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The king of comedy Look tragedy through comedy “l made so many tragedies, but the audience thought I had been making comedies all the time”, Stephen Chou stated. When we refer to comedy, what comes up to your mind, laughter, humor? Have it ever occurred to you that sometimes the director was trying to express a tragedy emotion behind the comedy atmosphere? When we talk about Chinese comedy, we have to come to the most famous Chinese comedy actor, Stephen Chou, who acted in a large number of famous comedy movies.
He plays an important role in the comedy world. In China, everyone knows his name. Among his representatives, the king of comedy is the most meaningful one to me. The king of comedy is about an actor, who Just played a bit role at the beginning, became a famous actor at last because of his great effort. Stephen Chou played a role called “Diatonic”. Reading tons of books about acting and wandering around the film studio to seek opportunities, he was crazy about acting. Unfortunately, the director only used famous actors to act. He did not give up.
He opened a cinema and taught acting skills for free. Then by chance, he was able to act again. However, things did not go as well as he thought. Going through some setbacks, Diatonic was appreciated by a famous actress, Juan, who helped Diatonic play a main actor. At last, Diatonic helped a spy arrest the criminals and he made a success in his career. This movie is classified as a comedy, however, when you analyze this film through, you will find that this movie is a mirror of Stephen Ouzo’s career experience. The whole film was in an informal atmosphere.
The first scene came into the audience was that Diatonic screamed to the sea, “Fighting! ” We can tell that Diatonic was an ambitious young man. However, life was not fair to him. He wandered around the film studio everyday in order to seek an opportunity to act, even though it was only an extra. Fortunately, he did get a chance, which was a role Just act for a few seconds. Ironically, he acted too exaggeratedly and appeared in a scene that he should not be in. All the scenes needed to be refilled. The main actress was so angry, “I’m begging you.
Even though t is only an extra, you should find a professional extra for this role”. As a green hand in acting, Diatonic was so disappointed to hear this. This was about exactly what happened to Stephen when he was young. When he graduated after high school, he made a short film, as the main role and the director. However, the supporting role became famous. He could only be an extra in the following years and suffered from people’s insult. If you do not know Stephens background, you may not realize that the tragedy emotion behind this scene.
We may come across a large quantity of faculties in our lives. Faced with them, some people choose to fight with it while some people choose to surrender. “I am an actor”, Diatonic declared. When people laughed at him, even the cook was not willing to serve him the food. This sentence always came out from Diatonic. When Diatonic decided to teach people how to act for free, a bunch of dancing girls in the bar came to learn. One of them, Phobia, could not stand Diatonic called her “dancing girl”, so she hit and insulted him with words.
However, Diatonic replied, “Miss, if you must call me an extra, you don’t need o add “damned” in front of it”. The audience burst into laugher hearing this. An actor might suffer from people’s insult only because you were not famous. What a tragedy it is. People Judge others according to their fame. Stephen wanted to use this scene to criticize a bad atmosphere in the society. If you Just laugh at it and do not think about it, you will never understand Stephens purpose. In the book, Of Contrast Between Tragedy and Comedy, the author pointed out that: The characteristic of comedy is laughter.
It must, therefore, be asked how the excitation insolence and indignation is related to the laughter, or at least, how these emotions leave room for laughter. Satire, also, may be interpreted as a modification, or even as a kind odd inversion of comedy. The similarity of structure in the complex of emotions aroused by tragedy and that aroused by comedy suggests the possibility tragedy contributes to laughter. (552) We can tell that sometimes tragedy is hidden behind the comedy. Nothing is absolute. When these big stars offended Diatonic, their words seemed to be funny. Actually, they exposed that they had a bad morality.
In the movie, Diatonic was a person who knew how to seize opportunities. When Juan agreed to help Diatonic, she let him participant in AU audition. They played a couple and Juan was going to die, “I’ve encountered too much failure in my life, and I’m very tired. If I lose you too, I can’t hold on anymore”. With Donation’s nasal mucus falling onto Jean’s face, the audition was passed. This scene was so interesting. Everyone was angry that how dare Diatonic let his nasal mucus fall. However, Juan thought that he was really devoted to the acting so that he could run his nose.
This comedy scene reflected that in order to be an good actor, you should have a good reaction. Whenever you are required to cry, you need to cry. We always see the actors fabulous moment on stage, but who knows what they gave up to achieve today’s success. The book Notes on Comedy and Tragedy also illustrated this point, “Although comedy and tragedy are frequently considered antithetical in substance and treatment, their significance is not sufficiently realized, however, until one considers the similarity between comedy and tragedy’ (45).