Throughout the late nineteenth century to the present day, comedy films have captivated audiences, shed light on sensitive subjects, and most importantly induced laughter from its audiences. From Leo McCarey’s Duck Soup (1933) to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), the conventions of this genre have greatly evolved. Although both the slapstick comedy Duck Soup and the dark comedy Dr. Strangelove satirize war and the government’s delinquency through the use of irony, acting, dialogue, and props, the style of these films drastically differs. Duck Soup, a Depression-era film, lacks all earnestness through the frivolous characters’ incessant use of sarcasm and absurdity while Dr. Strangelove, a Cold War era film, strives on achieving satire through serious, businesslike characters performing foolish acts.
Slapstick comedy was quite prevalent in the short, silent films of the early 1900’s as it is projected that individuals like Mal Sennett and Hal Roach, produced about forty-thousand reels of film containing this sub-genre (Dale 1). This type of comedy tended to focus…show more content… This change is exemplified by Dr. Strangelove, a dark comedy that strongly differs from the slapstick style of Duck Soup. Dark comedies are films that utilize disturbing humor in order to highlight a societal problem or controversial issue. Furthermore, there are three key elements that are found in the themes of these dark comedies. They are “man as beast, the absurdity of the world, and the omnipresence of death” (“Comedy: Dark Comedy”). Ultimately Dr. Strangelove captures all of these themes of dark comedy in its satire of the government’s role in mutually assured destruction in the Cold War. Men control who lives and dies through the decisions that are made by high-ranking officials. Moreover, the mutually assured destruction theory is portrayed as absurd by Kubrick, and the deaths of mankind due to nuclear war are ever-present in the
