Black comedy

This article is about a tone of comedy. For information about comedies featuring African or African-American characters, see Black sitcom.

Black comedy, also known as black humor, is a subgenre of comedy and satire where topics and events normally treated seriously – death, mass murder, sickness, madness, terror, drug abuse, et cetera – are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms used to avoid racial overtones are dark comedy/humor and morbid comedy/humor. (See also color metaphors for race.)

Black humor is similar to sick humor, such as dead baby jokes. However, in sick humor most of the humor comes from shock and revulsion; black humor usually includes an element of irony, or even fatalism.

In America, black comedy as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers such as Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut and others published novels and stories where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. An anthology edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, titled "Black Humor," assembles many examples of the genre.

For example, the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb presents one of the finest examples of black comedy. The subject of the film is nuclear war and the extinction of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with gravity and seriousness, creating suspense over the efforts to avoid a nuclear war. But Dr. Strangelove plays the subject for laughs; for example, in the film, the fail-safe procedures designed to prevent a nuclear war are precisely the systems that ensure that it will happen.

A scene in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot is a good example of black comedy: A man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down. The cartoons of Charles Addams typically display black humour, by mixing humor with scenes that would normally be considered macabre or horrific.

Some examples of black comedy in print include:

Oil of Dog by Ambrose Bierce
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. However, this may be a case of unintentional humor, as Heller reported in a Playboy interview in June 1975 of not being aware the novel was funny when he wrote it. [1] (http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/ContempDrama/Wasserstein.htm)
Fight Club, heavy with black humor about the capitalistic society.
One of the Guys by Robert Clark Young
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
National Lampoon, especially the work of Michael O'Donoghue, Doug Kenney, and Ed Bluestone.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, an anti-war sci-fi novel loosely based on Vonnegut's experiences as a German POW.

Some other famous films known for their use of black humor include:

Little Murders, written by Jules Feiffer
American Psycho about a serial killer. Played by Christian Bale.
Black Cat, White Cat
Catch-22, another film about the madness of war, based on the novel by Joseph Heller.
Death Becomes Her, about the downsides of immortality
Death To Smoochy A child's best friend is the center of murder.
Do The Right Thing Black community fights against Italian restaurant owner.
Falling Down, a normal guy takes on the world on the hottest day of the year.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, semi-autobiographical film of Hunter S. Thompson starring Johnny Depp directed by Terry Gilliam
Grace Quigley, a film about euthanasia
Harold and Maude, in which an alienated young man obsessed with staged suicides and the funerals of strangers falls in love with a vivacious octogenarian
The Hospital, the story of a chief of surgery who is trying to figure out why a number of hospital employees begin dying under strange circumstances
Heathers, about a disaffected, jaded couple who start killing members of popular cliques at their high school
Ichi the Killer, about a pair of savage killers, one a sadist and the other a masochist.
Kill Bill, By Quentin Tarantino
Kind Hearts and Coronets, Ealing comedy in which the main character assassinates members of an aristocratic family to inherit a Dukedom
The Ladykillers
The Lindsay Anderson trilogy of If...., O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a Guy Ritchie film about the seedy underside of London crime
Loot by Joe Orton dramatist of several Black Comedies
M*A*S*H, in which the medical staff of a Korean War field hospital engage in silly mischief to alleviate the horror of war.
Man Bites Dog, a mockumentary turning the tables on news and documentaries
Monsieur Verdoux, about a suave serial killer who commits his crimes to support his familiy.
Monty Python's Life of Brian, a satire of Christianity.
Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, a series of sketches on subjects including birth, death, and war.
Prizzi's Honor, in which a Mafia hitman and hitwoman fall in love
Pulp Fiction, about the misadventures of thugs, whose stories weave into the same destiny.
Roger & Me, in which director Michael Moore explores the decline of Flint, Michigan after General Motors CEO Roger Smith closed the city's auto plants and laid off thousands of employees.
The Ruling Class, about an insane British nobleman who thinks he's Jesus
Sin City by Frank Miller
To Die For, about murder and pedophilia.
Trainspotting, about the adventures of a group of heroin addicts.
Wag the Dog, a story about a fake war, designed to salvage the election for a president who had sex with a young woman.
The Wrong Box, from the story by Robert Louis Stevenson about the members of a tontine

Black comedy

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