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Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed

Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed cover

Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed

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Description

Bridging two crucial sites of global, interwar modernity, Hollywood and Weimar Slapstick provides a fundamental reassessment of Weimar culture, Hollywood comedy and their respective, intertwined legacies.

Paul Flaig reexamines a wide range of comedy films featuring and directed by figures including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, the Marx Brothers, and Frank Capra in light of their circulation and citation among German filmmakers, philosophers, advertisers, politicians, artists, playwrights and poets. Drawing on a diverse range of German-language sources, including avant-garde manifestoes, arts journals, feuilletons, trade press reports and academic studies, Flaig investigates the historical context, intellectual foundations, and cultural and political underpinnings that contributed to the fascination with American comic cinema in Weimar Germany. In doing so, he highlights the invaluable insights and imagery of American-obsessed German thinkers and artists, such as Hannah Arendt, George Grosz, and Theodor Adorno, who played a pivotal role in shaping the perception and exploration of slapstick's entanglement with modernity.

Highlighting the captivating powers of slapstick, cartoon, and screwball comedies, Hollywood and Weimar Slapstick offers an alternative history and analysis of European and American film cultures, revealing the cultural exchange and impact of comedy in this pivotal period.

Table of Contents

Introduction

I: Charlie, Buster and Harold in Weimar: Slapstick between Mass Culture and the Avant-Garde
Opening Act: Charlie's Shoes

1. The Tramp Re-functioned: On Brecht and Chaplin
2. 'Dada Buster': Technology, Fashion and Sensation from Slapstick Deadpan to the Weimar Avant-Garde
3. A German (Jewish and Queer) Harold Lloyd: Curt Bois and the White-Collar Worker

II: Uncanny Things and Animate Adventures
Opening Act: Dial M for Mickey

4. From Caligari to Disney: Animation Aesthetics, the Comic Uncanny and American Cartoon Humor Abroad
5. Felix the Psychotechnical Cat, or, the Usefulness of Comic Cartoons

III: The Screwball Letters: The Frankfurt School meets 1930s Hollywood Sound Comedy
Opening Act: The Marxist Brothers

6. Groucho, Harpo and Adorno: Culture becomes Comic in A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races
7. Slapstick Betrayed: Walter Benjamin and Capracorn

Bibliography
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Sep 04 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 304
ISBN 9781350439160
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 30 bw illus
Series World Cinema
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Paul Flaig

Paul Flaig is Lecturer in Film Studies at the Univ…

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