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December 2012, Week 3

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Subject:
From:
William Brown <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:12:24 +0000
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It may well be a genre convention of comedy, but I am suggesting that it is
not limited to comedy. War and Peace predates cinema and it is not a
comedy. Schatz is a bit cinema-centric in his thinking if it is he who
argued this.

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 6:29 PM, godard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>     the incompetent (male) hero is a genre convention of comedy, in fact.
> the ones who initiate the "groundbreaking antihero revolution" (i think
> it's schatz, but i am recalling from memory here) are laurel & hardy.
>
>    gloria monti
>
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 7:09 AM, William Brown <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       Film and TV Studies Discussion List <
> > [log in to unmask]>
> > Poster:       William Brown <[log in to unmask]>
> > Subject:      Re: QUERY: the incompetent hero
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > It is interesting that everyone has reached for comedy... I wonder
> whether
> > the student has been thinking about non-superhero superheroes - as per
> > films like Kick-Ass, Special (Specioprin Hydrochloride), and Super...
> Which
> > are comedies of sorts, but also not really...
> >
> > For what I wonder is whether an incompetent hero might not be much more
> > regular beyond the specialised lampooning of heroism that most of these
> > comedies involve... Chaplin, Keaton, Tati, Sellers: each incompetent is
> in
> > fact remarkably talented - physically above all.
> >
> > So the film that comes to mind for me is, perhaps surprisingly for some
> > people, Goldfinger. Whereas 21st century Bond can do parkour, somersaults
> > and superhuman jumping, in Goldfinger (and many early Bonds in general -
> > particularly the Roger Moore films), Bond can do nothing. He's got no
> idea
> > what's going on, he keeps fluffing up his invistigations, getting
> captured
> > - and he is each time rescued by others and barely manages to get out of
> > any of the scapes himself (electrocuting Oddjob perhaps aside). Here we
> > have a hero who is a bit incompetent, basically - and who never quite
> works
> > out what he's supposed to be doing...
> >
> > So while incompetent heroes are often comic - the Don Quixote tradition -
> > they often are not. And their incompetence can have disastrous
> consequences
> > - the tradition for me here would be someone like Pierre Bezukhov in
> > Tolstoy's War and Peace, who attempts to liberate his serfs but basically
> > messes it up and arguably causes more harm than good...
> >
> > Anyone else think of any incompetent heroes that are not necessarily
> comic,
> > then?
> >
>
>
> --
> gloria monti, ph.d.
> assistant professor
> radio-TV-film
> CSUF, fullerton, CA
> [log in to unmask]
> _____________________________
>
> ----
> Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex
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