.

Comme son nom l’indique, la comédie romantique est un subtile mélange entre entre la pure romance sentimentale et la sitcom humoristique. C’est donc une histoire d’amour qui commence mal et qui se termine plus ou moins bien, en exploitant tous les ressorts de l’humour dans le passage de la situation initiale à la situation finale.

Le sentimentalisme de ce type de comédie ne se restreint pas à l’aspect romantique au sens propre (la quête ou la reconquête de l’âme sœur), mais elle inclut aussi toutes les autres dimensions possibles de l’amour familial (régler des conflits familiaux, renouer des liens distendus, voire retrouver des membres perdus de cette même famille).

L’humour, dans ce type de comédie, est par ailleurs moins appuyé que dans la pure sitcom, et il n’est jamais complètement déconnecté de l’intrigue sentimentale. On cherche plus à faire sourire qu’à faire rire aux éclats, car l’émotion n’est jamais loin. 

Au répertoire de La Comédiathèque

LA FENETRE D’EN FACE
PRÉLIMINAIRES
AMOUR PROPRE ET ARGENT SALE
RENCONTRE SUR UN QUAI DE GARE

Sitcoms are primarily based on the confrontation of more or less ordinary characters with an extraordinary situation, which comically reveals their own flaws, hypocrisy, cowardice, and overall defects to themselves and others. While in character comedy, the clash between very opposite characters is the main humorous device, in sitcoms, it is an unprecedented event or setup that leads to the confrontation of each character’s traits in the face of adversity.

The comedic situations are obviously very diverse and are related to the themes listed on this website. However, for each theme, the possible comedy situations are much more numerous. For example, in the theme of money, it can involve winning the lottery (Friday The 13th), an unexpected inheritance (The Smell of Money), a marriage of convenience (Lovestruck at Swindlemore Hall)…

Black humor is the kind that makes people laugh about the most dramatic subjects (death, illness, injustice, poverty…) carefully avoided by light comedy (such as vaudeville). Provocative in nature, black humor relies primarily on irony (saying one thing to express the opposite): it presents shocking ideas in a lighthearted tone to denounce the social hypocrisy that leads to ignoring the most unsettling subjects. Black humor is therefore a form of dark comedy, claiming the right to laugh about everything, but not with just anyone (as stated by the famous quote from the french humorist Pierre Desproges), meaning not with those who pretend to take this ironic discourse literally (regarding a subject like racism, for instance) and would want to endorse what it actually criticises. When another famous french humorist, Coluche, in his sketches, made racist remarks, it was to mock racists… not to laugh with them.

The fantastic opposes the fantasy in that it starts from a realistic situation, then at a certain point, shifts into the bizarre, the strange, or even the irrational. On the other hand, the fantasy directly creates a parallel world (whether located in a fictional past, an alternate present, or a possible future) with its own set of rules. Science fiction, in turn, portrays a realistic world set in a possible future (anticipation) and/or a probable elsewhere (extraterrestrial). Lastly, retrofuturism portrays the future as imagined in the past, based on the principle that our current conceptions of the future will inevitably become retrofuturistic tomorrow.

The fantastic and science fiction (a possible version of fantasy) are not incompatible with comedy, even though these genres are rarely associated with comedy in theater, perhaps because comedy’s main device is to mock the real in its most trivial aspects and the human in its most mundane qualities. One can only laugh at a parallel world to the extent that it parodies our own. One can only laugh at extraterrestrials to the extent that they mimic our worst traits.