The specific meaning of black humor

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines "black humor" as "a desperate humor that tries to make people laugh as a response to the obvious meaningless and absurd human life." Black humor is a literary method to express tragic content in the form of comedy. "Black" stands for death, which is a terrible and funny reality, and "humor" is a cynical attitude of a willing individual to this reality. Adding black to humor becomes desperate humor. This school of writers mobilizes all the artistic techniques that can be mobilized to enlarge and distort the funny, ugly, deformed and dark world around them, making it even more absurd.

The school of "black humor" is a very important school in western modernist literature, which has a wide and profound influence on modern world literature. Catch-22, Gravitational Rainbow, Tobacco Broker, Slaughterhouse Five and other works are dark and secluded.

The most influential and representative classic works of mime school. Novelists with "black humor" highlight the absurdity of the world around the characters and the oppression of individuals by society, express the disharmony between the environment and individuals (that is, "self") with helpless irony, and amplify and distort this disharmony, making it more absurd and ridiculous, and at the same time making people feel heavy and depressed. Therefore, some critics refer to "black humor" as "humor under the gallows" or "humor before disaster". "Black humor" writers often create some eccentric "anti-heroes", and use their ridiculous words and deeds to insinuate social reality and express their views on social problems. In terms of description techniques, "black humor" writers also break the tradition, and the plot of the novel lacks logical connection. They often mix narrative real life with fantasy and memory, and mix serious philosophy with gag. For example, Heller's Catch-22, Pinchin's Gravitational Rainbow, and Wernig's First-class Breakfast. Some "black humor" novels laugh at the spiritual crisis of human beings, such as the tobacco agent in Bath and cabot Wright in Bodie.

As an aesthetic form, "black humor" belongs to the category of comedy, but it is also a kind of abnormal comedy with tragic color. The appearance of "black humor" is related to the turmoil in the United States in the 1960s. Absurd things and "comic" contradictions in contemporary capitalist society are not created by writers' subjective will, but reflect that kind of social life. Although this reflection has certain social significance and cognitive value, writers also attack all authorities, including the ruling class, but they emphasize that the social environment is difficult to change, so their works often reveal pessimism and despair. Nick Burke once gave an example to explain the definition and essence of black humor in a popular way: a man sentenced to hanging pointed to the gallows and asked the executioner, "Are you sure this thing is strong?" So black humor is also called "humor under the gallows".

The satirical humor in this school of works is very different from the traditional humor: it does not show simple funny taste, but has a strong color of absurdity, despair, darkness and even cruelty.

Black humor is dominated by Kierkegaard in Denmark and recreated by French jean paul Saud's literary existentialism. Its understanding of many issues is similar to that of the absurd drama, and it can even be said that absurd literature is a concrete manifestation in the novel. Most novelists who belong to the black humor school emphasize that the world is absurd and life is painful in their works, so although they have different reflections in their works, they always appear in front of readers with morbid characters, gloomy and painful humor, absurd and chaotic plots, numb and cruel modern world and sharp and profound satire.

As an aesthetic form, black humor belongs to the category of comedy, but it is also a kind of abnormal comedy with tragic color. Black humor exists to break taboos. Taboos are painful, including all levels of human society. There are various taboos in politics, such as white people versus black people, Hitler versus Jews, men versus women and other people with different sexual orientations, which may cause pain (that is, existentialism says others are hell). Black humor dares to joke about taboos, and it is spicy and ironic. The greater the taboo, the greater the joke power of black humor. This is why there are still black humorous novels and movies even out of the American background of 1960. "Black humor" is a modernist literary school based on existentialism philosophy. In 1960s, it rose and developed in America. It echoes the French absurd drama, so it is also called "absurd novel". Joseph heller, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Thomas Pynchon, John Bass, James Poe's brother and French Wei 'an are the representative writers of the "black humor" school. The three most influential works of this genre are Catch-22 by Heller, Slaughterhouse Five by Vonneger and Rainbow of Gravitation by Thomas Pynchon.