COMEDY

THE BODY 89the mind that inhabits it, suggesting a dysfunction of the mind/bodydualism that emphasizes the dividedness of human experience. Slapstickhistorian Alan Dale reads the beleaguered hero as a reconfiguration ofthe relationship between the mind and the body that has been a featureof conceptions of humanity since classical antiquity. ‘One of the centralelements of…theology,’ he writes,the debasing effect of the body on the soul—enables Christians toovercome this discord only by denying and finally getting rid ofthe body, whereas slapstick achieves accord here on earth by acomic concession to the body at its most traitorous. Both of thesestand in contrast to the pagan approach of the Olympic Games, inwhich athletes attempt to achieve a perfect union of body and will.These three ritualistic approaches form a gamut: Christianityseeks eternal triumph over physicality after life; Olympians seekby means of the body a temporal triumph that will be rememberedlong after the athlete’s prowess has faded; slapstick seeks atemporal acceptance of physicality by a cathartic exaggeration ofits very limitations.(Dale, 2000:14)As well as being a vicarious outlet for cruelty, then, the humour inslapstick may also help to reconcile us to a body that obstructs the willand insubordinately thwarts desire.As slapstick is where the body meets the world of things, it is suitablyfascinated with objects. By examining the identity and utility of thingsand playing with the space they occupy, their dimensions, properties,and cultural significance, the body’s relationship to the external world ismade strange. Typical gags might involve disproportionate sizes, theanimation of the inanimate, the slowing down or speeding up of events,the personification of objects, and the reversal or rejection of linearcause and effect that allows things to be re-contextualized or entirelyreused. This belongs to a rich tradition of clowning. The most popularroutines of the famous Regency comedian Joseph Grimaldi(1778–1837) were the ones where he turned cheeses into a coach, andproduced a hussar’s uniform out of a coal scuttle, a cloak, and a muff.The Swiss-born clown Charles Wettach, better known as Grock(1880–1959), speaks tellingly of his relationship to objects in hisautobiography: ‘Ever since I can remember,’ he wrote, ‘all kinds ofinanimate objects have had a way of looking at me reproachfully andwhispering to me in unguarded moments: “We have been waiting for