ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, “The Green World and the Screwball Comedy: A Pastoral World of Play,” explores the evolution of the mythology of the Green World in screwball comedies, including Libeled Lady (1936), Bringing Up Baby (1938), My Favorite Wife (1940), and The Lady Eve (1941). As Kathrina Glitre asserts, “Although the screwball green world is idyllic, it is ‘natural’ only in the modern sense of rural and unpretentious; there are no fairies or fools here. … The contrast between artifice and nature remains, … but is recast as a contrast between humanizing, urban existence, and liberating, pastoral play” (74). This chapter explores the environmental implications of this change in relation to the context and genre conventions of the screwball comedy.
