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135 pages

English

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Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium—from Buster Keaton's encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx's lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis's film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which "film exists in a state of philosophy." By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them—the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Comedy of Self-Reference

1. Slapstick Spectators: Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)

2. Buster Keaton's Theory of Film

3. Redeeming Vision: Charlie Chaplin

4. Bodies of Silence, Bodies of Sound: The Marx Brothers

5. Hollywood, Television, and the Case of Ernie Kovacs

6. Nouvelles Blagues: Jerry Lewis

Epilogue: The Apotheosis of Failure: Jackass

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Humour

Film

Cinema

History of film

Visual culture

Película fotográfica

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 février 2020
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781438477329
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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The Slapstick Camera

The Slapstick Camera
Hollywood and the Comedy of Self-Reference

Burke Hilsabeck
Cover: Buster Keaton in The Cameraman (1928), directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton. Credit: MGM/Photofest © MGM
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hilsabeck, Burke, 1978– author.
Title: The slapstick camera : Hollywood and the comedy of self-reference / Burke Hilsabeck.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011272 | ISBN 9781438477312 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477329 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Comedy films—United States—History and criticism. | Motion pictures—Philosophy. | Motion pictures—Production and direction—United States. | Television comedies—United States—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.C55 H55 2020 | DDC 791.43/617—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011272
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Comedy of Self-Reference
1 Slapstick Spectators: Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914)
2 Buster Keaton’s Theory of Film
3 Redeeming Vision: Charlie Chaplin
4 Bodies of Silence, Bodies of Sound: The Marx Brothers
5 Hollywood, Television, and the Case of Ernie Kovacs
6 Nouvelles Blagues : Jerry Lewis
Epilogue: The Apotheosis of Failure: Jackass
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figure 1.1 “A Thief’s Fate” ( Tillie’s Punctured Romance )
Figure 1.2 Distracted spectatorship ( Tillie’s Punctured Romance )
Figure 2.1 Failure ( The Cameraman )
Figure 2.2 Mastery ( The Cameraman )
Figure 2.3 Buster and the screen ( Sherlock Jr. )
Figure 2.4 Waking up to and turning away from the image of reality ( Sherlock Jr. )
Figure 2.5 Waking up to and turning away from the image of reality ( Sherlock Jr. )
Figure 3.1 Fantasy at the threshold of the screen ( City Lights )
Figure 3.2 Sight and screen ( City Lights )
Figure 3.3 The screen as surveillance and wall ( Modern Times )
Figure 4.1 The grotesque body ( Duck Soup )
Figure 5.1 Olsen and Johnson in the projection booth ( Hellzapoppin’ )
Figure 5.2 “Die Morität von Mackie Messer” as “seen” through an oscilloscope ( The Ernie Kovacs Show , January 23, 1962)
Figure 5.3 Turning the oscilloscope to milk ( The Ernie Kovacs Show , January 23, 1962)
Figure 6.1 Rick Todd (Dean Martin) and the Trim Maid ( Artists and Models )
Figure 6.2 Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis) and his “Bat Lady” comic books ( Artists and Models )
Figure 6.3 The Trim Maid spits the pages of Eugene’s comic books ( Artists and Models )
Figure 6.4 Accidental abstraction ( Artists and Models )
Figure 6.5 The space of continuity ( The Ladies Man )
Figure 6.6 Televised simultaneity ( The Ladies Man )
Figure 6.7 The house as set ( The Ladies Man )
Figure 6.8 Mis-extended duration: a gag about gags ( The Errand Boy )
Figure 6.9 The sausage factory ( Tout Va Bien )
Figure 6.10 A second horizontality ( Tout Va Bien )
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of two sections of this book have been previously published. Part of chapter 3, “ Redeeming Vision: Charlie Chaplin ,” is included in The Philosophy of War Films (2014, ed. David Larocca). A section of chapter 6, “ Nouvelle Blagues : Jerry Lewis ,” appeared first in LOLA (as “Modernism from Clement Greenberg to Frank Tashlin”) and then in Modernist Cultures 11.2 (as “Frank Tashlin’s Jackson Pollock”).
People sometimes say that the completion of a feature film is a small miracle. The same holds true for any academic monograph. Like most scholarship, this book is the result of the support of several institutions; more importantly, it owes its existence to the kindness and conversation of my friends, mentors, and colleagues.
The Slapstick Camera began as a dissertation in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. It was shaped especially by my dissertation committee and mentors James Lastra and James Chandler, and from conversations with James Conant. Thank you too to the members of the Mass Culture Workshop, from whose conversation I learned to navigate a new discipline.
At Oberlin College, I spent untold hours at the Black River Cafe with William Patrick Day, whose insight and patience were instrumental in transforming an awkward dissertation into a somewhat less awkward book. The book also benefited from conversations in Oberlin with Grace An and Geoff Pingree, and from the support of the dean’s office, and Pablo Mitchell in particular. A Grant-in-Aid provided me with an opportunity to work at the Margaret Herrick Library, whose staff was both helpful and gracious. Thanks go too to my many wonderful students at Oberlin, some of whose insights appear within. I think especially of Joshua Blankfield and Isabella Miller.
At the University of Northern Colorado, the book received the gracious support of the dean’s office. It would not have been completed without the help of Laura Connolly and Chris Marston and a Faculty Reassignment Award that allowed me to continue to work while caring for my infant daughter. Thank you too to my colleagues in the English department at UNC, who have been supportive at every turn.
Like many others, I owe a debt of gratitude to the inimitable Murray Pomerance, who is patient, exuberant, and always happy to pick up the phone. Murray showed me the ropes. At SUNY Press, James Peltz is a model director—both supportive and attentive to detail. Thank you too to the two anonymous readers whose input was both generous and detailed and whose model I hope to emulate in my own service to the profession.
The attentive reading of many friends and colleagues shaped the form and content of this book, identifying errors of omission and sharpening my ear. Thanks go to Kenneth Chan, Doron Galili, Akiva Gottlieb, Katie Lennard, Daniel Morgan, Andrew Ritchey, Matthew Solomon, and Alberto Zambenedetti. What errors remain are certainly mine alone.
As I worked on this book, the conversation of dear friends gave me both pleasure and courage. Among many such friends, I think especially of Andy Broughton, Sarah Cornish, Neal Fisher, David Hahn, David Hoffman, Dana Kletter, Benjamin Landry, Marianna Ritchey, Sara Schaff, Brian Short, Daniel Torday, and John Zahl.
A friend once told me that all academic work falls into two categories, labors of ego and labors of love. Perhaps the two cannot be fully separated, but I try my best to walk in the latter. This book works through a style of comedy that I came to love as a child. My feeling for the Marx Brothers, for Laurel and Hardy, and for Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin I owe to my grandfather, the late Robert Burke Hilsabeck, and to the laughter and friendship of my brother Geoffrey.
To that end, I still remember the evening, as a child of nine or ten, when my father returned from the video store with a videocassette copy of A Night at the Opera . In this and in many other things, it was my great good fortune to be raised by Steven and Alison Hilsabeck, educators, thinkers, and exemplary parents.
And finally, thank you Elizabeth—poet, mother, helpmeet ne plus ultra .
Introduction
The Comedy of Self-Reference
F OR MANY YEARS , I HAVE BEEN interested in the intelligence of slapstick comedy. For a mode of performance and filmmaking whose predicates are idiocy and failure, many slapstick comedies have a surprising ability to turn themselves inward and think—dumb movements suddenly shouldered with a philosophical cast. So much comedy involves the attempt to solve a physical problem that suddenly takes on psychological, and sometimes metaphysical, consequences: What’s the best way to jump off this moving train? How do we get a piano up this flight of stairs? Can one put together a Sears home without instructions? 1 At times, this metaphysical impulse reaches toward the medium in which it is voiced. It is difficult not to be impressed by the way in which Buster Keaton rides the cow catcher of an antique train, for instance, but it can be stupefying to see that the track and its train stand as a metaphor for the cinema itself, photograph after photograph pulled across the sprockets of the projector like coal cars over railroad ties.
In the case of Keaton’s The General (1927), this self-reference is elegant metaphor, but a remarkable number of comedies turn the camera more literally upon the technologies and the ontology of the cinema. Keaton’s own Sherlock Jr. (1924), for instance, tells the story of a projectionist who falls asleep before his machine. It includes an extended meditation about the viewer’s re