Chapter3
3.1 Narrative and structure
3.2 Timing and pacing
3.3 Characters
3.4 Scenes
3.5 Color
3.6 Sound
3.7 The difference between ironic animation and traditional cartoon animation
The character of black humour in film （which is similar to irony in animation）
Black humour has a unique aesthetic function and typical aesthetic characteristics, which exist independently of the categories of comedy and tragedy. The aesthetic features and expressions of black humour in literature are also fully applied to cinema, in terms of context, situation, characterisation, narrative mode, and the expression of camera language. The stories presented under black humour use “laughter” to express “sadness”, catharsis with absurdity, and emphasise the use of humour to reveal the various pathologies in society. The charm of black humour films is inseparable from their rich aesthetic connotations.
I. Creating an unreal and playful context
Context is the environment in which a linguistic unit appears, and the use of any language is inseparable from context.
(i) The inverse mix of sound and picture
Nicholas Angel, a good policeman, is transferred to a remote and quiet town called “Sandford” because he has been ostracised. It’s a town that has never had a bad case, where the people are friendly and caring, but amidst the gentle country music, an unprecedented murder begins, and the tragedy continues to unfold, leading to a foggy mystery of death. Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange is the ultimate in the inverse blend of sound and picture, pushing the boundaries of cinema. The nasty and evil protagonist Alex uses Beethoven’s music as a source of motivation for his sadism, and Beethoven’s symphonies mean violence and pornography to him. There is a scene in the film in which he insults Jesus: the scene in which Alex masturbates in a room with four dancing statues of Jesus, a portrait of Beethoven and pornographic pictures, which switch rapidly with the Ode to Joy; this scene is often a hint of the lustful or violent nature of the protagonist. There is also a scene in which Alex dances to beautiful music and sings passionately of violence against the writer’s wife in the “Song in the Rain”. These sounds and images are blended in a strong visual and aural conflict, giving the audience the unique mix of laughter and sadness that is the hallmark of black humour. In the Chinese film “Crazy Stone”, the music of the film is perfectly combined with the unique perspective and rhythm of the film to express the main theme of the film, and the sound and images present a unique and intriguing mood in the confrontation and blending.
( 2) Alienated Humanity and Absurd Plot
Black humour often aims to express the coldness, absurdity, anti-conformity and subversion of traditional aesthetic values of human nature, to show the degradation of human nature and the alienation of emotions, and to highlight the survival of marginal characters. The film “The Devil Comes” uses dark humour to show the deep-seated miserable nature of the little man and his fearlessness in the face of the brutal oppression of the devils. The film’s main characters are mostly pedantic, selfish and cowardly, comical and even pathetic in comparison to the bloodthirsty Japanese, but the film cleverly uses the unique structure of black humour, uncertainty, fragmentation and egolessness, and the humble nature of the film, using the brutal war to stimulate the latent humanity of these small people. In the film, Ma Dashan’s decapitated head smiles eerily in front of the camera, containing epiphany and relief, helplessness and bitterness; and the Japanese hoodwinked singer who goes from cowardly to fearless in an instant, before being brutally murdered. In the film, the transition from the indecency of the past to the fearlessness of the spirit constitutes the complete humanity of the alienation of the black humour film, and this complex transformation of human emotions is expressed in the form of black humour, which is more impactful and shocking and will not be forgotten by the audience after watching it.
Black humour films often use a cynical attitude to represent the environment, magnify and distort the incongruities between characters, show a perverse relationship between people and objects, and use absurdity to depict the absurdity of the world around and the oppression of individuals by society. The film “Bullfight” is the story of a foolish and cunning man, “Bull Two”, and a Dutch cow. After the entire village is killed by the Japs, the cow becomes Niu Er’s only family, and he tries every means to protect the cow, which has been deified and continues to bring him disaster. After his ordeal, Niu Er puts the bracelet he gave his lover on the cow’s nose and lives a small life with her. There are many other absurd scenarios in the film, and these surreal scenarios reflect the essence of black humour, as the film uses black humour to show how fate plays tricks on the little people and provokes the viewer to reflect on human nature and war. The beauty of the film lies in its highly artistic method of expression. The unreal and playful context it creates contains the disharmony of natural objects, the paradox of human nature, pain and cruelty, alienation and absurdity in a specific social environment, and is an alternative portrayal of social reality.
The aesthetic meaning created by the unique narrative mode and camera language
(1) Dissolving narrative
The narrative of black humor films breaks the pattern commonly used in traditional films, and adopts the reverse negative narrative, using “absurdity” to dissolve “rationality”, “parody” to dissolve “misery”, and “deconstruction” to dissolve “rationality”, using extremely dramatic artistic expressions, transcending time and space, morality, ideas and language habits, breaking with tradition, rejecting customs, and combining contradictory elements with a rational black core.
In traditional cinema, the protagonist is often a positive figure who is brave and courageous, but in black humour films the hero is often replaced by a lewd and marginal character, and such an eccentric and psychopathic character is ironically referred to as a ‘hero’. Heroism dissolves into absurdity. In Lu Chuan’s The Search for the Gun, Ma Shan, a small-town policeman, loses his gun, which means he loses his dignity as a man and the value and meaning of his life. In the end, the soul that emerges from the main character’s body disappears into the horizon with tears in its eyes and a smile on its face, subtly using black humour to mock the impermanence of life. In a play where all rules are dissolved, the ridiculous and absurd make the state of existence a game, where rationality and classics are repeatedly denied, and where the viewer examines the world we live in and the hidden nature of human beings from a unique aesthetic perspective.
(ii) The language of the camera
In the film noir, the clever use of the camera better demonstrates the rhythm of the film, the conflicts, the “sadness” and the “joy” as one and the same, and even combines beautiful shots with cruel and tyrannical scenes.
In order to express the film’s noir theme, the director often focuses on the expressive power of close-ups, the use of motion shots, the performance of the film’s rhythm, through “flirtation with imitation”, “collage” and other artistic expressions to group shots, with a unique perspective to express the anomalous, anti-logical, incomprehensible and paradoxical plot.
Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange is a typical example of the use of comedy to express tragedy. In the film, Alex dances sultrily and sings the romantic “Song in the Rain” while committing violence against the writer’s wife, The language of the camera subverts the logic of the narrative, using beauty to express violence and shamelessness, giving the audience a visual and psychological impact that is both amusing and infuriating. The Coen brothers’ 2009 film A Serious Man follows an introverted and sullen physics professor through a series of unlucky events, a divorce, a brother’s rebellion and the prospect of having his career ruined by an anonymous letter.
At Sey’s funeral, the director’s close-ups of his weeping wife, Larry’s unpredictable face, the complimentary eulogies from the institution about Sey’s lack of stinginess, and Judith’s cries of grief at the loss of her lover, make for an endlessly sarcastic picture.
In 1994, Quentin Tarantino’s “Lowlife” uses a “patchwork” camera language to combine the violence and bloodshed of society with the struggle of the little people. Lu Chuan’s film The Search for the Gun uses black humour to analyse the psychological and existential state of the little man from a new perspective, with elements of suspense, thriller, metaphor and irony, in the style of a surrealist work. It also brings the audience into the anxious and tense atmosphere created by the language of the camera.
The unique expression of artistic emotions in black humor films
Film noir is also original in its expression of artistic emotions. It generally takes the marginal characters with extreme psychological angles as the main characters, focusing on their special psychology and the absurd behaviour of the characters in a certain social form, using artistic colours and music that contradicts the atmosphere of the scene to show the scenes of the story and the emotional changes of the characters, so as to set the atmosphere of the film and make the viewer feel the truth in the absurdity, the sadness, resentment and helplessness in the uncontrollable joy, using the comic The seriousness of a real tragedy is dissipated by the comic form.
The breathtaking “blackness” of the film “Bullfight” always sends a shiver down the spine of the audience. In the darkness of the night, the cow protector is relieved to see his compatriots being killed one by one by the Japs’ mines. In the film, “red” is the colour that brings comfort to Niu Er, the colour of Jiu Er, who repeatedly appears in flashbacks in the film as a reflection of Niu Er’s desperate love, as does her mournful cry. Grey” is used extensively in the film to show Niu Er’s living environment, the grey lifeless sky and the dirty villagers wrapped in grey rags, allowing the audience to experience the hardships of this grey little man’s existence. Huang Jianxin’s “The Black Gun Incident” uses “red” to express the anxiety, and “white” to exaggerate the red colour, using the contrast of warm and cold colours to reflect the contradiction and conflict of the plot.
The soundtrack of a black humour film is the finishing touch to the film, and its artistic expression is greatly enhanced by its comic and clever soundtrack. The film uses MTV filming techniques, and in order to match the tension and fast pace of the film, a large number of voice-overs are used to introduce the characters or tell what is going to happen. The film starts slowly, and as the audience adjusts to the pace, the characters suddenly come to life one after another, the location, the setting, the characters, the plot, the changing rhythms make the viewer feel curious and tense, and the open-ended ending leaves the viewer with a sense of wonder and a sense of wonder.
Black humour films are based on the core of “blackness”, with a disintegrating narrative mode and personalized camera language as a means to bring the viewer a unique artistic and emotional experience, narrating modern people’s alternative criticism of human nature and social reality. The development of film noir represents the transcendence and progress of the aesthetic spirit of cinema and the aesthetic consciousness of the viewer, making the artistic expression of cinema increasingly rich.