Jeffrey Rutter
Is it possible to compare the likes of Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell to Lysistrata, King David, or Jesus? Jeffrey Rutter explores the full story.
Unpack the issues
Over the past 20 years a spate of well-known comedians has begun to make the successful transition from comic to dramatic actor. One of the earliest and most notable moves in this direction was made by Robin Williams, who played a person desperately trying to preserve his integrity against the threats of ambiguity, bureaucracy, and war in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987).
In 1984 Bill Murray stuck his toe in the same pool just long enough to realise that perhaps being a groundskeeper in Caddyshack was not going to be the capstone of his prolific career. In that year he played a daring role in The Razor’s Edge, a film based on the W Somerset Maugham novel of the same name and steeped in themes of struggle and ennui.
Other comedians have followed suit and done so with aplomb. Most notably, Eddie Murphy (Coming to America, 1988; Life, 1999), Jim Carrey (The Truman Show, 1998; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004), Adam Sandler (Spanglish, 2004; Click, 2006) and Will Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction, 2006) have made significant contributions to film storytelling that quite possibly could not have been pulled off by actors who lacked their comic sensibilities.
Of course, today we think of comedy as a genre of storytelling built around laughter. But when Aristotle referred to comedy as “imitation of inferior people,” he was not referring to laughter but to the underlying structure of a story.
In ancient Greek drama, a comic protagonist was in many ways the polar opposite of a tragic protagonist. Whereas the tragic figure displayed strength and favour early in the story but then fell from grace when a tragic flaw was revealed, the comic figure —particularly in old Greek comedy — displayed low status, vulnerability and even buffoonery early on but then underwent a preposterous, often stunning, reversal in stature as his or her heroic qualities were revealed.
We might say the quintessential Greek comic figure was Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, whose heroism emerged only after she, a lowly woman, addressed the “miserable greybeards” of the ruling class of Athens with the warning, “Don't irritate me, you there, or I'll lay my slipper across your jaws!”
To be sure, laughter often emerges from comedy in the classical sense, but structurally speaking there is more to the story.
Not only does the comic literary archetype present a down-then-up structure — it often presents life’s contradictions in a creative way that leaves audiences feeling more hopeful.
In Adam Sandler’s Click, for example, we experience the tense pull between wanting the comforts of life on the one hand and wanting to feel totally alive on the other. More to the point, we see the gravity of this tension played out over against moments of levity, humor, and self-effacement.
The comedian-actor is shown being paralysed by fear or dread in one moment, followed by laughter and apparent mastery in the next. The hopeful meta-message to audiences is, ‘Here is an average person coping with life’s difficulties in a way that you can, too.’
George Bernard Shaw once said that, “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” Who else but the comic figure can creatively combine such contradictions?
Can we imagine anyone bridging this existential gap between tears and laughter better than Adam Sandler or Bill Murray? It is certainly hard to imagine Russell Crowe or Ralph Fiennes doing the same.
This ability of the comedian-actor to portray a wide range of human experience is reminiscent of the messianic archetype in Judeo-Christian literature.
It is telling, for example, that King Saul, a tragic protagonist presented in the classic ‘up-then-down’ fashion, is described in a completely serious light, whereas his successor, King David, a comic protagonist presented in a ‘down-then-up’ fashion, is described as experiencing a fuller range of human emotions, both lamenting well and rejoicing well.
Jesus became the ultimate pinnacle of such wholeness in human form. And like Jesus, comedian-actors are somehow able to say things that are not allowed under the normal rules of life; rules that apply when one is, say, totally confined by life’s seriousness.
It may seem overstated to compare the likes of Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell to Lysistrata, King David, or Jesus. Perhaps it will seem less so when one considers that all of us are a part of a much bigger and older story than we may sometimes realise.
Tragic figures will certainly continue to be a part of that story but in my view the comic figure occupies a place that is equally, if not more, important. Whether they realise it or not, comedians-turned-actors have reached into eternity here in the early going of the 21st century.
Jeffrey Rutter is a clinical psychologist and lecturer at Wesley Institute for Ministry and the Arts in Drummoyne, NSW.
Unpack the issues
- Why is humour important?
- Watch some of the movies mentioned in this article and see if you can see a connection with the life of Jesus.
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