INNOCENT SADISTS, BROADLY PT. 1

 

In THYMOS BE DE PLACE PT. 4, I gave two examples of my new categories, thymotic and epithymotic, as they applied to two characters from Rumiko Takahashi's URUSEI YATSURA venting slapstick violence on the same character, Ataru. One character committed violence in self-defense, to stave off Ataru's attentions, which I labeled epithymotic because it was not concerned with anything but self-maintenance. The other committed violence with the purpose of forcing Ataru to give her recognition as his proper wife and only love, and because it involved recognition, I labeled the action thymotic. The same thymotic characterization applies to all of Lum's actions, even those in which she takes the role of "innocent sadist," causing Ataru harm or humiliation without seeming to have any conscious intention to do so. 

I've most often used my term "innocent sadist," though, when analyzing episodes of the Fox teleseries MARRIED WITH CHILDREN. While I didn't feel like surveying every episode to support my views on the show's use of slapstick violence, I checked online summaries for the first two seasons of MWC to see how often, and in what ways, the two female characters acted the part of "dommes" to the male "subbes" of the series.      

The PILOT, while much less extreme in its use of violence than the later seasons, sets some ground rules. From the start, it's evident that Peg Bundy enjoys running husband Al down, so any time she causes him harm or humiliation, it's a given that she really means to do so, no matter what protests she may voice. In PILOT, she moves Al's alarm clock and puts a cactus in its place, and when he questions her capricious actions, she makes a lame excuse. For the length and the breadth of the series, Peg is a thymotic torturer: she does it because it gives her a buzz, not for any reasons of gain or security.

Kelly isn't quite as obvious at the beginning of things. However, for the first two seasons, the writers didn't really do that much with either Kelly or Bud. I imagine this was because the two young actors playing them were somewhat unknown quantities, while the two adult leads, O'Neill and Sagal, were the primary stars. Most of the stories in the first two seasons revolve around Al and Peg, or with their actions with their upper-middle class neighbors Steve and Marcy Rhodes. However, the PILOT does establish a degree of animosity between Kelly and Bud, though oddly, Bud's the aggressor. In one scene, he comes up behind Kelly, seated on the couch, and mimes cutting her throat with a rubber knife. Nothing more is said about the incident; Bud is nothing more than a typical annoying little brother. He annoys Kelly a couple more times in the first season-- he steals her diary twice-- before she really retaliates. And when she does so in the seventh episode-- the one entitled MARRIED WITHOUT CHILDREN-- the action goes a little beyond the mundane level of slugging him or giving him a wedgie. After it's established that Kelly's blasting out music from speakers in her room, Bud yells that "Kelly's tied my face to the speaker" in order to torture him with the racket. No reason for her action is stated.

Season Two doesn't have much more Kelly-sadism than the first season. The most notable episode is BORN TO WALK, the eighth one, in which Kelly gets her license to drive, and repeatedly threatens to turn her brother into "car meat." She never does anything overtly violent at this point in the show, though a much later episode had her run down her motorcycle-riding dad with a car. However, in the same episode Peg claims that at some earlier time Kelly shaved Bud's head, forcing him to celebrate Halloween that year by posing as TV detective Kojak. BORN TO WALK, though, seems to be the only second-season episode with that level of sadism.             

I won't go into all the ensuing seasons, but I would say that Season Three finally sets the Kelly-Bud relationship in stone, and to a mutual escalation in hostilities throughout the series, usually with Kelly getting the upper hand. THE CAMPING SHOW has Al, Steve, and Bud trapped in a rustic cabin with Peg, Marcy and Kelly, who are filled with hatred for men by their synchronized periods. At one point, the three women are alone in the cabin with Bud, and Kelly suggests, "Let's pretend Bud's a man and kill him." A little later, THE BALD AND THE BEAUTIFUL has Kelly torment Bud by pranking him that he's losing his hair, and when she asks Peg if she minds, Peg delivers the classic line, "No, that's why we had him!" From then on, even on those occasions when Bud provokes Kelly to retaliation, none of Kelly's actions can be considered epithymotic, because she, like her mother, enjoys male suffering far too much.          

MYTHCOMICS: ["RINGSIDE BLONDIE"] BLONDIE #169 (1963)

 

In my overview of Chic Young's BLONDIE comic strip series-- parts of which were sometimes reworked for newsstand comic books-- I took pains to emphasize that Young had a special talent for formulating certain repeated gags that took on almost folkloric status. I observed that most of these gags were articulated in the BLONDIE strip after 1933, when the feature changed its focus from "young rich guy pursuing flighty young girl" to "middle-class husband constantly suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous matrimony." However, one humor-trope appeared even in the pre-matrimonial years, and that was the trope I termed "the Peacemans and the Bickersons."

This trope isn't exclusive to married couples. One can find the Bard himself plowing that particular field with the two couples in 1599's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, which follows the travails of two non-married couples are depicted. Hero and Leander fit the bill as "Peacemans," for under normal circumstances they appear to be entirely lovey-dovey. Benedick and Beatrice, though, are "the Bickersons," expressing their deep affection by sniping at each other. It's a fair assumption that for Elizabethan audiences, the Peacemans supplied an idealized vision of romantic love, but the Bickersons were the fun couple to watch, even though they only battled verbally.

This dynamic continued through most popular romantic comedies throughout the 20th century, with a secondary romantic couple being contentious with each other while the primary couple was depicted more "seriously." And as I also observed in the overview, Blondie and Dagwood were, on the face of things, "the Peacemans," because they weren't repeatedly shown fighting with one another, verbally or physically, while other couples filled the role of "the Bickersons." Further, one reason it wasn't necessary for Chic Young to focus on fights between Blondie and Dagwood was because Dagwood was constantly being tormented in one way or another by almost everyone he encountered. Young's infusion of frequent slapstick into the Bumsteads' middle-class world ensured that Dagwood was almost always the Goat. His endless sufferings-- mostly from sources outside the home, but occasionally also from Blondie, his kids or his pets-- were the source of the strip's successful humor.

That's what gives the strip I call "Ringside Blondie" the heft of a psychological myth; that of Chic Young expanding on the context of a familiar repeated gag by taking it in a relatively new direction. "Ringside" is almost certainly an earlier twelve-panel Sunday comic strip by Young, reworked for Harvey's publication in a comic book format, so I'm glad to have found an example of Young himself playing with his tropes, in contrast to the earlier BLONDIE mythcomic I examined here. 

In effect, "Ringside" gives Dagwood the chance to be the chance to be on the inside looking out, enjoying the spectacle of another male being tormented. In the first four panels, Blondie scolds Dagwood for openly watching a neighbor-couple, the Flizbys, having a "battle royale." Dagwood notices that Blondie herself peeks at the ongoing fracas before pulling down the window-shade, but she makes a lame excuse that doesn't fool the reader. She'll shortly show herself to be a hypocrite, for she takes just as much pleasure as Dagwood viewing someone else's marital troubles despite saying that it's wrong.

I'll note at this point that no one reading this strip would confuse any of these married martial battles with real spousal abuse. That's why, on the second page, Dagwood keeps remarking on how hard Mrs. Flizby is hitting her husband: "She must've taking boxing lessons when she was young." This sort of remark adds what Northrop Frye called "the protective wall of play," making clear that this is a comedic setup, in which no one is really harmed.

Anyway, Dagwood just goes back to scoping out the neighbors' fight. Once again, Blondie makes moralistic pronouncements while sneaking more than a peek this time. Dagwood acquires binoculars from his son Alexander and stations himself on a balcony to get a better look. Blondie shows up, scolds him again, but somehow ends up using the binocs herself. (Even Daisy the dog gets in on the scopophilia.) Then the pugilistic Mrs. Flizby shows up and sarcastically suggests that both nosy neighbors ought to come over and watch the fight close up. Blondie refuses, claiming she's "insulted," while Dagwood is only too happy to have a ringside seat, peacefully smoking a pipe as if he were watching a TV show. 

This is a rare departure for Chic Young in that Dagwood isn't the Goat for once, except in a very minor way: his son charges him for renting the binocs, and Dagwood accepts the condition. Blondie scolds Dagwood, but she's the main source of humor since she won't admit her nosiness as Dagwood does, and even pretends to be offended when she's correctly called out for her intrusive curiosity. Dagwood pays no real price for satisfying his curiosity, though the spectacle he gets to watch is still that of a male humiliation, as the beleaguered Mr. Flizby is clearly getting the worst of it. But in the more frequent altercations in which Herb Woodley or Mr. Dithers get clobbered by their termagant wives, sometimes the violence would spill over onto Dagwood-- but never, significantly, onto Blondie. This time Dagwood is as insulated from the violence as the readers of the comic strip. 

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.