What if God existed and lived Belgium? Laughter, humor and relief of bible narratives

Abstract

God, an alcoholic and a pervert, created the world not out of love but out of boredom. This is one of the premises of the flm The New Testament (2014), it was directed and produced by the Belgian Jaco van Dormael. The flm narrative opens a series of reflections on the relationship between gods and humans, gods and gods and humans and humans. He lives in Belgium with his wife, passive and almost voiceless, and Ea, his pre-adolescent daughter, with a cliché-Gothic style of rebellion, bored with her parents’ lives and their close relationship with television. The goal is to see how the re-readings of the biblical narratives of Christianity that have been performed suggest laughter and humor today. For this, it is based methodologically on the discussions made by Marco Napolitano about cinema as a historical source and dialogues with Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud to think laughter and humor in the flm narrative.

Keywords

• Deuses e deusas
• riso
• humor
• narrativa fílmica