Response to Jane's Post

Elf has to be one of my favorite christmas movies, and I think I’ve watched it way too many times by now. It is still so funny to me everytime, but it also gets emotional too. I definitely agree that the superiority theory is the most prevalent theory of comedy in Elf. When I first saw the blog post was about Elf, this theory immediately came to mind. We as the audience understand that Buddy’s actions are extremely childish and that they are not the smartest, but we still learn to love him throughout the movie for these traits. I also agree that we do not essentially look down on Buddy for his actions, and this is mostly because we understand why he acts the way he does. His naive actions also make the movie so hilarious. The audience can see how Buddy grew up, so they can understand why he is so childish and not like a normal person. This is because we know he was raised by elves, but is actually a human. This clearly messes Buddy up a bit in the way he acts, but we learn to love him for it. Some other characters like his family members, especially his Dad, do not appreciate his childish actions and look down on him initially because they do not know how he was raised and what Buddy really went through. Overall, Elf is a perfect example of a comedy movie that greatly utilizes the superiority theory.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 7, 2018 at 12:03 PM

    This is a sort of trend I've been noticing, how we admire Buddy for his childish actions and we do not approve the way the characters and people in the movie treat him. Sure, we know more of his story than anyone, but would we really be okay with that if we knew him in real life? Knowing his past or not, it is sometimes still the slightest bit annoying and disgraceful of how he acts.

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