Bobs Burgers: A Case Study
Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog, Have Things Really Changed? For those of you who are new, this blog where I explore the relationships between ancient and modern times. More specifically, I make an in-depth analytical comparison of a modern noun with an ancient one every week; this ranges anywhere from people, places, and art to events and entertainment. My goal is to show modern times are often simply a continuation of ancient times, regardless of how different it all may seem, and the technological advancements we have made. This week, I will take a dive into an episode of the popular television show Bob’s Burgers called ‘Sexy Dance Fighting’ (Season 1, Episode 4) alongside Aristophanes’ old comedy Clouds; these two have similar plots, but I am more focused on how what, specifically obscenity,makes them funny ties them together. It is okay to be skeptical of this at first — after all, how much can a cartoon show and a play really have in common?
Background Information
Clouds doesn’t have a background in the sense that you should already be familiar with the characters and know what to expect from it ahead of time, however there is historical context. This was a play performed in a competition at the Dionysia festival for the god of wine and fertility, one of the two annual festivals in his honor. Typically, the performed plays were more politically founded than this one which is designed for ‘the more intellectual’, this disconnect from the norm may be why this play came in last (3/3). If you are interested in reading more about this, I recommend Clouds, a translation by Stephen Halliwell because it includes a translation of the play and does a phenomenal job giving more context (Aristophanes, trans. Halliwell). Another bit of context worth mentioning is Socrates, so I have included a video below, (Nails, 2018). *
Bob’s Burgers requires a bit more background information because it is part of series, rather than an independent production, but does not need historical context. If you are already familiar with the basic set up of the series, feel free to skip to the next section. The show has five main characters whom are all members of the middle-class Belcher family: Bob, Linda, Tina, Gene and Louise. Bob and Linda own a burger shop, and fill the roles that parents usually are associated (for example, the rational voice, the wise one, etc.), yet still let their childish instincts come out to play regularly. Tina (13) is the oldest, she is perpetually going through puberty since the characters never really get older and loves boys and butts; Gene (11) is the jokester, he always has an unexpected and rather adult comment to make; Louise is the youngest, she tries to portray herself as evil, but is relatively harmless. Together, they end up in some pretty funny situations that are just a tad more unusual one might expect in real life, but that combined with their family dynamic makes for great TV. For those who want to get a better understanding of the family and the scenarios they end up in, the full series is on Hulu, and during the season new episodes are on Fox every Sunday at 9 pm.
Plot Summaries
Clouds starts with a man named Strepsiades who is in major debt from his son’s horse habit. Strepsiades thinks that he best shot at escaping his debts would be if his son, Pheidippides, learned to debate at Socrates’ thinkery, but has to take on the learning himself after Pheidippides refuses. After watching Strepsiades make stupid mistakes and choices over and over again, Socrates quickly realizes that Strepsiades is a hopeless student and finally Strepsiades gets Pheidippides to enroll instead. When he returns from learning at the thinkery, Pheidippides begins to use immoral arguments to justify things like hitting his father, which Strepsiades is extremely upset about. Strepsiades manages to evade some of his debts, but ultimately decides that using immoral arguments is wrong. Naturally, he blames Socrates for being the teacher of these arguments and his own forsaking of the gods to be immoral, so he burns down Socrates’ thinkery and goes back to his old ways (Aristophanes, trans. Halliwell, 2015).
‘Sexy Dance Fighting’ kicks off with Tina laying on the floor, depressed because a boy she liked moved away and she is going through puberty. Attempting to cheer her up, Gene and Louise show her a class they refer to as ‘a special needs break dancing class,’ but Tina is quickly enticed by the instructor Jairo’s sexy looks and signs up for Capoeira classes.
One day, Tina stays after to practice and misses work at the family restaurant, so Bob shows up to the class to remind her of her responsibilities. Jairo feels Bob is dissing capoeira and a sexy dance fight ensues, but stops short when Bob poops his pants. Bob stay away from the studio for a while and protests Tina’s attendance, but when the troca de cordesrolls around and Tina has the chance to level up, Bob shows up to be a supportive father. Jairo takes his dislike for Bob out on Tina, and another fight happens, sans poop, yet Bob is destroyed by Jairo. In the end, Tina decides Jairo is a jerk and chooses to go back to working at the restaurant instead (Bouchard, Dauterive, Molynuex, et al. 2011).
Obscenity
The foremost commonality in the techniques utilized by both Clouds and Bob’s Burgers is Obscenity; the dominating obscenity in both is potty humor. With the term potty humor, I simply mean humor/jokes related to the bodily functions people do not bring up in polite company: sex/masturbation, defecation, butts, etc., and can take verbal, physical, or visual forms. For the sake of offering clear examples of all three obscenity types, I am not limiting my analysis to potty humor. Obscenity is one of the most common tactics used to incite laughter in people of all age; Obscenity signals non-serious social incongruity, the feeling that develops when someone would not necessarily expect what is going on, but can tell they are not in danger, this is the stimulus of laughter. This phenomenon can be observed clearly in infants. Infants react to the same stimuli differently based off the context, whether or not they feel safe (as cited, Gervais & Wilson, 2005). The laugher of others increases one’s own sense of safety, making them more likely to laugh, feeding into the sense of safety further and the sensus communis.
The Oxford English Dictionary describes obscenity as something that is “offensive to moral principles,” and can be “offensive … by accepted standards of morality and decency.” Many people associate obscenity with ‘bad’ words, inappropriately timed sexual jokes and actions, and violence/gore in movies. There was a US Supreme Court case in 1972/73 called Miller v. Californiaon the topic of obscenity, which is not protected in the First Amendment as decide in Roth v. United Statesin 1957. The case was in regards to man who sent out unsolicited, explicit flyers advertising adult material that ultimately failed the obscenity test set by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. (His last name is a happy coincidence!) “The three parts of the test soon became known, in short, as the prurient interest, patently offensive, and SLAPS prongs (Hudson).” For more, follow the link below! In this case, the examples of obscenity are not quite as extreme, may not fit the contemporary expectation of offensive, and cause laughter rather than of discomfort.
In Old Greek comedies, obscenity was so engrained that it would have been odd to attend a play and expect anything less than numerous obscene jokes, situations, and even costumes. That’s right, even the costumes worn by the all-male performers were intentionally obscene verbally, physically, and visually- even by today’s standard. The actors would wear large fat suits, masks, and big, floppy, fake phalluses. Floppy is an important descriptor here because in Satyr Plays, an erect penis was part of the costume instead. Furthermore, the Clouds makes numerous jokes or puts characters in situations regarding things like bodily fluids, body parts, and functions. Bob’s Burgers is also known for its obscenity, but often time in a less obvious and harsh way than Clouds which tends to make the show more family friendly. The Belchers always wear the same modest, plain clothes, and though physical obscenity is common, the show rarely has visuals accompanying it. Regardless of the predominant type of obscenity, the overarching utilization of it ties the two together.
Verbal Obscenity
Verbal obscenity is the easiest of the three to miss. The words/phrases used and the context have to be monitored consistently or the transgression of expectations may be missed entirely. Of course, for us this is more applicable to Bob’s Burgers because it is more challenging to focus on the on the words when they are not written in front of you, and as previously stated the obscenity can be less obvious and may go over our heads entirely. In Clouds, we have the advantage of reading, making verbal obscenity easier to recognize; however, in its heyday it was performed for the audience, so this is still applicable.
Clouds is ripe with almost palpable obscenity that even children would recognize; a notable example of verbal obscenity in Clouds can be found on lines 191 to 195 (Aristophanes, trans. Halliwell, 2015),
STREPSIADES: And what is this group doing here, the ones bent double?
STUDENT A: Taking Erebos probes down under Tartaro’s realm.
STREPSIADES: [examining their buttocks]. Then why is their anus gazing right up at the sky?
STUDENT A: It’s learning to do astronomy all on its own.
Consider Tartaro’s realm as the “underworld’s darkest recesses (Halliwell, footnote 192).” In this example, Strepsiades is at Socrates’ thinkery for the first time, and while conversing with a current student about what happens at the thinkery, is more interested the other student’s butts. We can see how the obscene act of our main character examining the butts of others on stage is a visual example of obscenity, the majority of people, whether they like to look at butts (Ahem! Tina) or not, do not want to have their butt stared at by a random old man. Here, the visual aspect is not the main humor tactic, it is primarily to set up his asking about their anuses, ipso facto verbal obscenity. This violates our notion that he would be interested in in hearing about something he is about to sign up for and, less importantly, that that is what he chose to ask about, therefore inciting laughter. For the audience members unimpressed by the bodily obscenity, it is followed up with a witty retort, rather than an annoyed one, from the student, further increasing the likelihood of appeal to all audience members. Finally, it is worth pointing out how the student’s answer to the first question does not make sense — by simply bending over one could not possibly expect to reach the underworld, especially if they believe there is no way to reach the underworld other than the River of Styx (a popular belief at the time). This entire interaction is confusing and clearly non-serious; although it was surely funnier to the ancient audience, its bound to make the modern one laugh as well.
In Bob’s Burgers, most of the verbal obscenity is something that probably will not go overheads, yet the ones that might are actually the most obscene. Typically, there are not many of these in each episode, yet they are consistent over the series, and I like to think of them as little nuggets of comedic gold. The primary example of ‘hidden’ verbal humor can be found here (the first 21 seconds), the video quality isn’t great, and the sound doesn’t quite match up to the video, but the audio is the important part (Bouchard, et al. 2011).**
Now, the idea of the kids going to play with the dead seal they found is pretty obviously obscene and hard to miss the humor in. After all, we probably would not expect anyone to get really excited about doing this, unless they stumbled upon it and felt the need to poke or throw rocks at it, but not that they would go out of their way to do it again. The real obscenity, however, comes in when Gene wants to sample the sounds because he believes it sounds like an orgy. This is hidden obscenity because it is a glazed over remark without any sort of build up or follow up; furthermore, kids watching the show would not know what an orgy is, so they don’t get/recognize the joke. It subverts our predictions because it is at the end of an episode and a more extreme obscenity than we are used to, and we know there is no way Gene actually knows what an orgy sounds like, or realistically what it is. (I thought about including a sound link, but you should probably just look it up yourself if you are that interested.)
Physical & Visual Obscenity
Physical and visual obscenity; again, acknowledging Clouds is a play we read but Ancients saw performed; are the most obvious to recognize. Visual and physical obscenity go hand in hand, but each can exist independently of the other. It is important that we make this distinction evident, if they are mentally lumped together then it will be harder to understand how Bob’s Burgers and Cloudsuse different emphasis on the two with the same intention, and for the most part the same results. We will draw the line between the two using how they appear (visually) in the plot and what (for example: bodily functions) causes the obscenity. Hopefully, this will become more clear as I elaborate and give distinct examples of the two, and of when the two are directly related. I will focus primarily on the separation of the visual and the physical in Bob’s Burgers, as they do not have much overlap between the two due to the relative lack of visual obscenity. For Clouds, the visual and physical overlap is so hard to gauge that the independence of the physical from the visual not possible to analyze, but visual can be distinguished from the physical and we can examine the overlap.
In Bob’s Burgers
Since Bob’s Burgers is a cartoon show rather than a live performance, there are fewer constraints on how they can portray visual obscenity. This gives the writers and animators the opportunity to really focus the audience’s attention on visual obscenity; specifically, they are able to add visual obscenity in where it isn’t typically seen. Bob’s Burgers is not a big propagator of visual obscenity, but it is used to highlight the less gross visual humor. For example, as Bob walks into the capoeira studio to watch Tina at the Troca de Cordes we can literally see the stink lines coming off of the pile of shoes next to the door (Bouchard, et al, 2011), (we do see this earlier on too, but this is the only clip I could find). It turns out Fox monitors YouTube and other websites closely to make sure no high-quality clip exists anywhere, so please excuse the quality of this clip (0:29, to 0:41).
This possibility of making a smell visual is not something that can be found in any form other than a cartoon. In all fairness, the fact that the smell was an unfavorable one was acknowledged earlier in the episode, but green translucent waves coming from a pile of shoes speak for themselves. Although we would expect a room with barefoot tweens to smell pretty awful, the continual spotlight on the smell is still obscene; the vivid nature makes the smell obvious to the point that we can imagine the smell and possibly even smell a phantom shoe odor in the air. This creates an uncanny sort of funny feeling that a cartoon could possibly have that much of a physical affect on us. Furthermore, the repetition of the theme transcends our expectations because over the course of Tina’s classes the Belchers did not get used to the smell, pointing out how comically malodorous it must be.
Our solely physical example in Bob’s Burger shas already been talked about a bit in the episode summary because it plays an important role in the plot. Namely, when Bob poops his pants in the middle of fighting Jairo, here (0:38 to 1:25), his ‘meeting’ being his daily scheduled poop (Bouchard, et.al, 2011). There is a bit of build up to this incident, the audience knows Bob is putting off pooping and is irritable because Tina didn’t show up to cover the grill for his meeting; Nonetheless, there is no real foreshadowing that Bob and Jairo will get physical, and even when the fight starts it does not really last long enough for the audience to recognize what is about to happen. If you watch a little further in the clip, you will see Bob crab walk out the door, but you will never see any sign, other than behavioral, that it happened — there is no mess on the floor and we never see the seat of his pants. This obscene occurrence is not dampened by a gross out factor (visual obscenity), and has such a quick progression of events that we cannot see it coming. This surprise utilizes a sudden bodily function to function to make us laugh, whether or not we can relate (runners, you probably know what’s up) well to the situation, it makes us feel superior.
In Clouds
The visual aspects of Clouds are understandably difficult to imagine, the written play itself contains very little detail on how scenes would be performed. Additionally, Aristophanes would have certainly used more independent visual humor in the performance than was recorded/specified. Between lines 83 and 84, a group of students emerged from the thinkery and “engaged in various ‘scientific’ activities” (Aristophanes, trans. Halliwell). This is a prime example of where there would be visual humor; for the audience to recognize the science as incorrect, it would have to be noticeable enough for all levels of education to figure it out. The science would have to be as obviously wrong as a child playing doctor to maximize the comedy in it. At a place we have been led to believe is rather prestigious, the students partaking in obvious pseudo-science catches us off guard and defies our prior assumptions— it makes us feel ridiculous. Not ridiculous in a bad, embarrassing way, just in the way that our expectations were not only wrong, but also how the serious atmosphere turned around just like that. It even helps us feel more comfortable laughing at the upcoming events.
As stated prior, the information we have about the production value of Clouds is lacking,this makes distinguishing physical and visual humor a daunting task, without knowing the extent visual humor is used to portray physical humor makes it hard to separate the physical from the visual. For this reason, we can’t make any assumptions about physical humor being used without accompanying visual humor, so we have to consider the overlap in the play where it is certain both are present. This actually set up right in between lines 633 and 634, “[Strepsiades] is now scantily clad,” (Aristophanes, trans. Halliwell 2015), and this is the main visual obscenity that feeds into the upcoming physical/visual obscenity overlap. Socrates tasks Strepsiades with laying in a bedbug ridden bed and thinking — remember, Strepsiades does not last long at the school due to his stupidity. The first time Socrates asks about what Strepsiades has thought about, all he can do is complain about the bugs, so he is instructed to continue. When Strepsiades returns to inquire again, Strepsiades responds “The one thing I’ve managed to grasp is my prick — under here in my hand!” (Aristophanes, trans. Halliwell, 2015, line 35). The audience has already seen most of Strepsiades, so although he is hidden under a blanket masturbating, that does not stop the visual obscenity. The audience will unavoidably form a mental image of him under the covers; this obscenity is so inappropriate and out of the blue for Strepsiades to partake in while trying to impress Socrates, that it completely goes against what we would expect of even Strepsiades in the situation. This odd act to perform in public is funny enough simply in the way it happens, but it also makes us feel superior because we feel so disconnected from the possibility of doing it ourselves.
Conclusion
Both Clouds and Bob’s Burgers rely on obscenity to entice and crack up the audience, intertwining the two through the inherent similarity. They do have different emphasis on types of obscenity used, but ultimately have different audiences that they have to cater to, Clouds was able to incorporate more obscenity since it was intended for male adults rather than a more family-based audience. Regardless of the differences, upon analysis we see that they do both incorporate verbal, visual, and physical obscenity with the same intent and results. Finally, lets look back at our primary question: Have Things Really Changed? In the case of obscenity as a major technique used in comedy we can answer this with a simple no, the continuation of ancient practices in modern society is clearly exemplified here.
References
Aristophanes, & Halliwell, S. (2015). Aristophanes — frogs and other plays: a new translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bouchard, L. H. (Creator, Writer & Producer), Dauterive, J. T. (Developer,Writer & Producer), Molynuex, W., et al.** Fox. (2011, February 13). Sexy Dance Fighting. Bob’s Burgers.
Gervais, M., & Wilson, D. S. (2005). The Evolution And Functions Of Laughter And Humor: A Synthetic Approach. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 80(4), 395–430. doi: 10.1086/498281
Hudson, Jr, D. L. (n.d.). Miller v. California. Retrieved from https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/401/miller-v-california
Nails, D. (2018, February 6). Socrates. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates
Notes
* A big thank you to my boyfriend, Harry N. Jarvis, for his role as Socrates!
** If the video gets taken down for copyright reasons, a shorter clip can be found here, this clip leaves out this build up to the joke, so here is what you miss: Gene and Louise are heading down to the pier to poke at/slap a dead seal they found.
*** There are thirteen writers for this season of Bob’s Burgers