A fish out of water is a classic comedy situation. Think Crocodile Dundee facing New York. Everything normal, from most of the audience’s part of view (and Sue’s) is strange, wonderful, bewildering and/or challenging for Dundee. He brings an odd, childish perspective whether facing mobs of people, a bidet, or a transvestite.
But here’s the funny (not haha) part. In Australia, though Sue is technically a fish out of water when she is in the Outback, isn’t especially funny. The humor comes more from the relationship and who Dundee is than from the context. It’s a great example of humor (often) requiring that the audience be in a superior position. Few of us are in a superior position when in the Outback. That situation is strange, wonderful, bewildering and/or challenging for most audiences.
There is a clever connection between the two worlds — food — that explicitly equates eating roasted lizards with eating New York hot dogs.
Conflict is at the heart of a fish out of water and other comic situations. It’s all about being at odds: person against person, person against fate or god(s), person against nature, person against society, person against the unknown, person against technology, and person against self (which, when I was in school, was simpler: man against man, man against nature, and man against himself)?
For example:
▪ A fish out of water (Crocodile Dundee) story usually finds conflict through person against society, with a wink.
▪ Liar Liar, where Fletcher struggles against telling the truth is a person against self story (though not just that).
▪ The Music Box, in which Laurel and Hardy struggle to get a piano up the stairs, might be considered person(s) against technology (and a great example of prop humor).
▪ The Odd Couple is person against person, pitting a neatnik against a slob. (Many romantic comedies are person against person, often with differences in social rank adding a person against society component. A favorite of mine is It Happened One Night.)
▪ Clown characters, especially continuing ones like Chaplin’s Little Tramp seem to me to be person against fate stories. They strive for happiness and success, but are doomed to fail or only partly succeed.
▪ I can’t think of a better comic example of person against nature than the wind sequence in Steamboat Bill, Jr. Buster Keaton was a genius.
▪ Person against the unknown is fairly uncommon, probably because irony, that superior position the audience holds, requires common knowledge. Science fiction humor is relatively sparse, probably for this reason. Mork, of Mork and Mindy, leans on a fish out of water premise. To get to familiarity, the story may blend together what is essentially our world with common, well-known tropes from the genre. Good examples that might pass as person against the unknown are Men in Black and A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But, when the balance shifts heavily to the tropes, the humor depends less on the conflict and more on reference humor. And that is a different sort of situation. It’s a spoof.
While spoofs include conflict, they rely on making fun of something specific. Galaxy Quest references Star Trek. Spaceballs references Star Wars. Young Frankenstein references Frankenstein. Away from speculative fiction, consider Airplane!, which references Zero Hour!. Or Life of Brian references the New Testament. Note: If people don't get the reference, most of the humor is lost.
The comic situation may simply be a satire of a genre (like the rock mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap) or it could be taking a poke at the absurdity of real life, like Wag the Dog (politics), Bad Words (spelling bees), or Little Miss Sunshine (beauty pageants).
So comedies can be spoofs, satires, and explorations of seven dramatic conflicts. Or they can be mixes of these. For you as a writer, a clearer clearer understanding of which situations you’re leveraging can provide focus to sharpen your humor and make the work funnier. Such a closer look can also lead you to some terrific films that provide good models of how to get the most out of the situations you’ve chosen.
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