1. Techniques

• saturation comedy
• gags map the conflict between characters, social order

2. Structure

• anarchic comedy - a safety valve for inhibitions; the desire for no boundaries, no limitations, no restrictions; "the deepest urge in human beings is the revolt against definition and the fixities of life." (Dostoevsky in The Gambler 1866)
• persona - like Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin
• comedy space fills narrative space - written sequences, dialogue
• vaudeville presentation - immediacy of the performance, series of gags, no sustained focus or logic as in the classic Hollywood film representation
• cartoon - a pure, arbitrary, graphic world; Tex Avery's Krazy Kat and the "cartoon of the absurd"

3. Themes

• anti-government - anti-fascist, but FDR popular 1933
• anti-hero more important than hero - problems of the little man
• absurdity, black humor - a simple misuderstanding causes war