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alexandraerinThe formula in some Marx Bros. movies--particularly, those from the Groucho/Chico/Harpo era at MGM--involved a romantic pairing between a pretty boy (not played by any of the Marx Brothers) and an ingenue (also not played by any of the Marx Brothers) Add this to the need to give Groucho a dowager foil (played by Margaret Dumont) and you have Marx Brothers movies where the primary ensemble was only half Marxes, before you even got to the antagonist.
Now, I'd argue that the Bros. are not the protagonists of these films. Sure, they get top billing, but to invoke the classical structure, the Allan Jones-type character (as in A Night at the Opera or the ingenue (as in A Day at the Races) is the protagonist, with the other one as deuteragonist. Chico and Harpo are collectively the tritagonist, as their struggles are actively concerned in helping the protagonist's quest.
Groucho? He's a free agent, one who winds up steering events towards the villains' downfall... largely by dint of having annoyed the less even-tempered villains more with his antics. Margaret Dumont is there so that there's someone less sympathetic than the heroes for him to annoy when he's not messing with the villains.
There's a reason that the films fell into this sort of formula. The brothers' earlier films, made at Paramount, were far more madcap. Their producer at MGM insisted on giving the films more of a traditional story structure rather than just being a vehicle for stringing together popular sketches from their stage shows.
Ah! If you read this blog regularly, you may now understand what Warner Bros. is doing in the title up there. (If you don't, here's a recap.)
Yes, the Marx Brothers ran into the Bugs Bunny problem... or rather, the Bugs Bunny problem is actually a Marx Brothers problem.
See the climactic scene from A Night At The Opera to get a great look at the creative debt that Looney Tunes in general and Bugs Bunny in particular owe to the Marx Brothers in general and Groucho in particular.The zaniness in that clip is broken up by bits of opera and dialogue involving other characters, of course, which is the point of this discussion.
In order to tell a conventional Hollywood story around the Marx Brothers and their antics, you have to tell the story around them. Chico and Harpo may have their own aspirations, and Groucho certainly has his base motives, but the story of the movie is about the hopes and dreams of someone else, someone more conventionally Hollywood. Harpo and Chico play the role of the talking animal sidekicks in the Disney movie: largely but not entirely comic relief, as they forward the plot or accidentally present unexpected obstacles.
Now, the post I linked to in "Story Problems" talks about the problem for writing for Bugs Bunny primarily in structural terms... the escalating-gag-towards-inevitable-victory structure doesn't mesh well with the typical problem/complication/resolution structure. But there's another problem: if the story takes itself too seriously, we don't know who to root for.
When a hunter points a gun at a rabbit's head, it's easy to sympathize with the rabbit. When a mad scientist tries to use a bunny as a guinea pig in an unhallowed experiment, it's easy to sympathize with the rabbit. When we realize that the bunny is in absolutely no danger from the hunter or the scientist, that the bunny is kind of pointedly annoying, and that the bunny delights in cruelty... well, it's not so much that the bunny loses our sympathies. It's self-defense, obviously. The bad guys have it coming, obviously. It's still light comedy, not a rip roaring rampage of revenge.
But still, we're not exactly celebrating his triumph the way we would a sympathetic protagonist who faces and overcomes a genuine challenge. We're delighting in his inventiveness. We're wondering how far he'll go. The fact that these kinds of stories work for us is just another nail in my personal hobbyhorse about no story structure or feature being a universal necessity.
But a sympathetic protagonist (one who is not obnoxious and who is genuinely challenged by obstacles) is a necessity for certain types of stories, and that's part of why Bugs Bunny and the Marx Brothers aren't often put front-and-center in "plot driven" pieces.
(As a side point: consider that even as a broad ethic caricature and a mime, Chico and Harpo are still more inherently sympathetic than Groucho and thus are put closer to the center of the plot. But then, look at Groucho's nom de sourcil. While various etymologies have been presented for it, one can at least surmise that if he were meant to be sympathetic he might have been given a cheerier handle. Typically, Groucho gets first billing in the films, and the brothers overall are billed above the protagonists. Isn't it funny how these things break down?)
So, to back up: the Bugs Bunny problem predates Bugs Bunny. The Marx Brothers' solution for answering it without watering down their act, without altering their own schtick past the point of recognition (as attepmted Bugs Bunny reboots and reimaginings have done) was to make themselves secondary and tertiary characters in their own films.
(Sidenote: Consider the abysmal failure of Space Jam, which both de-centered Bugs and watered him down.)
Now let's talk about the Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor, to be specific... parts of what I have to say will apply to varying degrees to other Doctors, but I'm thinking specifically of the Matt Smith/Steven Moffat incarnation.
The Elevent Doctor is a trickster. He's not much of a Groucho, but he's got more than a bit of Bugs in him. I realized this watching and rewatching the Oval Office scenes in "The Impossible Astronaut", and watching the scene where he hauls a vintage 1960s telly into the middle of the Silence and adjusts the aerial in "Day of the Moon".
That sort of thing? That is Bugs Bunny cool. We forget, generations of cartoon watchers on from when the hunted first confronted the hunter, that Bugs's catchphrase wasn't always just a catchphrase, it was a joke. It was a one-liner. It was the character, summed up in a single sentence and single scene.
Bugs pops out of his hole, he chomps his carrot, he looks down the barrel of the hunter's gun and he says all casual-like (it became less casual as his signature gag became more signature and less gag, but the casualness is part of the joke) "What's up, Doc?"
Watch the scene where he (the Doctor, not Bugs) first enters the Oval Office. The emergence. The tip-toeing across the carpet. The very carefully pulling out the notepad and pen. The "carry on" gesture when Nixon sees him. The stunned/delayed reactions from the others and the take when he realizes he's caught.
The "...twelve jammy dodgers and a fez" might be pegged as being the most over-the-top comedic bit in the episode, but the emergence from the TARDIS is like a classic Warner Brothers bit. It's like Bugs Bunny at his best.
Imagine "The Lodger" from Craig's point of view. His consternation with The Doctor seems a little overblown to some viewers, but imagine if all the stuff that broke from his point of view... anything with Amy, with the people being lured upstairs, with the Doctor by himself... was cut of the episode. The result would be much shorter, and it would look a lot like the typical "[Bugs/Daffy/Zany Trickster] vs. Hapless And Maybe Not Even Particularly Deserving Shnook" cartoon.
He goes to use the bathroom and The Doctor is there, "Singing in the shower, la-dee-dee-do-do". The Doctor shows him up at everything, including the sport he's never played in his life.
Think about just about anything in Doctor Who from someone else's point of view. The Daleks. The Sontarans. Whoever. They turn around: the Doctor's there. They run to the ends of the universe: the Doctor's there. They seal the Doctor in a box, wrap every kind of lock and chain around the box and bury that box in the ground and fly away to their home planets/times/whatevers and the Doctor is there.
Ah, heck. I was using Bugs Bunny for my comparison, but let's talk about one of the cartoon masters of standing right there: Droopy. Sweet, goofy, even-tempered Droopy. Lovable, non-threatening Droopy. Droopy who brushes off or ignores all abuse until someone crosses one of his lines, and then... you know what, folks?
He's mad.
*shivers*
In the very same episode with the burying-in-a-box, we learn exactly how the Doctor looks to his nemeses:
A goblin.
A trickster.
He tears the world down. He turns it upside down. He can't be stopped. He can't be held.
No, the blood of a billion galaxies doesn't sound wacky and zany, but the people these stories come from aren't safely in the audience with us. Think about how many "zany vs. shnook" cartoons in the WB canon end with the shnook breaking down, sobbing, begging, pleading for an end... or even, in the uncensored originals, killing themselves to get away from the torment. Think about how many cartoon foils have burned down or blown up their own house or business trying to get away. Think about how many have been driven insane.
And that quote is just talking about the chaos that the Doctor causes to his enemies, more or less on purpose...
So, to bring all of this up to more of a point than "The Doctor is kind of like a cartoon character", let's go back to the post I linked to the Bugs Bunny problem... or problems: the Doctor is a trickster and he is also nigh-unbeatable. How do they make us care about his adventures? Well, to a considerable degree they don't have to. As Bugs Bunny's body of work shows, human beings don't need the things we're told we need in order to be interested in something. We'll watch the Doctor to see what he does next, to see how he beats his opponent even if it's not in doubt that he will. But it's best to cover one's bases, and to have multiple types of appeal.
So we get Companions. We get locals we care about. We get people aren't unbeatable tricksters and who can die, which gives us the possibility of degrees of success and failure.
And... in the Eleventh Doctor's case... we get the Happy Couple. Rory and Amy. Yes, they're Companions, but to me it's not a coincidence that we get an actual couple in the TARDIS while it's being piloted byMr. Dr. "twelve jammy dodgers and a fez".
Since his bow, I've thought of Matt Smith's portrayal as the most alien Doctor yet, which only increases the need for a human viewpoint in the big blue box. But now I think there's more to it. Rory and Amy aren't just a pair of human viewpoints, they are a human story... unfolding right there in front of us, along with all the zaniness and all of the horror and all of the... well, all of the Doctor, really.
And the leavening factor of sympathetic companions is not just there for structural/audience engagement reasons. Without someone for their own sympathies to align with, the Marx Brothers resort to causing chaos because that's what they do. As Donna Noble said to Ten:
Now, I'd argue that the Bros. are not the protagonists of these films. Sure, they get top billing, but to invoke the classical structure, the Allan Jones-type character (as in A Night at the Opera or the ingenue (as in A Day at the Races) is the protagonist, with the other one as deuteragonist. Chico and Harpo are collectively the tritagonist, as their struggles are actively concerned in helping the protagonist's quest.
Groucho? He's a free agent, one who winds up steering events towards the villains' downfall... largely by dint of having annoyed the less even-tempered villains more with his antics. Margaret Dumont is there so that there's someone less sympathetic than the heroes for him to annoy when he's not messing with the villains.
There's a reason that the films fell into this sort of formula. The brothers' earlier films, made at Paramount, were far more madcap. Their producer at MGM insisted on giving the films more of a traditional story structure rather than just being a vehicle for stringing together popular sketches from their stage shows.
Ah! If you read this blog regularly, you may now understand what Warner Bros. is doing in the title up there. (If you don't, here's a recap.)
Yes, the Marx Brothers ran into the Bugs Bunny problem... or rather, the Bugs Bunny problem is actually a Marx Brothers problem.
See the climactic scene from A Night At The Opera to get a great look at the creative debt that Looney Tunes in general and Bugs Bunny in particular owe to the Marx Brothers in general and Groucho in particular.The zaniness in that clip is broken up by bits of opera and dialogue involving other characters, of course, which is the point of this discussion.
In order to tell a conventional Hollywood story around the Marx Brothers and their antics, you have to tell the story around them. Chico and Harpo may have their own aspirations, and Groucho certainly has his base motives, but the story of the movie is about the hopes and dreams of someone else, someone more conventionally Hollywood. Harpo and Chico play the role of the talking animal sidekicks in the Disney movie: largely but not entirely comic relief, as they forward the plot or accidentally present unexpected obstacles.
Now, the post I linked to in "Story Problems" talks about the problem for writing for Bugs Bunny primarily in structural terms... the escalating-gag-towards-inevitable-victory structure doesn't mesh well with the typical problem/complication/resolution structure. But there's another problem: if the story takes itself too seriously, we don't know who to root for.
When a hunter points a gun at a rabbit's head, it's easy to sympathize with the rabbit. When a mad scientist tries to use a bunny as a guinea pig in an unhallowed experiment, it's easy to sympathize with the rabbit. When we realize that the bunny is in absolutely no danger from the hunter or the scientist, that the bunny is kind of pointedly annoying, and that the bunny delights in cruelty... well, it's not so much that the bunny loses our sympathies. It's self-defense, obviously. The bad guys have it coming, obviously. It's still light comedy, not a rip roaring rampage of revenge.
But still, we're not exactly celebrating his triumph the way we would a sympathetic protagonist who faces and overcomes a genuine challenge. We're delighting in his inventiveness. We're wondering how far he'll go. The fact that these kinds of stories work for us is just another nail in my personal hobbyhorse about no story structure or feature being a universal necessity.
But a sympathetic protagonist (one who is not obnoxious and who is genuinely challenged by obstacles) is a necessity for certain types of stories, and that's part of why Bugs Bunny and the Marx Brothers aren't often put front-and-center in "plot driven" pieces.
(As a side point: consider that even as a broad ethic caricature and a mime, Chico and Harpo are still more inherently sympathetic than Groucho and thus are put closer to the center of the plot. But then, look at Groucho's nom de sourcil. While various etymologies have been presented for it, one can at least surmise that if he were meant to be sympathetic he might have been given a cheerier handle. Typically, Groucho gets first billing in the films, and the brothers overall are billed above the protagonists. Isn't it funny how these things break down?)
So, to back up: the Bugs Bunny problem predates Bugs Bunny. The Marx Brothers' solution for answering it without watering down their act, without altering their own schtick past the point of recognition (as attepmted Bugs Bunny reboots and reimaginings have done) was to make themselves secondary and tertiary characters in their own films.
(Sidenote: Consider the abysmal failure of Space Jam, which both de-centered Bugs and watered him down.)
Now let's talk about the Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor, to be specific... parts of what I have to say will apply to varying degrees to other Doctors, but I'm thinking specifically of the Matt Smith/Steven Moffat incarnation.
The Elevent Doctor is a trickster. He's not much of a Groucho, but he's got more than a bit of Bugs in him. I realized this watching and rewatching the Oval Office scenes in "The Impossible Astronaut", and watching the scene where he hauls a vintage 1960s telly into the middle of the Silence and adjusts the aerial in "Day of the Moon".
That sort of thing? That is Bugs Bunny cool. We forget, generations of cartoon watchers on from when the hunted first confronted the hunter, that Bugs's catchphrase wasn't always just a catchphrase, it was a joke. It was a one-liner. It was the character, summed up in a single sentence and single scene.
Bugs pops out of his hole, he chomps his carrot, he looks down the barrel of the hunter's gun and he says all casual-like (it became less casual as his signature gag became more signature and less gag, but the casualness is part of the joke) "What's up, Doc?"
Watch the scene where he (the Doctor, not Bugs) first enters the Oval Office. The emergence. The tip-toeing across the carpet. The very carefully pulling out the notepad and pen. The "carry on" gesture when Nixon sees him. The stunned/delayed reactions from the others and the take when he realizes he's caught.
The "...twelve jammy dodgers and a fez" might be pegged as being the most over-the-top comedic bit in the episode, but the emergence from the TARDIS is like a classic Warner Brothers bit. It's like Bugs Bunny at his best.
Imagine "The Lodger" from Craig's point of view. His consternation with The Doctor seems a little overblown to some viewers, but imagine if all the stuff that broke from his point of view... anything with Amy, with the people being lured upstairs, with the Doctor by himself... was cut of the episode. The result would be much shorter, and it would look a lot like the typical "[Bugs/Daffy/Zany Trickster] vs. Hapless And Maybe Not Even Particularly Deserving Shnook" cartoon.
He goes to use the bathroom and The Doctor is there, "Singing in the shower, la-dee-dee-do-do". The Doctor shows him up at everything, including the sport he's never played in his life.
Think about just about anything in Doctor Who from someone else's point of view. The Daleks. The Sontarans. Whoever. They turn around: the Doctor's there. They run to the ends of the universe: the Doctor's there. They seal the Doctor in a box, wrap every kind of lock and chain around the box and bury that box in the ground and fly away to their home planets/times/whatevers and the Doctor is there.
Ah, heck. I was using Bugs Bunny for my comparison, but let's talk about one of the cartoon masters of standing right there: Droopy. Sweet, goofy, even-tempered Droopy. Lovable, non-threatening Droopy. Droopy who brushes off or ignores all abuse until someone crosses one of his lines, and then... you know what, folks?
He's mad.
*shivers*
In the very same episode with the burying-in-a-box, we learn exactly how the Doctor looks to his nemeses:
There was a goblin. Or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. Nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it – one day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
A goblin.
A trickster.
He tears the world down. He turns it upside down. He can't be stopped. He can't be held.
No, the blood of a billion galaxies doesn't sound wacky and zany, but the people these stories come from aren't safely in the audience with us. Think about how many "zany vs. shnook" cartoons in the WB canon end with the shnook breaking down, sobbing, begging, pleading for an end... or even, in the uncensored originals, killing themselves to get away from the torment. Think about how many cartoon foils have burned down or blown up their own house or business trying to get away. Think about how many have been driven insane.
And that quote is just talking about the chaos that the Doctor causes to his enemies, more or less on purpose...
So, to bring all of this up to more of a point than "The Doctor is kind of like a cartoon character", let's go back to the post I linked to the Bugs Bunny problem... or problems: the Doctor is a trickster and he is also nigh-unbeatable. How do they make us care about his adventures? Well, to a considerable degree they don't have to. As Bugs Bunny's body of work shows, human beings don't need the things we're told we need in order to be interested in something. We'll watch the Doctor to see what he does next, to see how he beats his opponent even if it's not in doubt that he will. But it's best to cover one's bases, and to have multiple types of appeal.
So we get Companions. We get locals we care about. We get people aren't unbeatable tricksters and who can die, which gives us the possibility of degrees of success and failure.
And... in the Eleventh Doctor's case... we get the Happy Couple. Rory and Amy. Yes, they're Companions, but to me it's not a coincidence that we get an actual couple in the TARDIS while it's being piloted by
Since his bow, I've thought of Matt Smith's portrayal as the most alien Doctor yet, which only increases the need for a human viewpoint in the big blue box. But now I think there's more to it. Rory and Amy aren't just a pair of human viewpoints, they are a human story... unfolding right there in front of us, along with all the zaniness and all of the horror and all of the... well, all of the Doctor, really.
And the leavening factor of sympathetic companions is not just there for structural/audience engagement reasons. Without someone for their own sympathies to align with, the Marx Brothers resort to causing chaos because that's what they do. As Donna Noble said to Ten:
"...sometimes you need someone to stop you."