DOMME COMS

Regarding my new term in the title, it came about when I encountered TV Tropes using the abbreviation "Dom Com" as shorthand for "domestic comedy." I've been aware of the term "domestic comedy" since I first began reading about fictional genres, and everyone's heard the term "Rom Com" that became popular in the 1990s. But when I read "Dom Com," I responded with my own "Domme Com."

Now, there are a lot of serial comedies in which two or more characters contend in small ways but end up making up, like the classic I LOVE LUCY. This is the basic aesthetic of what I've called the "accomodation narrative." But any comedy, self-contained or serial, that emphasizes an ongoing imbalance of power would broadly qualify as a Domme Com. I'll concentrate here on heterosexual entanglements, though I'll touch briefly on other possible combinations.

(1) The primary type that I've examined here I'll call "The Delectable Domme." Such stories feature a female Domme constantly exerting her power over a male Subbe (a spelling I'll toss in to distinguish the term in my mind from my other use of "Sub.") Examples I've covered over the years include, with assorted variations, include URUSEI YATSURA, RANMA 1/2, NISEKOI, and NAGATORO. Usually these are one-on-one encounters, though various support characters may irregularly torment the male protagonist to provide variety.

(2) A second type, "The Deflected Domme," forswears any power-imbalance between the two main hetero characters, but one or more support-characters exert power over one of the main ones. Said support-characters are not necessarily limited to being of a gender opposite to that of the Subbe. For instance, relations between Darrin and Samantha on BEWITCHED are usually pacific and balanced. But many of Samantha's witchy relations intrude on the couple's marital bliss to torment Darrin, usually with minor, annoying transformations. In keeping with countless mother-in-law jokes, Endora is the main Domme, but it may be no coincidence that Samantha's lookalike cousin Serena is the next most frequent female tormentor. Yet Darrin also frequently gets "subbe-jected" to humiliation by his father-in-law and by Endora's brother Arthur, so male Dommes are seen there as well.

(3) I'll term the third type "The World is His Domme," in that there's a Subbe character who's constantly the butt of torments from nearly everyone, male and female, with whom he comes in contact. In the teleseries ABBOTT AND COSTELLO, Costello's character is sometimes given bad treatment by Abbott. But Abbott is in no way Costello's main tormentor; he's just one of many, male and female.

(4) Finally, I'll term the fourth type "Queen of the Tormenting World," because the Subbe suffers from any number of diverse torments from separate sources, like the Costello character-- but the Subbe suffers all these torments largely because he's become tied to a Domme female. The comic strip BLONDIE, which I'll be examining in future essays, is one where husband Dagwood has become the target of everyone in his circle-- neighbors, bosses, cops, pesky salesmen-- specifically because he's married to a dominant spouse. Blondie, for her part, sometimes appears to be an accommodating spouse like Samantha Stevens. But close examination shows that on a semi-regular basis Blondie exerts power over Dagwood, either overtly bullying him in one way or another or humiliating him with acts of "innocent sadism." (Example: Blondie moves a ladder while Dagwood's working on the roof of their house; after Dagwood falls to the ground, Blondie seems unaware of having wrought harm.) 

A second "Queen" example I've often discussed here is MARRIED WITH CHILDREN. In this show Peg Bundy barely makes any bones about tormenting husband Al. Al, unlike Dagwood, responds with insults, but his impotent responses merely underline that he's just as much under Peg's thumb as Dagwood is under Blondie's. MARRIED offers an unusual variation in that the husband-wife couple is mirrored by the relationship of their teenaged kids. Bud, in contrast to the Al-Peg dynamic, occasionally does manage to degrade Kelly because she unlike her mother is stupid. Nevertheless, the majority of their battles validate Kelly, if only because of her dumb luck, so it's pretty obvious that the sibling relationship was designed to mirror that of the married couple.

Next up: Chic Young's not-so-innocent sadist.

DONWGRADING (OR DEGRADING) ON A CURVE

 I devoted some attention in REPETITION AND PROLONGATION PT. 2  to differences in the ways sadism-scenarios are used respectively in accomodation narratives and confrontation narratives, noting how in the former the consequences were almost never as dire as in the latter, as per all the Poe and Sade examples referenced in the first part. And another way of approaching these distinctions is by incorporating a dichotomy I came across in some forgotten book on comedy: that of "downgrading" vs. "degrading." 

Usually, when we think of "sadism"-- particularly because of the stories written by the man for whom the syndrome was named-- we think of people trying to degrade others by nullifying their will, abusing their bodies, minds, or both together. This is also the motive of what I'd term "pure sadism," which is not connected to such gains as learning enemy information or the location of hidden treasure. This is usually, though not universally, characteristic of sadism-acts in "confrontation narratives."

But "accomodation narratives" are usually about "downgrading," not degrading. Downgrading does not destroy the will of the one subjected to it, but rather alters it, seeking to purge parts of the will that the character does not recognize as disadvantageous. In Part 2 my foremost example was that of Raku Ichijo in NISEKOI, who, if I correctly interpret his creator's wishes, needs a little pain and humiliation to get him out of his romantic comfort-zone.

That said, not all serials are structured like NISEKOI, with a beginning, middle, and end. The open-ended teleseries BEWITCHED begins as an accomodation narrative concerning the difficulties of a young married couple-- one an ordinary, somewhat priggish mortal, the other a witch with supernatural powers. The first three episodes of the show merely set up some basic tropes of the situation. But the fourth episode, reviewed here, established the most fundamental trope that dominated most of the episodes, which might be formulated: Uptight Husband Tries to Restrain Wife's Identity and Her Relatives Make Him Pay For It.

This segment of my review recapitulates the main action between the mortal husband Darrin Stevens and his wife's mother-in-law Endora, whom he encounters for the first time in this episode.

When Darrin and Endora meet that evening, it's mutual hate at first sight. Darrin wants no interactions with Samantha's weird family, and Endora threatens to turn Darrin into an artichoke. This is one of the very few Endora episodes wherein Endora does NOT wreak some magical alteration on her son-in-law's helpless mortal body, and it's probably the first in which Samantha asserts that she can't do anything to cancel the spells of another witch. To the extent that Endora represents Samantha's  own rebelliousness, one might regard this claim as Samantha's tacit consent to tolerate the comical acts of violence her mother perpetrates upon Darrin. Indeed, it occurred to me for the first time that every time Endora or any other witch changes the way Darrin looks or acts, Darrin gets some part of his own identity erased, even as he repeatedly insists that his wife must.

Endora is hardly the only witch-spawn who gives Darrin trouble over the eight seasons of the show. Yet she is the only character who's more than a "guest star," given that actress Agnes Moorehead shared principal co-billing with those playing Darrin and Samantha, even for episodes in which her character did not appear. The sadistic acts that Endora and her brood perpetrate upon the helpless Darrin are fundamentally harmless and frivolous, and they're usually directed at "downgrading" his assumptions of absolute authority. 

Yet in marked contrast to the example of Raku Ichijo, Darrin never learns from any of his victimizations. Occasionally he might show a moment of relative tolerance, but by the next episode he's back to shouting and demanding and thus inviting yet another humiliating spell. And to some extent Endora, to the extent she has any consistency, enjoys tormenting her son-in-law so much that she invents the most tenuous logic to give herself the excuse. I suspect that as the showrunners approached the eighth and last season, no one thought for a moment of wrapping up the series by forging some stable rapprochement between Darrin and Endora-- and indeed, the very last episode is just a remake of a Season Two tale, with Endora playing another prank on Darrin and his workaday world. The showrunners knew they were doing simple done-in-one stories that always went back to the original status quo. And it should be said that the status quo allows Darrin to look like a successful professional to the outside world, all his eccentricities swiftly forgotten. But the audience at least sees that he brings some of his humiliations upon himself, and that was apparently enough to grant the series long life. 

It's of course possible for "degrading sadism" to appear in comedies, usually directed at minor characters in whom the audience has no investment, like the suckup Brice in 1988's SCROOGED. And a fair number of "serious" adventure-stories concern men or women being martially trained, and often these include trainers who seem to be perpetrating sadistic acts on their students, though the rationale is usually "what doesn't kill them makes them stronger." Thus the Jackie Chan character in his breakout film DRUNKEN MASTER keeps dodging the painful rigors of training, but eventually buckles down and endures all the downgrading torments needed to improve his kung fu and to triumph over an enemy.

Still, "degrading" is more associated with the "serious" mythoi, and "downgrading" with the "ludicrous" ones.

THE COMPLICATIONS OF COMEDY PT. 2

For part 1, I used as examples of "isothymotic conflict" in comedy two stand-alone films, 1942's I MARRIED A WITCH and 1937's TOPPER.  The 1942 film may have influenced a well-known TV show of the 1960s; a program which offers some perspective on how the same isothymia works out in a serial format.

Whereas WITCH includes a potentially fatal menace to the happiness of the lead couple, only rarely is there any threat to life and limb in BEWITCHED.  Going by my schema of focal presences, the witch Samantha is the imaginative center of the series, to whom hapless Darren Stevens provides support even as Akane is the support to Ranma in the Takahashi series.  Her "opponents," if I may stretch a point to call them that, are almost always Samantha's mischievious relatives, not least her mother Endora (seen above).  Their function is usually to embarass husband Darren in the eyes of straight-laced society by forcing him to violate some societal norm-- acting strangely, dressing funny-- though they don't have the marginally noble motivations of the ghostly Kirbys in TOPPER.  That said, I'd argue that BEWITCHED offers the same basic dynamization as TOPPER, that of seeing the regular routines and priorities of society temporarily thrown into chaos, although with the understanding that order will be restored at the end of every episode to the accompaniment of some thoroughly lame explanation that allows society to ignore the ongoing activities of chaos.

In Part 1 I said that the characters of Jennifer in WITCH and the Kirbys in TOPPER conformed to the persona I term a "monster," since all three of these focal presences operate to create chaos, albeit in the name of goodness.  However, Samantha, despite being a supernatural being, functions to maintain the status quo, and her central virtue in the stories is the virtue of endurance, by which I characterized the persona of the demihero in D IS FOR DEMIHERO PT 3.

My repeated mentions of "order" and "chaos" are not accidental, for the terms might apply as a corrective to a statement I made in the above essay, though a corrective that principally applies to the comedy mythos.

As a general rule two of the four, the “hero” and the newly christened“demihero,” are the life-affirming forces, while the “villain” and the“monster” exist to thwart the forces of life. However, experienced readers will be familiar with other permutations.

In that essay I cited two exceptions, the monstrous Man-Thing and the villainous Joker, who ended up supporting the forces of life more or less accidentally.  The accidental nature of their good acts is necessary because they belong respectively to the two "serious" mythoi: "drama" for Man-Thing and "adventure" for the Joker.  There may be anaologues in the mythos of the irony, though I haven't located an example as yet.

However, "comic monsters" can get away with doing good, with affirming life, without a lot of excuses.  Paradoxically, they create chaos, which is generally a bad thing when monsters or villains do it, yet by the principle of comic dumb luck, the chaos can be easily dispelled, and may even end up benefitting the natural order of things.

"Comic villains" used to be rather rare phenomena.  In the Silver Age I can recall only this one-shot Charlton character, SINISTRO BOY FIEND, shown accidentally helping the law in this panel:

However, in recent years, animated movies seem to have found gold in this lode.

I considered revised the terms "life-affirming" and "life-thwarting"-- strongly influenced by Gaster's schema-- with some neologisms along the lines of "order" and "chaos."  But in the end I've decided not to introduce yet more neologisms.

It's probably sufficient to note that there can be "positively-toned" and "negatively-toned" versions of all four personae.  It's characteristic for the comedy-mythos, given its paucity of audience-conviction, to get away with positively-toned villains and monsters.  It's also possible within the serious mythoi to invert the virtues of instinctive endurance (signified by the demihero) or of larger-than-life intellectual will (signifying by the hero). In D IS FOR DEMIHERO PT 1 I showed that it was easy for a writer to portray a demihero as a nasty customer, as seen in my example of a Steve Ditko story, "The Gentle Old Man."  It's less typical for focal heroes to have negative manifestations.  Marvel Comics' Punisher would probably be one example, in that his obsession to eradicate crime, though certainly larger-than-life, is rooted in his personal animus rather than in concern for life.  The Punisher does end up supporting the forces of life, but he's not always admired for his persistence, so that he ends up becoming a quasi-villain in the features of other Marvel heroes like Daredevil and Captain America, or getting beat up by Batman in a throwaway scene of JLA/AVENGERS.