: Comic Cruelty - Examples In the movie Inglourious Basterds, there are many scenes employing what I can only describe as "comic cruelty". Acts of barbarity that yet somehow inspire glee and revelry

In the movie Inglourious Basterds, there are many scenes employing what I can only describe as "comic cruelty". Acts of barbarity that yet somehow inspire glee and revelry in the audience. Anyone who's watched the movie knows what I'm talking about.

Is this an official trope or a writing style? Does it have a name and are there other examples in books and film that you can think of? I would really like to study this form of comedy, but so far only have had exposure from one movie.

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@Samaraweera193

This is typically called black humor (based on an essay by Andre Breton). Personally, I dislike the term, because it sounds racial when it isn't, but it is commonly used and well-understood ("bleak" humor is a soundalike alternative). It isn't always about cruelty, but it deals with grotesque, obscene, taboo or otherwise usually unfunny subjects. The most well-known subgenre of this type of humor is "gallows humor," which is specifically about death.

Physical comedy involving pain, cruelty and violence, but as played for lighthearted uncomplicated laughs, is called slapstick. In contrast to black humor, however, slapstick is usually cartoonishly unreal, and completely consequence free.

If you combine the two, you end up with what is variously called a bleak, black, or tragic farce. Death at at Funeral, The Ladykillers, Heathers, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Movie 43, and Tropic Thunder are a few examples that come readily to mind, or, for something more reminiscent of Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

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: Comic Cruelty - Examples In the movie Inglourious Basterds, there are many scenes employing what I can only describe as "comic cruelty". Acts of barbarity that yet somehow inspire glee and revelry

More posts by @Goswami879

: I'm in a similar situation, though helped by the fact that I use a lot of english in daily life in both my profession and private life (international friends and relatives). I've noticed

: Copyright: is it OK to include very short (paragraph-length) text from other novels? Writing a novel, is it legal in terms of copyright to have a character reading aloud a passage from an existing

: How to describe a horse from the POV of someone who has never seen one? In my story, my narrator has only recently met other humans and the biggest creature she has ever interacted with are

: Protagonist who is morally compromised and antagonist who is "good"? My protagonist is Eris and my antagonist is Ezrith. In a post-apocalyptic world, my unreliable narrator Eris has the ability

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