107-470 Comedy, Cult and the Carnivalesque

Formerly available as 107-094. Students who have completed 107-094 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours in cinema studies, see Honours entry.

This subject will focus on approaches to and definitions of the comedy and cult in film and television, with particular focus on the carnivalesque aspects of both forms. Areas to be explored will include early film comedy; comedian comedy; sitcoms and female comics; characteristics and definitions of the cult text; South American cinema and the carnivalesque. In particular students should become familiar with various interpretative issues centring around these two forms - comedy and cult - including the ability of comedy and cult to violate generic boundaries and rupture classical narrative form; pleasures of comedy and cult; the carnivalesque and liminality; comedy and the grotesque; the cultish nature of bad-taste films (the films of John Waters, low budget monster films from the 40s-50s, serial films, Ed Wood classics); and cult, ritual and the cult spectator.