Music and Comedy in the Films of Woody Allen

Binns, Alexander

Abstract

Comedy is the preeminent genre in the films of Woody Allen, and the ways in which music, which is also important and distinctive in his films, contributes to the emergence of comedy in Allen’s work are also varied. The city of New York and the identity of Allen himself (both as actor and director) add to this image and Woody Allen’s association with jazz is well known. This chapter, therefore, examines how music frames these conditions in Allen’s work. It argues that music plays a key role in the production of comedy, social commentary, and the critiquing of cultural practice, and that Allen’s approach to comedy is multi-faceted and socially interrogative. Comedy, for Allen, is as much about being socially and critically transgressive as the mere deployment of a gag. Parody and pastiche form the basis of Allen’s comedy toolbox and this also plays out musically with a deep interest in the affordances that different types of music invoke. The critical lens of postmodernism is used to read the ways in which Allen deploys musical types and genres and argues that music provides a critical (and often oblique) commentary on cultural practice in ways that echo Allen’s wider comedy style.

Citation

Binns, A. (2023). Music and Comedy in the Films of Woody Allen. In E. Audissino, & E. Wennekes (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema (729-744). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33422-1_42

• Online Publication Date: Oct 25, 2023
• Publication Date: Oct 25, 2023
• Deposit Date: Dec 15, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 26, 2025
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 729-744
• Book Title: The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema
• ISBN: 9783031334214
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33422-1_42
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3750889
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-33422-1_42
• Contract Date: Sep 15, 2021