Comedy: Before and After the Production Code

Before the Production Code came into effect in 1934, films tried to get away with as much taboo material as possible.  Once the Code was brought into play, there were a significant amount of restrictions.  After the ratings system was introduced, more and more filmmakers have tried to transgress beyond what people were used to seeing in film, especially in the comedy genre.  This was risky because people laugh at different things, so one can’t be sure whether a viewer will find it hysterical or offensive.  Two films that display the larger culture and state of the American film industry before and after the Production Code are Lowell Sherman’s 1933 film, “She Done Him Wrong,” and Peter and Robert Farrelly’s 1998 film, “There’s Something About Mary.”  Each film is a case in what a comedy could get away with in its era

One significant comparison between the two films is how the dialogue uses double entendres for comedic effect.  In Thomas Doherty’s book “Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934,” he has a chapter that describes the evolution of the wisecrack.  He states, “The inability of slow-witted censors to keep up with the implications of fast talk from ‘ultra-modern slanguists’ made for a fun game of hide-and-seek between the hip and the hapless,” (181).  Many of Lady Lou’s (Mae West) lines of dialogue are double entendres.  Right after we first see her get out of the carriage, a woman calls her “a fine gal, a fine woman.”  To which Lady Lou replies, “One of the finest women ever walked the streets,” making a subtle comedic reference to the sensitive subject of prostitution.  

Another way filmmakers were able to get around the censors is if the delivery and tone of a risqué bit of dialogue went over the heads of the censors: “For a few actors, the wisecrack lay not in the words but in the delivery.  A consistent source of trouble for tone-deaf censors was the remark that read innocent on the page but sounded suggestive to the ear, notably in the insinuating octaves of Mae West, Groucho Marx, and Jean Harlow,” (181).   Although “She Done Him Wrong” came out before the Code’s censorship, it has an excellent example of this kind of line.  Mae West tells Captain Cummings (Cary Grant), “Why don’t you come up some time and see me?  I’m home every evening.”  On paper, this would just sound like an innocent invite for Cummings to visit Lady Lou, but the way how she delivers the line with her flirtatious expressions and tone make the audience fully aware of her real intentions.

For “There’s Something About Mary,” there is an entirely different approach to the way double entendres are spoken.  They are made to sound more obvious.  In Geoff King’s book, “Film Comedy,” he says, “Some film comedies are subtle, nuanced and ‘respectable’.  Others are decidedly not.  ‘Gross-out’ has become one of the most lucrative elements in contemporary film comedy: comedy based on crude and deliberate transgressions of the bounds of ‘normal’ everyday taste,” (63).  At the start of Ted’s (Ben Stiller) masturbation scene, his friend Woogie (Chris Elliot), tells him to “clean his pipe” before going out with Mary.  When Stiller doesn’t understand what he means, Woogie begins to say several not-so-subtle double entendres to masturbation, including “choke the chicken” and “spank the monkey.”  Although these are supposed to be double entendres, they aren’t subtle in the least.  This reflects highly on the state of the film industry in the 1990s because it presented how filmmakers didn’t have to be as subtle as they used to be if they wanted to get a gross-out gag across.  They are actually funny in their lack of subtlety because the audience knows full well what the characters are referring to.  

One scene in “There’s Something About Mary” that can be said to have transgressed certain boundaries is the “zipper” scene when Ted goes to pick up Mary for the prom.  As he’s going to the bathroom at the start of the scene, he gazes out the window and looks at a pair of doves, while the Carpenters’ “Close to You” plays as non-diagetic music.  This provides a comedic effect because it’s a romantic song that’s playing as Ted is going to the bathroom, and then the doves fly away and Ted is able to see Mary changing, both of them exchanging embarrassed expressions.  But then, there is the part that contributes to the gross-out effect, which is when Ted gets his testicles caught in his pants zipper.  During this scene, the directors play with the audiences’ expectations as to what they are and aren’t going to get a view of.  There are four people who come into the bathroom to have a look at what has happened: Mary’s father and mother, a police officer and a fireman.  As the first three have a look, the audience is tricked into thinking that it will have a look at the damage when the characters see it.  That is not the case.  By doing this, the directors toy with what painful visions the viewers have in their heads.  So, by the time the fireman walks in, the audience will have most likely let its guard down into thinking they won’t see the testicles in the zipper and the scene won’t take it any further by showing us what happened.  However, it is here that the viewers do see it, throwing them into a painful and funny surprise.  

After having gone this far, the viewer might think that there will be more to come in this scene, especially when the police officer recommends unzipping the pants.  The viewer thinks he knows what will be shown, so the directors play with expectations again by having the police officer count to three slowly, prolonging the wait with painful anticipation which will cause most male viewers to either cross their legs or squeeze them together.  However, editing contributes to the comedy when the bathroom scene cuts to another officer yelling “We got a bleeder!” just as the other officer is getting to “three.”  By showing the viewer the testicles in the zipper, but cutting away from the unzipping, it highlights how the directors were tricking our expectations as to what will and will not be shown.  According to King, “Gross-out films…seek to evoke a response based on transgression of what is usually allowed in ‘normal’ or ‘polite’ society.  They test how far they can go…,” (67).

A scene in “She Done Him Wrong” that represents what audiences can and can’t see is when Lady Lou first comes into the hotel and shows Sergei Stanieff pictures of her.  The tone of her voice when she asks Sergei, “Do you want to see the pictures?” sends a signal to the audience that these photos are sexual in nature, especially when she describes one as being “for the bedroom” and “a little bit spicy.”  For this, the audience has to picture how Lady Lou is posed in the photos, and the way she describes the photos is this scene’s comedic effect and allows for the viewer to form some sort of image in his mind.  

What was shown in comedies decades ago is highly different from what is shown today.  Comedies have been allowed to evolve from viewers being restricted to picturing certain things in their heads and filmmakers needing ways to sneak around the censors, to viewers being presented with startling and hysterical imagery because of the filmmakers’ new artistic freedom.  How comedy is depicted in film is the product of how the film industry operated in different eras, as well as what is deemed as acceptable in society.  

Works Cited

Doherty, Thomas.  “Comic Timing: Cracking Wise and Wising Up.”  Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934.  Columbia University Press: New York, 1999.  172-193.

King, Geoff.  “Transgressions and Regressions.”  Film Comedy.  Wallflower Press: London and New York, 2002.  63-92.