For my second blog post I will be referring to American cinema, specifically early cinematic comedy in relation to Donald Crafton’s ‘Pie and Chase: Gag, Spectacle and Narrative in Slapstick Comedy’. Admittedly, even after having watched various early American slapstick comedies, particularly the likes of Chaplin, I found myself oblivious to the rift between narrative and gag; although the two parallel, they never really cross paths. I found it interesting that Crafton should refer to the gag as being “disruptive”, yet a crucial component in the equation that is the comic sketch.
So important is the gag that Brett Page states that “The purpose of the sketch is not to leave a single impression of a single story. It points no moral, draws no conclusion, and sometimes it might end quite as effectively anywhere before the place in the action at which it does terminate. It is built for entertainment purposes only and furthermore, for entertainment purposes that end the moment the sketch ends”. I have to agree with him; from what I‘ve observed, the narrative only acts as a sort of vessel that contains the gag and feeds it only a loose context, but the gag doesn’t necessarily have any bearing upon the narrative. In a way the two act independently, which is precisely what Crafton was making a point of in this text.
Surely there are moments when a gag propels the narrative? Mistaken identities, arousing the anger of an authority figure with an errant pie in the face, gag ingenuity inspiring the love of a (usually) female observer.... Maybe Page underplays the subversive aspect of slapstick, that which got the social reformers all hot and bothered.
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