Blog 5: The United States Soap Queen
Laughter is a universal language. While watching Dirty Rotten Scoundrels , our class communicated in that intrinsic mother tongue at specific moments of irony, embarrassment, or just plain humor. In many of the film’s moments, I found myself chuckling when a character would say something and the punchline of the joke landed slowly, like at the beginning of the film when Freddy Benson (the American hustler) sat across the table from a wealthy lady and cited his grandma as “the one who taught me it is better to be truthful and good… than to not.” As a class, we were thrown into a fit of giggles when jokes were made at another’s expense. For example: When Lawrence Jamieson (a British con artist) descended into an extended allegory about being a bad painter and recognizing his own limitations, but concluded his story by telling Freddy, “You are a moron.” When Janet Colgate opened the door to “Dr. Emil Schaufhaussen!” (Lawrence), as Freddy watched in complete shock. When Lawrence asked Fred...