Following this infographic, compiled of the specific tags found on IMDB for each year, undoubtedly the most popular and consistent genre of film over the last 108 years is comedy. Fortunately for the genre, comedy is subjective and in my opinion infinite meaning the genre will live on consistently as evidenced.
As I mentioned above, comedy is subjective and as such a lot of successful box office hits follow a similar pattern of recasting actors such as Melissa McCarthy, Adam Sandler and Steve Carell, a familiar face will ease audiences and draw them to your film.
I think trying to give comedy a particular iconography is a difficult task but there are a few that stand out across the genre. The first being slapstick; a really basic form of comedy and potentially the most popular, slapstick is the use of over exaggerated physical movements which often result in accidental injury to the victim. Examples of slapstick comedy films are Mr. Bean (1997) starring Rowan Atkinson, The Three Amigos (1986) Starring Martin Short and Hot Shots: Part Duex (1993) Starring Charlie Sheen and Ryan Stiles as evidenced in this clip where Ryan Stiles takes out some enemy soldiers with a ridiculous but effective (apparently) boxing glove bazooka.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y8EGMBcfh8
Coupled with slapstick is the use of props that you might associate with comedy, given varying themes that are popular within the genre (Violence, Sex, Drugs, Crime) some props you might associate with comedies could be guns, drug paraphernalia including pipes and bongs, large sums of cash can often lead to problematic situations and hidden articles of provocative clothing can lead to character being caught doing something they shouldn’t be.
Character tropes are generally the same throughout the broad net that is comedy, usually following an ordinary everyday working Joe ending up in adverse situations with adverse consequences like Shaun of the dead (2004) Starring Simon Pegg which follows the story of electronics salesman Shaun (Simon Pegg) at his rock bottom. The country is overrun by zombies and he must overcome this to save his family, his best friend and the girl he loves. There are plenty more examples of this across all sub-genres of comedy.
One very specific trope of the comedy genre is that it has always been seditious to real life, taking real life issues and parodying them for example; (War, Jojo Rabbit, 2019) (Terrorism, Four lions, 2010) and (Racism, Do the right thing, 1989) to make audiences feel at ease about that particular issue and at the very least better about themselves.
However this general rule is broken by the Hollywood execs who churn out movies whose only purpose on the screen is to either make money (some failing horribly) or just to give the producer and director something to do, some recent examples include works by Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans (Fifty Shades of Black, 2016 & A haunted house, 2013) and the Will Ferrell flop (Holmes and Watson, 2018)
Bibliography
Bo McCready (2019), Film Genre Popularity – 1910-2018, Accessed on 26th march 2020, https://public.tableau.com/views/FilmGenrePopularity-1910-2018/GenreRelativePopularity?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes&:showVizHome=no
Hot Shots: Part Duex, 1993, Online Video, Abrahams and Zucker, San Joaquin County, Distributed by, 20th Century Fox, Written by Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft, Directed by Jim Abrahams, Starring Charlie Sheen, Lloyd Bridges and Valeria Golino, Viewed on 26th March 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y8EGMBcfh8
