Week One (Monday 1-28-08)

Looking at the films of Buster Keaton (specifically, The Boat, in this context), I really think that his work is all about performance. There are definitely some aspects of play and perhaps even intervention, but the bulk of what he does is completely ingrained in the art of performing. With any of his films, The Boat included, a viewer will see within less than five minutes that Buster Keaton himself is constantly working with some kind of performance. His films are silent, so the only way he can convey ideas and humor is through his physical actions. Thus, he must use his whole body to perform the various scenes and situations that his characters find themselves in. Is Keaton a performance artist, then? In some way, I think he is. He is obviously a very skilled silent actor who pioneered the art of slapstick comedy. But I also believe that Keaton portrays perfectly solely with his physical performance what many non-silent actors can do with voice. Though we never hear him speak, we still know his emotions and perhaps his motives.

Keaton's performance is the definitive root of his humor. I think this ties in nicely with Freud's passage about jokes. Of all the categories of considerations of jokes that Freud writes about, Keaton's work best fits with Theodor Lipps' theory. Lipps describes it as something comic "which we produce, which is attached to action of ours as such, to which we invariably stand in the reaction of subject and never of object, not even of voluntary object". This is humor of activity. Buster Keaton's characters' actions in The Boat are what makes it funny. We see him do one ridiculous thing after another, and it produces comedy. Keaton is the subject, so according to Lipps, all of the jokes and humor emanates from him. His character makes conscious choices that result in funny outcomes.