MEDA 235 - Screen Comedy & Clowns

Credit(s): 3
3 hours lecture, 3 hours contact
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 111.
The world needs to laugh and comedy gives more than pleasure. It is a cultural escape valve allowing us to “joke” about forbidden subjects, permitting us to talk about race, gender, and social classes. The first films made included comedies and this course studies the stars (some comics, others clowns) and directors who have made the world’s great comedic films. Examples reviewed are representative of the silent film era, screwball comedies, as well as to the social comedies of the 1940s and 1950s, with a review of the liberation comedies of the 1960s and 1970s along with contemporary examples of the genre.