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'Black comedy', also known as 'black humour' is a sub-genre of comedy and satire where topics and events that are usually treated seriously — death, mass murder, suicide, domestic abuse, sickness, madness, fear, drug abuse, rape, war, terrorism etc. — are treated in a humorous or satirical manner. Synonyms include 'dark humor', 'morbid humour', 'gallows humour' and 'off-color humour'.
Humor is a social tool that is often used to ease and diffuse tense situations. By laughing at problems a person can ease stress and other painful emotions.
Black comedy should be contrasted with obscenity, though the two are interrelated. In obscene humour, much of the humorous element comes from shock and revulsion; black comedy usually includes an element of irony, or even fatalism. This particular brand of humor can be exemplified by a scene in the play ''Waiting for Godot'': A man takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down.
In America, black comedy as a literary genre came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers such as Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison and Eric Nicol have written and published novels, stories and plays where profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner. An anthology edited by Bruce Jay Friedman, titled "Black Humour," assembles many examples of the genre.
The 1964 film '' presents one of the best-known examples of black comedy. The subject of the film is nuclear war and the extinction of life on Earth. Normally, dramas about nuclear war treat the subject with gravity and seriousness, creating suspense over the efforts to avoid a nuclear war. But ''Dr. Strangelove'' plays the subject for laughs; for example, in the film, the fail-safe procedures designed to prevent a nuclear war are precisely the systems that ensure that it will happen. The film ''Fail Safe'', produced simultaneously, tells a largely identical story with a distinctly grave tone; the film ''The Bed-Sitting Room'', released six years later, treats post-nuclear English society in an even wilder comic approach.
Today, black comedy can be found in almost all forms of media.

Contents

Works

Literature

Films

Television

Video games

Board, Card and RPG Games

Internet

Comics

See also

Works

Literature

(Some of these have been adapted to television or film as well.)

★ ''A Clockwork Orange'' by Anthony Burgess

★ ''A Series of Unfortunate Events'' by Lemony Snicket, a series where 3 orphans try to escape the murderous Count Olaf.

★ ''Arsenic and Old Lace'', by Joseph Kesselring, is about a dramatic critic, who discovers that his two spinster aunts (who are always praised for their charitable work and generosity) take in lonely old men and murder them by serving poisoned elderberry wine.

★ ''Breakfast of Champions'' by Kurt Vonnegut, a crudely illustrated satire about how the works of an obscure science fiction writer manage to drive a rich pontiac dealer insane.

★ ''Candide'' by Voltaire

★ ''Catch-22'' by Joseph Heller.

★ ''Chimera'' and other novels by John Barth

★ Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

★ '' by Irvine Welsh, a tongue in cheek, dark romantic comedy. A transformation love story from the love of Ecstacy,to the ectasy of love.

★ ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' by Hunter S. Thompson, the "true" story of his drug fueled trip to Las Vegas with his "attorney".

★ ''Fight Club'' by Chuck Palahniuk, and his other works.

★ ''Hamlet'' by William Shakespeare, a revenge thriller. Although considered a revenge tragedy, it often has moments where it could be seen as a black comedy.

★ ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams, along with other books in the series; in the opening pages of the first book, Earth and its inhabitants are casually destroyed by careless bureaucrats, and the blackly humorous satire doesn't let up from there.

★ ''Le Jardin des supplices'' by Octave Mirbeau.

★ ''The Loved One'' by Evelyn Waugh

★ ''M
★ A
★ S
★ H'' by Richard Hooker

★ ''Trainspotting'' by Irvine Welsh, a very dark comedy along with Welsh's other works.

Films

★ ''The Acid House'' (1998) - The Cult ''Trainspotting'' as Irvine Welsh's book ''The Acid House hit the screen with Dark tales.

★ ''After Hours'' (1985) - about an office worker's experiences with a wide array of criminals, psychotics, sado-masochists, mohawk-sporting punks, and an angry mob of ice cream men trying to kill him.

★ ''American Beauty'' (1999) - about middle-aged man who tries to find happiness on the changing American suburbia.

★ ''American Psycho'' (2000) - A Wall Street stockbroker leads a secret life as a serial murderer, torturer, and rapist.

★ ''A Life Less Ordinary'' (1997) - Ewan McGregor takes on the role as a cleaning man in L.A.who takes his boss' daughter hostage after being replaced by a machine. Two angels are sent to Earth to help them get closer in Danny Boyle's Romantic Black Comedy film.

★ ''Angst'' (2000) - Australian film which circles around gothic people and pot smokers.

★ ''Bambi Meets Godzilla'' (1969) - Bambi is crushed by Godzilla's foot.

★ ''Beetlejuice'' (1989), - a married couple dies and begins to haunt the people that move into their house.

★ ''Big Nothing'' (2006) - about three people who decide to blackmail a porno-making priest

★ ''Brazil'' (1985) - A white-collar worker begins to have daydreams and ends up escaping into a fantasy world of romantic struggles.

★ ''Bug'' (2007) - described by its director William Friedkin to be in many ways, a black comedy love story.

★ ''The 'Burbs'' (1989) - A suburban family man's ordinary life changes when a mysterious family moves in next door, who are believed to be murderers.

★ ''Better Off Dead'' (1985) - A high school student becomes miserable after his girlfriend breaks up with him.

★ ''Cannibal! The Musical'' (1996) - Revolves around the true story of Alferd Packer.

★ ''The Cable Guy'' (1996) - Jim Carrey plays a cable man who becomes a stalker after striking a friendship with one of his clients.

★ ''Chopper'' (2000) - A semi-biographical film about former Australian criminal, Chopper Read.

★ ''Dead Husbands'' (1998) - A movie about a secret women's society who desire to become widows, as they do not support their husbands anymore and have interests in the heritage. A woman gains the right of having her husband killed by murdering the husband of other wife.

★ ''Death Proof'' (2007)

★ ''Death to Smoochy'' (2002) - A former child's television star seeks revenge on the replacement host for his show.

★ '' (1964) - a satirical film about an insane American General who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, filmed during the Cold War.

★ ''Eating Raoul'' (1982) - A conservative married couple living in Hollywood begin killing people for money.

★ ''Fight Club'' (1999) – described as a 'black comedy'' by lead actor Edward Norton on the DVD commentary.

★ ''Jawbreaker'' (1999)-Dark Comedy about three popular school girls that go round bumping off there competion for the school prom dance.

★ ''Happiness'' (1998) - deals unflinchingly with subjects designed to make audiences squirm (from suicide, rape and murder to pedophilia and childhood masturbation). The treatment of the subjects is blunt, but also gleefully absurdist.

★ ''The Happiness of the Katakuris'' (2001) - a musical farce about a Japanese family who run a guest house. The comedy stems from the family being miserable.

★ ''Heathers'' (1989) - about a disaffected, jaded teen couple who start killing members of popular cliques at their high school.

★ ''Harold and Maude'' (1971) - a morbid young man drifts away from the life that his detached mother prescribes to him, as he falls in love with septuagenarian, Maude.

★ ''Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro'' (1983) - A comedy film about about corruption in India's political system

★ ''Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (1949) - features an autobiographical narration of how an embittered half Italian man (Dennis Price) ignored by his mother's aristocratic family in their hour of need plots and carries old a cold revenge of assassinating the members of the family (all portrayed by Alec Guinness and wins a title after their deaths.

★ ''Keeping Mum'' (2005) - A comedy film about a vicar (Rowan Atkinson) and his family who take in a nanny (Maggie Smith) who, while taking care of them, also tries to keep the vicar and his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) together as a family by killing anyone who seeks to interfere with their love life, wether intentional or not.

★ ''The Ladykillers'' (1955) and (2004) versions; a criminal professor tries to perform a sophisticated robbery while fooling an old woman.

★ ''Little Miss Sunshine'' (2006) - An extremely dysfunctional family travels to California to enter their child into a beauty pageant.

★ ''Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'' (1997)- A Disgrace to Criminals Everywhere and a story based on four working class gangsters,Guy Ritchie says is a Black Comedy story.

★ ''The Little Shop of Horrors'' (1960) - about a florist shop assistant who develops a deadly plant, and has some pretty strange clients and visitors as well.

★ ''Monsieur Verdoux'' - (1947) Charlie Chaplin flim featuring a suave but cynical man supporting his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money.

★ ''Monty Python's Meaning of Life'' (1983) - notably the "Live Organ Donation" and "Mr Creosote" sketches

★ ''My Scary Girl'' (2005) - South Korean comedy about an English teacher who dates a lady who is actually part of a deadly mafia.

★ ''Network'' (1976)

★ ''Nowhere'' (1996)- Gregg Araki makes a movie that take's a bleek look at mid 1990s youth culter based on ''Madness'' and other things dark and black.

★ ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975)

★ ''Party Monster'' (2003) - A film detailing the rise and fall of infamous New York party promoter Michael Alig.

★ ''Peeping Tom'' (1960) a thriller about a man who murders women, filming their death throes in the process. Can be seen as a satire on the film industry as well.

★ ''Pretty Village, Pretty Flame'' (1996) - about the Bosnian War.

★ ''Problem Child'' and it's sequels (1990) - a film that makes black comedy insinuating that adopted children are always terrible and ill-behaved.

★ ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994)

★ ''Pumpkin'' (2002) - A story of forbidden love between a developmentally handicapped man and a sorority girl.

★ ''Radioland Murders'' (1994) - A musical comedy where a husband and his wife start an investigation after members of their radio station start being murdered one by one.

★ ''River's Edge'' (1986) - About the 1981 murder of fourteen year-old Marcy Conrad.

★ ''Snatch'' (2000) - A gangster film containing several intwined stories which affect each other unknowingly.

★ ''subUrbia'' (1996) - A film about the relationships between a few young adults as they waste away their time standing on the corner outside a local convenience store.

★ ''Suburban Mayhem'' (2006) - A young single mother is hooked on sex, drugs, and mayhem.

★ ''So I Married an Axe Murderer'' (1993) - A beat poet ends up getting engaged to a woman who he suspects is really an axe murderer, who butchers her husbands on the night of the honeymoon.

★ ''The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover'' (1989)

★ ''Toys'' (1992) - A military general inherits a toy making company and begins making war toys while the former employees band together to stop him.

★ ''Trainspotting'' (1996) - About a group of heroin addicts in Edinburgh and their passage through life.

★ ''Twin Town'' (1997) - two low life twin brothers making havoc for the people of ''Swansea''.

★ ''The Trouble with Harry'' (1955) - follows several quirky residents of a small town as they deal with a dead body that has inconveniently turned up in a local park.

★ ''Very Bad Things'' (1998)

★ ''The Virgin Suicides'' - A group of male friends become obsessed with a group of mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents after one of them commits suicide.

★ ''The War of the Roses'' (1989) - about a couple going through a nasty divorce while still trying to live in the same house.

★ ''You Kill Me'' (2007) - An alcoholic hit man befriends a tart-tongued woman who might just come in handy when it's time for him to return to Buffalo and settle some old scores.

★ ''Nothing But Trouble'' (1991) - 4 people go on a drive but get pulled over and taken to a crazy court house ran by a crazy 106 year old judge who him and his daughter try killing them by trapping them in his basement.
The James Bond films also occasionally feature black comedy elements and jokes; for example, when a man falls into an ink roller for a newspaper, the eponymous hero exclaims: "They'll print anything these days!"

Television

★ ''Invader Zim'' - An extraterrestrial "Irken" invader named Zim comes to earth to infiltrate and destroy the human race and joins a grade school class

★ ''Courage the Cowardly Dog''

★ ''The Simpsons'' ''Treehouse of Horror'' episodes, aired as ''Halloween'' specials.

★ ''Married… with Children'', about a miserable shoe salesman and his dysfunctional family.

★ ''Six Feet Under'', revolving around the world of the fictional mortuary "Fisher & Sons Funeral Home".

★ ''American Dad'', an all American dad and CIA agent with his all dysfunctional American family.

★ Funland'', Dark Comedy based on a dysfunctional day out in Blackpool.

★ ''Titus'', a sitcom which satirized life in an extremely dysfunctional family.

★ ''Dead Like Me'', about a girl who died but had to reap souls in order to move on.

★ ''Wonderfalls'', about a girl that can see and hear totems(animal items) talk to her.

★ ''Stressed Eric'',Animation about Eric Feeble and his battle with every day life know as a Black Comedy brit version of ''The Simpsons'' meets ''Four Rooms''.

★ ''Twin Peaks''

★ ''Blackadder''

★ ''The League of Gentlemen''

★ ''Rab C. Nesbitt''

★ ''The Sarah Silverman Program'', a show based around jokes on subjects such as AIDS and homosexuality.

★ ''Wonder Showzen'', innocent children's programming for mature audiences.

★ ''WSX'',Wrestling with extreme comedy.

★ ''South Park''

★ ''The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy'', a show about two kids and the Grim Reaper.

★ ''True Dare Kiss'',BBC drama that has some Black Humour.

★ ''Arrested Development''

★ ''Happy Tree Friends''

★ ''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia''

★ ''Weeds''

★ ''Combat Sheep''

★ ''Monkey Dust''

★ ''Metalocalypse''

★ ''The Oblongs'', a dark cartoon based on a mutated family.

★ ''MadTV'', where sketches generally involve the violent deaths or mutilation of characters

★ ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' Had sketches about cannibalism, one about fatal hilarity, and another with overexagerated gore.

★ ''Česká soda'' - a Czech TV programme that ran in the 90's and was famous for its really black humour.

★ ''Brass Eye'' - a British satirical programme which spoofs the documentary format with subjects which include pedophilia and AIDS. The episode about pedophilia got the most complaints from viewers ever for a programme on British TV.

★ ''Family Guy

★ ''Seinfeld''

★ ''The Job''

★ ''Rescue Me''

★ ''Desperate Housewives''

★ ''Black Books''

★ ''Spaced''

Video games

★ ''Conker's Bad Fur Day'', a controversial Nintendo 64 game making light of such taboo subjects as alcoholism, death, suicide, war, and movie parodies of scenes usually meaning more serious tones.

★ Half Life series, a science fiction series about the aftermath of an alien invasion on earth.

★ ''Fallout 1/2'', a highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic RPG game.

★ ''Grand Theft Auto'' series, about a lowly criminal in the big city who must rise in the ranks of organized crime throughout the game.

★ ''Total Carnage''

★ ''Twisted Metal'' series, about a vehicular combat contest in which the winner gets one wish.

★ ''Manhunt'', a Rockstar game in which the main character, a convicted murderer, is sold into a "Running Man" type game and forced to kill enemies in ever more grotesque manners with more and more sophisticated weapons.

★ ''Super Columbine Massacre RPG!'', an independently published video game based upon the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre.

Board, Card and RPG Games

★ ''Paranoia''

★ ''HoL''

★ ''All Flesh Must Be Eaten''

★ The ''Freak Legion'' supplement for World of Darkness

★ ''Gother Than Thou''

★ ''Snit's Revenge''

★ ''Freaks Who Eat''

Internet

★ "Cyanide and Happiness" - A daily internet comic that deals with issues such as rape, violence, racism, etc.

★ ''the Darwin Awards'' - given to people who remove themselves from the gene pool in a spectacularly stupid manner, usually by accidentally killing themselves.

★ ''Fat Pie.''

★ Knox's Korner videos

★ "Happy Tree Friends" - A cartoon where cute little animals get into deadly accidents.

★ "Kill Me Now" - A black comedy web series about a suicidal character.

★ "Lucid TV" - A webcomic about hospital workers.

★ "911wasfunny.com" - A website with 9-11 jokes and "Image Macro"

★ "The Angry Video Game Nerd" - terrible games reviewed by the angriest gamer you have ever heard

Comics

★ ''Pearls Before Swine'' by Stephan Pastis, in which nearly every new character meets a violent death.

★ Monroe, a comic series about an angst-ridden teenager who constantly endures the torments of bullies, authorities, and unloving parents. Produced by Bill Wray in Mad Magazine.

★ ''Johnny the Homicidal Maniac'' by Jhonen Vasquez, the comic is a black comedy laced with irony and social criticism. It is in part a satire of society’s fascination with violence.

★ ''Squee!'' by Jhonen Vasquez, part of the JTHM universe; it focuses on Johnny's friend and neighbor, Squee, who is often subjected to various traumatic incidents in a comical manner.

★ ''Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl'' by Roman Dirge, the comic portrays an innocent appearing dead girl in a lighthearted and often humorous viewpoint of death. It also often remakes children's stories into darker, morbid tales.

★ Viz has strips and story lines that are blackly comic.

★ Casey and Andy, a webcomic about mad scientists that die quite often. By Andy Weir

See also

★ Crude humor

★ Gallows humor

★ Macabre

★ Problem plays

★ ''Black Comedy'', a play by Peter Shaffer

★ Charles B. Griffith

★ List of movie genres