This early short, "Laughing Gas," is noteworthy for featuring an African-American woman in the lead role in a picture that is a generally stereotype-free representation of race. Unfortunately, I haven't seen many early films that I can say that about ("Something Good - Negro Kiss" (1898) would be another, though). The gag here involves her continuous fit of laughter after receiving nitrous oxide at a dentist's office, and her spreading that laughter to others through a series of slapstick skits, on what looks to be a bus or subway car, a few sidewalks, a courtroom, the home of the family where she seems to work as a servant, and in church. This was a common trick back in the early days of screen slapstick where the logic seemed to be that if the characters were laughing that audiences might, too. It seems stale today, if ever it did work.
The problem with the representation here, however, isn't racial, but rather the tendency towards long-shot framing, which strains the spectator's affections from identifying with the characters. Only two bookend medium close-ups, which comes from the tradition of facial comedies in early cinema stretching back to the 19th Century, of Bertha Regustus come as a relief in this regard. The other eight shots in this 10-shot short are scenes in themselves in front of a distanced, stationary camera. The continuity across scenes is decent if standard for the era. The only thing missing to make it like any other comedy from this stage in film history is a chase at the end. In a sense, though, that's an endorsement of "Laughing Gas;" it represents people of different races in the same way.
The problem with the representation here, however, isn't racial, but rather the tendency towards long-shot framing, which strains the spectator's affections from identifying with the characters. Only two bookend medium close-ups, which comes from the tradition of facial comedies in early cinema stretching back to the 19th Century, of Bertha Regustus come as a relief in this regard. The other eight shots in this 10-shot short are scenes in themselves in front of a distanced, stationary camera. The continuity across scenes is decent if standard for the era. The only thing missing to make it like any other comedy from this stage in film history is a chase at the end. In a sense, though, that's an endorsement of "Laughing Gas;" it represents people of different races in the same way.