Narrative structures

[davywavy]

There's a film you may have seen called Prince of Egypt. It's Dreamworks animation's retelling of the Biblical story of Moses and the Israelites getting out of Egypt and if you haven't seen it you ought to, because it's an object lesson in constructing a narrative.

I don't mean that in a good way.

In some ways, it isn't a bad film. It's got some good villains in a pair of serpent-worshipping priests and a few good songs, I suppose. However, where it falls down is in structure and pace. For example, take the scene in which Pharoah relents and lets the Israelites leave Egypt. The Isrealites respond to this bit of good news by slapping on their best pearly-white Hollywood smiles and singing a cheery and upbeat number about how you can achieve any miracle so long as you 'just believe'. I'm sure those are admirable sentiments, but this scene comes immediately after the slaughter of the firstborn by the Angel of Death which just led to me gleefully cackling as I pictured the children of Israel high-stepping through the streets of Luxor, singing happily as they wove their way past the piles of corpses.
I'll tell you what, if I could achieve that sort of miracle by 'just believing', I'd've sorted out any overpopulation problems we may have a long time ago.

What this really illustrates is the difficulty of constructing a narrative which ticks all the boxes, and how just throwing money at a project is no guarantee of success (I'm looking at you, George Lucas). As I've recently been yapping at flywingedmonkey about collaborating with him on a writing project I've been thinking more than usual about how stories and narratives which hang together in a satisfying way are constructed, and what I keep coming back to is the way conflict is the thing which drives stories forward.
There is the idea that there are only eight stories (Boy meets girl, A stranger comes to town, a man goes on a journey (the last two being the same story in reverse) and so on*) is a common one, as is the Joseph Campbell Hero with a thousand faces idea of pan-human or meta -myths. However, the more I look at stories, I find the best examples of hw to put togther short, consistent, conflict-led narratives come from good sitcoms.

The best sitcoms tend to have two consistent features: they revolve around people who can't stand each other, and they're in situations where they can't get away from each other. So we have Father Ted, The Young Ones, The Odd Couple, and Dad's Army for starters. It's why 'closed environment' narratives are so popular and why they work so well; claustrophobia is a powerful tool in driving either drama or comedy (which are the different sides of the same coin and sometimes even cross over, like when Darth Vader staggers to his feet at the end of Revenge of the Sith and bellows "Noooooooooooooooooo!" to the hilarity of the entire cinema).

I think this is why the new BBC sitcom Episodes (a joke-free comedy about a trials and tribulations of a pair of BBC comedy writers trying to transfer their hit British show to the U.S.) doesn't work - it's because the characters like each other and aren't trapped in their environment. Their circumstances may nominally suck (in the sense that being wined and dined by Hollywood sucks), but they could just leave and get on with their lives at any time. There's no oppressive sense that they're stuck in the situation and can't get away. There's no driver of conflict: and without inescapable conflict, the drama - and the comedy - simply don't follow.

Which leads to me thinking about closed environments which I could use. The problem is that so many have been used: The military (Dad's Army, The Navy Lark, MASH, etc), Family household (every early evening BBC sitcom ever), hospitals (Green Wing, Only when I laugh), Housemates (The Young Ones), Outer Space (Red Dwarf)...So many used ideas. What's new?

^{*If there are only eight stories, I defy anyone to read some Junichiro Tanazaki and tell me where some of his tales fit. The story of the Samurai who regains his honour by hiding in a lady's toilet, for example. Which of the eight great stories is that one, precisely?}

Comments

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Sean Locke and Bill Bailey were talking about this exact same subject (the best sit-coms all essentially about being trapped) on Comic's Choice last night.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll see if that's on iPLayer. Cheers.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

It's here on 4od.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

It's also not my day for getting comments right first time.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

You should write an entire six-episode sitcom about a Tory party worker and a student activist trapped together in a lift at Millbank during last year's demo ;-)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Given what Edward Woollard looks like, I wonder if Mel Smith would be available for the protestor role?

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

He's not exactly hurting from overwork at the minute, I shouldn't imagine.

Separated at Birth!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It's uncanny, I tell you. Uncanny.

Re: Separated at Birth!

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

It is a bit News of the World lovechild shocka, isn't it?

Re: Separated at Birth!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Where was Mel Smith spending his nights in 1992, that's what I want to know.

Re: Separated at Birth!

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Filming this...

Re: Separated at Birth!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Fame is an aphrodisiac, they say.

[drplokta]

You left out the one where people are really trapped, prison. But of course that was done in Porridge. Also politics makes for strange bedfellows (Yes, Minister).

Educational and training establishments don't quite seem to have been done to death as sitcoms. Schools, universities, police training college, etc.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The probblem with those is that people can just leave - if it gets that bad, just quit your job. I think that although the closed environment can work (Brittas Empire, even though it wasn't funny) in the workplace, it is harder to do.

Was I the only person to sit in rigid, stony silence all the way through The Office?

[vierkilau.livejournal.com]

No

I didnt find the office funny at all

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I always said you were a man of taste and discernment.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I never "got" The Office and dislike Ricky Gervais with a passion. He's just not funny and has a facial expression that could only be made better by punching it repeatedly.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

A cogent and well-reasoned summary with which I heartily concur.

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch the Office - I loathe that kind of thing.

That said I was watching Yes Minister the other day and it struck me that the politics of recent years are a re-run of that sit com.

It's also funny, and I think that's because someone is trapped. Hacker's trapped - he wants to be an MP so he gets trapped in a situation. Sure he can walk away - but he feels duty bound to remain and do his job; in spite of Humphrey. Dad's Army has a similar entrapment, in theory they can walk away but they are duty bound to stick it out. And there are glimmers of light where they succeed in their wishes which keeps them there. The New Statesman is another politics one - the person trapped is Piers although B'stard is also trapped because of his desires.

I think the entrapment doesn't have to be as obviously physical as it is ion Porrige or red Dwarf. But there has to be a firm reason for the entrapment to be there - the Office is the kind of situation where if I had a boss like that I'd walk out - I'd feel no obligation to be put through hell on a daily basis.

[blue-cat.livejournal.com]

or going back further, The Young Ones, as an 'education' type entrapment?

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

How about a sitcom set on the International Space Station? The ultimate 'can't get away from each other' environment!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

That might have too small an audience as it would have to be rather science geeky to work, unless you set it in the future in a different context (and then you get Red Dwarf).

That said, I find it hilarious that one of the astronauts on the ISS is a creationist. That's comedy fodder right there. Why does his head not explode?

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

Are you serious??? Which one? That is just...bizarre!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Yep. I can't remember, it was one of the astros who tweet photos from the ISS (not @astro_soichi). He was on sometime last year.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Why bizarre?

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

I find creationism bizarre anyway, but I would have expected someone who got as far as the ISS to have more sense than that somehow? To have more of a scientific point of view? Maybe I expect too much of people. ;-)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The point of creationism is that it accepts all scientitic laws as they are from the point of creation. A bit like all the laws of the matrix were present from the moment it was switched on. It postulates a universe of consistent laws, so to give the astronaut credit he's not being inconsistent?

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

All scientific law apart from evolution. And carbon dating.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Not at all - 'mainstream' creationism is happy to accept that species change over time. From the time of creation, that is. And carbon dating, well it was made to look like that.

It really is a fantastically self-referential piece of work. I admire it as a meme.

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Hence my 'bizarre' comment. Delusional to the extreme is how I see it, but each to their own. As long as they're not up there falsifying their test results to fit their beliefs they can believe what they like as far as I'm concerned.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

Much of it mediated through the complex filter of "LALALALALALALALALALA I can't hear you".

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Hm, you're right, in his own little paradigm, it works.

What I don't see is that someone who's quite bright in his field (he wouldn't be on the ISS otherwise) can't see the validity of other sectors of science that clearly prove that creationism (and especially their age of the Earth) is bollocks.
It would be interesting to see how he interprets the biology experiments that show how organisms adapt to their environment, which is part of the principles of evolution.

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[blue-cat.livejournal.com]

God made them able to adapt, even to change within set parameters (hence breeding better / different cows / dogs plants) but not to morph from one to another (so no reptiles become birds).

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

A variety of people and animals trapped in an alien zoo, forced to dance each week to a new challenge of their alien overlords.

The only thing left to do are either things that are so utterly boring no-one would watch it (the excitement of the trainspotters union) or would not pass censor before print (The life and times of the KKK)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That sounds like The Adventure Game to me!

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Ah now there was a fantastic show... yep; pretty much got that one there then!

Guess it's the fun and frolics of the KKK then!

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

I hear people can get trapped in mines... or submarines, I seem to recall a hilarious tale about a U-boat captain by Howard Phillip-something that must be ripe for a six-part comedy adaptation.

(Of course, now that I've said that, the idea of a bunch random people being assigned to a doctor-who style pest control service by Job Centre Plus seems like an ideal opportunity to contrast mundance irritations and tea-breaks with ghostbusters style work)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

So basically a mix between E4's Misfits and a TV version of InSpectres?
That could work quite well. :D

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

Sure, although I was thinking more bored than Chav - the over-qualified student, ex-manager, burger king employee... I think the current economic climate gives you a great narrative excuse to take a bunch of people who would never normally interact and say 'they all have to do the same thing'

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I can see that working, too.

And there's always Mak Attax. ;o)

[blue-cat.livejournal.com]

or indeed Operation Petticoat, a film turned tv series about a WW2 US Navy submarine...

[cleosilver.livejournal.com]

The story of the Samurai who regains his honour by hiding in a lady's toilet, for example. Which of the eight great stories is that one, precisely?



The Road to Redemption

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

Nobody's yet mentioned the obvious thing which so often yokes together two disparate people who hate one another -- the family relationship. Purest example of this is probably Steptoe and Son.

The 'base under siege' scenario is of course also the setting of a large proportion of the most popular episodes of the original Dr Who. Wonder if any of those could be retooled as comedy material? How about the three lighthouse keepers in Horror of Fang Rock, for example?

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

Twins, before they're born.

I expect royalties.

[flywingedmonkey.livejournal.com]

I still like the band idea. That said its always going to be compared with Spinal Tap (but then so will every comedy with rock music ever), Anvil and even School of Rock. But I can’t think of a sit-com that did it.

I’ve been thinking of alternatives and you’re right: It has almost all been done! Besides the ones you mention I though actors on a TV program - has been done (30 Rock), regulars at a bar - has been done (Cheers), Old people trapped in a nursing home – yup, has been done (I have forgotten the name of it). Gah!

Thoughts:

We could do a (comedy) survivors of an apocalypse? Has that been done? Zombieland did it for the Zompocalypse I suppose.

We could attempt do an alternative workplace to hospital or regular office (a garage maybe? A funeral home)

Some sort of sports team? Or martial arts dojo? There’s some comedy in that. (Have you seen the foot-fist way?)

Gypsies are very in- we could do that. Of course we’d both be killed but still…

JmC
Whatcha think?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I also like the band idea, as it's a subject matter we both know-ish. However, making it a closed environment is difficult, (unless we set every episode in the van between gigs, which did strike me as a possibility...)..
Alternatively, there's always this: http://davywavy.livejournal.com/274313.html