Neither is Drama, for that matter.
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This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, and reading Robert McKee's excellent screenwriting book Story has only served to support this notion: Comedy is not a genre.
Too often, it seems, people attempt to lump stories into one of two categories; Comedy or Drama, as if they were genres unto themselves - but they're not. Both are just tools in the writer's toolkit; stylistic approaches that one may take when working on a scene, but not mutually exclusive.
The most successful screenwriters use elements of both to varying degrees, depending on what best suits the story. All of the Coen brothers films possess comedic moments and some very funny dialogue, but you wouldn't call (for example) No Country For Old Men or Fargo comedies. Aaron Sorkin is another excellent example of a writer who freely moves between the two ends of the Comedy/Drama spectrum, filling episodes of his best-known work The West Wing with serious, dramatic stories alongside spectacularly funny dialogue and character moments. Freaks and Geeks (created by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow) is a show that steadfastly refused to characterise itself as either comedy or drama; the writers were intelligent enough to realise that if you create strong enough characters and a believable enough world, you can draw from them comedy, drama and a million shades of grey in between.
All of the shows and films I mentioned above fall into a variety of genres; political soap opera, thriller, coming-of-age story, etc., which do a lot more to define the show than simply calling them Comedy or Drama.
Even the films that one would describe as outright comedies (as opposed to the blends of comedy and drama mentioned above) all fall into genres outside of, and more specific than, simply being "a comedy". Romantic Comedies, for example, are love stores that happen to have jokes in them. Parody and Satire have their genre conventions dictated by whatever they're making fun of; Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg) is a comedic horror movie. Talladega Nights (Will Ferrell and Adam McKay) is a sports movie. And so on, and so forth.
The reason I'm posting this now is that I recently fell victim to this simplistic way of thinking. I sat down thinking "I'm going to write a comedy", without having the dramatic backbone to support it. I learned the hard way that anyone who tells themselves "I'm going to write a comedy" is far from ready to start writing. It's the next few words after that which will really inform your genre, which will, in turn, inform your setting, characters, obstacles, etc.
"I'm going to write a comedy in space"; okay, you're writing a sci-fi film with jokes. "I'm going to write a comedy about Wyatt Earp"; okay, you're writing a western with some jokes.
Anyway... something to think about.
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A lot of writers (good ones, too) seem to share the notion that every story is, at its core, a comedy or a tragedy. A film can have more funny moments than dramatic ones and still have a depressing message. Others can satirize a topic through a series of misfortunes, without making a single joke. We went over lots of examples of this in class, but I remember exactly none. It's all that glue I did in the 80's.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I personally don't think in those terms. I think each story is what it is, and if it feels right to mesh drama with humor, I'll do it. However, I do think that it can be helpful, when starting a writing project, to decide if your outlook is gonna be comedic or tragic (whatever the genre). Settling on that can be very useful for giving shape to the story, and you can always betray yourself later. That is my motto, by the way.
I agree completely that one can make a tonal choice to be more dramatic or comedic; one SHOULD, in fact, make such a choice. But that's not that ONLY decision to make. You have to be more specific.
ReplyDeleteThat's all I'm sayin'.
You know, it's funny that you mention this, as I was thinking on it just the other day.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently in a Media & Society class, and the text talks about genre. They have a chart (it's a 100 level class, but a core requirement and a prereq for the others I have to take) of "popular genres" including comedy and drama, and it lists examples for each. Under "comedy", one of the examples is American Beauty which, while containing many very funny moments, is not a comedy AT ALL. This led me to recall the time I saw Revolutionary Road and people were laughing at the scene in which Kate Winslet's soul has been broken. I could not imagine what exactly they were laughing at.
Anyway, it let me to question the consideration of comedy as a genre as well. I think in general people tend to label things however they can, without consideration of the accuracy of such labeling. How does it go? People need to put things into neat little boxes, so they know what to expect, even if that's wrong.
Probably the most intelligent thing I've seen you write ;)
ReplyDeleteActually, I've never thought about any of this before, and it's made me think about how I write. My stuff would be considered 'drama', but has comedic moments. On the other hand, I consider myself a very bad writer when it comes to 'comedy'.
Makes me wonder if everything I've ever written can be put into one genre.