Deadpan
Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour
Etymology
The term deadpan first emerged early in the 20th century, as a
George M. Cohan, in a 1908 interview, had alluded to dead pans without using the actual term "deadpan". Cohan, after returning from a trip to London, told an interviewer that "the time is ripe for a manager to take over about a dozen American chorus girls and wake up the musical comedy game. The English chorus girls are dead–their pans are cold.”[4]
The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1928 New York Times article as having the first appearance of the term in print.[5] That article, a collection of film slang compiled by writer and theatrical agent Frank J. Wilstach, defines "dead pan" as "playing a role with expressionless face, as, for instance, the work of Buster Keaton."[6] There were several other uses of the term, in theater and in sports, between the 1915 Bresnahan article and the 1928 article in the Times.[3]
The usage of deadpan as a verb ("to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan") is recorded at least as far back as 1942.[5]
Examples
The English music hall comedian T. W. Barrett, working in the 1880s and 1890s, is credited with being the first to perform in a deadpan manner, standing completely still and without a smile.[7]
Early in his vaudeville days, Buster Keaton developed his deadpan expression. Keaton realised that audiences responded better to his stony expression than when he smiled, and he carried this style into his silent film career.[8] The 1928 Vitaphone short film The Beau Brummels, with vaudeville comics Al Shaw and Sam Lee, was performed entirely in deadpan.[9] The 1980 film Airplane! was performed almost entirely in deadpan;[10] it helped relaunch the career of one of its supporting actors, Leslie Nielsen, who transformed into a prolific deadpan comic after the film.[11] Actor and comedian Bill Murray is known for his deadpan delivery.[12]
Many popular American sitcoms use deadpan expressions to deliver dry humour, including
Deadpan delivery runs throughout British humour.[14] In television sitcoms, John Cleese as Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers and Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder in Blackadder are both frustrated figures who display little facial expression in their put-downs.[15] Atkinson also plays authority figures (especially priests) while speaking absurd lines with a deadpan delivery. Monty Python include it in their work, such as "The Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch.[16] For his deadpan delivery Peter Sellers received a BAFTA for Best Actor for I'm All Right Jack (1959). A leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, Peter Cook delivered deadpan monologues in his double act with Dudley Moore.[17] In his various roles Ricky Gervais often draws humour from an exasperated sigh.[18] While in his various guises such as Ali G and Borat, the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen interacts with unsuspecting subjects not realising they have been set up for self-revealing ridicule; on this The Observer states, "his career has been built on winding people up, while keeping a deadpan face."[19]
Dry humour is often confused with
See also
References
- ISBN 0-8143-2959-4.
- ^ Bresnahan, Roger (20 Jan 1915). "Roger Bresnahan's Own Tale". 490 Washington Street. p. 10.
- ^ a b "Deadpan – Caught in the Web of Words". Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ^ Darnton, Charles (1 Feb 1908). "George M. Cohan Froze in London, But in Paris–Ah!–He Managed to Thaw Out". New York World. p. 3.
- ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary. "dead-pan, adj., n., adv., and v." Second edition, 1989; online version December 2011. accessed 17 February 2012. First published in A Supplement to the OED I, 1972
- ^ "Slang of Film Men". The New York Times. 11 Mar 1928. p. 6 (Section 8). Retrieved 13 Nov 2021.
- ISBN 0-236-40053-3.
- ^ "Deadpan: the comedy of Buster Keaton". Telescope. CBC.ca. 17 April 1964. Archived from the original on 2016-01-01. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
- ^ Knipfel, Jim (29 May 2015). "Shaw and Lee: Vaudeville's Loony Futurists". OZY. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ^ Dudek, Duane. "25 years and still laughing; 'Airplane!' maintains its cruising". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Archived from the original on 30 April 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
- ^ Dalton, Andrew; Thomas, Bob. "'Airplane!', 'Forbidden Planet' actor Nielsen dies". The Monitor. Archived from the original on 8 December 2010.
- ^ Bernstein, Jonathan (October 30, 2015). "Will Bill Murray ever make another good movie?". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
- ISBN 978-1-4405-7698-0. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
- ^ Andy Bloxham (10 March 2008). "British humour 'dictated by genetics'", Daily Telegraph. Accessed 31 July 2019
- ^ "Blackadder rides again in festive schedule". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 July 2021.
- ^ "John Cleese and Mick Jagger are wrong – Monty Python's silly walks are still hilarious". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
- ^ "Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, The 25 best comedy duos". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved 22 July 2021.
- ^ "The king of deadpan". The Irish News. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
- ^ "Sacha Baron Cohen: Our man from Kazakhstan". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
External links
- The dictionary definition of deadpan at Wiktionary