Sachin Radhakrishnan

1 November 2010

Moving Beyond the Conventions of Comedy

Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is filled

with diverse situations that arouse laughter and continuously raise the bar

of the unexpected and weird as the story progressively increases in humor

and eccentricity in both radio serials and the protagonist’s narratives.

Although Mario Vargas Llosa starts off his book relatively simple, with a

conservative use of parody and conforming to conventions in the storyline,

he is able to increase its complexity and stretch the bounds of this comedic

mode to make it more humorous because of his masterful use of figurative

language, extreme exaggerations, and contradictions, which are able to

shatter any shred of seriousness built into the novel, taking the story into

crazily comical realms that endlessly incite humor from the reader as a

result.

An example of Llosa’s earlier parodies in the novel is a simple police

drama that pokes fun at any old crime show by taking commonly attributed

elements and exaggerating them to amplify his parody. This sets the base of

humor from which the author seeks to supersede in hilarity with the

following chapters through his manipulations of the text. The second serial

installment begins by the scriptwriter, Pedro Camacho, setting the scene for

the drama: The distant bells of the church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen de

la Legua struck midnight…behind him the old wooden headquarters

building of the Fourth Commissariat, a blaze of light amid the darkness…[In

Puerto Nuevo] only an infinitesimal proportion of the inhabitants earned

their living as dockers or fishermen. The majority were bums, thieves,

drunks, pickpockets, pimps, and queers (not to mention the countless

whores), who went at each other with knives on the slightest provocation

and sometimes shot each other. This district, without water or sewers,

without electricity or paved streets, had more than once run red with the

blood of officers of the law. But things were exceptionally quiet that night…

The cold has sent the night birds to bed early. For it was mid-August, the

dead of winter, and a heavy fog that blurred and distorted everything, along

with a steady drizzle that saturated the air, had turned this night into a

dreary and inhospitable one (60 – 61).

From this description-rich paragraph, the reader is quickly able to

garner a sense of foreboding danger because of how historically immoral

the city has been in the past and how the night had an eerie ambiance,

gives an immediate sense of evil resonating from every aspect of the

setting. Although the humor is neither blatantly apparent nor considerably

great, the exaggerated textbook introduction of the setting sets up the

parody of crime shows quite well because of how most crime shows contain

the same exact elements of this setting, lessening the seriousness of the

following seemingly life- threatening events. Also, because the scriptwriter

was able to knock off all these elements in one paragraph as if it were a

checklist, especially with the cliché tidbit of things being too quiet for the

night, the introduction gives the reader a chuckle as he/she gets the feeling

of easily being able to predict the next scenes due to such a familiar setting.

This classic background marks Llosa’s conservative use of parody as he

steps away from this and begins to introduce to the installment highly

unusual elements that take away the false sense of security from the

familiarity of the setting.

After setting up the classic crime show model, Llosa then sets aside

all other previously used elements of a typical police drama and adds in his

own divergent aspects that get the reader laughing as the heavy

contradiction between the conventional and unconventional provides the

grave serial with comic relief. During the narrator’s description of the

setting, he slips in some unconventional aspects to jumpstart the comedy as

he describes Sergeant Lituma thinking: “Lieutenant Jamie Concha would be

reading Donald Duck, officers Snotnose Camacho and Apple Dumpling

Arevalo would be sugaring their freshly made coffee” (60). Contrary to the

long, serious, and foreboding precedent set by the scene set by the

narrator, these highly unusual character names take away the importance

of the darkly depicted town in a quick sentence that jumps out at the

reader, which invariably arouses laughter as the conventions of the crime

drama were shattered by such nonsensical names. In a city where the

majority of the inhabitants are criminals who have a bloodthirsty feeling

towards law officers, it’s hilarious to think that vigilant policemen

constantly at war with these criminals read Donald Duck and have silly,

childish nicknames. Although this short sentence gives the reader a quick

laugh, a more exaggerated situation presents itself shortly after that

completely twists around the seriousness of the conventional police drama

and amplifies the hilarity of the serial.

As soon as Sergeant Lituma hears the sudden sound that “almost”

gives him a fright, he immediately investigates the hole in the wall near the

alleged noise, but before he goes in the reader sees him resort to highly

unconventional tactics: He took a deep breath and roared, in as loud a voice

as he could muster: “Have your men surround this warehouse, corporal. If

anybody tries to escape, fire at will. Get a move on, all of you!” And to make

the whole thing more believable, he began running back and forth,

stamping his feet loudly. Then he glued his face to the wall of the

warehouse and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Hey, you in there! The jig is

up: you’ve had it. You’re surrounded (65). This scenario is overbearingly

funny, as readers are given an exaggerated image of an old security guard

frantically running up and down outside a warehouse, pretending to have an

army of policemen at his side to scare the suspected thief. Because of the

background given about the supposed highly respected Lituma, it’s comical

that such tactics as stamping his feet and yelling loudly would gain him

success, when normally cunning stealth and outstanding wits exalt officers

into the realm of the legendary. The lack of seriousness in his pursuit

strategy does not fail in procuring a laugh from readers and completely

undermines the conventions of a classic crime flick. This part of the serial

definitely gets the point across to the reader that the story, although

containing many elements of a police drama, is the complete opposite of a

proper crime investigation, and surely pushes the bounds of parody as the

exaggerations and contradictions alleviate the hilarity ensued from the

unconventional scenarios.

It is not only the serials that employ the usage of parody in the

storyline, as Llosa has carefully woven the same comedic mode in Mario’s

narrative as well, similarly pushing the same bounds of conventionalism to

amplify the hilarity of the parody. Towards the end of the novel as Mario

and Aunt Julia have decided to come out of secrecy and finally marry each

other, they hear news of Mario’s father overreacting upon hearing of their

plans: My father had been waiting for him at the door. Livid with rage, had

approached Javier, brandishing a revolver and threatening to shoot him if

he didn’t reveal instantly where Aunt Julia and I were…My father had finally

calmed down a little and left Javier a letter that he was to deliver to me

personally (335).

The author, parodying a parental reaction to a rushed marriage,

successfully uses exaggeration, figurative language, and contradictory

words to illustrate Mario’s dad’s unconventional response to his son’s rash

decision. Usually parents would not go to the lengths of killing their child’s

friends or spouse, but clearly Mario’s dad has disproportionate motives

compared to the circumstances of going to such lengths that make the

whole situation hilarious and rich. The first two sentences are able to paint

a picture of Mario’s dad’s anger as the quick succession of powerful

adjectives and verbs illustrates a mental picture of a madman off his rocker,

ready to solve his problems with a pull of a trigger, but is able to find the off

button in time to relieve himself of his fury and calm down to approach the

matter logically. Shortly after this passage, the actual content of the letter

is revealed as Aunt Julia exclaims: “I presume that the person he really

wants to put a bullet through is [me]. Listen Varguitas, I do hope my father-

in-law won’t shoot me right in the middle of my honeymoon” (336). It’s

hilarious to think that Mario’s father calming down to write a letter would

end up producing an approach to the problem with even more drastic

measures than previously stated. One would conclude that someone who

had calmed down would be able to write a letter of increased rationality and

decreased violence, but instead, Mario’s father manages to do the exact

opposite, which is comical because the mental picture raised in the first

passage is much less extreme than the mental picture raised in the second

passage. This is tough to think about considering how radical the former is.

Throughout the narrative, Mario’s relationship had been laidback and

careless, nobody in the family feeling much anger towards the couple even

after discovering their secret, but the immediate revelation of the

relationship to Mario’s parents completely turned the attitude towards the

two upside-down, and completely takes the story on a tangent that is too

excessive to take seriously. Llosa successfully manages to stretch the

comedic mode of parody to arouse humor from seemingly regular situations,

making over-the-top scenarios capturing the laughs of his readers.

In conclusion, Mario Vargas Llosa includes more exaggerations,

contradictions, and figurative language as his text works through the pages,

making initially conservative parodies blossom into hilariously explosive

works of comedy, pushing the boundaries of a conventional parody by

unconventionally dealing with the created situations. This gradual, yet

speedy transition from serious to funny is smooth, but never hesitates to

throw the reader into bouts of laughter from the suddenness of the radical

outcomes. Much of the story parallels the author’s real life, something that

gets people wondering if the book was just his way of laughing off many of

the problems in his life. Whether that is the case or not, Aunt Julia and the

Scriptwriter, is not a text that should be taken seriously but more with the

mindset that situations will get progressively crazier and intense, and will

surely ache your stomach from all the uncontrollable bellows of laughter.