[Commlist] New Book: Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed by Paul Flaig (Bloomsbury "World Cinema" series)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/weimar-slapstick-and-hollywood-comedy-transformed-9781350439177/ 



  Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed

Paul Flaig (University of St Andrews)

*Description*

 From cabaret songs inspired by Buster Keaton to Mickey Mouse's 
diagnosis as a “melo-maniac,” /Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy 
Transformed/ explores the extraordinary appeal of American slapstick, 
cartoon, and screwball comedies during and after Germany's Weimar 
Republic. Bridging two crucial sites of interwar modernity, Paul Flaig 
offers a fundamental reassessment of Weimar culture, Hollywood comedy, 
and their intertwined legacies.

Through a series of comic pairings-including Bertolt Brecht and Charlie 
Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Curt Bois, Felix the Cat and 
psychotechnics-Flaig investigates the aesthetic, political and sexual 
forces that shaped Weimar Germany's fascination with American film 
comedies, as they were taken up and transformed by German filmmakers, 
philosophers, advertisers, artists, and politicians. Examining a wide 
range of sources-including films, manifestoes, arts journals, 
feuilletons, and trade press reports-he underscores the essential and 
diverse contributions of Weimar culture to our understanding of these 
comic laboratories of modernity.

*Table of Contents*

*
Introduction

Chapter 1- The Tramp Re-functioned: On Brecht and Chaplin

Chapter 2- A German (Jewish and Queer) Harold Lloyd: Curt Bois and the 
White-Collar Worker

Chapter 3- “Dada Buster”: Laughter, Technology and Androgyny from the 
Great Stone Face to the Weimar Avant-Garde

Chapter 4- From Caligari to Mickey: Animation Aesthetics, the Comic 
Uncanny and American Cartoon Humor Abroad

Chapter 5- Felix the Psychotechnical Cat

Chapter 6- Walter Benjamin versus Capracorn

Coda***

*Reviews:*

**

“A masterful study of Weimar culture’s engagement with American 
slapstick, Paul Flaig’s book uncovers forgotten histories—Berthold 
Brecht on Charlie Chaplin, Walter Benjamin on Frank Capra, Germany’s 
lost Laurel and Hardy—restoring the intellectual and historical contexts 
that shaped this transatlantic comic dialogue. A genuinely revelatory 
work.” – Robert J. King, Columbia University, USA

“In this brilliant book, Paul Flaig shows how the familiar characters of 
American slapstick (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Mickey) assumed new meanings 
within the crisis-laden context of the Weimar Republic. Both film 
history and intellectual history, /Weimar Slapstick/ covers an 
astonishing range of contexts, from philosophy to the Bauhaus to 
advertising film.” – Michael Cowan, The University of Iowa, USA

“/Weimar Slapstick/ provides a welcome deep-dive into the influence of 
American slapstick on Weimar and post-Weimar German cultural practice 
and theory. It is an invaluable resource for scholars in transnational 
media studies and will remain essential reading for those interested in 
U.S.-German cultural relations for years to come.” – Ervin Malakaj, 
University of British Columbia, Canada

Bio: *Paul Flaig* is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St. 
Andrews, UK. He is the co-editor of /New Silent Cinema /(2015) and his 
writing has appeared in /Journal of Cinema & Media Studies/, /Camera 
Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies,/ and /Screen/.


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