Humor and the Avant-Garde

WILLIAM VERRONE

HERE’S NOTHING TOO FUNNY ABOUT A RAZOR SLICING THROUGH

T an eyeball, the startling and infamous image from Luis Bun-

uel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1929). Nor is there
a laugh-out-loud moment in Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon
(1943) or Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967). These three films are
considered avant-garde masterpieces, exercises in form and style that
speak to an alternative idea of perception and vision that is
unfounded in mainstream cinema. These films—and many like them
—are not overtly humorous (which does not mean one won’t laugh at
certain things in them). But avant-garde films are indeed comical,
witty, and amusing and some do trigger spontaneous laughter. The
term “avant-garde” is generally not one associated with the film genre
of comedy, but many instances of well-known experimental or avant-
garde films please because they tease; or, to put it less obliquely, they
aim to be funny through subversion. Subversion is an aesthetic choice
and a critical practice where the artist—here, a filmmaker—attempts
to undermine, subvert, corrupt, satirize, parody, threaten, destabilize,
or challenge the norm, generally recognized as a stable, mainstream,
moral standard. Or, put another way, subversive humor is a practice
that aims for a more critical representation of truth and/or reality,
however, each may be defined. According to Geoff King, “Comedy
has the potential to be both subversive, questioning the norms from
which it departs, and affirmative, reconfirming that which it recog-
nizes through the act of departure; or a mixture of the two” (8).
Avant-garde humor and avant-garde films that are humorous—two
distinct and separate forms of comedy—can take various shapes, but
most combine the implausible with the absurd, a blending often of

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© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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710 William Verrone

the unreal (in the case of avant-garde film, surrealism) and the recog-
nizable, that is, the situation that gives rise to comedic happenings.
Subversion and subversive humor may have many appearances, but
avant-garde forms fall into three basic types: avant-garde perfor-
mances, including surrealist, that occur in mainstream comedy films;
parodies, which have often been described as incorporating a genre
within the historical avant-gardes; and overtly comic avant-garde
films.

Avant-Garde Film and Comedy: Strange (but comforting)

Bedfellows

Avant-garde filmmakers have long practiced the overthrowing of tra-

dition. A defining characteristic of avant-garde film is that it is not
necessarily a genre itself. Instances of the avant-garde occur throughout
many films and in many genres. Certainly, there are easy ways to
“group” avant-garde films (e.g., structural, lyrical, trance), and more
often than not, critics do situate avant-garde film as its own genre,
but in terms of comedy and the avant-garde, there is no definitive
way of determining if an avant-garde film is purposefully funny.
More often than not, if a film is considered “avant-garde”—recog-
nized as such because of its style/form or thematic concerns—the
filmmaker is typically making a film that defies strict categorization,
which means that it works beyond genre conventions, including com-
edy. According to Rick Altman, “Like the notion of nation, the very
idea of genre exists in the singular only as a matter of convenience—
or ideology” (86). Avant-garde as a genre can be defined based on its
ideology or, as I believe, its extreme flexibility.
Laughter is first subjective: what one finds funny may not please
another. But laughter is also contagious: what one finds funny may
also instigate laughter in others. This paradox—or dialectic—creates
an interesting scenario for the avant-garde film because, typically,
avant-garde films require highly personal and interactive viewing
responses. Comedic forms and avant-garde films have coexisted since
early cinematic practice. Slapstick behavior, vaudeville performance,
or the incongruity all became elements of avant-garde film. Slapstick
was much admired by the Surrealists of the 1920s for its sheer anar-
chy and disabling effect; the focus on the individual performer who
Humor and the Avant-Garde 711

breaks free from narrative causality fills many avant-garde narratives;

and the discrepancies between real/unreal, dream/awake, or being/
seeming—all incongruities—crept into avant-garde filmmaking prac-
tices. As A. L. Rees points out,

There were two main reasons why the comic burlesque continued
to appeal to [avant-garde] filmmakers. Firstly, it unchained film
drama from narrative logic, showing that drama need not pass
through realism. It opened the way to parody and to an irrational-
comic style, linked to the surrealists’ insight into Freud’s analysis
of wit and jokes as agents of the unconscious and of subversion.
Secondly, the magic and early comedy film reveled in filmmaking
devices which realist film largely excluded, such as stop-frame
motion and variable speeds. (30)

The comic burlesque, which is essentially the comedy of parody or

even skit comedy, was incorporated and appropriated by avant-garde
filmmakers because they recognized how subversive the material could
be. Divorcing comedic elements from narrative logic also meant that
the avant-garde was more interested in irrationality or the manifesta-
tion of the unconscious, as the surrealists practiced. The avant-garde
also realized that using the camera as a mode of comedic operation
produced incongruity such as slow motion, optical devices, smeared
lenses, or fast-motion, all used to stimulate laughter or to demonstrate
film’s formal capacities through a humorous method of production.
Comedies can generate a feeling of empathy or of distanciation in
spectators. That is, we can become invested to a certain degree in the
characters’ situations (which occurs with Sherlock Jr. and Conspirators
of Pleasure, two films discussed below), or we can enjoy the comedy
from a distanced or even disassociated perspective (which occurs with
Duck Soup and Even As You and I, discussed below). But either reac-
tion compels laughter. Avant-garde films are traditionally considered
serious. King suggests that “comedy plus seriousness. . .generates,
potentially, a state of unstable and contradictory emotional responses,
a quality that can be both disturbing and exhilarating in its refusal of
the reconciliatory dynamics of mainstream film comedy” (196). This
occurs with Mario Banana No. 1 (discussed below) and Conspirators of
Pleasure, two films that are dramatically realistic in their stories, but
also potentially offensive in their subject matter. As a genre, comedy
is very unstable; for example, as Altman points out, “What initially
712 William Verrone

appeared as (burlesque) comedy, a known genre dressed in modal garb,

with the noun outweighing the adjective, took on a new identity
when accompanied by burlesques of other genres, thus becoming bur-
lesque (comedy)” (51). This dichotomy (signified by Altman’s brackets)
might help explain the appeal of burlesque to avant-garde filmmak-
ers, where it becomes, in Altman’s analysis, the latter rather than the
former descriptive category. Still, shifts in genre and generic tropes
make them unhinged, which also might explain the multiple and
extremely varied kinds of humor found in avant-garde films.

Avant-Garde Performance as Comedy

A most decidedly recognizable category of comedy is the comedy of

bodily performance, where the body acts, performs, gestures, and
moves as comedic device. Performance as comedy can be described as
a subgenre. In the performance as avant-garde motif, narrative becomes
secondary to the body as display. One such performer who typifies
this style of comedy is Buster Keaton. Keaton regularly disrupted
and interrupted the narratives of his films. In doing so, he shifted
spectator focus from the story to the body, mainly because Keaton
was a physical comedian and because his best films were silent. Many
discussions of silent film identify moments of narrative interference
for the gag. Keaton, however, went beyond mere gags to full-blown
orchestrations of illogic, surrealism, and excess, taking the gag and
extending it or amplifying it to absurd proportions. Take for instance
a moment in Sherlock Jr. (1924) when Keaton’s character falls asleep
and dreams himself into the film he is projecting in the theater. We
see him leave his corporeal self via superimposition, walk down the
aisle of the theater, and leap into the frame and become a part of the
film world—he essentially transgresses the boundaries of the nondie-
getic spatio-temporal zone to the diegetic one. This sets up the first
surreal instance: because he has entered a world where he is disassoci-
ated from reality, anything can occur, and as a result, he is unable to
keep himself grounded. The film makes several quick montage cuts
and each time a new cut occurs, Keaton finds himself struggling to
make the transition. We see him in a lion cage, standing on the prec-
ipice of a huge mountainous chasm, perching atop a tall column, and
sitting on a rock in the sea. As Robert Knopf surmises, “Buster, the
Humor and the Avant-Garde 713

‘reality’ from outside the inner film, remains consistent while the film
shifts beneath him; at the same time, his ability to move from place
to place with each cut is a bit of film magic in and of itself” (104).
This sequence contains a moment of surrealism or surrealist activity,
where dream collides with reality and temporal and spatial dimen-
sions are either blurred, blended, or completely lost. There is a sense
of incongruity, or the clash of opposites, like the real/unreal, logical/
illogical, or appropriate/inappropriate, which operate on the same
plane. “Incongruity is also found in the bizarre juxtapositions found
in the works of surrealism,” King tells us, which suggests an affinity
between Keaton’s sight gags and surrealism’s play of difference (15).
It is telling that the sequence occurs in Keaton’s dream, suggesting
that anything can happen. The visualization of the absurd—really,
the impossible—in the sequence highlights the way surrealism works
within comedy. The illogic of surrealism makes the scene funny and
the emphasis on Keaton’s body as the site of performance underscores
it as the focal point of sensorial expectation rather than the narrative.
In other Keaton films, there are severe moments of incongruity
and irrationality. Almost always, there are large-scale chase sequences
or elaborate object or mechanical-related sight impossibilities punctu-
ated by Keaton’s physical performance. Hundreds of policeman scurry
through the streets after him (Cops, 1922); cattle and bulls enter the
city and seem to replace human activity (Go West, 1925); houses leave
their moorings and fly (Steamboat Bill Jr., 1928); hundreds of brides
chase Buster through the streets (Seven Chances, 1925); a house spins
like a child’s top (One Week, 1920); hundreds of tiny holes form in a
boat causing it to sink as Buster frantically bails water (The Boat,
1921); or, Buster performs every sporting event in perfect form as he
rushes to save the girl from the college big men (College, 1927). The
comedy stems from the sheer implausibility of the circumstances,
which yields to the excitement and enjoyment of watching Keaton
deal with avant-garde moments—”involuntary surrealism,” as J. H.
Matthews calls it (qtd. in Knopf 112). What is appealing is Keaton’s
audacity in calling attention to the self-reflexivity of the performance
instead of the narrative, which is rooted in early cinematic practices of
spectacle. As Tom Gunning has noted, “[It] was precisely the exhibi-
tionist quality of turn-of-the century popular art that made it attrac-
tive to the avant-garde—its freedom from the creation of a diegesis, its
accent on direct stimulation” (232). Keaton’s cinema is one of
714 William Verrone

exhibitionism; the moments in his films where there is a break from

the narrative—the “freedom from the creation of a diegesis”—work as
avant-garde forms of spectacle. Keaton came from vaudeville, so it
comes as no surprise that he would perform acts in the middle of a nar-
rative film, an avant-garde impulse that results in acute, great humor.
Buster Keaton was not overtly making avant-garde films. But his
films, like Sherlock Jr., have instances of the avant-garde, moments
when spectator association is displaced through avant-garde tech-
niques, namely, the performance of physicality that showcases
Keaton’s theatrical side. The value of Keaton’s comedy, in terms of
the avant-garde, rests on his capacity to fracture the logic of narrative
continuity. Another performer who interrupted narrative through the
irrational was Groucho Marx. Unlike Keaton’s focus on the physical,
Marx essentially performed stand-up comedy, which came from his
own training in vaudeville and theater. In films like Duck Soup
(1933), Groucho tells jokes, ad-libs, and offers non sequiturs to the
spectator, or really, for the spectator’s amusement, which means they
are essentially not part of the narrative. This type of humor is couched
in avant-garde ideas of the illogic, where motivation becomes nullified
through mayhem, chaos, and outright bedlam, where talking to the
audience via performance reigns. We see this tradition in such later
comedians as Woody Allen, who constantly tells jokes for the audi-
ence in his films, but not for the characters in the films themselves. It
is Groucho Marx who started this avant-garde comic technique.
Duck Soup has rightly been championed as a film of pure anarchy,
where silliness, ridiculousness, and madcap behavior reign. Marx’s
comedy is wholly situated in how funny he can be at the expense of
others, a knowing wink to the audience who cheers his rapid-fire
lunacy. In an early scene in Duck Soup, after Groucho is announced at
a party, he never answers his female counterpart in a straight manner.
Here, is Groucho responding to his female foil (Margaret Dumont):

Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground
yourself. You better beat it—I hear they’re going to tear you down
and put up an office building where you’re standing. You can leave
in a taxi. If you can’t get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that’s
too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. You know, you
haven’t stopped talking since I came here? You must have been
vaccinated with a phonograph needle.
Humor and the Avant-Garde 715

After he says these ludicrous lines, no one reacts or responds. It is

a moment of stand-up, a Groucho routine that is solely meant for the
audience. King notes, “The creation of opportunities for the blatant
display of the familiar persona/routines of the comedian performer
can, of course, occur at the expense of narrative coherence” (38). In
Duck Soup, like other Marx Brothers’ films, we have a very loose
narrative thread but plenty of stand-up routines, where Groucho’s
recognizable and memorable persona is given precedence—his per-
formativity is what creates a certain kind of comedy predicated on a
severe break from logic, which is avant-garde. A similar case occurs
in Animal Crackers (1930) when Groucho has three “strange inter-
ludes,” which are filmic soliloquies to the audience. In each one, he
steps forward toward the camera to perform for us before stepping
back into the actual scene where the other actors (here the two
women he is about to propose to) remain frozen in place, essentially
tableaux-like statues that have nothing to do with Groucho’s com-
ments (though he comments on them as they remain unaware). They
do not hear him; we are the only ones who get his hilarious avant-
garde performance. Even the content is subversive, strange, and sur-
real. In the third interlude, for example, he says:

Living with your folks. Living with your folks. The beginning of
the end. Drab dead yesterdays shutting out beautiful tomorrows.
Hideous, stumbling footsteps creaking along the misty corridors
of time. And in those corridors I see figures, strange figures, weird
figures. (Steel 186; Anaconda 74; American Cane 138)

The lunacy of his interlude—the references to marriage and

ghostly stocks creeping around—provides a very surreal and funny
moment that is both parodist and performative.
Unlike musicals, where performance plays the central role, the
avant-garde act of interruption is divorced from narrative cause and
effect; musical numbers are typically moments of narrative continuity
as expressed through the lyrics. Groucho Marx is permitted perfor-
mance because of his well-known persona, a trait that exemplifies the
moment of freedom generated through and by the avant-garde. He
breaks the fictional plane for a direct address to the audience, and the
camera either focuses on him (in close-up) or in a medium shot. This
kind of avant-garde performance sets a precedent for future comedians
716 William Verrone

who performed stand-up in a fictional narrative—everyone from Bob

Hope to Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen to Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey to
Will Ferrell. These instances of the avant-garde are what generate
comedic occurrences, where logic is disregarded for the more appro-
priate avant-garde reality of the irrational and implausible.

Avant-Garde Film as Parody

Parody films are a genre of the broad comedy genre, but avant-garde
parody films are a type of avant-garde filmmaking that generates
humor through ingenious distortions of generic conventions, character
types, or particular styles, all shown through an avant-garde perspective
or aesthetic, which makes them different from simple parodies (e.g.,
Airplane! or Scary Movie.). Genres are created to meet expectations, and
the avant-garde parody film plays with these expectations, subverting
and thwarting spectator acceptance or comprehension. The avant-garde
parody film “invokes and decisively rejects the model of the contempo-
rary narrative film” (Neale 28), making it an interesting case study in
how humor works in and beyond genre and generic parameters.
Parody means to lampoon, satirize, or critique another work by
making ironic commentary on its particular stylistic devices or the-
matic content. A parody subverts norms by drawing our attention to
the construction of the parody itself; as Linda Hutcheon suggests,
parody “is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text”
(7). King suggests that “the target of parody tends to be formal or
aesthetic” (107). He adds, “At one extreme, parody can be seen as a
form of attack, debunking and undermining familiar conventions in a
manner that has potential social or political implications. At the
other, it might ultimately be a form of celebration or reaffirmation of
the object of its apparent mockery” (109). While King here is
describing comedy as parody and not avant-garde film parodies, the
function of the avant-garde parody works in a similar way by fore-
grounding its formal structure (like many avant-garde films do),
undermining convention, and offering a verification of avant-garde
film’s potential to alter perception. There can be avant-garde parodies
of mainstream film or of other avant-garde films.
Even As You and I (1937) is an avant-garde film and parody made
by Roger Barlow, Harry Hay, and LeRoy Robbins. The film is
Humor and the Avant-Garde 717

avant-garde in its formal construction, using optical tricks, superim-

positions, montage, surrealist imagery, slow motion, and graphic ani-
mation, while also using found footage in its narrative construction.
The plot mimics a conventional Hollywood formula: three aspiring
filmmakers want to make a film, so they enter a contest and after
rejecting a typical boy/girl romance script, they stumble upon an
article about Surrealism and thus construct a script made from ran-
dom scraps of news articles, based on the ideas they discover in Surre-
alism. This collage approach is a facet of surrealism and a key
historical division of the avant-garde. What follows are numerous
“scenes” of random association, where dream-logic dominates the
story. It is funny precisely because it mocks the conventions of both
Hollywood films and avant-garde films. It is playful in its approach,
using a familiar outward narrative structure (romance) as a catalyst
for the absurdity and irrationality of surrealism. The film acts as par-
ody because it is governed by rules of contention rather than convention.
The film is dark, abstract, and ironic. According to Rees, “This [type
of film] was explored mostly in the Dada and surrealist tradition,
which valued dream-like ‘trans-sense’ irrationality as the key trope of
film montage and camera image” (30). Even As You and I is the kind
of film applauded by the surrealists because it has a series of images
that are unexplained, incongruous, subversive, or highly irrational.
As a parody, the film also offers a more pointed commentary on
socio-cultural circumstances, namely, the difficulty of achieving fame
through Hollywood versus the more appropriately acceptable world
of the avant-garde. According to Jan-Christopher Horak, the film
“comments on the pressure of originality when a canon of avant-garde
works has already been established, and to the difficulty of becoming
a filmmaker and surviving economically” (52). As a comedy form, the
avant-garde parody distinguishes itself as a unique comedic experi-
ence, where the spectator is both engaged with the film and with the
target of the parody. King suggests, “The experience of parody, for
the viewer, requires engagement on at least two levels: that of the
parody itself and that of its object, a duality that has to be recognized
by the viewer for the film to be understood as parody rather than any
other form of comedy” (112). The spectator must also work to grasp
the formal aspects of avant-garde film. Ultimately, what makes Even
As You and I funny is how it deconstructs conventions by showing
just how humorous filmic construction can be. In one shot, for
718 William Verrone

instance, we see the three filmmakers in a “See no evil, hear no evil,

speak no evil” pose, indicating their frustrations, while also making
us laugh because of its out-of-place insertion in the film.
Another parody film that is entirely avant-garde in its construction
is Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936), a famous example of surrealist
collage. It is a parody because it breaks down the formulas of Holly-
wood to uncover the surrealism that exists in the very narratives it
subverts. All of Cornell’s collage films are experiments in form, some-
where between serious art and playful amateurism, which is not a
negative description but simply a label often used for his works,
which also works well within parody—playful art. Rose Hobart is an
experimental film that consists of a completely re-edited and short-
ened version of the film East of Borneo (1931), a minor film starring
the actress Rose Hobart. Cornell edited his film from many different
shots of the original, added in shots of an eclipse, first projected the
film through a piece of blue-tinted glass and slowed down the speed
to match silent film. The result is one of the most famous collage
films in avant-garde film history, where the parody stems from the
seemingly unintentional mocking expressions of the actors in the ori-
ginal film, with Rose Hobart’s being the most expressive. King says
that parody can often shed light on the object of its ridicule, that
“parody of some aspects of a genre or film type can serve a process of
renewal, clearing away elements considered to be the stuff of cliche
and myth in favor of others presented as more ‘authentic’” (113). Rose
Hobart uncovers the cliches and myths of Hollywood film simply by
extracting shots and then reconfiguring them as a new narrative. The
result is a film that parodies Hollywood convention and style. By tak-
ing apart the original and reconstructing it through editing of
selected shots, Cornell ridicules the process of narrative. Rose Hobart
participates in the surrealist idea of the associative and connotative
meanings that come from objects in temporal and spatial dislocation.
As Michael O’Pray states, “It can be argued that [the surrealists’]
strongest impulse was not to make films but to experience them and
to marvel at Hollywood’s naivete, its extraordinary expressions of
innocence, desire and mad love—in other words, it’s very uncon-
scious” (20). Rose Hobart is precisely an exercise in the unconscious
states of the actors in East of Borneo, a complete transcoding of the
meanings of the images that have been appropriated from the original
source material. In the film, we see the heroine, the hero, and the
Humor and the Avant-Garde 719

villain all moving around in slow motion, showing glances to an

absent person, cut with shots of character reactions from other parts
of the film. The actors move through empty rooms, caress curtains,
and, due to Cornell’s editing of the film, never meet face to face. We
can never know to whom exactly Rose Hobart is talking or why she
is reacting in certain ways, which “make her fears and anxieties seem
to be in response to the very mystery which the collagist’s editing
has made of the film” (Sitney 330). As Horak surmises,

Their looks lead nowhere, their erotic desires careen into a void,
while the audience is left with a mystery, as the film’s purple-
tinted eroticism masks unfulfilled desire. In keeping with the sur-
realist creed, Cornell subverts not only the standard conventions of
Hollywood filmmaking, but also viewer identification, draining
the gaze of meaning. (53)

Rose Hobart gets rid of plot and dialogue to create a collage of

images that we can either form into our own narrative or leave us baf-
fled. Either way, it is good (surrealist) fun, and it is indeed funny.
Cornell’s film encapsulates the surrealist and avant-garde tradition of
freeing the cinema from the strictures of narrative and from hermetic
temporal and spatial dimensions, so watching characters stare fixedly
at nothing creates the unusual humor in the film. As P. Adams Sitney
suggests, “[Rose Hobart] is a breathtaking example of the potential for
surrealistic imagery within a conventional Hollywood film once it is
liberated from its narrative causality” (330). Cornell wanted to manip-
ulate emotions and actions to facilitate a new way of thinking about
the process of cinematic collage. Scenes are fragmented, actions are
unexplained (such as the opening and closing of doors without people
entering or leaving), and images are exploited for surreal purposes.
A final example of avant-garde as parody comes with Chick
Strand’s Cartoon le Mousse (1979), another collage film that parodies
not just Hollywood norms, but more importantly, the gaze of the
spectator based upon images and image-making. Strand has estab-
lished a reputation as a feminist, ethnographic, and collagist film-
maker, someone whose sensibilities bridge documentary-like footage
with collage-like experimentation. Cartoon le Mousse is an abstract
compilation of found footage, a “rigorous experiment in assemblage
that, nevertheless, manages to involve the viewer’s emotions through
720 William Verrone

oddly evocative images” (Prammiagore 201). This unusual parody

takes found footage and reassembles it in a very distinct manner,
altering the meanings of all the original sources, which include car-
toons, educational films, and re-created footage resembling old B-
movies. Idiosyncratic juxtapositioning of these creates the humor.
Strand also has appropriated dialogue, or at least snippets of narra-
tion, that takes on a different meaning outside its source, and even
countered or contradicted the images onscreen, again creating humor
and a dissociative effect. The film consists of footage from old car-
toons and educational films that are assembled to create metaphorical
associations rather than narrative clarity. We discover a new meaning
of Mickey Mouse, for instance, one that rests on perception that in
turn makes us laugh at its absurdity. As in parodies, Strand weaves
the images together to offer a commentary on Western culture and
society, juxtaposing cartoons with live-action footage, combining
dark shadows with the brightness of animation to present an absurdly
provocative analysis of culture through visual and linguistic meta-
phor. According to Gene Youngblood, “If poetry is the art of making
evocative connections between otherwise dissimilar phenomena, then
Chick Strand is a great poet, for these films transcend their material
to create a surreal and sublime universe beyond reason” (Young-
blood). Like other collage films, the images are edited so that they
take on metonymic or metaphoric meanings—and humorous ones,
mainly through satire and parody. It is characteristic of avant-garde
films to represent or interpret through metaphor. Strand, like Cornell
or Barlow, Hay, and Robbins, has appropriated the aural and visual
equivalents of accepted cultural meaning, altering their given refer-
ents into new visual representations, a new satirical critique that
hinges upon its parodist quotient. Like avant-garde performative acts,
avant-garde parodies are marked by interruptions; “disruption and
transgression are themselves expected, when they occur in a context
clearly marked as parodic” (King 123). As such, they generate humor
from their formal, stylistic, and thematic workings.

Avant-garde Comedies

There are many avant-garde comedy films, yet most spectators do not
associate the avant-garde with outright comedy, or feel that avant-
Humor and the Avant-Garde 721

garde cinema is too rooted in political, cultural, and social issues to

even be funny. But avant-garde filmmakers tend to be a highly sophis-
ticated lot, and they certainly have ingenious senses of humor. Even
Stan Brakhage, godfather of avant-garde filmmaking and the epitome
of avant-garde approach and aesthetic, made comedy films. Granted,
they were early in his career, but something like The Extraordinary
Child (1954), is an absurdist comic fable. The film is a farce about a
family whose baby arrives home fully grown. But the baby behaves
like an adult: smoking, drinking, biting visitors, participating in a
card game, all while sporting a rattle and baby bonnet. The baby
eventually escapes his parents by simply turning off the lights and
leaving when everything goes dark. The film has elements of surreal-
ism, particularly in the juxtaposition of baby and adult, because it is
the baby who acts like an adult and the adults who act like babies.
This blatantly absurdist premise makes it funny.
Another artist who has established himself in the pantheon of
avant-garde filmmaking is Andy Warhol, someone whose sly sense of
humor is perhaps best represented through his visual arts. However,
some of his films are funny, maybe unintentionally in some cases, but
nevertheless humorous. One such film is Mario Banana No. 1 (1964),
a five-minute film that consists of nothing more than drag performer
and Factory regular Mario Montez eating a banana. Warhol was ini-
tially part of the Underground cinema movement, a subversive group
that included other like-minded avant-garde filmmakers like Jack
Smith and Kenneth Anger (themselves responsible for very subversive
and humorous films). Mario Banana No. 1 is a highly subversive film;
here, the exaggeration of the act itself provides humor that is at once
(perhaps) discomfiting, radical, and transgressive. The film is shot in
close-up, focusing on the peeling and eating of the banana, and Mon-
tez’s wry looks at the camera. There is nothing that occurs onscreen
other than the eating of the banana, and given the way the film is
shot in close-up, the way Montez eats, the dim lighting, and the
phallic overtones, it borders on kitsch and generates laughter.
It seems Warhol may want to make us uncomfortable, but instead,
he makes us laugh at the spectacle of a man dressed in a glittering
headdress, wearing a giant necklace, and adorning dark red lipstick,
simply eating a banana. That, in and of itself, is funny. Montez rav-
ishes the banana, savoring each taste and lick of his finger. The one
long take without any edits or camera shifts forces us to view the act
722 William Verrone

directly, never averting the gaze. One could read the film in many
ways: as a manifestation of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, where the jester
holds center stage, overturning hierarchal order by commanding our
attention away from high art; or, we laugh at the simple ludicrous-
ness of the image; or, we recognize the inherent transgression of social
norms, shown through a drag performer devouring a (metaphorical)
banana. As King suggests, “Whether it is taken to be subversive,
conformist, or an unstable mixture of the two, comedy that presents
a transgression of dominant cultural norms can tell us a great deal
about the conventions of the society in which it is produced” (71).
Perhaps, then, Warhol is making pointed social commentary about
the (then) Puritanical mindset of the United States and its unwilling-
ness to embrace Otherness. Or, more likely, Warhol simply found
the idea of Montez seductively eating a banana to be humorous—and
he was right.
One final example comes from Czech filmmaker and animation
pioneer, Jan Svankmajer. Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) is about the
strange sexual fantasies that people have and what they do behind
closed doors with these fantasies by making them realistic yearnings.
The film contains black humor and sarcasm about the human condi-
tion and about how we are all interconnected through our fantasies—
we are all conspirators of pleasure. Svankmajer expresses the fantasies
and desires and fears that motivate human behavior. Svankmajer is a
surrealist filmmaker, aiming to change the ways people consider
living, indeed, the very way they perceive their surroundings.
Surrealism conspires in revolution, and it also provides moments of
unreal or hyperreal fun. Conspirators of Pleasure is an explicit examina-
tion of the surrealist idea of desire, but the film transcends any sort
of high-minded seriousness because all of the conspirators are funny,
do funny things, and instigate funny reactions because they are
entirely absurd. One conspirator rolls a bread loaf into tiny balls and
snorts them through long tubes, giving herself an extreme form of
pleasure; two others engage in a sado-masochistic ritual of courtship;
another builds erotic hand-made implements in his woodshed to gar-
ner self-pleasure; another builds a masturbation machine. In discuss-
ing the relevance of humor and his characters’ strange enactments,
Svankmajer says, “Yes, of course, there is a bit of sadism and a certain
‘enjoyment’ of it, in other words the principle of pleasure is also
involved here, but it is also black humor [sic] with subversive
Humor and the Avant-Garde 723

metaphors and metamorphoses” (qtd. in Hames 137). What make

the film funny are the “subversive metaphors” that underlie character
behavior. What is remarkable (and avant-garde) about the film is that
there is no spoken dialogue; the characters act and interact through
furtive glances, sheepish looks, or pleasurable grins. We hear only
hyperreal sound effects that give credence to how fantasy coexists
with reality, a surrealist idea that lends the film its humor.
The mundane activities of each individual conspirator’s daily rou-
tine are subverted because we see their true selves through their plea-
sure-seeking personae. The film is completely expressive: devoid of
dialogue, we become transfixed by the images, sounds, and behaviors
of the conspirators. Conspirators of Pleasure is funny because of the
absurd actions of the characters, and because of Svankmajer’s unique
aesthetic. Svankmajer is known for his elaborate use of stop-motion
animation; animation has the potential to free objects from their
moorings. When they come to life in the film, they operate within
the logic of dreams—anything seems possible. So when rolling pins
move by themselves, bread balls scurry through a bowl, or effigies
come to life and interact with real people, we see—and feel and hear
—the surreal, illogical humor. Surrealism, and, arguably, comedy
itself, is about freedom, or at least the capacity for momentary free-
dom that comes through release—through laughter or pleasure. The
conspirators of pleasure of the film

Move around us—inconspicuous, ordinary and tedious, but above

all, they live (and let us state in awareness of all its banality)
within ourselves; because the desire of every human being for free-
dom, for free action without any external motivation, is as inten-
sive as the forces of cultural tradition are repressive, oppressive and
domesticating. We should not be confused by the pathetic appear-
ance of these rebels—they are hardly more pathetic than our own
privacy or the norms and conventions of public hypocrisy, as the
film also shows. (Hames 190)

Ultimately, what makes us laugh during Conspirators of Pleasure is

an uneasy recognition of the familiar. Subverting our own desires
through the faces of others, Svankmajer is able to induce humor
through discomforting association. The actions of the characters are
so bizarre and strange but normal; the film is universal because it
appeals to and is reflective of general notions of identity, culture, and
724 William Verrone

freedom that inform any individual’s sense of self. Svankmajer’s sense

of humor is present throughout the film. As he says, “I think that all
my films (even the most sinister of them) have their own brand of
humour. It is not a question of ‘comedic elements’ but of ‘humour as
a weapon,’ black humour and objective humour” (qtd. in Hames
119). Black comedy can be traced to the violent world of slapstick and
experienced as a “weapon” and as “objective” display, but it also con-
tains incongruities. In discussing (violence in) black comedy, King
notes, “The effect, both comic and shocking, is created by the sudden
drop from a level of lively engagement, in something trivial, to a
level of engagement that hardly registers” (186). In Conspirators of
Pleasure, this could translate to the banality of the conspirators’ every-
day lives, portrayed with humorous touches, and their private plea-
surable moments. Still, it is the intermingling of the two that
produces laughter. What we see is shocking but also humorous
because each act of pleasure is so weird, surreal, or sudden. (There is
also some violence in the film that registers more clearly, perhaps,
King’s idea of the “trivial.”)
Svankmajer’s film balances the dream-like absurdity and danger in
the true spirit of Surrealism. The display of the uncanny—an anxious,
psychological place and space prone to unusual, eerie situations and
circumstances, which are, ultimately, couched in the reality of every-
day life—provides the humor of Conspirators of Pleasure. The uncanny
is an anxious, psychological place and space prone to unusual, eerie
situations and circumstances, which are, ultimately, couched in the
reality of everyday life, which is why the film resonates on both psy-
chological and physiological levels. Surrealism is a catalyst for explo-
ration and for uncovering meanings in the nuances of everyday
activities. Svankmajer’s film makes the unconscious seem palpable;
the animated objects and interaction between humans and mario-
nettes represent the constant conflict of the real and the fictional, and
because of the absurd subject matter, it is funny.

Conclusion

Comedy is subjective, which means it comes in many forms and is

experienced in many ways for spectators. But comedy is also subjec-
tive because the viewing experience of comedy depends upon one’s
Humor and the Avant-Garde 725

acceptance of the words/actions/behaviors of the comedic performance

or the comedic gesture/exploit hinges upon taste, experience, recogni-
tion, or acceptance. The types of comedy I have described here are
based on the notions of subversion, incongruity, irrationality, and
implausibility, and often the humor is dark, devious, and misappre-
hended. So it may be that the slicing of an eyeball makes us grimace
in addition to making us gape at its sheer audacity and subversive
tone. Its irrational and implausible act might even produce (nervous)
laughter. And perhaps, too, Deren’s mischievous and ambiguous
Meshes of the Afternoon allows us to see and appreciate the playfulness
of its subversion of narrative structure and comprehension. Avant-
garde films force us to recognize alternative modes of production:
their very forms—the materiality of the image—make us identify
them as different, and their methods of representation—the ontology
of the image—make us perceive reality differently. When comedy is
either introduced into an avant-garde film or when the film itself is a
comedy, we receive pleasure through the visible and cognitive recog-
nition of departure—from stylistic or thematic norms that cause
excitement in the spectator. Laughing at subversive behavior can
occur in any genre, but the comedy in or of avant-garde cinema is
subversive because it operates on both an intellectual and emotional
level, where we are allowed freedom to consider the implausibility
operating within the possible.

Works Cited

Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI, 1999. Print.

Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator,
and the Avant-Garde.” Film and Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Rob-
ert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 229–
35. Print.
Hames, Peter, ed. Dark Alchemy: The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer. Lon-
don: Wallflower, 2008. Print.
Horak, Jan-Christopher. “The First American Film Avant-Garde,
1919-1945.” Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-
Garde, 1919-1945. Ed. Jan-Christopher Horak. Madison: U of
Wisconsin P, 1995. 14–66. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth Cen-
tury Art Forms. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000. Print.
King, Geoff. Film Comedy. London: Wallflower, 2002. Print.
726 William Verrone

Knopf, Robert. The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton. Princeton:

Princeton UP, 1999. Print.
Neale, Steve. Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
O’Pray, Michael. Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions. Lon-
don: Wallflower, 2003. Print.
Prammaggiore, Maria. “Chick Strand’s Experimental Ethnography.”
Women’s Experimental Cinema. Ed. Robin Blaetz. Durham: Duke
UP, 2007. 188–210. Print.
Rees, A.L. A History of Experimental Film and Video. London: BFI,
1999. Print.
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943–
2000. London: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Youngblood, Gene. “Cartoon le Mousse.” Avant Cinema: Film-Makers’
Cooperative. 31 Mar. 2010. Web. 1 Sept. 2010.

Dr. William Verrone is the author of Adaptation and the Avant-Garde:

Alternative Perspectives on Adaptation Theory and Practice, and The Avant-Garde
Feature Film: A Critical History. Most recently, he was Associate Professor of
Film Studies and English at the University of North Alabama, where he cre-
ated and directed the film studies minor. He has published numerous arti-
cles on different aspects of cinema history and theory, and is currently
working on his third book. He also was the Executive Director and Con-
vener of the Conference on Global Film, held in 2009.