ColdLightOfDay
Serge’s alt.
★★★★★
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2018
- Posts
- 5,704
Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant were very clever when writing this, they understood the blackpill.
It would have been easy for them to make David Brent horrible at singing and playing the guitar and it would’ve been predictable, slapstick comedy. But the fact he is actually better than expected adds subtlety which is often customary in UK comedy in a way that is different to the upbeat in-your-face comedy customary to the US.
The point is that the fact David is actually quite a decent performer doesn’t detract from how pathetic he looks because his looks are already rendering him as uncool as he could possibly be regardless of how good he is, and that is enough to evoke the schadenfreude in the audience in order for it to be comedic without being over the top.
The fact the lyrics (which in the show David Brent has written himself) are reminiscent a Bruce Springsteen Americana song also add to this effect, who is doing the singing matters more than what the melody / lyrics of the song actually are, and that is why it’s funny to watch David Brent perform this where it wouldn’t be to watch someone good looking and supposedly ‘cool’ like Springsteen.
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