In today’s world, silent films are essentially non-existent. To most the idea of a silent film is not the ideal way to spend an evening and I, like most, am part of that large extensive group. It seems almost as simple as, why watch something silent when I can watch something with sound? More than a legitimate critique of silent film, but to truly understand how and why the movie industry is the way it is today, we must examine the whole history of motion picture. To truly understand movies, you even need to go further back and examine plays that eventually led to the creation of motion picture. In the essence of time we’ll stick to a brief analysis of Buster Keaton’s silent film Sherlock Jr. While I’ll admit that silent films seem rather outdated and not entertaining, I was shocked by the amount of strategies used in the film to make the audience laugh that are still extremely common comedic ploys used in today’s film industry in films such as StepBrothers and Big Daddy. Don’t change something that works, and that is exactly what the American film cinema has done by relying on the same strategies that were relied on over eighty years ago.

This narrative uses many common strategies used today in comedies such as reaching the audience through the misfortunes of others and the portrayal of unrealistic events. In one of my favorite scenes; Buster Keaton follows the man who actually stole the pocket watch after reading in his, “how to be a detective” book to “shadow your man closely.” In this comedic scene, we see a vast array of typically thought of as unrealistic events. Keaton is within a footstep of the man while the man simply doesn’t notice. Also, during the scene Keaton catches a cigarette the man is smoking and he smokes some as well, they avoid a car by making the exact same movements and finally, Keaton walks into a door towards the end of the scene. An example of reaching the audience through another’s misfortune also comes in what I regard as one of the best scenes of the movie. Keaton is finishing sweeping the theater and he is asked about finding some money. He asks the lady to describe it (probably looks like every other bill) and she does, so he gives it back. Next, another lady comes looking for lost money and with a confused look on his face Keaton describes it and the second lady confirms it. Finally, a man comes looking for his lost money and Keaton without question gives the guy a dollar and surprisingly the man gives it back only to pull a wallet with a stack of cash in it out of the pile. Instantly Buster dives into the trash and starts looking for money.  In both scenes, Keaton intends to make the audience laugh and I think he absolutely succeeds.

Moving forward more than eighty years, we still see these same two strategies in most modern day comedic successes. One of the most recent, wildly successful unrealistic comedic films is StepBrothers, the story of two forty year olds who both live with their parents and become stepbrothers through marriage. In one classic scene, Brennan Huff and Dale Doback walk home and are forced to eat white dog poop by kids who appear around middle school age. This is just one small example of the many unrealistic events that take place in this film. The entire film is primarily based on unrealistic events, but nonetheless has most audience members in tears after watching for the first time. A classic movie that capitalizes on the misfortune of one man comes from comedic icon, Adam Sandler in Big Daddy.  In the film Adam Sandler struggles to get Frankenstein (Julian), a kid he is taking care of to stop crying. He finds that hurting himself helps the kid stop crying. This leads to numerous scenes with Sandler purposely hurting himself, one that sticks in my mind is when he jumps in front of a car and tells the guy, “Next time, kill me.” Using this strategy, Big Daddy was able to reach the audience through the misfortune of Adam Sandler and insight laughter.

Through examining a wildly successful silently movie in Sherlock Jr. and comparing this with two successful comedic movies of our time, one thing becomes evident. It is clear that although technology changes and we make advances in costume, microphones, cameras and everything else that the strategies used to induce laughter from the audience remain constant. In class and in our text, Professor Platt, and author Richard Barsam touched on the conformity of Hollywood primarily around the early 1900’s, but based on this simple comparison, conformity is still widespread in the movie industry. As a business major and current accountant, it is relatively safer and bares less risk to conform to strategies that have proven to work rather than innovate, although innovation can be accompanied by greater reward.