Traditional Farcical Elements Found in Kevin Smith's "Clerks"

Looking at the definitions by Maurice Charney and Barbara Freedman of "farce," the first work that came to mind was not Feydeau or even Peter Bogdanovich (director of What's Up, Doc?), but Kevin Smith's Clerks. The story of one (very bad) day in the life of Dante Hicks is a fairly dark comedy, and doesn't seem "silly" enough on the face of it to be a farce, but a critical look at the film and …

…in high school--that everyone else knew. Dante is suddenly issued a ticket for selling cigarettes to a minor (one of Randal's antisocial actions from earlier in the film) and finally, after all the other characters leave and Dante expects a moment of peace, Caitlin shows up to bring the whole film crashing down. The coalescence of all this chaos in one place is a farcical convention, but also one of the defining moments of Clerks.