What is black humor?

An important school of American literature in the 1960s. 1In March, 965, Friedman compiled a collection of short stories, which included the works of 12 writers. The title was Black Humor, from which the word "black humor" came. It is one of the most representative schools of American novel creation in the 1960s. After entering the 1970s, the momentum of "black humor" was greatly reduced, but new works still appeared from time to time, which still had a far-reaching influence in American literature. Its main writers are joseph heller, Kurt Wernig, Thomas Pinchin, John Bass, James Poe's brother, Bruce Jay Friedman and Donald Basim.

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.

What is "black humor"

Published by rippling breeze on 2005-10-915:17: 33.

Characteristics of "Black Humor"

After the rise of "black humor" literature in the early 1960s, it quickly became one of the important literary schools in the United States and even the whole West. The reason why it can get social attention lies not only in its profound ideological connotation and aesthetic value, but also in its originality in creative techniques. Taken together, it has the following artistic characteristics.

First, a particularly humorous style. Black humor is different from humor in traditional literature. In western traditional literature, generally speaking, the distinction between tragedy and comedy is very clear. Comedy satirizes the ugliness and deformity of the villain, while tragedy shows the pain and misfortune of the positive protagonist. However, the "black humor" literature broke this boundary, and the content of tragedy adopted the artistic technique of comedy, and the pain and misfortune also became the object of jokes, that is, the content of tragedy was expressed in the form of comedy. This introduces a new factor into the aesthetic form of traditional humor: thinking that pain is ridiculous and taking a mocking attitude towards misfortune. The irony and satire of "black humor" is very implicit and allegorical. The author did not make a clear moral and political evaluation, but let readers understand some hidden meanings from these cold humor and comedy laughter. Writers do not stick to the traditional methods of describing reality. They always look at and reflect the world with magnifying glasses and mirrors, and express objective things with infinitely exaggerated brushstrokes, thus expanding and deforming them and making those dark and ugly things more prominent, disgusting and ridiculous. Although the writer holds a cold-eyed and uncritical attitude, readers can appreciate the profound meaning in their thinking and aftertaste. Second, "anti-hero" characters. These anti-hero images doubt and deny all traditional values, have a sense of loneliness that everyone is drunk and I am awake alone, and also have certain pursuits. These characters often laugh at what they respect, destroy what they have achieved, deny what they have affirmed and protest what they have accepted. For example, Billy, the hero of vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, is a crazy character. Heller's Doctrine of Catch-22 Yossarian is a humble, wretched and afraid of death, and a man with abnormal nerves. Alderman believes that these people are "forced to play the role of clowns". The soil that produces such morbid deformed figures is a morbid deformed society.

Thirdly, the narrative structure method of "anti-fiction". Traditional novels adopt the narrative method of "telling stories", which generally has a complete story structure, a beginning and an end, and the plot development should conform to the internal logical relationship. "Black humor" literature completely abandons the old storytelling method and creates a new dramatic method by using hints, contrasts, metaphors and symbols. It breaks the limitation of time and space and exaggerates the vastness of the inner world of the characters; It is no longer limited by time and space, and can transcend society, morality, customs and concepts. The novel has no structure, no complete story, and certainly no strict structure. This clearly shows several characteristics of this kind of novels in structure: it often adopts "time execution technique" to break the conventional concept of time and space. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is a model of "time travel", and the activities of the characters in the novel are strangely intertwined with the past, present and future, changing rapidly. At first glance, it is confusing, dazzling and confusing. In fact, this is a special structure that goes hand in hand at multiple levels, which is useful for the rapid development of the story and the deepening of the theme. Another feature of the structure is that change and development are replaced by reinforcement and repetition. Generally speaking, in traditional novels, the cause, development and ending of events are clearly written, but in "black humor" novels, it is not. It is not a routine explanation, but the plot of the characters in the work is reversed. For example, "Catch-22" describes that a person is dead and alive, born and dead. This has never happened in traditional literature and is not allowed. But it can be seen everywhere in "black humor" novels. This is just as vonnegut said: "Let others give chaos, and I will give chaos." Traditional writers can grasp the broad social picture, arrange thousands of messy things in an orderly way, and form articles with strict structure and distinct levels. Black humorists, on the other hand, put the cart before the horse and "messed up the order", mixing humorous things with lofty and serious things, comedy factors and tragedy factors to form a completely new cultural structure.

Fourth, special themes. In order to keep consistent with the overall theme of "black humor", writers are also different from traditional novels in material selection. It is embodied in two aspects: one is to explore the theme of science and technology. The authors of "black humor" are mostly university teachers. They are knowledgeable and like to introduce the essence of natural science into literary works. For example, Pynchon's Gravity Rainbow is the trajectory of missile launch; Vonnegut believes that the struggle comes from the "dynamic tension" in Cat's Cradle and the harmful chemicals in the brain in Breakfast of Champions. Secondly, "black humor" writers like to choose special scenes with unclear meaning, vacillation, waking from a dream and looking at flowers in the fog. For example, Pynchon's Gravitational Rainbow and Heller's Catch-22 are both set in World War II, but the author's intention is not to write a "war novel" or describe World War II sincerely, but to enlighten people and let them see the law of the jungle in contemporary society from these novels.