Otago Daily Times

Humour in entertainm­ent mirrors darker side of real life

- JARRYD OSBORNE Year 12, The Catlins Area School

GUARDIANS of the Galaxy, directed by James Gunn, is not just a runofthemi­ll superhero movie.

It’s a good movie that is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise and although it can be watched as a standalone movie, there are also a few ways they have connected it to the rest of the universe storylines.

I used to play the first Iron Man video game.

In some ways, it was literally just a linear shootemup game, but it actually felt real, like I was actually flying through the valleys at insane speeds.

As is the movie, making the impossible possible, like the spaceships, which in reality would be aerodynami­cally incapable of flight.

I guess directors rely on connection­s like this to attract their audiences.

It appears that the society we live in has a really messedup sense of what can be considered funny and what can’t.

It may be because laws oppress our desires and instincts, or it might be due to a general insensitiv­ity, or to ease tension of other emotions.

When the Guardians are on Knowhere (their base), there is a scene where they all bet on whether a small ratlike animal will make it to the other end of a table without being eaten by a beast resembling a dog.

They all end up drunk and laughing, even though they’re watching an animal get eaten alive.

The same sort of thing happens when we watch the likes of MTV’s Ridiculous­ness — we laugh at the misfortune of others.

Why is this the thing we find funniest?

Throughout Guardians of the Galaxy, I noticed some actual similariti­es with reality.

Like how Ronan the Accuser wanted to wipe out the Xandarians.

This was a reminder of how Hitler wanted to wipe out the Jews, along with various other minorities, and how US President Donald Trump seems to want to keep all immigrants out of the United States of America.

It is interestin­g how such themes repeat in literary material and mirror what happens in real life.

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