An offbeat triumph, Bottoms is a film about two lesbian high-school losers who plot to seduce their cheerleader crushes by creating a fight club for girls. Celebrated for the casualness of its presentation of queerness, so different from earnest coming-out narratives, the film is also significant for the ways in which it sloughs off a… Continue reading Bottoms
Category: film
Sex comedy
‘Sex comedy’ is a rather nebulous classification; films like American Pie (1999), and much of Judd Apatow’s oeuvre (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad) fit the bill, with ancient Greek and Restoration comedies and the films of Doris Day and Rock Hudson providing a lineage for comedies that revolve around sex. It’s a genre that can be… Continue reading Sex comedy
Jack Docherty’s meta-romcom
How to classify Jack Docherty’s new storytelling Fringe show, Nothing But? It’s a romcom of sorts, and a meta-romcom at that, one that has its cake and eats it too. Alongside the romance narrative itself, it’s also a record of the attempt to create a romcom, and a commentary upon the genre more generally. Docherty’s… Continue reading Jack Docherty’s meta-romcom
Googly eyes
The cartoonish owl in Nicole Eisenman’s new sculpture, ‘Love and Generosity’, eyes pointing slightly in different directions, is one of a string of recent characters with the same feature: Heihei, the stowaway chicken in the Disney film, Moana; the pigeon in Spies in Disguise who eats anything and everything; and most recently, the family’s pug… Continue reading Googly eyes
Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield
All too often humour is seen as somehow secondary to satire - Harry Levin, for instance, describes satire as ‘purposeful comedy’, with the implication that humour alone is insufficient. Indeed, as the privileged critical category, satire often serves ‘to defend comic art against charges of frivolity’ (Green 106). This tendency is understandable given the distinctions… Continue reading Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield
Jojo Rabbit
Jojo Rabbit has been nominated for 6 Oscars, and has just won a Bafta, so, despite the very mixed reviews, it’s clearly appealing to many. For me, it brought to mind other well received films that were similarly muddled – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri for example. The Oscars often favour films which take on… Continue reading Jojo Rabbit
Seth Rogen’s Shamelessness
Obliviousness is a crucial component of comic license. And our pleasure in obliviousness is partly pleasure in witnessing and sympathetically participating in the avoidance of humiliation, a condition which we are acutely and continually preoccupied with evading. While a relish for resilience and recovery is at the core of our enjoyment of obliviousness, part of… Continue reading Seth Rogen’s Shamelessness
Humour in the Arts 