What you can’t laugh at – Weekend – Kommersant
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You can’t laugh at some things at all, otherwise someone will definitely be offended, or upset, or forbid everything that you do, or even you at the same time. We collected topics that are not allowed to be laughed at at all, and looked at how these topics were joked in the cinema. Unfunny, insulting, cynical and unbridled jokes.
over the dictator
“Interview”
Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, USA, 2014
A film about how two American foolish journalists – a TV producer and a narcissistic host – unexpectedly interview the North Korean leader, intending to kill him on the instructions of the special services, predictably caused an international scandal. The North Korean authorities demanded that the film be removed from the box office, hackers hacked into the Sony Pictures servers and threatened with terrorist attacks if the film was released on the big screens. Sony Pictures at first decided not to show the comedy, Barack Obama opposed such a decision – in general, the noise around the film was louder than the comedy itself. In the film, James Franco and Seth Rogen explore the fake world of North Korea, they are used in the dark by everyone – including the dictator himself and his assistant. In the end, the leader is destroyed by free speech: the interviewer asks such questions that the North Korean leader is on the air … in general, the people understand that “the leader has a hole in the ass” (exact quote). The main idea of the comedy is that the “fathers of the peoples” do not need to be killed, they need to be shown that they are ordinary people, and then the dictatorship will fall by itself. If only everything was that simple.
“Death of Stalin”
Armando Iannucci, UK, France, 2017
The film’s distribution certificate was revoked in Russia a few days before the release on the big screens: after a closed special screening, cultural figures, including Nikita Mikhalkov and Vladimir Bortko, wrote a letter to the Minister of Culture, where they called “The Death of Stalin” “denigrating the memory of our citizens, defeated fascism. The then Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, also noted that this was “an insulting mockery of the entire Soviet past.” Scottish screenwriter and director Armando Iannucci with actors Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev, Jason Isaacs (Georgy Zhukov), Simon Russell Beal (Beria) explored the undercover struggle that took place after Stalin’s death. Soviet macabra in the film is turned into absurdity, and serious politics turns out to be just a big meal, endless devouring of each other.
over Hitler
“Jojo Rabbit”
Taika Waititi, USA, New Zealand, Czech Republic, 2019
A film about a boy living in Nazi Germany and playing with his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler won an Oscar for best screenplay and was not shown on the big screen in our country – Fox did not plan to enter the Russian market with this film, but the companies There were no people in Russia who were ready to show a comedy about Hitler, albeit an imaginary one: after the scandal with The Death of Stalin, the distributors became more cautious. American critics called Waititi’s film a “hipster comedy about Nazism” and compared it to Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”, although Waititi has a completely different attitude. Chaplin’s main idea – ridicule as the main weapon against dictatorship – does not quite work here: Waititi is more for everything good than against everything bad.
“Producers”
Mel Brooks, USA, 1967
The heroes of the film, in order not to return money to investors, put on a freak musical “Spring for Hitler” – obviously a failure, with a terrible script, actors and director. Real producers refused such a script by Mel Brooks, believing that a comedy about Hitler is terrible, obscene, vulgar and will not bring money to anyone. Both in the film and in reality, the producers miscalculated: “Spring for Hitler” turned out to be a hit, Brooks’ film is recognized as one of the funniest comedies in history. Mel Brooks, who himself voiced one of the musical numbers in “Spring for Hitler”, said that he often ridiculed Hitler and Nazism because he wanted to make them look so ridiculous that no one would ever be interested in their ideas. And he gladly admitted that his films are not just vulgar, they are “below vulgarity.”
over World War II
“To be or not to be”
Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1942
The great film by Ernst Lubich was shot in 1942, the director was accused of the wrong tone, of ridiculing the tragedy of the Polish people, and of ignorance of the realities of occupied Warsaw. Pauline Cale wrote that the film’s burlesque Nazis looked “grossly gleeful” rather than funny, while other critics accused the director of callousness. But in the end, a movie about Polish actors who, in the middle of the war, dressing up either as Nazis, or as spies, or as Hitler, manage to deceive and beat everyone – and why else do actors exist? became one of the best comedies of all time. Lubitsch himself wrote that it was a satire not only of the Nazis and their “ridiculous ideology”, but also of actors who remain actors even in the most dangerous circumstances.
“Holiday”
Alexey Krasovsky, Russia, 2018
Officials, media and deputies did not even wait for the release of the “comedy about the blockade”, and even at the stage of creation they accused the authors of falsifying history. So the director Alexei Krasovsky (“Collector”) decided not to get a rental certificate, but to post the movie immediately on the network. Timofey Tribuntsev, Yan Tsapnik and Alena Babenko play out a New Year’s farce in theatrical scenery: the wife of a professor who receives a special ration is unhappy that strangers will come to the celebration of the new year 1942 and see how the professor’s family is fattening. In fact, “Holiday” is not “a desecration of our history” and not a comedy at all, but an evil satire on the stratification of society and on the immodest charm of the privileged class, which finds it hard and unpleasant to pluck a chicken in the middle of a starving country.
over another race
Looney Tunes
USA, 1931–1944
Eleven issues of the Looney Tunes animated series have not been shown publicly since 1968 due to “racist stereotypes”. A parody of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, Disney’s “Snow White” with a black Snow White and seven black dwarfs, a cartoon about Bugs Bunny and the huntsman, and the most amazing episode of “Clean Pastures” (1937), in which Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway are angels- jazz players in heaven, the so-called “forbidden eleven” are unlikely to ever be on TV, but they are on the net. They seemed vulgar even at the time of release: racial (and in the case of Snow White also sexual) stereotypes were supposed to cause laughter here, so today the “forbidden eleven” is interesting as a story of delusions built into the history of cinema.
over another country
“Borat: Exploring American Culture for the Benefit of the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”
Larry Charles, USA, UK, 2006
Kazakh reporter Borat – a racist, anti-Semite, chauvinist, xenophobe and the main freak of the 2000s – has become hundreds of times more famous than his creator, the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The first and main “Borat” – a film about how a Kazakh reporter came to the United States, dreaming of marrying Pamela Anderson – did not receive a rental certificate in Russia and was not released on the big screen due to the fact that they saw in it materials that “may appear degrading to some nationalities or religions to some viewers.” This was the first time a non-pornographic film was banned in Russia. Critics rightly called the jokes from the film offensive, cynical, obscene, but all these epithets faded before the real Borat, impenetrable in his militant cheerfulness. They say that during the filming of the film, the police were called almost a hundred times: Sacha Baron Cohen completely got used to the character and improvised a lot, pestering passers-by with unexpected questions.
over your country
“Daisies”
Vera Chitilova, Czechoslovakia, 1966
A delight movie, an explosion movie, a collage movie about two innocent Marie Daisies who want to be even worse than the world, so they destroy everything they touch. They are like children, they are like monsters, they are like robots; they are women. Khitilova’s destructive clowning delighted the audience, but one of the members of the Czech parliament saw “lewdness” in the film, and “Daisies” were partially withdrawn from the box office. Officials were indignant that there was nothing to eat in the country, and the heroines of the film “walk on high heels on the table.” After the Prague Spring, the great Chytilova, the leader of the Czech New Wave, did not emigrate, but stopped filming for a long time. Daisies remained her most famous film, an ode to a destructive, hilarious, and murderous future.
over the Soviet people
“Relatives”
Nikita Mikhalkov, USSR, 1981
The first film by Nikita Mikhalkov, shot “about modernity”, without the slightest regard for the classics. A provincial aunt (Mordyukova), simple and sincere, comes from the village to the regional center to her daughter and granddaughter and finds out that her husband left her daughter, the granddaughter constantly listens to “not our” music, the men are kind of frail and in general the world is not good, wrong , irreparably. A film based on the script by Viktor Merezhko might not have been released at all: at first, officials demanded to cut out half of the significant scenes in order to avoid parallels with the war in Afghanistan, then they said that “it was only possible to see the Soviet people like that from the window of a Mercedes,” and then the Secretary General watched the film Andropov still gave him the go-ahead. But the Soviet people remained so – simple, sincere, irreparable.
“The Man from Nowhere”
Eldar Ryazanov, USSR, 1961
“Comic Non-Science Fiction”, an eccentric satire about a “Bigfoot” who ended up in Moscow, aroused such anger from the authorities that the film was banned, and the ban was lifted only in 1988. Ryazanov said that the film “fell under the Suslov tram”: party ideologist Mikhail Suslov said at the CPSU congress: “In the ideological and artistic sense, this film is clearly not from there, not from there.” Today, this comedy is interesting not only because Papanov and Yursky played their first major roles here, but above all because the savages from the tribe – those who ate their fellow tribesmen – turned out to be exactly the same as the Moscow authorities. Suslov was not in vain offended.
over the feelings of believers
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Terry Jones, UK, 1979
The British comedy troupe Monty Python created one of the funniest anarchist films in world cinema. The story of Brian Cohen, the neighbor of Jesus Christ, who was mistaken for the Messiah (simply mistaken for a barn), is not only political satire, not only the history of mankind, which, in essence, does not care who to obey, but also an ode to chance. The film was banned for some time in Ireland, Italy, Norway (in Sweden it was shown with the slogan “The movie is so funny that it was banned in Norway”); in the UK it was banned in several city councils before it was released. Before the Finnish version, they wrote a statement that this is a parody of Hollywood historical films. Pickets lined up in front of movie theaters in many countries. In general, the audience behaved like the characters in The Life of Brian, and director Terry Jones patiently explained that his film is not a mockery of Christ, but of those who have been killing each other for two thousand years in the name of God.
over the clitoris
“Deep Throat”
Gerard Damiano, USA, 1972
It’s certainly not exactly a comedy. Although what else to call the film, the heroine of which discovers that her clitoris is deep in her throat, so she can achieve orgasm with only one way of satisfaction? The first porn movie to hit the big screen, a kind of manual for creating the perfect porn, the great-great-grandmother of porn networks, Deep Throat became a symbol of obscenity, porn chic and depth of immersion in the topic. At the same time, the film was hated by feminists, religious activists and the government. In America, it was banned in 23 states, and a Manhattan judge called “Deep Throat” “Sodom and Gomorrah going wild before the fire.” True, all the prohibitions only added to the popularity of the film. Leading actress Linda Boreyman said: “Every time who watches this movie, they watch me raped,” and yet “Deep Throat” is watched, adored and hated to this day.
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