ABSTRACT
The academic history of the 1990s re-emergence of dark comedy is a boys' club, from which women are glaringly absent. Women's voices in the comedy genre are strongest in the role of writer, yet the authorship of female screenwriters remains underrepresented in scholarship. Mark Eaton observes three primary thematic conventions of the dark comedy: 'man as beast, the absurdity of the world, and the omnipresence of death'. The comedic sensibility in dramatic scene comes from inverting this writing cliche, revealing the gendered nature of this genre convention as Kenny experiences the emotional difficulties of being a stay-at-home parent for the first time. The fact that both the characters and most likely the audience have forgotten about the babysitter's death at this point instantiates the film's themes of indifference to human life and the fickleness of memory, even when it comes to tragedy.
