interesting, funny

05/01/2017

INTRODUCTION

     The universe that The Lobster inhabits is frighteningly bleak. Set in a dystopian future where those not joined in romantic union are forced to either find the most suitable partner in a bizarre Butlins-esque establishment, or to transform into an animal for the rest of their days, it would first appear to be a terrifying commentary on the stranglehold of normativity upon western capitalist society. However, it is, ostensibly, a comedic film. Most would not find it to be a laugh out loud hilarious film upon first watching it. Most would state that it was either ‘weird’ or ‘interesting’ and may finally concede, after consideration, that it was funny. It is a difficult thing to define; certainly not a film that is strewn with recognisable gags to inspire uninhibited mirth. It is in this ineligibility where the interest in The Lobster (Lanthimos, 2015) lies.

     In this paper I am examining the comedic mood and sentiment of The Lobster in that I am attempting to define what elements are present within this film that create such a sublime and strange piece of indefinable but undeniable comedy. To undertake this observation, I am employing two techniques – first I will examine The Lobster through its comic devices by way of Henri Bergson in ‘Laughter – An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic’. Secondly, I will scrutinise the ways in which I believe The Lobster diverges from Bergson’s work in its dark, surreal and almost upsetting mood, using the work of Andre Breton, Umberto Eco and Noel Carroll – specifically their work on black, ugly and horrific humour.

BERGSON AND THE LOBSTER

     Probably the most well formed meta-view of comedy as a process and a concept is that of Bergson. His admittance of the elusive, indefinable quality of humour itself is what makes this work so accomplished – instead of attempting to define what comedy is with a finite aim, he instead works around the issue, noting qualities that are irrefutably funny, both in life and in performance, to try and piece together a jigsaw towards a true humorous definition. ‘Laughter – An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic’[1] was first published in 1900 in a procession of three articles within the Revue de Paris. This explains the relative simplicity of Bergson’s explanation and why it lacks reference to other theorists – it was intended to be an accessible document for a very accessible form of sentiment/affect.

     In this collated document, Bergson lays out three fundamental observations. These observations are as follows – that comedy is a strictly human endeavour, that comedy requires an absence of feeling and that comedy has a social signification. Within this section of the paper, I will examine the ways in which the film The Lobster conforms to and illustrates these observations, thus identifying where the basic tenants of comedy, despite their grey disguise, lie within The Lobster.

     The humanity aspect of Bergson’s comedy creates a certain paradox when applied to The Lobster. In Bergson’s theorisation of the comic form, he relays the fact that only the human can laugh. The animal, such as the hyena, may be able to successfully imitate the sound of laughter but only we are capable of it in a cognitive capacity. This is highly ironic as humans who do not laugh populate the world of The Lobster. These versions of ourselves that the audience can recognise in all their shabby apparel and dreary quirks are entirely humourless. This is a quality that we cannot reconcile and therefore creates an air of dismayed confusion.  These humourless beings are then, if unsuccessful in their mission of finding the ‘happiness’ of a partner, transformed into animals – who can never laugh. Bergson notes that “several have defined man as an ‘animal who does not laugh.’” [2] With this vital fact in mind, are the characters that appear within The Lobster really that separate from the animals they may be destined to embody?

     This question leads to another - are the characters within The Lobster even human? They certainly resemble us but it is a false resemblance. They are humanity distilled into a set of characteristics – or rules - that only speak to relay necessary information to further the aims that they have been set by their society. Often, they speak in clichés or idioms, like they are reading from a script or a manual. They are marionettes – machine humans – people who have been reduced solely to our functions and our rules and this is a huge element of humour present both in the work of Bergson and in The Lobster.  For Bergson, humour lies in the presentation of the human as ‘automaton’. For him, this rigidity of character united with a rigidity of movement is fundamental to comedy.

     Consider the main player of The Lobster – character upon whom the audience are intended to project themselves.  An almost unrecognisable, dowdy Colin Farrell stars as the established comedian within The Lobster. In the Chaplinesque role of the actor known enough for his comedies to anticipate this element within him upon first glance, Farrell is unusual. Known first and foremost as a dashing Irish hunk, he has recently come to the fore as a comedic actor with an extremely successful and lauded turn in the euro-crime/dark-comedy caper ‘In Bruges’ in which Farrell played an exasperated, crude criminal who has been scheduled to die. His ‘deadpan’ delivery that is so vital to The Lobster was very successful in ‘In Bruges’ – although the character he played deployed it more in zestful sarcasm than the total emotional deadness performed within The Lobster. In The Lobster, he is playing someone very different, not really a someone as he is devoid of certain significant aspects of personality but a something – a symbolic, analogous presence. He is the everyman but simultaneously he is not relatable for the audience, he is pathetic without being sympathetic, he is almost completely lacking in any discernible level of emotion. But then, so is everyone else in this film. His character stands out, however, because unlike the others – until the break in the film in which the audience encounters the character played by Rachel Weisz - the audience are allowed into his interior thoughts. The audience are invited, through omniscient narration (later revealed to be Rachel Weisz within the role of her character), to understand his motivations and desires – a privilege not awarded to anyone else inside the hotel. Luckily, the characters within this world tend to be quite blunt in their intentions, stating them without fervour, with the enthusiasm of a delivering a sedate business manifesto.  Also, his character is the only one who is afforded a name – David.

     The social necessity of laughter that is outlined by Bergson could be the secret to its elusive humour, as one must be in tune to its politics to truly understand why it could be a comedic thing. The surreal aspect of The Lobster throws the audience at first but an educated watcher of previous Yorgos Lanthimos work has already been acquainted with his bizarre language, or lack of language and knows it to be comedic. Take the film Alps[3] for example; it is not at all dissimilar in context to The Lobster. Its narrative focuses around another strange subset of society in which rules and regulations are almost biblical in proportion and must be followed strictly to maintain entrance in this group. This is the same as in The Lobster, except in reverse – it is not the subset that maintains these rules in contrast to an ignorant outwards society – it is the entire society that maintains sets of unbreakable and strange rules. To acknowledge and accept that we too function under a set of strange, unbreakable rules that are not only our laws but also our societal requirements is to accept the comedy of The Lobster. Yet, this social disparity aside – there is a paradox at play regarding The Lobster and Bergson’s conception of laughter as a form of social control.

     The reason as to why the humanity aspect is so confused within this film is because the society in The Lobster so completely conforms to the concept of Rigidity that is present in Bergson’s work that it becomes almost uncanny. Both sides of the society that we bear witness to, both the loners and those at the hotel and within the city, are obscenely, completely rigid. There are certain strict rules that pertain equally to both the conformers and the rebels, only hegemony can be allowed in this world. The absurdity of these rigid rules and guidelines is where the humour of this film can be derived. They are pedantic, so illogical and yet completely obeyed that they become a figment of ridicule. The staid, sterile nature of the universe conforms to this culture of obedience and acceptance. There are elements here that are recognisable in the work of Bergson, specifically due to the machine-like interactions of the characters. Bergson states that “THE ATTITUDES, GESTURES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE HUMAN BODY ARE LAUGHABLE IN EXACT PROPORTION AS THAT THE BODY REMINDS US OF A MERE MACHINE’[4] With this in mind, the characters within The Lobster are extremely laughable, but in a way that errs towards the disturbing, as it is there ideologies that are machine-like, not their physicality or attitudes.

     In Bergson’s work, rigidity is a key element to humour – and to recognise that we are human through the ‘ordinary function of laughter’[5] (page 8). However, in The Lobster, this recognition is an uncomfortable one. Bergson states of rigidity: “Society will therefore be suspicious of all INELASTICITY of character, of mind and even of body, because it is the possible sign of a slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies, that inclines to swerve from the common centre round which society gravitates: in short, because it is a sign of eccentricity.”[6]

     One of the grandest reasons why I must diverge from Bergson in this paper is this statement. In The Lobster, the statuses that Bergson grants ‘ELASTICITY’ and ‘INELASTICITY’ have been reversed. The comedy is not derived from an inelastic moment in an elastic society. The comedy is derived from an elastic moment within an inelastic society. There is no physical eccentricity to these characters that we are supposed to laugh at, with a social gesture, to keep them in check. Everything they do is rule-bound, so proper that it becomes unsettling. No one steps out of the strictly drawn lines. We are therefore horrified and confused by this extremism. We are made uneasy by the inelasticity of the characters not because they hide depths or separatist tendencies – in the world of The Lobster, the inelastic is the norm – it is because they do not. Inelasticity becomes elasticity. Therefore, the social gesture in the way that Bergson conceived it is lost – becoming more of a hollow chuckle than a uniting laugh.

     Laughter requires indifference – which is ironic as the characters that inhabit the world of The Lobster are entirely indifferent – they are completely detached and sensible – constantly composed and emotionless. However, detachment whilst watching The Lobster is not an achievable process. This is due to the obscenity of the amplifications that have been made in the name of comedy – there is too much rigidity, there is too much indifference – there is too much caricature – there is too much eccentricity. And, as will presently be divulged, obscenity is the key from transforming what was simply a work of comedy into something politically divisive.

The issue with Bergson regarding The Lobster is that although the film conforms greatly to Bergson’s theory around what makes an audience laugh, it takes each concept too far – it is obscene in this regard. The society is not only rigid – it is frighteningly totalitarian. With this kind of bleak extremity, it is almost impossible not to become emotionally involved in the proceedings – something that Bergson highlights could take away from the amusement. In these points, then, The Lobster becomes more of a ‘black comedy’ or a ‘horror-comedy’.

     Some parts of Bergson plant the seeds for these comedic forms and subsequent theorisations. As Bergson claims - “WE LAUGH EVERY TIME A PERSON GIVES US THE IMPRESSION OF BEING A THING.” [7] The idea of human as automaton - as a thing - is also as great figment of horror as it is of humour. It depends, of course, on how the situation is presented and in the case of the The Lobster, or in a black or horror comedy, this is bleakly and viscerally. When someone makes a mistake in The Lobster, there are horrifying consequences that are so vibrantly portrayed, similar to a ‘body genre’ with their unyielding and frank presentations of this physical violence, it is difficult here not only to feel a body affect, but an emotional sentiment also. In the world of The Lobster, when someone slips on the proverbial banana, they crack their head open.

THE LOBSTER AS DARK HUMOUR

BRETON

     In 1940, André Breton published an unusual anthology that can be credited with the first usage of the term ‘black humour’, as well as a comprehensive definition of what the term meant and what kind of humour could be rightly deemed ‘black’. Due to the shocking content and politically transgressive nature of the material included, the anthology was immediately banned by the Vichy government and was re-printed in 1947 after Breton, the founder of surrealism and author of the surrealist manifesto, returned from Nazi imposed exile.

     Breton’s introduction, in which he introduces black humour, has an esoteric, fathomless depth to it – which reflects the concept that he is attempting to convey. To fully understand the true meaning of Breton’s black humour, we must, as he has done, turn to Freud’s theories of humour[8]. As Freud’s theories upon humour are based upon the psychoanalytical or the purpose to which some may employ humour, not necessarily why certain things may be funny, it is difficult in practise to apply them to film or performance. However, both Breton and Carroll make use of Freud’s humour theories within their own work. 

     The best alley from which to understand black or horror humour via Freud’s theories is through Freud’s conception of gallows humour – the humour of those who are about to die. This type of dark humour is characterised as being liberating – it is a release from social norms, not a device to dismiss eccentricity by way of Bergson. The reason in which it grants liberation is through the way in which the conscious has allowed expression of thought that is in direct denial of the social norms – the superego has allowed the ego a moment of expression. This moment of expression is one of freedom – freedom against the oppressive control over the conscious of the super-ego and freedom in speaking against what is socially acceptable. Freud’s concept is the humour is the expression of our cloaked desires that contradict society, which is in direct contrast of Bergson’s idea that humour is what unifies us in identifying and quelling forbidden or transgressive moments of inelasticity.

      In this short introduction, preceding which he begins to produce a collection of anthologised dark humour, with writers such as D.Sade and Rimbault heralded as creators and perpetrators of the darkly comic, Breton turns to Freud, as many surrealists did, to explain what makes the dark humour so compelling.  It is, he states, in their act of violent transgression that denies the ego that makes them a form of complete liberation and truth. This is evident in the denial of the fallacious nature of sentimentality – that black humour is the antithesis to works of a sentimental nature.  Breton winningly states with manifesto-esque clarity that; “To take part in the black tournament of humour, one must in fact have weathered many eliminations. Black humour is hemmed in by too many things, including stupidity, sceptical sarcasm, light-hearted jokes…(the list is long). But it is the mortal enemy of sentimentality, which seems to lie perpetually in wait.” [9]

     It could not be claimed, by any stretch, that The Lobster was a sentimental piece. Even the romantic moments between the couple that is comprised of the characters played by Colin Farrell and Rachael Weizs, whilst being endearing, are marred by their amusingly inappropriate facets of crude explicitness. Their sign language in the forest, which could have been an alley towards sentimentality, is astoundingly and bluntly sexual – the phrase ‘let’s fuck’ making a surprising addition to the act of courting. The scene in which they are compelled, not at all reluctantly, to kiss as part of their ‘masquerade’ in the house of Lea Seydoux’s parents is cringingly inappropriate, far too explicit, lasting far too long to be politely romantic. In fact, the last moment where sentimentality could have arisen, in the final escape of the end couple, was tempered by the horrible reality of what David must do to maintain his happiness. The film ends without conclusion, a blade hovering over his eyes as he decides whether to blind himself so that he has an impediment that matches that of the woman he loves. Both imagined conclusions – a life of blindness or a life of not being with her – seem unbearable and extremely lacking in sentimentality.

     There are more moments of explicitly ‘black’ or dark humour within The Lobster but the mood of darkness is not an overriding one, at least not entirely. One of these scenes within the narratives is the scene in which the ‘psychotic’ character, played delightfully coldly by the Lanthimos regular Angeliki Papoulia, murders David’s dog via a swift and merciless kicking. The way in which the character of David tries to hold back or conceal his emotion at the death of his dog-brother, even attempting to stifle his tears at what is an admittedly horrific act, is a hilariously reversed situation from one that would be found in daily life. The way in which the camera pans from of her stoic, mask like face down to her legs, with one limb and foot entirely covered in blood, the juxtaposition between the calmness of her demeanour and the violent transgression of her act- there is a definite moment of black humour in this.  Another scene of dark humour occurs with the death of the ‘biscuit woman’. Her suicide, a deeply dark moment, is punctuated with the spray of her biscuits – a comedic feature of the character and a signifier of the mundane ugliness of human eccentricity.

     As a point of difference, there are moments when dark comedy and conventional comedy converge within The Lobster. This is true of the scene in which Rachel Weiz mistakenly murders the maid character, believing her to be Lea Seydoux – as she is blind she cannot see who she is stabbing. This is almost a physical gag, an especially sick one, considering that these kinds of ‘sight gags’[10] rely on the amusing disparity between what the audience can see and anticipate and what the characters can see. With a character such as the one played by Rachel Weizs, who has had her sight intentionally and, it is implied by the small patch of blood on her surgical eye-patch, quite painfully, taken from her – the gag is still present but coincides with a sick undercurrent of tragedy. Not quite black humour, not quite sight gag.

UGLINESS AS HUMOUR

     The world of The Lobster is unavoidably, unapologetically ugly. The scenery – grey, grim, unforgiving,  is ugly. One of Bergson’s’ protean signifiers of humour is ugliness, which he transfers onto expressional rigidity and from this point onto caricature. In the spirit of black humour, we shall stick with ugliness and accept, as Bergson does not, that some find ugliness – true unfortunate ugliness, not the rigidity of deformity – to be funny. It is a guilty humour, but it doubtless exists as a transgressive point of comedy.

     There is a certain nationalism about the ugliness witnessed within The Lobster that unites sets of audience members. A European or, perhaps more specifically, a Brit can sense the inherent ugliness of the hotel within which the unattached are forced through strange, almost animalistic rituals, to find a mate. The resemblance to every strange, surreal, remote country spa that one may have been forced to visit under the guise of a quaint getaway is striking, and therefore humorous considering the seriousness of the implication of tenure there. There is something quite familiar about the hotel set-up, a little ‘Faulty Towers’ or ‘Carry On’ in its premise. The underpasses and motorway bridges are almost traumatic in their drabness.

     The cast, a well-selected and surprising compilation of some of the best actors working in both Europe and the US, as well as some Lanthimos stalwarts, have been intentionally ugly-fied. In his choice of actors, Lanthimos has favoured skill over presentation, with many of the cast resembling people that you might find walking the street than those accustomed to Hollywood – a careful and precise decision that will delight insightful audience members who recognise them and placate those who don’t with their unassuming appearances. Their purposeful ugliness in wardrobe and unflattering camera work makes this intentional ugliness ever more prescient, and therefore humorous. Even the radiant Rachael Weizs and Lea Seydoux, actors known for their glamorous roles, have been purposefully muddied and rumpled to fit into their squalid environments.

     These characters, as well as being automaton like in their social actions and interchanges, speak very much to the ‘caricature’ that is present within Bergson’s work. Bergson states that “Automatism, inelasticity, habit that has been contracted and maintained, are clearly the causes why a face makes us laugh. But this effect gains in intensity when we are able to connect these characteristics with some deep seated cause, a certain fundamental absentmindness, as though the soul had allowed itself to be fascinated and hypnotised by the materiality of a simple action.” [11]

     This is a narrative device within The Lobster, as the very feature that allows a character within this structure to align themselves with a match is often through a ‘feature’ that they both share, whether it be a personal defect or a physical one. Sometimes, the feature is positive – as shown by the woman who announces that her notable feature is a ‘lovely smile’, but the characters that the film focuses upon all have physical defects that make them noticeable and their characters are therefore defined by these defects. There is the lisping man, played by John C. Reilly, the man with a limp, played by Ben Whishaw and Colin Farrell’s character, who is short-sighted and wears glasses. In the bizarre rules of this world, you can only be together if you share such a notable flaw. This is why the vignettes occur in which the limping man feigns a nosebleed problem to ensure a partner, and why Colin Farrell’s character must either blind himself or lose the woman he loves in the films final moments. Even though this may seem like an extreme but humorous device, its use as a social commentary should not be overlooked. Often, especially when using dating technology or apps such as ‘tinder’, we are made to define ourselves in a set of legible characteristics and the sharing of these characteristics can attract others – it demonstrates a level of suitability. This irony is not lost within the film. However, what is interesting here is how The Lobster once again denies the corroboration of ugliness and caricature with rigidity. Yes, the characters are made to be ugly and frumpy. Yes, they are defined so greatly by their deformities that instead of having credited character names they are referred to only as ‘biscuit woman’ or ‘limping man’. However, their deformities are not particularly pronounced or even noticeable elements of their physical appearance. They cannot, then, be elements of rigidity or caricature.

THE LOBSTER AS HORROR-HUMOUR

     In Noel Carroll’s essay he explores the striking theoretical and philosophical similarities between the sentiments of horror and of humour. He realises, that if examined via Freud through his work on the uncanny (a mood in which The Lobster certainly falls) and his work on the unconscious quality of jokes, horror and humour share a many cognitive pathways. Similarly to Breton, Carroll endorses the idea of both horror and horror comedy having potential for liberation. According to Carroll, the condition that both horror and incongruity humour shares is that of transgression. Carroll states that like horror, “Humor is also necessarily linked to the problematization, violation, and transgression of standing categories, norms, and concepts. – [12]

Carroll even manages to comment on Breton’s concept of humour requiring a lack of emotion to be affective. He also uses Freud within this comment, relying not on Breton’s idea that humour should rely on total emotional detachment, but instead on Freud’s proposal that humour involves more of a saving of emotions.

Freud claimed that humor involves a saving or economy of emotion. Perhaps I can commandeer his slogan for my own purposes and say that the emotion in question is fear, which disappears when the comic frame causes the burden of moral concern for the life and limb of comic characters to evaporate. – [13]

     Whilst I do not believe that The Lobster lacks the burden of moral concern for the characters due to its frame (instead, as I have stated earlier in this paper, Lanthimos, by way of his deliberate mundanity and reality in mise-en-scene/setting/design has gone out of his way to deny this comic frame), the element of fear is something that is highly important within The Lobster. The situation that is presented within the film, despite being totally illogical, is highly plausible and incredibly frightening. The Lobster walks this tightrope between fear and humour admirably, sometimes granting momentary levity in our collective social paranoia.

CONCLUSION

     Returning once more to the theme of ugliness as comedy, as I feel it is a vital one in regards to The Lobster, the philosopher Umberto Eco has an interesting view upon the subject – quite specifically upon that which really separates the socially acceptable and controlling laughter defined by Bergson and the ugly, dark humour defined by both Breton and Carroll. He uses the concept of the ‘obscene’, something previously explored in relation to The Lobster in this essay to separate the two – and for Eco, it is in the obscene where true social change can be discovered. It is in the obscene where some of the greatest moments of comedy can be discovered – as Eco asserts with this statement: “One can indulge in obscene behaviour out of anger or a spirit of provocation, but very often obscene behaviour or language simply arouse laughter – just think of the way children love to hear or make jokes about excrement.”[14]

As a closing comment whilst utilising the work of Umberto Eco, it is my belief that he has most succinctly captures what it means to expand upon Bergson’s theories of humour into the obscene, as The Lobster so quietly does. This statement also reinforces the political importance of the film – it acts as a deterrent for society against a future that lacks eccentricity, reducing humans only to our polite functions. Perhaps the reason why the characters in The Lobster do not laugh is because its too subversive and this is a testament to the political power of the humorously obscene.

Thus we can laugh at the arrogant stuffed shirt who slips on a banana skin, at the stiff movements of the marionettes, and we can laugh at various forms of expectations frustrated, at the animalisation of human features, at the bungling of an incompetent, or at amusing word play. These and other forms of comedy play on deformation, but not necessarily on obscenity.

But comicality and obscenity come together either when we make fun of someone we hold in contempt (for example when we mock or make coarse jokes about cuckolds) or when we indulge in some cathartic respect to something or someone who is oppressing us. In this case, by arousing laughter at the expense of the oppressor, the comic-obscene also represents a sort of compensatory rebellion. [15]

THE LOBSTER AS MELAN-COMIC

     Although there are many elements of the black or horror-comedy that are present within The Lobster, there is an overriding atmosphere of melancholia – of sadness and reluctance – that keep this theme from totally being realised. Through this sadness, the ‘liberation’ promised by the transgressive ‘blackness’ of the comedy is tempered greatly. The film is ruminative; it lacks a decisive finality, instead gnawing away at the viewer via its melancholic themes and atmosphere. Even the colour palette of muted greys and greens speak, not only to ugliness as previously stated, but also to the melancholy. This melancholia does not, however, dampen the social impact of this film. Perhaps The Lobster calls for new form of categorization – that which mixes traditional comedy with black comedy with melancholia – the melan-comic.

[1] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, (Project Guttenberg Online 2003, originally published 1900).

[2] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, Pg. 4

[3]

[4] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, Pg. 11

[5] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, Pg. 8

[6] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, Pg. 8

[7] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, Pg. 19

[8] Freud, Sigmund, Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious, (London, White Press, 2014).

[9] Breton, Andre,  Anthology Of Black Humour, (Istanbul, Telegram, 2009). Originally published : (Paris, Éditions du Sagittaire, 1944). Pg.3

[10] Carroll, Noel, Theorizing the moving image. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996). p. 146

[11] Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, Pg. 10

[12] Carroll, Noel, Horror and Humour, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 2, Aesthetics andPopular Culture (Spring, 1999), Pg. 152

[13] Carroll, Noel, Horror and Humour, Pg. 158

[14] Eco, Umberto, On Ugliness, Translated by Alistair McEwen. (London, MacLehose Press, 2011.) P. 135

[15] Eco, Umberto, On Ugliness, P. 130

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eco, Umberto, On Ugliness, Translated by Alistair McEwen. (London, MacLehose Press, 2011.)

Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay On The Meaning Of The Comic, (Project Guttenberg Online 2003, originally published 1900).

Carroll, Noel, Horror and Humour, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 2, Aesthetics andPopular Culture (Spring, 1999), pp. 145-160 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/432309 Accessed: 22-12-2016 17:54 UTC

Breton, Andre,  Anthology Of Black Humour, (Istanbul, Telegram, 2009). Originally published : (Paris, Éditions du Sagittaire, 1944).

Freud, Sigmund, Jokes And Their Relation To The Unconscious, (London, White Press, 2014).

Carroll, Noel, Theorizing the moving image. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).

FILMOGRAPHY

 Lanthimos, Yorgos. Alps. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Athens: Haos Film, 2011.

Lanthimos, Yorgos. The Lobster. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland: Picturehouse Enterainment, 2015.