“The Comic Rhythm of Adaptation, or: ‘Come Up to My Place’”
In Feeling and Form, Susanne Langer refers to the comic rhythm as “the rhythm of ‘felt life,’” by which she means “the sentient aspect of organic unity, growth, and self-preservation.” In short, she argues, the essence of comedy is adaptation, the impulse to survive. This impulse is spent not simply for purposes of self-defense and accommodation, for although the oncoming future is indeed fraught with danger and suffering, it is full of opportunities as well: “with physical or social events occurring by chance and building up coincidences with which individuals cope according to their lights.” In this paper, I argue that we have yet to fully appreciate the vitality of comedy—meaning the general exhilaration of its “livingness,” in the terms of this panel, its “perpetual timeliness” and “ephemeral persistence.” Comedies performed on Broadway, suggests Langer, “do not last the hour of their passing allusions.” The timeliness of comedies past, however, endures—specifically in the form of adaptation (from stage to screen, from page to screen etc.). In this paper, I address this curious paradox of comedy and adaptation by considering the successful Broadway musical, “On the Town” (1944), and its adaptation to the big screen in 1949. My primary focus will be the lyrics to the musical number “Come Back to My Place,” which includes the spoken line “Don’t you realize a big city like this changes all the time?” The comic conceit of this particular number is that a young sailor, Chip, asks a cab driver named Hildy to take him sightseeing, but the sights he wants to see no longer exist (his tour book is badly out of date). Part of my interest here is in the changes the filmmakers make to the lyrics of the original Broadway musical. My larger aim, however, is to imagine what a “timely” performance of “Come Back to My Place” might be—not simply in terms of its fidelity (to the original) but in terms of its vitality: the comic notion of moving on, the feeling that, in a world fraught with danger and disaster, our best hope is to adapt.
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Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Langer, Susanne K. Feeling and Form. New York: Scribner’s and Sons, 1953.
Rich, Frank. “The Greatest Dirty Joke Ever Told.” New York Times. 13 March 2005.