Narrative Techniques and Humor production in Thai Comedy Films

Abstract

           This research aimed to investigate: 1) the narrative techniques and 2) humor production in Thai comedy movies. The research used two frameworks of analysis including narrative techniques in films, humor production, and comedy films. The research employed qualitative methodology, using textual analysis. Ten Thai comedy movies with the highest income from 2012 – 2022 were selected for data analysis.

            The results revealed that the movies had five stages of plot: exposition, rising, climax, falling action, and resolution. The movie contents were simply created based on what really happened in Thai society to allow the audience to understand easily. Most movies embraced conflicts between characters and self-conflict. A variety of themes were found, mostly presenting morality and philosophical questions, human nature, and truths of life, and social criticism. Most of the movies had a lot of characters with different personalities. The settings mostly reflected the characters’ ways of life. In addition, the use of omniscient point of view was mostly found.

            Most of the movies used farce produced by characters with exaggerated acts. The most prominent type was physical mishap, followed by plot mechanism, satire, verbal jokes, sexual inuendos, and the unsystematic presentation of characters, respectively. Nevertheless, most of them were found to reflect some Thai social issues, such as gender, social values, ways of life, religion, political conflicts, society, economy, culture, the life of rural people living in urban areas, and localism.