Ben-Ner Makes Jokes

By blatently filming his version of Moby Dick in the cheapest way possible, Ben-Ner manages to make a hilarious reproduction of the original, epic story. Since "Moby Dick" is filmed in his kitchen, Ben-Ner makes sure that his audience is not emotionally invested in the actual story and its drama. Instead, they focus on the amusing ways in which Ben-Ner works with what little he has to present the story. As Henri Bergsun says in his essay, distance from feeling/emotion is one of the necessary conditions for comedy to occur. Therefore, the stop-motion sharks are funny rather than threatening because of the "danger" they pose for the characters. Nobody shrieked in horror when the captain was cut in half at the end of the film, but people laughed as his legs ran around in circles. "Moby Dick" also satisfies another or Bergsun's prerequisites for comedy by appealing to the intelligence of the audience. It's funny that the film opens with his daughter pretending to tend the bar while she is actually only sitting in the kitchen sink. It's also funny to see how Ben-Ner cleverly produces the motion effects involved with a ship. Tilting the camera side to side and sliding a bowl between him and his daughter produces the effect of a ship on high seas, while sliding a person and a palm tree across the kitchen launches the ship on its journey. Buster Keaton uses some of these same tactics for a similarly hilarious effect in "The Boat". A final way in which "Moby Dick" creates humor is by making it obvious that Ben-Ner and his daughter are taking the production about as seriously as the audience is. It's easy to imagine them laughing between takes at the absurdity of what they're doing. Knowing that the whole production is supposed to be taken lightly makes it easy for the audience to laugh along with them as opposed to feeling pity for a serious film that is actually that bad. This concurs with Bergsun's claim that laughter is a group-based phenomenon and that comedy is best enjoyed when it can be shared with others.