About: Kafka Komedy   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : dbkwik.org associated with source dataset(s)

A story where no matter how well-meaning, reasonable and cautious a character is, everything he does has awful repercussions for him and makes him look like a horrible person. Attempts to set things right just blow up in his face and aggravate the situation further, and generally the story ends when things are at their worst. Often this all happens because the people around him are over-sensitive and stupid with a Hair-Trigger Temper, but just as often it'll be thanks to plain old bad luck. Examples of Kafka Komedy include:

AttributesValues
rdfs:label
  • Kafka Komedy
rdfs:comment
  • A story where no matter how well-meaning, reasonable and cautious a character is, everything he does has awful repercussions for him and makes him look like a horrible person. Attempts to set things right just blow up in his face and aggravate the situation further, and generally the story ends when things are at their worst. Often this all happens because the people around him are over-sensitive and stupid with a Hair-Trigger Temper, but just as often it'll be thanks to plain old bad luck. Examples of Kafka Komedy include:
dcterms:subject
dbkwik:all-the-tro...iPageUsesTemplate
dbkwik:allthetrope...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • A story where no matter how well-meaning, reasonable and cautious a character is, everything he does has awful repercussions for him and makes him look like a horrible person. Attempts to set things right just blow up in his face and aggravate the situation further, and generally the story ends when things are at their worst. Often this all happens because the people around him are over-sensitive and stupid with a Hair-Trigger Temper, but just as often it'll be thanks to plain old bad luck. The afflicted characters are held to be entirely to blame for their own misfortune. Despite this, they are otherwise decent, nice and perfectly pleasant people who would be well-liked and respected... if they didn't have the misfortune to be living in a Kafka Komedy. Here, the universe punishes even the whitest lie or mildest of indiscretions with completely out-of-proportion ruthlessness. It doesn't help that in a lot of these comedies the people around the protagonist seem incapable of feeling any kind of sympathy or empathy for them at all, despite how blindingly obvious it should be that this person isn't (entirely) responsible for the hideous chain of misfortunes crashing down around them, and would never be responsible for the horrible things they've been mistakenly accused of. The trope is named after Franz Kafka, whose characters are well-meaning, reasonable, and cautious, but horrible things happen to them not only despite but usually because of their perfectly-nice actions. Whether or not Kafka's work qualifies as funny, on the other hand, is a matter of taste and serious academic debate. Kafka himself read chapters of his books to his close friends, and the comedy aspect was a big part of the readings. It's also worth noting that David Foster Wallace has written an in-depth essay on the subject of Kafka's humor. The subtrope of Black Comedy least likely to involve death. Contrast with Plague of Good Fortune, where good things keep inexplicably happening to the character's chagrin, and Springtime for Hitler, where a character deliberately does something bad but is met with greatness for it, or Karma Houdini where the villain gets off scot-free. May occasionally overlap with Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond and probably Butt Monkey. See also Can't Get Away with Nuthin'. Examples of Kafka Komedy include:
Alternative Linked Data Views: ODE     Raw Data in: CXML | CSV | RDF ( N-Triples N3/Turtle JSON XML ) | OData ( Atom JSON ) | Microdata ( JSON HTML) | JSON-LD    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software