob of ice cream men trying to kill him.
Bug, described by it's director William Friedkin to be in many ways, a black comedy love story.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a satirical film about an insane American General who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, filmed during the Cold War.
Fight Club – described as a 'black comedy by lead actor Edward Norton on the DVD commentary.
American Psycho - described as a dark comedy from an interview with Christian Bale.
Happiness deals unflinchingly with subjects designed to make audiences squirm (from suicide, rape and murder to pedophilia and childhood masturbation). The treatment of the subjects is blunt, but also gleefully absurdist.
Heathers, about a disaffected, jaded teen couple who start killing members of popular cliques at their high school.
The Cable Guy - Jim Carrey plays a stalker.
The Ladykillers (1955) and (2004) versions; a criminal professor tries to perform a sophisticated robbery while fooling an old woman.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) An extremely dysfunctional family travels to California to enter their child into a beauty pageant.
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, about the Bosnian War.
The Trouble with Harry follows several quirky residents of a small town as they deal with a dead body that has inconveniently turned up in a local park.
Twin Town ,two low life twin brothers making havoc for the people of Swansea.
The War of the Roses, about a couple going through a nasty divorce while still trying to live in the same house.

Television

Married… with Children, about a miserable shoe salesman and his dysfunctional family.
Six Feet Under, revolving around the world of the fictional mortuary "Fisher & Sons Funeral Home".
Titus, a sitcom which satirized road rage and suicide.
Dead like me, about a girl who died but had to reap souls in order to move on.
Wonderfalls, about a girl that can see and hear totems(animal items) talk to her.
Twin Peaks
Blackadder Goes Forth, a sitcom set in the Trenches during World War One culminating in the death of the characters in the final episode.
The League of Gentlemen
The Sarah Silverman Program, a show based around jokes on subjects such as AIDS and homosexuality.
Wonder Showzen, innocent children's programming for mature audiences.
Scrubs (TV series), A show based on life and work in a hospital, combining slap-stick comedy with real world lessons about life and death.
South Park
Happy Tree Friends
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
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Video games

Grand Theft Auto series, about a lowly criminal in the big city who must rise in the ranks of organized crime throughout the game.
Total Carnage
Twisted Metal series, about a vehicular combat contest in which the winner gets one wish.

Board, Card and RPG Games

Paranoia
HoL
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
The Freak Legion supplement for World of Darkness
Gother Than Thou
Snit's Revenge
Freaks Who Eat