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Woody Allen and the Comic Tradition in America
by Karen C. Blansfield EXCERPT: Of the American humorists who have emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, Woody Allen is one of the most sophisticated and versatile, and surely one of the most prolific and well-known. His resilient comedy, which wrestles with age-old philosophical problems, and his beleaguered, self-deprecating personas have made Allen a kind of cult figure, a Chaplinesque hero of the “little man” engulfed by the absurdities, frustrations, and neuroses of modern urban life. His penchant for confronting these fears and obsessions–most notably, God, sex, and death–and transforming them into witty, humorous, but often dark parodies have prompted such comments as Douglas Brode’s that Allen is the “key comic consciousness of our times” and “a walking compendium of a generation’s concerns, comically stated”.
