Skip Nav Destination
Close Modal
Update search
NARROW
Format
Journal
Date
Availability
1-1 of 1
Steven Jacobs
Close
Follow your search
Access your saved searches in your account
Would you like to receive an alert when new items match your search?
Sort by
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
October (2017) (160): 30–50.
Published: 01 June 2017
Abstract
View article
PDF
Scrutinizing the writings by Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Theodor W. Adorno and connecting them to specific comedy scenes and tropes, this essay explores the fascination for American slapstick comedies and comedians by the philosophers of the Frankfurt School. Although often critical of mass entertainment, Benjamin, Kracauer, and Adorno admired the way slapstick film elevated motion and speed to an art form that answered to the rhythms and dangers of an industrialized society. For these writers, slapstick's crude and anarchic humor and anthropomorphizing of everyday objects offered a means of resistance against the forces of modernization through ludic encounters.