In the films you have studied, how important are performances in creating comedy?
The films I have studied are film fours East is East and The Ladykillers, and in this essay I am going to discuss how the performances (mise-en-scene) in each film creates humour for the audience and therefore defines its genre.
I will first discuss East is East, the film mainly uses accent and dialect as a way of creating humour, George uses words akin to British culture such as ‘bloody’, he says these words with a Pakistani accent which would thus amuse someone who is British because of the use of his language which is of British colloquialisms. Also, leading on from Georges cultural roots, his children have grown up in the UK, and therefore live by the British culture, one significant part of there performances connotes there preferred style of living, for example when George is on his way home from the market, Saleem, Tarik and Meenah are in the living room having a full English breakfast, however as soon as Sajid proclaims that there Father George is on his way home, they all scatter in panic because food such as pork is forbidden in Islam, another part of the life they wish to avoid, this certain set of performances creates humour because they are doing something that is familiar to the British audience by having a full English, thus the audience would be thinking “we would do the same” so it makes them laugh when they see something as normal as a full English being a “forbidden fruit” for lack of a better term, and so when they see the three of them scatter around the house spraying spray to rid the stench of the fried food, the audience would find this peculiar as it is so normal to them, and therefore see the humour in the performance.
Leading on from the familiar ideologies idea, some of the performances are spawned from pure realism of the British culture, and therefore British audiences appeal so well to the performances and are so familiar, that they find...