The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Farce

Farce: From the Latin for “to stuff,” a type of low comedy that employs improbable or otherwise ridiculous situations and mix-ups, slapstick and horseplay, and crude or even bawdy dialogue. The humor in a farce is anything but subtle, aiming simply to entertain and evoke guffaws. Comedies or dramas may contain farcical elements without being farcical themselves.

EXAMPLES: Brandon Thomas’s play Charley’s Aunt (1892); the movie One, Two, Three (1961), a cold war farce set in West Berlin; Joe Orton’s black comedy Loot (1965); the movie Airplane! (1980), which spoofs disaster films; Michael Frayn’s play Noises Off (1982; adapted to film 1992), a backstage farce including a play-within-a-play, Nothing On, that is itself a sex farce; Ray Cooney’s bedroom stage farce Run for Your Wife! (1984); the Home Alone movies (1990, 1992, 1997); Roger Boylan’s satirical novel Killoyle: An Irish Farce (1997); Neil Simon’s play Rumors (1998); Steve Martin’s play The Underpants (2002), an adaptation of Carl Sternheim’s 1910 satire on the bourgeoisie involving the attentions paid to a young wife (and the fears of her uptight husband) after her underpants unaccountably fall to her feet during a parade. The actor Leslie Nielsen made a career of starring in farces, including The Naked Gun (1988) and Spy Hard (1996). A Knight’s Tale (2001), in which Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), is a character, is an action-packed film farce set in medieval times.

Sitcoms often make use of farce, whether as a mainstay or an element of a given episode. Examples include Three’s Company (1977—84); Seinfeld (1990—98), a comedy of manners; and Arrested Development (2003—06, 2013— ).