by Tim Ferguson
—Extras (Episode 3 by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant)
Andy gets himself tied up in so many knots that even his desperate change of topic only makes things more excruciating.
EXERCISE
Devise re-interpretations for Bob’s ill-timed comments:
BOB: I am going to kill her with my bare hands. I mean it—I am going to throttle her in her sleep.
BOB sees BARBARA is standing behind him.
BOB: (to DICK) Barbara is a harpy from hell.
BARBARA overhears.
Ideally, the cover-up itself forces the character into elaborately perpetuating their own fiction. For example, having convinced Barbara he is a resuscitation specialist, Bob might be forced to teach his wife the basics so that she can seduce him—the last thing he wants.
LIMITED WORLD VIEW
Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) said, ‘The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this is normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspectives can be’.
We are all sometimes so caught up in our own little worlds that we can’t see the full picture. Whether our lens is warped by our own desires, insecurities, selfishness, prejudices or personal limitations (such as innocence or a thin skin), we see the world how we wish to see it. A starving man will see a chocolate bar as a Godsend while a man on a diet will see it as the devil’s taunt. A man blinded by love is capable of throwing his closest friends and worldly possessions overboard to win the object of his desires. A dim-witted man will misinterpret even the simplest commands. And, for a suspicious man, nothing is as it seems, no matter how implacably it may be proven.
A mafia don, a corrupt cop, a prostitute and a greenie will each have different views of what constitutes a moral breach. None of them can be completely right, but try telling them that (particularly the greenie). Each person’s view will be limited by their experience; none will have a monopoly on the truth or a full and measured view of the world and their place in it. Consequently, any given stimulus may (and should) elicit a different response from each character.
Because no-one has a completely objective perception of themselves or the world, we can all see each others’ shortcomings. Comedy’s task is to clearly and accessibly present the diverse views of its subjects, and explore the trouble they can cause. The overall lesson we draw from watching limited world views in action is that our opinion can be our worst enemy. The more limited the outlook, the clearer, funnier and more pointed this lesson can be.
In The Jerk (by Michael Elias, Carl Gottlieb and Steve Martin), Navin Johnson is so innocent of the ways of the world that when he finds his own name in the phonebook he’s elated to see his name ‘in print’ at last! A service station owner offers him an unpaid job with accommodation in a broom closet with the off-the-cuff provision that Navin will send him a postcard every once in a while. Navin mulls over the offer as if it was a high-level business deal.
When Kramer in Seinfeld meets a beautiful librarian, Marion, he falls madly in love. Upon reading her poetry, Kramer’s convinced Marion is a literary genius. He convinces his friend Elaine to present Marion’s poetry to a publisher, but the publisher rejects the poems as total garbage. Kramer’s love limits his ability to assess her poetry objectively (‘The Library’ by Larry Charles).
Often a character will see the quality limiting their world view as a strength where the audience perceives a weakness, and vice versa. Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show is so convinced of his own wisdom that he refuses to accept the advice of others. This egotism leads Ted to make stupid mistakes he could have easily avoided had he simply accepted that nobody knows everything, especially newsreaders.
Limited-world-view gags immediately fulfil one of the imperatives of a narrative joke because they say something about character. A world view limited by innocence can drive a character to misinterpret phrases and euphemisms or take things literally:
BETTY: You’ll never guess what happened down at the shops!
DAD: (sarcastically) Elvis dropped by for a cheeseburger and fries at the fish shop.
BETTY: Did he? I didn’t know that.
—Hey, Dad..! (‘Fair Cop’ by Gary Reilly and John Flanagan)
Knowing Betty is what makes the ‘Did he?’ line funny—we must be aware of her innocence and gullibility for the line to work. Betty’s lack of guile is so great it regularly surprises the audience.
Sometimes character limitations are so severe they depart from reality.
MALCOLM: I gave him some food dye and told him they were chemicals.
REESE: (entering, elated) Guys! I just made a discovery! When you mix blue and yellow, you get an entirely new colour.
He holds up a test tube filled with green liquid.
REESE: I’m gunna name it … ‘blellow’!
—Malcolm in the Middle (‘Experiment’ by Alex Reid)
It’s not credible that an apparently fairly functional teenager could be as dumb as Reese. So why does the audience accepts this lack of credibility? Because of their expectations from comedy.
One of the reasons we watch drama is to learn lessons we can apply to real life. To guarantee the lessons are valid, the characters have to come across as plausible. By definition, the actions of unrealistic characters have nothing to teach us about the real world. Even when the world of the dramatic story is not real (as in science fiction and fantasy), the characters must behave as though it is.
We don’t, however, watch comedy to learn life lessons (although it’s more satisfying if it has them). What is there to learn from Monty Python’s ‘The Parrot Sketch’ or Fast Forward ’s Chenille and Janelle (Marg Downey and Magda Szubanski)? The sketches have themes and a narrative shape, but in terms of lived human behaviour, they’re bereft.
We watch comedy to laugh, to experience the thrill of seeing the world turn antagonistic in some way without it representing real danger, or to witness aspects of life from a distance. Because we’re watching for different reasons, we don’t need to identify with every character. We can laugh at them without laughing with them, so their actions can be unrealistic (so long as they remain consistent). Reese is so dumb, in a drama his story would be very sad. He’d be in permanent care, incapable of looking after himself, a burden on his family, a young man with a limited future (certainly not in house-painting). In comedy, however, that doesn’t happen. Reese is okay despite his shortcomings, because for us he is a puppet, not a person. We don’t require him to be realistic so long as he’s funny.
The other key to audience acceptance of unrealistic comic characters is consistency. Implausibly dumb characters like Reese, Betty, Woody in Cheers, Joey in Friends, Mike Moore in Frontline, Alice in The Vicar of Dibley, Rich in Daas Kapital and Earl’s little brother Randy in My Name Is Earl are all consistently unrealistically dim-witted. They can all be relied on to see things the wrong way all the time.
So long as these idiots always act in accordance with their natures—and they’re in a comedy—the extremity of their stupidity is accepted by the audience.
Writing limited-world-view gags requires boldness. Don’t squib it in the name of credibility or political correctness. A character who’s half-stupid only half the time is too close to reality and thus better suited to drama. Similarly, a character whose limitations (e.g. cynicism) waver from scene to scene will be too wishy-washy, undermining any gags that distil their limitation. For example, Red in That ’70s Show remains cruelly cynical in any situation. If he lapsed into caring and sharing on a regular basis, as most fathers do, it would rob him of his identity in the show and fatally undermine the running gag of his cynicism. Unless the emotional or perspective change is the story, the character must remain true to their nature. In That ’70s Show, the only time Red softens and says ‘I love you’ to his son Eric is when he’s high on painkillers. The event becomes the catalyst for a
story about Eric trying to deal with this declaration (‘Kelso’s Career’ by Gregg Mettler). On any other day, however, Red’s role is to constitute a threat to the other characters and to put the most cynical spin on any situation. While nobody is like Red all the time, we can all be cynical some of the time. So, even an extreme archetype such as Red can cause viewers to cry out, ‘My dad is like that!’ even though nobody’s father could maintain Red’s level of hard-heartedness.
Boldness, clarity and consistency will encourage viewers to invest in a character, no matter how unreal that character may be.
To illustrate how various limited world views can drive a character’s responses, here are some examples in which each character responds to the same lead-in. Their outlook is conditioned by a personal quality.
The set-up is: character A visits the graveyard where their entire family is buried. On hearing this, character B says, ‘That must have been a dreadful ordeal’.
INNOCENCE: Those were graves? I thought they were bike-stands.
SELFISHNESS: I’ll say! There was no kiosk so I couldn’t get a drink for the whole day.
PREJUDICE: I went to the graveyard but I didn’t visit them. They’re in the Protestant Section.
CYNICISM: They’re dead? Tch. Typical of them not to tell me.
CALLOUSNESS: It was actually nice to see them all quiet for a change.
PETTINESS: It wasn’t my whole family. My second cousin Arthur is buried in Sweden.
EXERCISE
Devise responses to the following for a character limited by a certain quality:
B: What did you think of the movie, Titanic?
B: Why don’t you ever say you love me?
B: You owe me $22.38 for the concert ticket.
B: I think it may be your baby, probably.
B: Quick! The boathouse is on fire!
There’s a common subset of limited world views in which a character offers a confirmation or solution that’s technically correct but nonetheless inadequate due to their narrow view. These constitute a narrative version of Flawed Logic gags (see Chapter One, ‘Flawed Logic’):
DOCTOR: Does it hurt when I tap you with a hammer?
PATIENT: Yes.
DOCTOR: Then avoid hammers.
—The Sunshine Boys (‘The Doctor Sketch’ by Neil Simon)
JERRY: Four-thirty? Who eats dinner at four-thirty?
MORT SEINFELD: By the time we sit down, it’ll be a quarter to five.
—Seinfeld (‘The Cadillac’ by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld)
HOMER: I’m sorry, Marge, but sometimes I think we’re the worst family in town.
MARGE: Well, maybe we should move to a larger community.
—The Simpsons (‘There’s No Disgrace Like Home’ by Al Jean and Mike Reiss)
TAKING THINGS LITERALLY
Comedians and comic characters can inadvertently or deliberately take things literally. A character with a world view limited by a quality such as naivety, callousness and so forth is capable of inadvertently taking the wrong meaning from an innocent, sarcastic, ironic or euphemistic statement (particularly if they’re not too bright). For example, a woman receiving an expensive birthday present from her boyfriend might lovingly say, ‘You’re so naughty—I could kill you for that’. Depending on the circumstances, if the boyfriend is sufficiently naïve, paranoid or lacking in self-esteem, he’ll hear the unintended, literal meaning and wonder how his gift could prompt a threat of murder.
Upon removing the [Barbeque Shapes] biscuits from their container, I was struck by the fact that, while uniform in shape, they resembled in no way any barbeque that I have ever seen.
—Greg Fleet
STANLEY SMITH: My butt is on the line.
ROGER THE ALIEN: Well, that must be one massive line, ’cause your butt is huge.
—American Dad! (‘Roger Codger’ by Dan Vebber)
JACK: When I said get a grip on yourself, I didn’t mean get a grip on yourself; I meant get a grip on yourself.
—Shock Jock (‘What Goes Up’ by Chris Thompson)
Characters can deliberately take a statement literally to suit their own purposes:
CAROLINE: Please can I have a quick word?
MAC: Zoom. Whoosh. There’s two for you.
—Green Wing (‘Rumours’ by Robert Harley, James Henry, Gary Howe, Stuart Kenworthy, Oriane Messina, Victoria Pile, Richard Preddy and Fay Rusling)
RAY: (to the MAYOR) Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by ‘Dickless’ here.
WALTER PECK: They caused an explosion!
MAYOR: (to Peter) Is this true?
PETER: Yes, it’s true. This man has no dick.
—Ghost Busters (by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis)
Here, Peter takes ‘Dickless’ literally, but also deliberately mistakes which fact the Mayor is querying.
This principle can also work well in reverse: one character setting up another to take the wrong meaning from a statement, then introducing new information that puts it in a totally different light:
NILES: (about Maris) She’s been afraid to fly ever since her harrowing incident.
DAPHNE: Oh dear. Did a plane almost crash?
NILES: No, she was bumped from first class. She still wakes up screaming.
—Frasier (‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ by Anne Flett-Giordano and Chuck Ranberg)
BRIGHTON SHEFFIELD: Yes, it just so happens that your voice carries.
FRAN: To your bedroom?
BRIGHTON: To Michigan.
—The Nanny (‘Fran Gets Shushed’ by Caryn Lucas)
PAUL: What did you say? I haven’t been listening.
RICHARD: Well, I was just saying—
PAUL : No, I mean I haven’t been listening for a couple of years.
—DAAS Kapital (‘Chastity’ by Richard Fidler, Paul McDermott and the author)
Finally, a character may try to correct, avoid or re-frame another character’s intention, but there’s no wriggling out of its true meaning:
A WOMAN from the Make-A-Wish Foundation meets KENNY.
WOMAN: So, Kenny, if you could have one wish, what would it be?
KENNY’s reply is muffled.
KYLE: … He said his wish is not to die.
Long pause.
WOMAN: Okay … and what if you’re gunna have two wishes? What would the second one be?
—South Park (‘Kenny Dies’ by Matt Stone and Trey Parker)
HENRY: Radar, do you know what kind of wood this is?
RADAR: Oak, sir?
HENRY: Nope—it’s oak.
—M*A*S*H (‘To Market, To Market’ by Burt Styler)
Tommy and Dick are looking at babies at the nursery.
TOMMY: Which one is it?
DICK: It must be him—he’s hideous.
MAN: Hey, that’s my daughter!
DICK: I’m so sorry. She’s hideous.
—3rd Rock From The Sun (‘The Baby Menace’ by Jim O’Doherty and David M. Israel)
EXERCISE
Invent scenarios in which these common expressions are taken literally:
To walk softly and carry a big stick
To put yourself in someone’s shoes
To look on the sunny side
Getting out what you put in
I need (this) like I need a hole in the head
DISTORTIONS
The discomfort experienced by a character who is distorting the truth, or having their own truth distorted, can be deliciously painful to witness.
LINDSAY: I guess (Mum) wanted me to have something new. Sweet old thing.
MICHAEL: Only two of those words describe Mum, so I know you’re lying to me. And where did you get the outfit?
LINDSAY: Old thing got it for me.
—Arrested Development (‘Not Without My Daughter’, Mitchell Hurwitz and Richard Rosenstock)
Following the comic principle of negation, distortions turn black to white, innocent to guilty, truth to fiction. They tend to follow the m
odel of the non-hero striving against insurmountable odds with limited tools, yet clinging to hope (see Chapter Five, ‘The Hope Principle’) as the protagonist strives against all logic to maintain their view.
We’ve all been busted doing something we shouldn’t. The temptation to re-frame our crime into something innocent is hard to resist. Like cover-ups, an inadequate distortion of the truth can be funny, so long as the audience knows that nothing very terrible is hanging on the outcome. (If the stakes are truly high, a plausible distortion could be a scary or thrilling moment, like the increasingly elaborate lies in Anthony Schaffer’s Sleuth).
In the following, Bob invents a series of lame distortions to avoid Barbara’s fury.
BOB is caught by BARBARA peeking through a curtain at girls.
BARBARA: You were perving on those girls.
BOB: What girls?
BARBARA: You were looking through the curtains—
BOB : I was checking the curtains for moth holes.
BARBARA: Then you pressed your nose against the glass—
BOB:—As a way of checking the temperature outside—
BARBARA:—And you whispered, ‘Check her out’.
BOB: ‘Check it out’, ‘Check it out’.
Sometimes, even though we admit to our wrongdoing, others refuse to accept it. Mothers of criminals seem to be champions at this.
In the following, Bob’s lawyer is driven by his desire for a not-guilty verdict. No matter how damning Bob’s evidence, the lawyer finds a benign ‘spin’ :
BOB: I stabbed the bastard.
LAWYER: You mean he threw himself on the knife.
BOB: Twenty-six times.
LAWYER: Twenty-six? So he was determined to kill himself.
BOB: I stuffed the cat down his throat.
LAWYER: He ate your cat? No wonder you feared for your life.
A character intent on damning themselves may distort another’s efforts to comfort them.
BOB: Everybody picks on me.
BARBARA: Don’t be silly.
BOB: See? You’re doing it now.