Salutations!
This trip has been really flying by! Tomorrow is fourth Monday. Can you believe it? Anyways, enough about the mind blowing passage of time. Throughout our trip, we’ve watched a fair amount of dramas. Ranging from Sunrise to L.A. Confidential, majority of our films have been quite serious. This week we saw Preston Sturgess’ Sullivan’s Travels— a screwball comedy. The film focuses on the popular comedy director, John Sullivan, as he aims to make a serious film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? In order to do this, he decides he needs to know what it is like to struggle. The concept of just removing oneself from a comfortable life and essentially moving into a Hooverville for research is inherently privileged. The film does, however, directly acknowledge this fact. Yes, the film had a few flaws yet it presented an entertaining story while acknowledging social issues. Considering the time (1941), this is quite impressive. The screwball comedies that predated this film tended to focus on the affairs of the upper class. Ultimately, John Sullivan decides that the greatest gift he can give to society is laughter. I whole heartedly agree with this. Life is scary enough.
Today after I successfully convinced my Uber driver I was not 15 years old, he asked me what I did. I told him I was a comedy writer. He looked at me with an incredibly curious look and asked, “How do you know what’s funny?” I honestly could not think of an answer. After a few moments, I responded, “I think its funny when normal situations are skewed somehow.” He agreed but added that the twist should have a purpose. I think he’s completely right and this idea is exemplified in Sullivan’s Travels. Throughout the film, Sullivan repeatedly ends up back in Hollywood no matter how hard he tries to leave. This twist seems to suggest that no matter how hard Sullivan tries to understand the experience of the lower class, he will always be privileged. Additionally once Sullivan finds himself in labor camp, he realizes that he actually wants to write comedy. He realizes that during that time (The Great Depression) people went to the movies to escape. They had no desire to see their experiences on screen because they were living them. Similarly, they didn’t want people with extreme amounts of privilege to write their experience. Comedy seems to have the ability to comment. Dramas seem to try make a point. This film was not necessarily about those disenfranchised by the Depression. Rather, it utilized the social and political climate of the time and commented on it by means of comedy. It’s a comedy film about a director trying to make the next great drama. I feel like that’s quite absurd. I should’ve suggested it to Savi. He was my Uber driver. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20.
-Olivia
