This commentary contains some spoilers and may be better read after the screenings.
At this year’s London Comedy Festival we are laughing in the face of adversity.
I didn’t approach programming the films with a definite theme in mind, but it quickly became clear that, in one way or another, most of them were playing with pretty dark themes. The post-war classics tell tales of robbery, murder, violent revolution, and some of the most frighteningly pugnacious schoolgirls you’ll ever see on screen. Many of the short films selected in our annual competition explore life’s absurdities, challenges, and horrors. A Gaza Weekend, which has its UK premiere on our opening night, invites us to chuckle at the absurdity of conflict and a global pandemic. And Klokkenluider, our Saturday night special, finds its humour in the murky world of political whistleblowing.
So what is it about such dark comedy that gets us laughing?
There are a thousand possible answers to the question. The three classic theories of comedy all help to explain a little: the Hobbesian idea that we laugh because we feel superior to the poor sucker who’s struggling and even suffering in front of us; the Freudian idea that we laugh because we enjoy a momentary relief from the usual rules that dictate our waking lives and relish the feeling of naughtiness; and the Kantian idea that we laugh because of some incongruity in which mismatched elements collide and unsettle our expectations. More contemporary theories – from the radical feminism of Hélène Cixous’s ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ to the queer reclamation of comic failure by Jack Halberstam – hint at the potential subversiveness of laughter. Each of these theories might help us understand why we are going to spend hours this weekend sitting with the lights out and laughing at some pretty dark stuff.
But there’s something else that we hope our screenings will show: that we laugh to remind ourselves that we are not alone. We are far more likely to laugh in groups, catching giggles from those around us, sharing and spreading the mirth and forming bonds. Laughing together is one of the fundamental building blocks of any community. One of the principal cruelties of the pandemic was that it starved us of precisely this opportunity, denying us those priceless moments of sitting together, even with total strangers, and becoming a collective through shared laughter. And this group bonding is most important in the face of adversity, whether that’s 1950s post-war privations or 21st century anxieties about our politics and our planet. Walter Benjamin wrote, in celebration of laughter, that “spasms of the diaphragm generally offer better chances for thought than spasms of the soul.” Laughter doesn’t just make us feel better in the moment; it can build communities and start us thinking about change.
And, dark as they are, LOCO’s films this year are about community. A Gaza Weekend, through the farce of conflict and disease, breaks down borders (in a hilarious and joyful way) and discovers unlikely points of unity. Even Klokkenluider, in many ways the darkest film from the entire festival, is a film of (dysfunctional) relationships and community (going wrong); its humour is a kind of exposure of and resistance to the corruption at the film’s frightening core.
Our laughter at such films reminds us that we are not alone and that together we can face the darkness.
A Gaza Weekend | 2022 | directed by Basil Khalil | starring Stephen Mangan and Mouna Hawa
Klokkenluider | 2022 | directed by Neil Maskell | starring Amit Shah, Sura Dohnke, Tom Burke, Roger Evans, and Jenna Coleman