This book presents closereadings of seven postmillennial comedic films Up in the Air,Tropic Thunder,JCVD,Winnebago Man,The Trotsky,Be Kind Rewind, andHamlet 2. It is a sequel to Stanley Cavells 1981 landmark study of the comedic genre,Pursuits of Happiness, where he examines seven comedies of Hollywoods "Golden Age." Khan puts forward the idea that comedies, once centred on the conventional "happy ending," are no longer interested in detailing the steps to any ending we might call happy. Instead, the agenda of most culturally serious comedies today is to "spoof," to make all that is fair foul. The seven films presented here risk a type of cultural nihilismspoofing for the sake of spoofing and nothing else, indicative not of films promise but its failure. By equating the failure of film with the failed national politics of Canada (or the failed politics of nationalism and community more generally), this study shows that comedy has less to do with happiness and more to do with the grotesque. The films analysed represent hyperrealized forms of comic irony and move towards what theatre knows as tragedy, or a tragic vision.

Binding: Hardcover;196 pages; Publisher: Springer Nature B.V.; Classification: APFA; Weight: 484 g; Dimensions: 219 x 155 x 17

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