The comedy of a well placed marching band

English: UCLA marching band (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wrote The Love of Three Oranges as part of my honors thesis on comedy my senior year of college. As you could imagine, I spent a lot of time doing research on comedy that year and my friends had all heard me go on about it at one point or another. I tried to resist being like, “That was funny because…” every time we all cracked up about something though I’m confident that I did it once or twice.

One evening, my roommates and I were doing school work with the TV on watching Naked Gun which we’d all seen about a billion times. We get to this classic bit at the end…

…and as soon as that part ended, my phone rang. It was my friend Steve who was apparently also watching it over in his apartment. As soon as I answered, he fired off:

What does your thesis say about the comedy of a well placed marching band? Boom! I bet you didn’t even cover it!

I had a ready answer about how unexpected marching bands fit under some other type of humor I had covered which he didn’t accept but, since that day, I’ve noticed that the Unexpected Marching Band is actually a pretty common running gag. There’s something about a huge crowd of colorful uniforms and silly hats coming out of nowhere marching in time through an incongruous scene that just strikes the right note (obligatory music pun). Now, whenever we see it, we just nod sagely and say, “Ah, the comedy of a well placed marching band.”

I was thinking of this because of this:

Which is a parody of this viral video:

Not exactly a well placed marching band but certainly a comedy minded one.

So the question remains, is the Unexpected Marching Band still funny or is it one of those things that’s become cliche and overdone? Is the marching band gag purely a visual thing or do you think it works off-stage or written out in a story?