Is Bigger Always Better? Musicals and Sitcoms and Big Characters

So, I've been listening to a great podcast, Sitcom Geeks, which is all about sitcoms (obvs) and is presented by a couple of, er...highly successful comedy writers, James Cary and Dave Cohen.

One thing that struck me (way back in Episode 2, if I remember) was the way in which they described leading sitcom characters. Sitcom characters, they theorised, should be Big in the sense of larger-than-life. They also need Big Flaws. And not just to stand on. That's because the Big Flaws are the root of the comedy so, the bigger the flaws, then the bigger the comedy. 

This is often true of musical theatre characters too. Although, in musicals, the Bigness is more to do with the fact that the characters sing and that, perhaps, is easier to believe in a larger-than-life character than it would be in a quieter, more inhibited type. (That's probably not really true but we'll park that thought for the moment.)

Now, I suspect that this Bigness can be off-putting for some people. Sometimes it can make characters feel cartoonish. But I'm not sure the reason for this is the Bigness. It's more to do with the other essential aspect of a sitcom character, as pointed out by the Geeks, and that is a lack of self-awareness. It's this lack of self-awareness that can make characters feel less like a real person.

There's an extraordinary example of this in Fleabag (the TV version, at least). There's a character with the improbable name of Bus Rodent, who has very Big Flaws and is, apparently, completely unaware of the fact. He's awkward and clumsy and says inappropriate things and, on top of that, he has these two enormous front teeth. Basically, he's someone to laugh at. 

At one point, however, his character turns on a dime, as our American friends say. Fleabag has just had very ungratifying sex with him and she fakes a climax. Bus picks her up on it: "You don't go through life with teeth like these and not know when somebody's pretending". With that single line and, for the briefest of moments, this ridiculous figure of fun turns into an ever-so-slightly more real and sympathetic character. All because he has shown a smidgen of self-awareness.

Now, the temptation is to conclude that the self-aware characters are the real ones and the big, cartoonish ones are the fakes. But here's the thing. If that's the case, then why do love the cartoon characters so much? And I don't mean, why do they make us laugh? I mean, why do we really, really love them?

In sitcoms, the likes of Captain Mainwaring from Dad's Army, Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers and The Office's David Brent are some of the most beloved characters in British popular culture. Yet, a defining feature of all of these characters, is their 'cartoonish' lack of self-awareness. If we met them in real life, they'd be nightmares at best; at worst, monsters (although, worryingly, I always felt that I'd get along with David Brent).

The same is true of musicals. Ado Annie from Oklahoma springs to mind, so completely and innocently unaware of the appropriate way to behave with men ("I'm just a girl who cain't say no"). And Adelaide from Guys and Dolls who wants to be a proper, upright lady but lacks the required sophistication ("Take back your mink/ To from whence it came"). And, perhaps, the ultimate example is Professor Higgins from My Fair Lady, a character so lacking in awareness of his own self-absorption ("Why can't a woman be like me?"), you could easily imagine him in his own sitcom spin-off.

And yet, and yet, despite being over-the-top and unrealistic, as with their sitcom counterparts, they are beloved characters. So what on earth is going on?

I think the reason is this: these characters are not fakes. In some ways, they are more real because they are us without the filters. Of course, they are not like 'real' people, the kind that we meet and know in our everyday lives. That's because in our everyday lives we all have filters. We don't express every thought, we don't act on every impulse. We're constrained by norms, morals, other people's perceptions. In fact, probably the main reason for our filters is the fear of being revealed to be just as moronic, embarrassing and petty as these cartoonish characters that we find in musicals and sitcoms. 

And that's why we love them; they allow us to acknowledge the parts of ourselves that are usually kept hidden. For all their contrived artificiality, these Big Characters can get to a truth that the more 'realistic' ones fail to reach.

It's another one of those Big, beautiful puzzlements.

TATAR #15 Lose My Sh**

 

By Keir Nuttal and Kate Miller-Heidke (2014)

This is from Aussie hubby-and-wife songwriting team. Non-antipodeians may know them best for supporting Ben Folds on tour or when Kate Miller-Heidke took on Eurovision whilst balancing on a giant pogo stick. But, for me, it's their songwriting that is special.

Now, this is one of their funny songs, but not funny in a traditional comedy song kind of a way. By that, I mean bouncy and upbeat and crammed with jokes and natty rhymes. Traditional comedy songs can be witty, like a Gilbert and Sullivan or a Noel Coward, or broad and bawdy like a classic Broadway musical comedy. But they do tend towards the joke-joke-joke and rhyme-rhyme-rhyme model.

This, however, is a bit different.

There are few rhymes. It's dry and downbeat. And, I think, it points to a different way of doing comedy songs for musical theatre.

On one level, the joke is just the contrast between music and lyric. Musically, it's a sweet love song but, lyrically, it's about a young girl cracking up over a boy. The unexpectedly sweary title is kind of funny in itself. But the real fun is the way the song develops and the little songwriting details it uses to do so. 

If you exclude the bridge, there are basically three sections and each sits in a slightly different vocal register. So, we start at the lower end:

"You look so good tonight

Goddamn it all, you look good

That floppy hair and that stupid smile

And that old blue sweater"

That lower register gives us the feeling that she's talking to herself, perhaps mumbling in the corner of a room at some terrible party, whilst she's watching this boy in his devastating "old blue sweater".

When we get to the chorus, there's a shift in perspective. And so the vocal line shifts up a bit too. 

"I swear I'm gonna lose my sh**

If you walk this way..."

And here's the attention to detail.

"Gonna lose it, gonna lose it" 

Those little leading notes (probably not the right term, but you know what I mean) on "lose it", they work a treat. Rather than expanding on the fist two lines of the melody, they kind of interrupt it and build the tension. You get the feeling that she could explode at any minute.

Finally, in the third section, just when we might expect to go back to the verse, the voice goes up another notch for a further thought:

"You look like you

You look like you

Belong in my arms"

Those jumpy notes on "you look like" sound breathless and nervy, almost like she's sobbing or, more likely in this case, hyperventilating. It's another little detail that makes the song funny.

Of course, the second verse takes it further. Whilst, in the first verse, she's annoyed at the object of her affection for looking so unreasonably fanciable, now she's just plain angry:

"You look so good tonight

I just can't catch a break

Have some consideration

Where's your sense of proportion?

Scale it in a bit, for fu**'s sake"

Obviously, they're taking the character to a more absurd place. Yes, sometimes an unexpected swear word helps land a punchline but this is really pure character comedy in song.

So, it seems that Lorenz Hart may have been wrong after all: unrequited love doesn't have to be a bore. 

Sometimes, it's 'sweet as'.