WIKIPEDIA
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Cartoonist Charles Addams was famous for such humor, e.g. depicting a boy decorating his bedroom with stolen warning signs including "NO DIVING – POOL EMPTY", "STOP – BRIDGE OUT" and "SPRING CONDEMNED."
Black comedy differs from both blue comedy—which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity, sex, and body fluids—and from straightforward obscenity. Whereas the term black comedy is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, gallows humor tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humor can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre.[1] Literary critics have associated black comedy and black humor with authors as early as the ancient Greeks with Aristophanes.[2][3][4][5][6][7][excessive citations]
Etymology
[edit]The term black humor (from the French humour noir) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift.[8][9] Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire[10][11] in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism,[8][12] often relying on topics such as death.[13][14]
Breton coined the term for his 1940 book Anthology of Black Humor (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor (particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731), A Modest Proposal (1729), Meditation Upon a Broomstick (1710), and in a few aphorisms).[9][12] In his book, Breton also included excerpts from 45 other writers, including both examples in which the wit arises from a victim with which the audience empathizes, as is more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comedy is used to mock the victim. In the last cases, the victim's suffering is trivialized, which leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as analogously found in the social commentary and social criticism of the writings of (for instance) Sade.
History
[edit] | The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with US and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (February 2023) |
Among the first American writers who employed black comedy in their works were Nathanael West and Vladimir Nabokov.[15] The concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after the publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, edited by Bruce Jay Friedman.[7][16] The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre. With the paperback, Friedman labeled as "black humorists" a variety of authors, such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Bruce Jay Friedman himself, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.[7] Among the recent writers suggested as black humorists by journalists and literary critics are Roald Dahl,[17] Kurt Vonnegut,[10] Warren Zevon, Christopher Durang, Philip Roth,[10] and Veikko Huovinen.[18] Evelyn Waugh has been called "the first contemporary writer to produce the sustained black comic novel."[19] The motive for applying the label black humorist to the writers cited above is that they have written novels, poems, stories, plays, and songs in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. Comedians like Lenny Bruce,[11] who since the late 1950s have been labeled as using "sick comedy" by mainstream journalists, have also been labeled with "black comedy".
Nature and functions
黑色幽默，又稱為「黑色喜劇」，是產生於1960年代美國的一個現代主義文學流派，它由於人數眾多的作家和豐富多彩的小說作品，成為現代主義中非常有影響的一支流派。現時黑色幽默已不局限於文學，在藝術、電影和電視劇等範疇，黑色幽默都成為了一種非常重要的流派。
背景
[編輯]黑色幽默產生、發展於1960年代，繁榮於70年代，是有其特定的時代背景的。當時美國在韓戰結束後，一方面社會矛盾，勞資矛盾頻繁，另一方面麥卡錫主義使整個社會形成了壓抑窒息的氛圍；1960年代初期，美國在越南戰爭戰事失利和美軍慘痛的傷亡，更使全國反戰情緒高漲，局勢比較動盪，社會狀況比較混亂。在無所適從的社會背景下，於是產生了對現實採取嘲笑抨擊，揭露和諷刺，幻想和否定結合在一起的「黑色」的「幽默」。
起源
[編輯]早在1940年，一位法國超現實主義作家安德烈·布勒東曾編過一本名為《黑色幽默文集》的書，該書所收錄的黑色幽默作品幾乎都是當時超現實主義的作家寫的。1965年，美國作家布魯斯·傑伊·弗里德曼將1960年代以來的美國報刊上發表的具有黑色幽默風格的12名作家的作品編成一本小書出版，取名為《黑色幽默》。同年，美國評論家尼克伯克（Conrad Knickerbocker）發表《致命一螫的幽默》（Humor With a Mortal Sting）一文，明確的將這類作家稱為「黑色幽默」派，於是以「黑色幽默」命名的現代主義文學流派在美國誕生。雖被評論家視為流派，黑色幽默作家卻不像超現實主義等派有召集人與定期聚會，相反地，黑色幽默作家大多單獨寫作，也不太接觸其他黑色幽默的作家，是否能作為一個流派來看待尚有爭議，作為一種文學思潮跟創作手法，卻是公認的有名。
解讀
[編輯]尼克伯克曾舉了一個例子，通俗地解釋黑色幽默的定義和性質：某個被判絞刑的人，在臨上絞架前，指著絞刑架詢問劊子手：「你肯定這玩意兒結實嗎？」 因此黑色幽默又稱為「絞刑架下的幽默」。
這一派作品中充斥的諷刺幽默與傳統的幽默大不相同：並不表現一種單純的滑稽情趣，而帶著濃重的荒誕、絕望、陰暗甚至殘忍的色彩。作品以一種無可奈何的嘲諷態度表現環境和個人（即「自我」）之間的互不協調，並把這種互不協調的現象加以放大，扭曲，變成畸形，使它們顯得更加荒誕不經，滑稽可笑，同時又令人感到沉重和苦悶。
黑色幽默是丹麥的齊克果為主導的，經過法國的讓·保羅·沙特再創造的文學上的存在主義，它在許多問題上的認識類似於荒誕派戲劇，甚至可以說是荒誕派文學在小說上的具體表現。屬於黑色幽默派的小說家大多在作品中強調世界是荒謬的，人生是痛苦的觀點，所以儘管他們在作品中有不同的反映，但出現在讀者面前的總是病態的人物典型，陰沉而痛苦的幽默，荒誕而雜亂的情節，麻木而殘酷的現代世界，尖銳而深刻的諷刺。
在描寫手法方面，黑色幽默派作家也打破傳統，小說的情節缺乏邏輯聯繫，常常把敘述現實生活與幻想和回憶混合起來，把嚴肅的哲理和插科打諢混成一團。
黑色幽默作為一種美學形式，屬於喜劇範疇，但又是一種帶有悲劇色彩的變態的喜劇。黑色幽默是為了打破禁忌而存在。禁忌使人痛苦，包含人類社會的各種層面，以政治上來說有種種禁忌，如白人對黑人的，希特勒對猶太人的，在性別上則是男人的對女人及其他不同性取向的人們，都可能造成痛苦（亦即存在主義說的他人即地獄）。黑色幽默敢於拿禁忌來開玩笑，而且是辛辣的，挖苦的，禁忌越大，黑色幽默的笑話威力就會越大。這就是為什麼即使脫離1960年代的美國背景下，至今仍會有黑色幽默的小說及電影存在。
主要作家及其作品
[編輯]- 納博科夫，可以算是黑色幽默最早的作家，他1955年出版了長篇小說《蘿莉塔》，此後又出版《普寧》（1957）、《幽冥的火》（1962）等小說，是黑色幽默派的元老。《幽冥的火》出現互換身分而被誤殺的情節，正是發生在納博科夫之父身上的事，於現實中發生了黑暗且悖論的東西，成為小說的核心之一。
- 約瑟夫·海勒，以《第22條軍規》聞名文壇，後又寫出了《出了毛病》（1974）和《像高爾德一樣好》（1979），成為公認的黑色幽默派的代表作家。《第22條軍規》描述大戰時軍隊瘋狂要求飛行員執行死亡任務的現象，軍隊中光怪陸離的現象層出不窮，人命高度受度威脅的情況下，瘋子與人權都由22號軍規決定，但永遠都會被駁回，也被用來比喻一種極端不利於百姓的政治悖論。
- 庫特·馮內古特，以充滿幽默和奇特風格的長篇小說而著稱，他的《第五號屠宰場》（1969）使黑色幽默的小說創作的影響達到頂峰。另外他的《貓的搖籃》（1963）和《時震》（1997）也是優秀的黑色幽默作品。馮內果由於二戰時親身經歷美軍對德勒斯登的大轟炸，感受到即使正義的一方也可能作出殘暴的毀滅性破壞，以此終身反對戰爭，並開始質疑人類的瘋狂行為，《第五號屠宰場》表面上是馮內果的戰爭回憶，回憶的框架下，描述了戰俘畢勒在戰爭最外圍的地方所感受到的荒謬，以及人類遇到極端威脅生存的狀況時，將自己活埋的隱喻。
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