Mad World is about the history and conventions of comedy

  Mad World can be seen as a huge epic about the history of comedy and its many subcategories.  It is also an overview of how American comedy has evolved over half a century.  It references vaudeville (stars like Milton Berle and Mickey Rooney) and Burlesque (with the likes of Phil Silvers).  The film also pays tribute to screen comedy like the silent and screwball films, cartoons, and satire.  It also pays respect to radio and TV comedians such as Jack Benny, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, and Carl Reiner.  This whole film examines the conventions of comedic logic in a real world setting and it sees if the comedy of the past can survive in the then contemporary world of 1963.  The only person, obviously, not to survive is Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) who is the first one to go represents a dying breed of comedians who were once big in the 1930s and early 40s but now are irrevelant to the now hip, new crowd of comedians who are more edgier in this material than what he is accustomed to.

 In my opinion, the big "W" is not about finding hidden money but more about staying relevant and funny in a modern society. The reason why the motorists are anxious to beat one another to the "W" is because they are comedians and they too are scared to be irrelevant in their society and want to stay in the public's eye as long as they have breath! They perform dangerous feats in order to stay on the top by and they do this by experimenting with different forms of comedy.
                                        

   Russell Finch, Emmeline, and Mrs. Marcus represents the Theater of the Absurd, for they keep going in circles in the desert looking for one another and bickering to the very end of the race much like the structure of the play, Waiting for Godot.

     Melville and Monica Crump represents the Surreal and Dada form of humor in which offers strange, illogical, and destructive alternatives to get a laugh. Case in point, they risk their lives in a 1916 bi-plane

and find themselves locked in a basement of a hardware store once they are in Santa Rosita and almost destroys it in the process!

J. Algernon Hawthorne represents the English Hall comedy in which he is clearly a British stereotype.

Dingy and Benji represents a comic duo equivalent to Abbott and Costello that you see frequently in vaudeville and burlesque skits.

Lennie Pike is the broad traditional clown you find in the circuses in which he does violent slapstick in order to get a laugh such as the gas station demolition scene but can also be sweet and tender hearted like certain clowns would be.

    Otto Meyers out of all of the so called "comedians" represents what comedy was going to be like 50 years later.

    Much like Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Chris Rock, or even Jerry Seinfeld would do later on and that is he would be loud, manipulative, sneaky, and wisecracking through his dialogue.  I mention the "wisecracking" part because he talks as though he was on stage performing especially when he is talking to Ray and Irwin at the gas station about them fixing a flat tire as though he is practicing his routine on them instead of giving orders.

Last but not least, Sylvester Marcus who I would've classified as a Dada comedian for his actions are wild and unpredictable and doesn't make any logical sense; but I think calling him a jester is more appropriate for a jester can be foolish without rhyme or reason and Sylvester certainly fits the bill. Jesters were seen in Medieval times as either very wise or very foolish who couldn't help themselves because they feel divinely inspired.(Jester) I think the latter fits Sylvester just fine with his erratic behavior throughout the movie.

 

Even Sgt. Culpepper has a role in displaying a certain type of comedy.A good cop in the beginning who just wants to close the Smiler robbery he slowly turns corrupt by the end of the first act and when the second one begins hebecomes a sort of Shakespeare rogue like Falstaff or Shylock.  Always the smartest one in the bunch but luck or fate has not been kind to neither one of them.

You can also make the argument that the two cabbies in the film can represent the chorus that you find in Ancient Greek and Shakesepeare comedies especially since they come in late in the movie and trying to figure what the characters are doing in the park and also commenting on their actions.

      What I like about Mad World is the fact that it integrates verbal humor and sight gags into a real world setting. Not like it hasn't been done before but here it is done on such an epic and realistic scale that one marvels how William and Tania Rose were able to balance it just right in the writing process.

As much as Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy uses comic book conventions in a real world and is praised immensely for doing so I think there should be much praised about how the Roses were able to take the conventions of comedy and tell a story around it in the 1963 American setting.  The role of the movie is to show different types of comedy with these big comedians. 

    In the end though even the groups arrive at their destination, old and nasty habits rear their ugly heads as they fight for the spotlight to be relevant again as Sgt. Culpepper takes the lead and take it away from them.

As they continue to squawk and squander over this newfound fame that they discovered and so badly wants to keep to themselves, their fame dwindles as the money drops out of the sky and it no longer matters who is in the limelight now as they wasted their talents for some frivolous 15 minute of fame they will never get back.

They die metaphorically as they are thrown off the fire engine ladder they try to latch onto to be, ironically, saved.

They are then reborn as they realized that there can be new types of comedy out of this experience and should no longer latch on the old.  They say goodbye to the old types of comedy as Mrs. Marcus slips on the banana peel and falls on her bottom screaming as usual not learning nothing from the experience as the others laugh hysterically.
        Reiterating this point again, I really believe this movie best represents the history of the genre in a large epic scale. The Great Race which came out a couple of years afterward does this as well but one can tell that director Blake Edwards was more busy homaging only the silent comedies and cartoons from the previous decades and not really expanding the horizons that much as far as looking at other conventions of comedy is concerned.



Even though it contains the only element that is missing with Mad World and that is the pie fight.

  While essential to the staple of screen comedy it is not necessary for Mad World to have because it already references so many types of comedy that leaving one type of trope does not hurt the meaning of the film at all.  It achieves what no other screen comedy has achieved since, and that is faithfully tell a story about comedians who go through hell to stay in the consciousness and to preserve the history of the genre itself.

Work Cited

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester. Web.11.07.2013