Black comedy

Black comedy, also known as black humor, is a subgenre of comedy and satire where topics and events normally treated seriously – death, mass murder, sickness, madness, terror, drug abuse, rape, etc. – are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms created to avoid possible racial overtones include dark comedy/humor, morbid comedy/humor and off-color humor (see also color metaphors for race.) A scene in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot demonstrates black comedy well: a man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down.

Black humor is similar to sick humor, such as dead baby jokes. However, in sick humor most of the humor comes from shock and revulsion; black humor usually includes an element of irony, or even fatalism.

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 Humor," 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 most well-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. The worst examples are shallow attempts at grabbing attention with shock value, coating otherwise uninteresting content with a veneer of hip edgy-ness. The best examples are works of high satire that tell us something profound about ourselves and the world we live in.

Works

Literature

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J.G. Ballard
Candide by Voltaire
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
God's Other Son by Don Imus
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Oil of Dog by Ambrose Bierce
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, a series of children's books about three orphans who go through many tragic and unfortunate experiences.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, an anti-war speculative fiction novel loosely based on Vonnegut's experiences as an American POW.
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
most of the short stories contained in the collections Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
any of the six wartime aviation novels by Derek Robinson: Goshawk Squadron, Piece of Cake, War Story, A Good Clean Fight, Hornet's Sting, and Damned Good Show
How to Rent a Negro by damali ayo

Films

About Schmidt
After Hours
American Psycho is about a self-obsessed yuppie serial killer, played by Christian Bale.
Arsenic and Old Lace is about a pair of murdering old aunts discovered by their nephew, played by Cary Grant.
Bad Santa is about a wretched, drunk, perverse thief who poses as Santa Claus to rip off department stores.
The Bed-Sitting Room, about life in England after a nuclear war.
Being John Malkovich
The Big Lebowski, in which the shiftless "Dude" deals with bowling, nihilists, kidnapping, death, and having his favorite rug urinated on.
Black Cat, White Cat
Blazing Saddles, a comedy that makes fun of racism, about a clever black slave who is made the sheriff of a small Western town to drive out its citizens, but ends up winning them over.
Bubba Ho-Tep
Catch-22, a film about the madness of war, based on the novel by Joseph Heller.
Children Of The Revolution, about the 'love child' of Josef Stalin.
Citizen Ruth, a satire about the abortion rights battle.
Crazy People
La Comunidad
Dead Man On Campus, about the urban legend of a roommate's suicide and the resulting perfect grades in college
Death Becomes Her, about the downsides of immortality.
Death Race 2000
Death To Smoochy, a corrupt former children's TV icon plots revenge against his fuzzy purple replacement.
The Doom Generation, three young drifters go on a killing spree.
Eating Raoul, about a prudish couple who kill rich swingers by luring them to their apartment.
Election, a high school teacher attempts to sabotage an overachieving student's election campaign.
Falling Down, a victim of the late 1980s recession suddenly becomes a vigilante as he encounters social annoyances and injustices during a walk across LA.
Fargo, a debt-ridden car salesman hires incompetent criminals to kidnap his wife in order to get a ransom from his rich father-in-law.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, semi-autobiographical film of Hunter S. Thompson starring Johnny Depp directed by Terry Gilliam
Fight Club, friends form "fight clubs" to escape their mundane lives. Adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk.
Four Rooms, four vignettes centered around a hapless bell boy, involving witchcraft, a rotting corpse, and a severed finger.
Ghost World
Grace Quigley, a film about euthanasia
Grosse Pointe Blank, about a hitman who returns to his hometown to attend his high school reunion.
Happiness deals unflinchingly with subjects designed to make audiences squirm (from suicide, rape, murder, pedophilia, and childhood masterbation). The treatment of the subjects is blunt, but also geleefully absurdist.
Harold and Maude, in which an alienated young man obsessed with staged suicides and the funerals of strangers falls in love with a vivacious octogenarian.
The Hospital, the story of a chief of surgery who is trying to figure out why a number of hospital employees begin dying under strange circumstances.
Heathers, about a disaffected, jaded couple who start killing members of popular cliques at their high school.
Ichi the Killer, about a pair of savage killers, one a sadist and the other a masochist.
Intolerable Cruelty About a divorce attorney and a golddigger.
Kind Hearts and Coronets, Ealing comedy in which the main character assassinates members of an aristocratic family to inherit a Dukedom.
The King of Comedy
The Ladykillers
The Last Supper
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, about three orphans who go through many tragic experiences.
Little Murders, written by Jules Feiffer
The Lindsay Anderson trilogy of If...., O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a Guy Ritchie film about the seedy underside of London crime.
Loot by Joe Orton, dramatist of several black comedies.
Lord of War, Nicholas Cage in a film portrayal of the gun running underworld.
The Loved One, film version of the Waugh novel.
M*A*S*H, in which the medical staff of a Korean War field hospital engage in silly mischief to alleviate the horror of war.
Man Bites Dog, a disturbing mockumentary about a serial killer who takes a camera crew on a tour of his routine.
Meet the Feebles
Monsieur Verdoux, about a suave serial killer who commits his crimes to support his family.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python's Life of Brian, a satire of the practices of modern organized religion, especially those of many sects of Christianity.
Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, a series of sketches on subjects including birth, death, war, and sperm.
Natural Born Killers, about serial killers who become folk heroes as a result of media coverage of their crimes.
New Year's Day, two teens make a suicide pact and live their remaining days to the fullest.
The Player, a satirical look at a Hollywood studio executive who is blackmailed for murder by an unknown screenwriter.
Prizzi's Honor, in which a Mafia hitman and hitwoman fall in love.
Pulp Fiction, about the misadventures of thugs, whose stories weave into the same destiny.
Quick Change
Return of the Living Dead
Roger & Me, in which director Michael Moore explores the decline of Flint, Michigan after General Motors CEO Roger Smith closed the city's auto plants and laid off thousands of employees.
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Ruling Class, about an insane British nobleman who thinks he's Jesus.
Rushmore, the story of a prep school boy who competes with a middle-aged man for the attention of a teacher.
S.O.B., about a film director who turns a family-oriented flop musical into a hit psycho-sexual thriller.
Shallow Grave
Shaun of the Dead
Snatch
Throw Momma from the Train, a comedic retelling of Hitchcock's thriller Strangers on a Train.
To Die For, about murder and pedophilia.
Trainspotting, about the adventures of a group of heroin addicts.
Very Bad Things
Wag the Dog, a story about a fake war, designed to salvage the election for a president who had sex with a young woman.
The War of the Roses, about a couple going through a nasty divorce while still trying to live in the same house.
Weekend at Bernie's
The Wrong Box, from the story by Robert Louis Stevenson about the members of a tontine.

Periodicals

The Baffler
Might magazine
National Lampoon, especially the work of Michael O'Donoghue, Doug Kenney, and Ed Bluestone.
The Onion
Spy Magazine

Black comedy

Works

Literature

Films

Periodicals

Television

Video Games

Websites

People

Authors

Comedians

Comics Artists and Writers

Filmmakers

Musicians

Radio Personalities

See also