There's an insidious school of thought circulating among the world's pop culture enthusiasts and critics. It states that comedy is not and indeed cannot be True Art. Since true art is angsty and offensive, it logically follows that something lighthearted, created to inspire joy and laughter amongst the public, must not be true art, right? Sadly, many people seem to think so. For instance, can you remember the last time a film comedy won for Best Picture at the Academy Awards?*
Give up? It was Shakespeare in Love, in 1998, and even that was the first comedy to win in years. Before that, it was 1977's Annie Hall.
Exactly, and the numbers predict that it's not due to happen anytime soon. (The Golden Globe Awards have separate categories for comedies and dramas.)
This rule tends not to apply to minor technical awards: For instance, at the 1988 Oscars, the Disney / Amblin partly-animatedfantasy-comedy film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? won three competitive Academy Awards, but these were for film editing, visual effects and sound effects. (A special award was given for the film's animation.)
Compare Animation Age Ghetto and Sci Fi Ghetto for similarly flawed ideas. For the fandom version, see Maturity Is Serious Business. Particularly good satire and Black Comedymay be exempt such as with Life Is Beautiful, an ostensible comedy set during the Nazi Holocaust which got director/actor Roberto Benigni the Best Foreign Language and Best Actor Oscars.
A primary cause of Tom Hanks Syndrome.
Entertainment magazine's review of Observe and Report praises the film over the similarly-themed Paul Blart: Mall Cop for one main oft-repeated reason: the former is direct, sad, and "brutal" whereas the latter is funny, and its praise for the performers is secondary.
Recently, Robert De Niro was asked in an interview for Parade Magazine why he occasionally does "stupid" comedies such as Meet the Parents. De Niro explained that comedy films are just as difficult to make as serious dramas.
Almost any time a sitcom starts to make an attempt at an Emmy nomination, the episode they make for consideration is almost always a Very Special Episode. The laughs come fewer and farther between, a much more serious issue is addressed, and it can often be a Lower Deck Episode if a Supporting Actor being considered (the episodes of Roseanne when Jackie was a victim of domestic abuse stand out as this in syndication.)
The song A Comedian at the Oscars performed by Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly at the 79th annual Academy Awards is a biting satire of this idea. Ferrell and Black begin by pretending to challenge Oscar winners and nominees to a fight over the preferential treatment of dramatic actors before Reilly teaches them that they, too, can win awards if only they learn to accept absurdly tragic roles.
Professional Wrestling
While nothing to do with films per say, this trope does come up with regards to wrestlers that have comedy gimmicks. A lot of wrestling purists absolutely despise wrestlers that have gimmicks designed to entertain the fans and make them laugh, especially if their fans are primarily children. Some fans that value only the athleticism in wrestling seem to assume that more character-centred wrestlers are somehow "cheating" and aren't real wrestlers when in actuality they do know how to wrestle and instead just choose to be more character based.
Wrestlers with comedy gimmicks are more likely to become The Scrappy to internet fans, especially if they get cheered by the audience. Examples are Santino Marella, Brodus Clay, Scotty 2 Hotty, Doink the Clown etc.
You'll never get a wrestler with a comedy gimmick as a world champion in any major promotion. If a wrestler wishes to become a main eventer in any shape or form then they're going to have to be taken seriously. John Cena is probably the closest to a comedic main eventer WWE has had in recent years.
The Rock is an aversion though his comedy came more from insulting his opponents in clever ways.
Eddie Guerrero got away with it as well, possibly because his comedic cheating ways had become so endeared by fans.
Lay Cool are female aversions. The two were essentially exaggerated versions of the Alpha BitchValley Girl and yet managed to dominate the women's division for over a year.
Web Original
Members of Zero Punctuation's hatedom/-dumb often claim that because the series is "only" a comedy, the viewpoints expressed within cannot be taken as actual critical analysis and Yahtzee is not a "real reviewer."
On the other hand, fans of his often express virtually the same opinion: That because he's principally an entertainer, the content of his reviews cannot be criticized because he's "joking".
Very prominent throughout the history of animation. For example, with regards to Looney Tunes, Tex Avery was only nominated twice for the Best Animated Short Oscar without winning, while Bob Clampett was never even nominated at all. Likewise, Chuck Jones received nominations for his later "True Art" shorts, but not for "The Dover Boys", "One Froggy Evening", or "Duck Amuck".
Averted at least once by Friz Freleng. His cartoon "Knighty Knight Bugs" was the only Bugs Bunny cartoon to ever win an Academy Award.
Likewise, there was a stretch in the 1940's where Tom And Jerry dominated the Best Animated Short Oscar category.
Like Batman mentioned above, Teen Titans is often dismissed for its frequent comedic tone. However, since the series is a Cerebus Rollercoaster, it can be plenty serious when it wants to be.
The exact same applies to Transformers Animated. The comedy and seriousness are better balanced here, but the comedy part is always more apparent, hence why the deeper themes are overlooked by most.
Exceptions to the rule:
Perhaps the best recent example is The Hangover, a comedy that's basically Refuge in Audacity and Crosses the Line Twice put on film - it won the Golden Globe for best picture in musical/comedy, the first non-animated "pure comedy" film to do so in over two decades.
Usually, if comedies win any major awards, it's for a supporting performance. Examples include Melvyn Douglas in Being There, John Gielgud in Arthur, Kevin Kline for A Fish Called Wanda, Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, Jack Palance in City Slickers, and Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine. (In the first two cases, the lead actors also were nominated but didn't win.)
Want to have the best chance for winning an Oscar by appearing in a comedy? Appear in a Woody Allen film. Three actresses — Dianne Wiest (twice, for Hannah And Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway), Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite) and Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) — have won Best Supporting Actress. Michael Caine won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Hannah and Her Sisters and Diane Keaton received Best Actress for playing the title character in Annie Hall.
American Beauty had the tagline in the trailer "If you think a comedy can't be moving, if you think a drama can't be funny, look closer". The film is essentially a comedy with the drama coming to the forefront in maybe the last fifteen minutes and it is widely regarded as one of the best films of the 90s.
It's worth noting that three of the last four comedies to win Best Picture — The Apartment (1960), Annie Hall (1977), and Shakespeare in Love (1998) — aren't regarded as pure comedies; they all contain significant dramatic elements, though when these occur in Annie Hall it's still played for laughs. The other winner, 1963's Tom Jones, is a pure comedy, or very close to it... albeit one that's adapted from a respected 18th-century British novel.
One might notice that there have been only four comedies winning Best Picture in the last 50-plus years, and one in the last 25.
Star Trek IV The Voyage Home is mostly a comedy and is regarded as one of the best installments of the series. Of course, the whole series is already in the Sci Fi Ghetto.
Considering cartoon comedies, Tom And Jerry is a major exception. Such shorts as Quiet, Please! and Yankee Doodle Mouse got an Oscar for the Best Short Animated Film; although it's also worth noting that the number of shorts that won this award is the same that their amount that was only nominated. Before Tom and Jerry, cutesy fare like Silly Symphonies shorts tended to always win the award while zany comedies were overlooked.
Back to the Future got an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. It lost, of course, but for a sci-fi teen comedy that's practically a Best Picture win.
And then Bridesmaids (which he produced) got two Academy Award nominations (one for Melissa McCarthy's performance and another for the screenplay).
Theater is in many ways exempt, and Broadway comedies are not only successful, but are not infrequent Tony Award winners.
Broadway, however, formerly had a musical comedy ghetto. There was much controversy in 1931 when Of Thee I Sing became the first musical show to win the Pulitzer Prize; falling under the aforementioned exemption for satire seems to have helped it do so.
In fact, even Shakespeare himself applies - despite that he's known for tragedies, he did in fact write plenty of comedies that are still well known today.
Charlie Chaplin devoted much of the latter part of his film career showing that his film comedies could do far more than provide a few laughs. As a result, he has been honored as one of the great filmmakers with sophisticated satires like Modern Times, The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux.
James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the most highly regarded novels of the 20th century, is essentially a comedy. (Joyce himself claimed there was "not one single serious line in it"). Of course, it does have True Art Is Incomprehensible on its side.
P. G. Wodehouse, whose novels are often critically acclaimed as being the product of both a great writer and a comic genius.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is considered a classic. Although literary critics often avoid it, reviewers have praised it and it has a very devoted cult following.
A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer prize for fiction, a rare feat for a comedic novel.
Beast Wars is probably the most zany and comically over-the-top series in the Transformers franchise, but owing to the mostly serious second season, it's often considered the best of them all by fans.
