The Comedic Elements of Zoolander

One of Ben Stiller's most well-known films, Zoolander, was widely received with positive reviews praising the comedic elements of the film.  However according to Aristotle's definition of comedy, a comedy is a story of the rise in fortune of a sympathetic central character.  While Stiller's character Zoolander is certainly sympathetic, the problem with Zoolander's characterization as a comedy is the main character's rise to fortune.  In order to determine whether or not Zoolander would be considered a comedy in the eyes of Aristotle.  Although Zoolander did not gain any fortune in the monetary sense of the term, he did come across a great deal of success throughout the course of the film.

Although Aristotle's definition of comedy in his Poetics states that comedy must involve the nature of human sexuality as well as the triumph of eros, which Zoolander certainly has, in the end, the basic formula for a comedy is said only to involve a happy ending. Even though Zoolander is filled with its fair share of cartoonish pratfalls and lewd jokes, it is in its purest essence, a satire with all of the elements that Aristotle believed a comedy should possess.