The comedy series The Good Place caught me by surprise when I first encountered its concept. Of course the general plot of “main character ends up somewhere, realizes it was a mistake, and commences a journey to right the wrong” has been done many times before. However, what sets this series above similar scenarios revolves around the concept of a comedic hell. Hell is generally seen as any religious person’s worst-case scenario: an eternity of inescapable suffering, often surpassing the realms human understanding itself. Yet in The Good Place, this does not seem to be the case. Hell is a concept that has been touched upon in works of nearly all genres; primarily in horrors, thrillers, or dramas, but now hell introduces itself to comedy. Sure, the setting in The Good Place is still, by all definitions, a hell, but not the traditional ‘fire and brimstone, demons prodding you in the kidneys with their pointy demon staffs’ hell, and as Barford states, the series often uses this to its advantage.
In taking a concept like hell and creating something mundane out of it, it becomes comedic. It brings this inescapable realm of eternal torture to a more human level, allowing viewers to understand its concept while subverting our expectations of how it plays out. A perfect example is the kid’s meal scene that Barford references, in which a character complains that they died too young, but still too old to order off the kid’s menu. This sense of relatability and quirky humor is generally seen as funny, but seeing this in the context of a legitimate hell makes the concept that much funnier. The series plays this idea of subverting expectations fairly well, though another aspect that stands out to me is its sense of philosophy. The series often plays into tropes, references, and sometimes even clichés of more dramatic, philosophical works by channeling the ideas of ethics and morality into its fantasy-comedy groundwork.
Tom and Jerry are one of the most iconic, recognizable duos in all of cartoon history. The charming, animated, domestic ultraviolence of the age-old cat versus mouse tale has weaved its way into the hearts and minds of the last five generations or so. It relies heavily on simple, slapstick scenarios, often involving the pain of Tom the cat and pleasure of Jerry the mouse. Slapstick humor is defined as “comedy based on deliberately clumsy actions and humorously embarrassing events.” This means that anything from The Three Stooges to Blazing Saddles has indulged in a bit of slapstick every now and then, even if it is considered to be childish and cheap to most critical audiences. However, despite the negative connotation associated with slapstick, Tom and Jerry has managed to not only create a formula that performs remarkably well, but also one that stands the test of time. Tom and Jerry continues to be a relevant series down through generations, constantly getting reboots, reruns, ...
That's an interesting point about hell. It's almost as if someone did a take on Hell to rival the traditional image, much as Huxley's negative utopia is a muted, low-key version of Orwell's negative utopia in which things end with a whimper rather than a bang.
ReplyDeleteThe way that The Good Place puts a comedic swing on hell truly is unique. I wouldn't be surprised if new shows appeared that contained similar concepts.
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