Black humor =?

Black humor is a modernist literary genre that arose in the United States in the 1960s, and due to its large number of writers and colorful fictional works, it has become a very influential genre in modernism. Nowadays, black humor is not only limited to literature

Black humor has become a very important genre in art and film

Black humor has become a very important genre. Background Black humor was born and developed in the 1960s and flourished in the 1970s. At that time, after the end of the Korean War, the United States, on the one hand, social conflicts, frequent labor conflicts, on the other hand, McCarthyism so that the whole society formed a depressing and suffocating atmosphere; in the early 1960s, the United States was involved in the Vietnam War, the loss of war and the tragic casualties of U.S. troops, but also to make the national anti-war sentiments, the situation is more turbulent, the social situation is more chaotic. The idea of Western democracy was doubted by some people in the face of reality, traditional moral concepts were abandoned, and the truth of life and thought was questioned. Under these circumstances, the American middle and small bourgeoisie, out of their innate fear of the ****proletarian revolution, and against a social background of inaction, thus gave rise to the "black" "humor" which took a mocking swipe at reality, exposing and satirizing, and combining fantasy and denial. Origin and Sources As early as in the 1920s, a French surrealist writer, André Breton, compiled a book called Anthology of Black Humor. In 1965, an American writer, Bruce Jay Friedman, compiled the works of twelve writers with a black humor style that had been published in the American press since the 1960s and published them in a small book called Black Humor. Black Humor. In the same year, American critic Nick Burke published an article entitled "The Humor of the Deadly Sting", which explicitly referred to such writers as the "Black Humor" school, and thus the modernist literary genre named "Black Humor" was born in the United States. What is "black humor"? Knickerbocker once gave an example to explain the nature of this kind of humor in layman's terms. A man who was sentenced to be hanged, before going to the gallows, pointed at the gallows and asked the executioner in a light-hearted manner, "Are you sure this thing is strong? This is why black humor is also known as "gallows humor". The satirical humor in the works of this school is very different from the traditional humor: it does not show a purely comic interest, but carries a strong color of absurdity, despair, darkness and even cruelty. The work expresses the incongruity between the environment and the individual (i.e., the "self") with a hopelessly cynical attitude, and magnifies, distorts and deforms this incongruity, making them appear even more absurd and ridiculous, while at the same time making people feel heavy and bitter. The ideological basis of black humor is the literary existentialism pioneered by Danish Kierkegaard and recreated by French Jean-Paul Sartre, which is similar to the absurdist drama in its understanding of many issues, and can even be said to be the specific manifestation of absurdist literature in fiction. Most of the novelists belonging to the school of black humor emphasize in their works the view that the world is absurd and life is painful, so although they have different reflections in their works, what appears in front of the readers is always the typical of morbid characters, gloomy and painful humor, absurd and messy plots, numbing and cruel modern world, and sharp and deep satire. In terms of descriptive techniques, black humorist writers also break with tradition; the plots of their novels lack logical connections, often mixing the narration of real life with fantasy and reminiscence, and mixing serious philosophies with gags. Black humor as an aesthetic form belongs to the category of comedy, but it is a perverted comedy with tragic overtones. Major Writers and Their Works Nabokov, who can be considered the earliest writer of black humor, became the de facto patriarch of the school of black humor with the publication of his full-length novel Lolita in 1955, followed by novels such as Pnin (1957) and A Shimmering Light (1962). Joseph Heller, famous in the literary world for "The 22nd Army Rule", followed by "Something's Wrong" (1974) and "As Good as Golde" (1979), became the recognized representative writer of the black humor school. Kurt Vonnegut, known for his long novels full of humor and quirky style, culminated the influence of black humor in his novel writing with Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). His Cat's Cradle (1963) and Timequake are also excellent works of black humor. Thomas Pynchon, trained by Nabokov, became a rising star of the black humor school with his novel Gravity's Rainbow (1973), which links human *** and modern science and technology, and raises questions about life and death, the world and humanity. The author symbolizes the world by the parabola formed after the launch of a missile, "Gravity's Rainbow", The author symbolizes the world and death by using the parabolic "rainbow of gravity" formed after the launch of the missile, which shows his pessimism about the future of the world. William Geddes, whose novel Little Tycoon (1975) won the 1976 National Book Award for its exaggeratedly satirical portrayal of a child who makes a fortune in speculation. Thomas Berger, whose novel Little Big Man (1964) makes a satirical portrait of a seemingly powerful but actually small Western society. John Hawkes, who is regarded as 'the most original storyteller of our time'. His masterpiece The Bloody Oranges, which depicts a couple living a primitive *** life on an imaginary island, has become a model of 'anti-fiction'. John Barth, in his masterpiece "Giles the Shepherd Boy" (1966), used an "anti-hero" depiction to map the harm done to human beings by the two major political blocs of the world during the Cold War through the description of Giles, a college student, who was persecuted by two magical forces to the extent that he was unhinged.

It is the rubbing of morbid or grotesque horror into a work of drama or literature that exudes poignant, pessimistic gray humor.