This is part two of a three part series

The Comedy Noir comic-apocalyptic point of view refuses to pull its punches. It does not allow us to feel reassured, safe or uplifted. It is willing to profoundly offend in the service of truth telling, at least as truth is perceived by its author. It doesn’t say, “just kidding” after delivering its blows. It’s a slaughterhouse for society’s sacred cows. Tropic Thunder and Talladega Nights are typical parodies that deal in a politically correct, calculated outrageousness that allows the audience to feel reassured and safe by the time the credits roll (befitting ample-budget mainstream movies). Other mild species include Arsenic and Old Lace, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Harold and Maude. Idiocracy has some inspired moments, but ultimately chickens out. These movies lack the undomesticated ruthlessness of pure Comedy Noir, like say, Team America: World Police, or the unflinching Happiness.

Hard core Comedy Noir intrigues and attracts some viewers, while it offends and repels others. It’s not blockbuster material.  It seems to appeal to an artsy/literary, cynical, potty-mouthed juvenile, and/or intellectual audience. The subversive, satirical, and reform impulse sometimes expressed in Comedy Noir suggests a political leaning (usually liberal), but the pure stuff transcends politics. Those who don’t get it view Comedy Noir as non-ironically “sick,” which is what Comedy Noir is, if done correctly, without compromise, and delivering a real sting!  Reese Witherspoon’s turn in Freeway delivers, as does Laura Dern’s anti-Juno character in Citizen Ruth.

Novelist James Purdy (recently deceased) said in the 1960’s, “We live in the stupidest cultural era of American history. It is so stupid it inspires me . . . the theme of my work is the estrangement of the human being in America . . . based on money and competition, inhuman, terrified of love, sexual and other, obsessed with homosexuality and brutality, opposing anything that opposes money.”  Fifty years later, it seems little has changed that would alter Purdy’s point of view. In the past, movies like Day of the Locust, A Face in the Crowd, and Catch 22 offered some darkly inspired reactions to our brutal, dumbed-down culture. Sources of inspiration for the contemporary Comedy Noir writer are not in short supply, though the corporate cash may be. Still, we got Fight Club, Observe and Report, and the glorious Starship Troopers.

The impulse to reform in classical Satire is expressed in these quotes:

“Satire is born of the instinct to protest; it is protest become art.”  (Jack)

“Satire . . . a poem in which wickedness or folly is censured.” (Johnson)

“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s   face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.” (Swift)

While Comedy Noir often bears a close kinship to Satire, it need not have any intent to reform. And, unlike Comedy Noir, there is no requirement that Satire make us laugh at what is usually considered repugnant or horrible. Satire (through literary and other art forms) seeks to illuminate or improve human behavior and institutions by exposing follies, hypocrisy, excesses, and vices, using the tools of wit, irony, derision and sarcasm. Exaggeration and analogy are often components of satire, and the humor and irony employed are of a militant degree.

Most films listed in my Comedy Noir filmography contain satirical elements, if not bold-faced satire. Some Comedy Noir films that employ less apparent satire include Drag Me to Hell, Bad Santa, Observe and Report, and Fargo. Others are richly and pointedly satirical, like They Live, Dr. Strangelove, To Die For, and Burn After Reading.

So, Comedy Noir can be satirical and reform–minded, but what it really cares about is the primitive, perverted, absurdity of human beings in pursuit of their ridiculous ambitions and schemes. We are so sick it’s funny.

— david warfield