Deadpan Satire

While showering this morning i realised what my favourite genre of comedy is.. its Deadpan Satire. For ages I have thought that my favourite genre of comedy is intelligent stupidity which is pretty much what Deadpan Satire is.

Comedy I would class as deadpan satire:

Garth Marenghi's Dark Place
This show is the king of all deadpan satires. This is so funny on so many levels. It satirises 80's movies in how it is shot, cheap FX, doctors it satirises everything. It is delivered Dead Pan. So funny.

Trailer Park Boys
Deadpan totally serious delivery satirising if that is a word, trailer park life. Whenever I don't have enough money to have dinner i watch trailer park boys and immediately feel very well off.

Robocop
Delivered as deadpan, its a satire of the 80's at the time where success, power and money where popular. The tv adverts in Robocop & Robocop 2 blow my mind, they are soo funny.

Daria
Satire of modern society from a thinking person's perspective - deadpan delivery by Daria. Silliness also especially in character of Daria's dad, Jake Morgendorfer.

Tom Green
Tom Green goes over most peoples heads. He is genius. He is deadpan/silly satire, he plays on the standard 9-5 worker views of most people especially in freddy got fingered. His deadpan delivery of wacky/sick/disgusting/get a reaction humour hits the spot for me. He basically preys and gets off on normal people who immediately see his stupid antics and interpret this as this guys an idiot... no the thing is, if this is your reaction - you are the idiot.

Grand Theft Auto
The grand theft auto series of video games is great satire. Especially the radio stations. So funny.

Fast Forward
Was great at satire they did it so well in a more authentic way than all pissweak sketch comedies have failed at since the end of fast forward. Deadpan yes, often silly though.

Sean Micalleff
Is definately dead pan which i love, satire sometimes.. but mostly silly.

I want to class South Park as deadpan satire but its the deadpan that i dont feel comfortable labeling south park with. South Park can be deadpan but it is equally as silly/ridiculous as it is deadpan. It is totally a satire on modern societies messed up views on things. I love how south park expose common opinions/ideas/views as fake and deliver this from the point of view of a child (and a child is always honest)

Here's a good definition of satire:

Satire
In satire, a situation containing a violation is presented without any explicit acknowledgement of the existence of the violation(s). The violations are presented deadpan, as though there were no violation at all, so that the reader must detect or miss the violation on her own, actively using her own moral conscience. Those readers that do detect the violation may find it hilarious, because of the humorous structure: a moral violation is juxtaposed simultaneously with the deadpan view of the situation in which it appears normal or unremarkable. The special feature of satire, however, is that the deadpan presentation is given to an implied audience of readers or listeners who do not detect the violation. The inability of this audience to detect moral violations is itself a moral violation, since people believe that normal people can and should tell right from wrong; this further violation contributes additional complexity to the humor, making it even more funny.

My second favourite comedic genre would be well executed Silly.

Comedies which come under this category for me are:

South Park
The Mighty Boosh
Little Brittain
The Fast Show
The IT Crowd
The Naked Gun Series
Jim Carrey movies - most
Flying High 1&2
Something About Mary
Ben Stiller movies
UK Comedies do silly and bizarre so well.. Fawlty towers though I HATE with a passion, nothing is funny about that. It's very old skool humour.

Theres so many comedies/comedians i can't think of right now.
Comment if you can think of other peopel/shows/movies who do deadpan satire well.

Satire Links

For a good wikipedia description of satire click here.

The onion - is a satire news website i just found off of that wikipedia link page.

Posted by Nathan Kowald @ 9:14 AM