Bad Santa naturally can't compare as physical comedy to even the lesser Chaplin pictures. The most elaborate attempt, in which Willie enlists Marcus to teach the Kid how to box, almost makes you lose respect for the moviemakers because they seem unaware of the nature and difficulty of what they're attempting. (If you can't do it yourself, hire someone who can--ironists are the last people who should expect indulgence for good intentions.) And like Chaplin and most other slapstick artists (Harold Lloyd, the Marx Brothers, and Preston Sturges being the main exceptions), the moviemakers don't know what to do with the female characters. Only in a dream world, i.e., the world of romance not irony, would Willie be pursued by a gingery young woman like Lauren Graham. (He'd be more likely to end up with someone like Woody Harrelson's landlady played by Lin Shaye in the Farrelly Brothers' classic down-and-outer Kingpin (1996).)
There is a redemption here, bringing the movie into the neighborhood of that other holiday perennial A Christmas Carol, which is, as a formal matter, Dickens's usual blend of romance and realism. But Dickens expects us to identify with the Cratchits, not Scrooge, whereas in Bad Santa we respond to the unregenerate Willie, as if somehow he were out there losing the battle with life on our behalf. Willie needs redemption but his outlook expresses a dropout's rejection of stale commercial culture that these independent moviemakers, including Zwigoff, with his head in underground comics, expect us to share.
At the same time, there are three key moments in Bad Santa that weren't encompassed by the lowest-estimate jadedness of the rest of the movie: when the Kid says he thought Willie would get him a present not because he believes he's Santa but because they're friends; a shocking jump cut to Willie angrily pounding the blond skateboarder who picks on the Kid--the blond is himself a child, after all; and Willie dropping a tear at the climax because Marcus and his wife really want all the department store crap they're lifting. These moments are directly emotional and in that sense violate the irony. But because I felt the movie wasn't simply trying to massage a few more jingle bucks out of my wallet (how else can you describe Elf, finally?), I was willing to let it break through to heartache or terror or a pained sense of futility.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Really outstanding and thoughtful analysis, Alan. It's definitely got me thinking backwards through the Chaplin movies.
I tend to think of irony as a subset of humor, but your explanation of it doesn't seem to imply that at all. Most intriguing.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. Irony has a lot of overlap with comedy, esp., I think because it works by incongruity, which is one of the main tools of comedy. Double Indemnity is a classic American example of the wrong man for the wrong job with the wrong outcome model of irony, is an ironic version of a tragic situation, and feels like a nightmare while it's happening, but when I think about it afterwards I always feel that I'm laughing with Billy Wilder at MacMurray's foolishness. Irony is also on a continuum with satire: irony is the more reticent, mysterious end, satire the more explicit end. Irony can also be grouped with comedy over the issue of the protagonist's status with respect to the audience: in irony and comedy we tend to look down at him whereas in tragedy and romance we look up at him. It's all pretty fluid, though--all the genres are constantly spilling over into each other. Makes it more interesting to think about.
3 - Eric Olsen
Thanks as always Alan, the book looks very impressive, feel free to link it from Amazon.
4 - Frantic Freddie
NO THANKS!