So funny it hurts ... A £45,000 grand piano moments after it crashed to the ground.
There are moments that really remind you that different people see the world in vastly different ways. Take the £45,000 grand piano that fell off a truck and smashed to bits this week.
This disaster made Susan Tomes ask the question, "Why is it so upsetting to see a piano smashed to pieces?" My own reaction was to smile intermittently all day long.
Why are piano mishaps so hilarious? Partly it's run-of-the-mill schadenfreude at seeing expensive objects smashed to bits. But mainly, I suspect, it's because we have been trained by the movies to find shattered pianofortes, in particular, funny. Bungled transportation of the unwieldy musical instruments has long been a popular comic trope - second only, perhaps, to the bungled transportation of Ming vases.
So far as I can tell, it was Charlie Chaplin who first saw comedy gold in the otherwise unglamorous profession of piano mover. In his 1914 short His Musical Career, Chaplin is hired to deliver a piano to a rich man and repossess the piano of a poor man. Of course, he messes up royally, culminating with him on top of a piano sliding down a hill and into a lake. The end sees Chaplin playing a mournful tune as his piano-ship sinks.
This isn't one of Chaplin's most famous films, but it did have one great fan: Stan Laurel, who was once Chaplin's understudy in a traveling troupe. His Musical Career was the direct inspiration for Laurel and Hardy's Oscar-winning short film The Music Box, in which the duo struggled to get a player piano up a flight of stairs. The end of the flick is on YouTube and - avert your eyes Tomes! - it does not end well for the instrument.
The Music Box was so popular - even today you can go on a Hollywood tour that takes you to the treacherous steps - that the double act transported another piano in Swiss Miss, this time over a rope bridge. A monkey comes along and, again, it ends badly for the keyboard. Watch the scene on YouTube and see what inspired Wile E Coyote's numerous canyon falls.
Cartoons took the falling piano thing a bit further. It's impossible to count the number of animated anti-heroes who have been unsuspectingly smashed by a Steinway. Presumably these are funnier than a 16-ton Acme anvil because of the cacophony of noise that inevitably results when Wile E, Tom or Elmer Fudd is turned into a walking accordion.
This is a joke that launched a thousand homages: In season four of South Park, Kenny was killed by a falling piano. And in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? hard-boiled detective Eddie Valiant hates toons because a cartoon piano crushed his brother. (There's also a classic scene in this movie where Daffy Duck and Donald Duck have a piano duel that ends with cannon fire.) Even in last summer's Superman Returns, someone finds themselves crushed by a piano.
In live action film, the piano mover joke continues unabated. One of the best episodes of the sitcom Sanford and Son featured our heroes bungling the task. Most recently, Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep has a slapstick scene involving Gael Garcia Bernal dropping a piano down a spiral staircase. And now, of course, people are getting into the act on YouTube.
Given that pianos are not nearly as ubiquitous as they were in Chaplin's time - when sheet music was how popular music was heard - it's amazing the gag still thrives today. Sorry Tomes, but there still really is nothing more side-splittingly satisfying than a busted piano. Smashing an iPod will never be as fun - or as funny.
