Specters of slapstick & silent film comediennes In Specters of Slapstick Hennefeld focuses on silent film comediennes and the function of the female body in early slapstick. Laughter is a kind of grating against the absurdity of society argues Hennefeld. But while male bodies in slapstick tried to violently fight or escape their surroundings slipping on a banana peel and falling for example female bodies exhibited a fluidity that reflected an attempt to morph into their changing surroundings. In one slapstick film a maid humorously cuts off her limbs in order to finish all her household chores in time. In others women transform into fairies or spiders; all underscore an attempt to assimilate their bodies to the demands of changing environments. This eradicates the traditional opposition between performer and audience making the laughing spectator a more active part of the film experience. As Hennefeld analyzes early slapstick film historiography in light of this theory she examines larger themes like the evolution of gender the body and their place in cinematic comedy Early cinema and the comedy of the female catastrophe Female combustion and feminist film historiography Slapstick comediennes in transitional cinema: between body and medium The geopolitics of the transition film comedy: American Vitagraph versus French Pathé frères D.W. Griffiths slapstick comediennes: female corporeality and narrative film storytelling Film comedy aesthetics and suffrategette social politics Radical militancy and slapstick and slapstick political violence