Wednesday, October 24, 2012

"Stuplime" Examples (2nd Responder, Derek)

I have had difficulty thinking of examples from this semester. More precisely, I'm unsure whether the examples I've gathered here satisfy the definition of stuplimity well enough.

First, I might suggest the singing and dancing we saw in Black Watch, including the sign language scene. As Ellen has pointed out, these little routines went on just long enough (i.e. a couple of verses too many) to create irritation and boredom in the audience.

Second, let's consider whether opera's formal characteristic of the thrice-repeated utterance qualifies as stuplime, especially when compounded by the supertitles shown above stage (effectively giving the audience every utterance six times).

Third, I would like to bring in an outside resource: Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls, which features overlapping dialogue. Ngai might have been talking about that play's first scene when she writes "the tension created by slightly overlapping phrases results in gap and disjunction" (Ngai, 280).

Fourth, I would like to suggest there is an element of the stuplime in some of Monty Python's sketches. In particular, the Travel Agent sketch. An argument might also be made for some others, such as the Spam sketch (and the fish-slapping dance if it were extended much longer). Here is the Travel Agent sketch:



Fifth, we could say the old knock-knock joke about the banana and the orange contains an element of stuplimity as well, mainly due to the repetition which irritates the questionee. I used to love this one when I was a kid. Oh heck, here it is:




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