Divine Film Comedies

Biblical Narratives, Film Sub-Genres, and the Comic Spirit

Terry Lindvall, J. Dennis Bounds, Chris Lindvall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317353416
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Divine Film Comedies creates a meaningful dialogue between stories in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and comedies spanning the history of film. The text lies at the intersection of three disciplines: humor/comedy studies, film studies, and theology. Drawing on films from the silent era to the 21st century, the book highlights parallels between comedic sub-genres and sacred narratives, parables, and proverbs, illuminating a path to seeing and understanding both Scripture and film through a comic lens. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of theology and film, media, and communications.

1 Theological Assumptions of Religious Film Comedies

DOI: 10.4324/9781315665870-2

When the Lord told Moses to tell Aaron how to bless Israel, He laid down the format of the grand Hebrew blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24–26). Central in this consecration of His people, God underscored this joyous nonverbal sign of the shining face, the Shekinah glory grinning at His own people. He looks upon His broken and wayward and weak people with gladness. He does not turn His face in shame, but shines and smiles and accepts these creatures covered in mud. Professor Maurine Sabine of the University of Hong Kong suggested that the depiction of God in movies, especially comedies, is a part of humanity’s desire to understand divinity. “One could also say that this reflects a touching and altogether human desire to see God face to face,” particularly if that face is one marked by laughter.¹

We propose seven principles that underlie our understanding of the meeting of God’s shining face, for seeing the Christian faith translated into film comedy. We believe these films can serve as icons, enabling us to look through them and not just at them, to see the goodness and grace of a God who revealed Himself in words and in flesh.

As will be evident, we opt for incongruity as the best explanation of the nature of comedy. As a set of theoretical concepts, an incongruity approach offers what Noel Carroll called an “eminently serviceable method for discovering the secret to the humor one encounters daily in the form of jokes, comic asides, cartoons, sitcoms, and so on.”² For us, the comic is defined as the enjoyment of perceived incongruity, which includes everything from Monty Python’s “And now for something completely different” to the platypus and honest lawyers.

First, we argue that laughter is divine in origin. The incongruity of the Trinity, of three persons in one, opens the Godhead to a lively set of juxtapositions among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The creative play of creation invites the laughter of fun, a romping and frolicking with the stars, the seas, and the mountains. All creation sings out with praise, with hills dancing and rivers clapping, with the Psalms painting the glory of its rejoicing. The old, odd German mystic Meister Eckhart could see that what goes on in the heart of the Trinity is laughter, as the Father’s laughter unites Son and Spirit, and “the whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.”³ Perhaps it is a harbinger of the need for community to enable laughter to reach its full potential. A contagious laughter expands when two or three are together in His name. Even Sarah, giving birth to Isaac at a ripe old age, surrenders to its communal blessing and declares that everyone who hears of this birth will laugh with her.⁴

Second, the humor of incongruity in human nature existed before the Fall. Two sets of juxtaposed odd elements create the potential (and likelihood) for laughter. In the creation of humanity itself, God takes the humus of the earth and breathes His Spirit into it, creating that oxymoron, a spiritual animal, on one side related to angels and on the other side cousin to hyenas. Then, surveying His creation, He calls everything good except for one condition. It is not good, He intones “that man should be alone.” That’s only half of a good joke. Thus, the other grand incongruity of creation is that God split His image into two genders, so divinely alike and so hilariously different.

To exploit Aristotle’s definition of the human, man becomes the only animal that weeps and laughs and knows that he weeps and laughs. One becomes conscious of the incongruity in life, that something isn’t what it is supposed to be.

Third, this awareness of the cosmic discrepancy comes as the comic sours and darkens with the disobedience of Adam and Even. A bent laughter even characterizes God, whose laughter in the Psalms is heard by His wayward people mostly in derisive ways. God mocks, especially the proud and pretentious unbelievers. Laughter is affected by the Fall just as every other human experience is. One finds a creature that is not quite at home with herself. C. S. Lewis found evidence of the comic in this miserable state of being depraved. In fact, he saw coarse humor springing from such a rotten condition. Humor was spoiled and ruined like the Fall, just as sexual desire or self-worth was bent for selfish designs. Yet, like all other aspects of the human experience, humor can be redeemed.⁵ While Jesus pronounced a judgment of woe upon those who laugh now, those who do not recognize the grace among them or those who mock the poor, He also promised laughter to those who weep now, who humbly recognize their need and seek the face that shines.

Fourth, the comic is scattered throughout the sacred texts and sacred history.⁶ One finds the laughter of humor, farce, irony, and satire. Establishing Israel upon a foundation of laughter, God miraculously uses two very old people and sexual activity to beget His chosen people. He rhetorically asks “Why did Sarai laugh?” when she heard that she would be pregnant at 90 years old, in the desert, from a man who might finally give her pleasure. He knew the punchline would be Isaac, which in Hebrew translates as laughter, for He gave the name to the baby of the laughing couple. God Himself blended comedy with sex and marriage and set a precedent for all who would follow.

Playful laughter erupts in the rabbinical tradition over Moses’ chutzpah in challenging God’s inconsistent use of pronouns regarding Israel, much like a husband and wife arguing over their children. Yahweh called the Israelites His people when He sent Moses to deal with Pharaoh: “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth My people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). But when Israel disobeys God, and worships the golden calf, God yells at Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves” (Exodus 32:7). Then Moses argues back: “Hey, God. You can’t call them your people when they’re good and my people when they’re bad. Whether they’re good or bad, they’re still Your people!” Tradition has it that God laughed at the bold wit of Moses.⁷

When Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was asked if there were any jokes in the Talmud, he replied drolly, “Yes, but they’re all old.”

The celebration of the Psalms and the wisdom of the Proverbs increased the laughter. In Israel’s joyful return from captivity back to Zion, the Psalmist shouts that “we were like those who dream; then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with singing” for all the great things God had done for them. They were glad with liquid laughter (Psalm 126:1–2). Proverbs reminds its young men that “a glad heart makes a cheerful countenance” (15:13); “a cheerful heart has a continual feast” (15:15); and “a cheerful heart is a good medicine” (17:22). The Hebrew life exudes the joy of living, robustness, a hearty, zesty comedy.

Humorous aphorisms, proverbs, and parables dot the pages of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, eliciting thoughtful laughter and amused insight. Many serve as Jonathan Swift’s mirror for those who have eyes to see themselves, exposing folly in those who have ears to hear. While Bildad the Shuhite may not be the most dependable witness, he still observes rightly that God does not reject a blameless man, reminding Job that God would “yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouting” (Job 8:21).

Fifth, the redemption of laughter is connected to the redemption of every human experience. Its redemption comes in part through the incarnation, in the Word of God taking on flesh. In fact, the comic is more apparent in the incarnate Christ than in the Father: the Son’s use of puns, paradox, riddles, slapstick behaviors (spitting in mud for a blind eye), satire (mocking the whitewashed sepulchers of the religious leaders), and the sheer pleasure that people receive in listening to his comic parables about goats, sheep, virgins, and wine. His rabbinic mode of answering questions with questions often seems mischievous and even offensive to those in authority. Yet people enjoyed His parables and women and little children were not only attracted to His presence, but took pleasure in His attention. There was something playful in this Man of Sorrows.

As it has been recorded, Jesus wept. But if Jesus could suffer and share in all our infirmities and weaknesses, could He not also laugh? Twice Jesus speaks of laughter. Those religious leaders and lawyers who laugh now will one day weep and gnash their teeth. However, the beatitude of Luke 6:21 blesses those that weep now: “for you shall laugh.”

What is too often missing in Protestant circles is an appreciation of the oriental qualities of Semitic humor. Jesus played, albeit roughly, with religious leaders and rejected the dismal face (Matthew 6:16). Gaiety dances through the Gospel of Luke, so much so that little children wanted to be around Him.⁸

Religious wit and humor find their way into the film narratives of Sir Thomas More (A Man for All Seasons, Fred Zinnemann, 1966) and Martin Luther (Luther, Eric Till, 2003). In the former, the Cardinal Wolsey attempts to justify King Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine, arguing that “she’s barren as a brick; are you going to pray for a miracle?” To which More responds, “There are precedents.” In the latter, Luther gives a lecture to his students which turns into a stand-up routine:

When I became a monk I believed the monk’s cowl would make me holy. Was I an arrogant fool? Now they have made me a doctor of divinity and I am tempted to believe that this scholar’s robe will make me wise [laughter]. Well, God once spoke through the mouth of an ass, and … [laughter], perhaps he is about to do so again. Eighteen out of twelve apostles are buried in Spain [laughter]. And yet here in Wittenberg we have the bread from the last supper, milk from the Virgin’s breast, a thorn that pierced Christ’s brow on Calvary and nineteen thousand other bits of sacred bone.

Sixth, comedy can help modern society rediscover the supernatural, or so at least sociologist Peter L. Berger has argued. In A Rumor of Angels, Berger outlines several “signals of transcendence,” prototypical human experiences that point to a perception of a divine presence. Such gestures as “order” or “hope” or “damnation” provide arguments that we are not alone, that this material world is not all there is.

Two of his signals apply here: namely the gesture of “play” and the argument of “humor.” Working from Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s studies on the ludic, i.e. the playful, Berger shows how the joyful activity of play enables us to step outside of time, giving us a taste of eternity, as one steps not only from “one chronology into another, but from time into eternity.”⁹ Even as one remains cognizant of death, and stumbling toward the inevitable grave, one recognizes that joy breaks out of time. As C. S. Lewis wrote eloquently in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory”:

[H]‌uman life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Men propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.

It is the nature of homo ludens, the creature that plays.¹⁰ Time itself is suspended. In the midst of ordinary life, a dynamic moment of laughter stops the world in its spinning, and in this kairos of stasis, holds us enthralled.

For Berger and Lewis, the argument from humor departs from theoretical explanations offered by Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson, who view and interpret the causes of laughter as, respectively, a discrepancy between superego and libido or between a living organism and non-organic mechanical behaviors. However, all agree that the comic is “fundamentally discrepancy, incongruity, incommensurability.”¹¹ When Berger sees the great discrepancy between man and the universe, he recognizes the basic incongruity of the biblical person, in which “the comic reflects the imprisonment of the human spirit in the world.” Comedy and tragedy are at root closely related. Commenting on Nazi concentration camps, David Rousett argued that the comic was “an objective fact that was there and could be perceived as such, no matter how great the inner terror and anguish of the mind perceiving it.”¹²

Comedy thus “brackets” the tragedy of being human. What this implies is that this tragic or miserable imprisonment is not final, but will be overcome. “Humor mocks the ‘serious’ business of this world and those who try to carry it out.” Particularly in the Christian realm, humor exposes the limits of power, as laughter points to something transcending reason, suffering, power, and death. As the old joke goes, “O Grave, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?” Rather than deify humanity, humor humbles it, showing it that it needs something beyond itself. And here, for Berger, erupts the truth that “the Fool is wiser than the Humanist.”¹³

This implication leads, finally, to the promise of the comic, the coming of laughter in the eschaton. While the “four last thi...