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Homo Ludens as a Comic Character in Selected American Films pp 55–79Cite as

Mimicry in ¡Three Amigos!, Austin Powers, and HouseSitter

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Part of the book series: Second Language Learning and Teaching ((ILC))

Abstract

Out of all the categories of games, mimicry is possibly the most easily found in comedy genre by the very nature of acting and the frequent use of comedic acting tropes, such as bad acting/overacting, or inflated egos caused by celebrity status.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This can be observed in numerous comedies, e.g. Romancing the Stone [1984] in which a Colombian drug lord happens to be a fan of the novelist Joan Wilder and feels obliged to help her.

  2. 2.

    According to Courrier, ¡Three Amigos! “attempted to satirize the broad heroism of The Three Musketeers” (2005, p. 2015).

  3. 3.

    If the filmmakers wanted to create a counterpart for this character in ¡Three Amigos!, it may have been the heroine, Carmen, who initially admires the performers. Although seemingly naïve, she does show cunning. Although she know that she could not afford to pay for the services of the famous Amigos, she counts on the fact that they would not accept money but decided to make the offer since “it would be an insult not to offer it to them.” She also recognizes Lucky Day’s true nature and seeing him as an unsuitable partner she ultimately rejects him.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English Studies, Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts in Kalisz, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Artur Skweres

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  1. Artur Skweres
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Skweres, A. (2017). Mimicry in ¡Three Amigos!, Austin Powers, and HouseSitter . In: Homo Ludens as a Comic Character in Selected American Films. Second Language Learning and Teaching(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47967-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47967-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47966-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47967-5

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