![]() If you like, you can play this in the background while you read the words and look at the GIFs. We'll be starting at right around the seven-minute mark. ![]() But for now, to refresh your memory, here is the video we've been unpacking. We'll return next week with an all-new (and thankfully stand-alone) ENHANCE that will dive down into another tidbit of sports minutiae. And you can access the penultimate chapter by clicking here.īut this is it: the ENHANCE di tutti enhance-o. If you've somehow come late to the party (and I don't know whether to pity you or envy you), you can find the first part of our breakdown by clicking here. We started out on this journey lo those many weeks ago, but we've finally come to the end of our ENHANCE journey through the adventures chronicled by the intrepid Helix Snake. ![]() The makers of funny videos therefore use the whole game as a mischief device, prodding and poking it to see the (often hilarious) results.Look, we've been through a lot here. The more unpredictable the result of hurling oneself into a car crash or a ditch is, the funnier it is likely to be found. I would argue that the sudden loss of control, often experienced by players of video games as frustrating, can be considered laughable when observed from the position of a spectator. The player drive the character into a hazardous situation and… observes the outcome. A similar recurring theme is to be found in funny game videos. Suddenly, it is laws of physics and the machinery what’s moving him around. We could add that he is no longer in control of his body. The example he gives is that of the waterfall scene in “Our Hospitality” (see 1:07:00).įollowing the Bergsonian explanation of humor as the mechanical, Gunning points out that after swinging on a rope to save his girl, Keaton’s characters becomes a marionette. He describes Keaton’s fascination with “how things work”, with mechanical devices and the effects they can produce. He analyzes the silent comedy’s fascination with crazy machines and technology on the case of Buster Keaton movies. We could go on to discuss how the idea of a gag versus narrative relates to the emergence versus progression or paidia versus ludus dichotomies.Īnother inspiring concept introduced by Gunning is that of the “mischief device”. That is nevertheless the way many players use it. GTA is not advertised as a car crash simulation. However, they constitute a considerable portion of gameplay, especially in open-world games such as the Grand Theft Auto series. They are also often described by their makers as “silly”, “random” or “junk”. Likewise, the stunts and comical situations that players experience or stage, capture and share have usually nothing to do with the main narrative thrust of the game. Many film scholars, including Gunning and Jenkins, have pointed out that a gag - a joke form - disrupts a narrative. However, the possible application of early cinema studies to our case and games and general runs even deeper. ![]() Like the cinema of attractions, they too rely on spectacle and humor. Instead of telling stories, they show off what can be done in the virtual worlds. Within the contemporary “machinima” production, these videos occupy a space is similar to the one cinema of attractions did in the early history of film. The same approach could be applied to the funny video montages I am studying for my project. Gunning argues that this vision of the medium preceded the one of “narrative cinema”. The Lumiere brothers output did not primarily attempt to tell a story - it demonstrated what their technology was capable of, focusing on the power of the medium to display. Concepts developed by the film historian and theorist Tom Gunning are especially interesting as they focus on the interplay of the medium and the performance of humor.įirst of all, he describes much of the early films as “cinema of attractions”. However, a substantial body of medium-specific and technology-aware work on humor does exist in the realm of early cinema. Humor scholar tend to be biased to a certain medium - be it theatre for Bergson or jokes for Freud - without explicitly acknowledging its specifics. For most humor scholars (and there are quite a few), humor is something so natural and homogeneous that it doesn’t really matter if a joke is told at a bar, on TV or played out as a sketch. When I started studying physical humor in virtual spaces, I was shocked by how little has been written about the role of mediation in humor. # Funny video game montages, “cinema of attractions” and the “mischief devices”
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