hellomrcauliflower-blog

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Ecce homo qui est faba - Behold the man who is a Bean

Mr. Bean, played by legend Rowan Atkinson, is the slow-witted, selfish, yet likeable man-child protagonist of the 1990’s Britcom with the same title (Mr. Bean, 1990). The original 15 episodes, released over a period of 6 years, focused on the scheming, contrivancing man in a brown tweed jacket with suit pants, white shirt and a thin red tie wriggling himself out of failed attempts at everyday life.

The success of the funny wibbly man Mr. Bean is due to being uninhibited by a language barrier by performing in a physical comic manner, drawing heavily on the world of gags and play. The character barely talks, and when he does he mumbles. The humour, instead, derives from his actions and attitude. Mr. Bean is an accessible character; the comedy of a 9 year-old boy in a self-contained grown man’s body develops a sense of natural anarchy. This combined with the visual comedy of Mr. Bean skyrocketed the character to international success. 

This blog focuses on the magic of the character Mr. Bean, including a brief history on the character, as well as performative aspects of his success as a visual comedian. 

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Cauliflower

During his studies at school, a project introduced Rowan Atkinson to the film Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, a silent film by visual comedian Jacques Tati (Tati, 1953). It was the uncompromising comic attitude and setting that struck a chord in Atkinson. However, it was not until his years studying towards a Masters in electrical engineering at Oxford University where he met comedy writer Richard Curtis that he resurfaced this inspiration. Atkinson was a natural physical comic, and he quickly became successful touring the country with different comedy sketches, working in collaboration with Curtis. Atkinson’s two main sketch characters were the absolute bastard, with no consideration for those around him, or the funny little wibbly man, a clueless man-child - a character that would become the archetype for Mr. Bean. This character was created by Curtis and Atkinson joking to create a man who struggles to keep his eyes open (Later revisited multiple times, including Mr. Bean in church). After being invited to the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Quebec, Canada, 1987, Atkinson sampled his nameless Bean character in the French-speaking programme to see if the character would receive a good international reception for his character’s physical comedy. 

In 1989 said character was given the name Mr. Bean, after consideration of multiple vegetable names, including Mr. Cauliflower. His first episode, titled Mr Bean, was released on January 1, 1990, and over the course of 6 years Atkinson meticulously planned every Bean moment.

The character of Bean is most like Chaplin, Keaton and Tati in the sense that the same character is played in each of his episodes. The character is inevitably a loner, outside, and a charming fool (Cardullo, pp. 358). Mr. Bean himself lives in a small flat in North London with his best and only friend, Teddy. Irma Gobb is his girlfriend, although Mr. Bean seems clueless to this fact. 

Mr. Bean is now the main character of the titular TV series, which ended in 1995. He then went on to be the main character of two feature films Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007), as well as an animated spin-off Mr. Bean: The Animated Series (2002). 

Mr. Bean’s character is not only limited to his series though, the character has also promoted brands such as M&M’s and Snickers and even performed in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean At Church

Mr. Bean trying to stay awake at church (@ 2:45)

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

The Visual Comic

Mr. Bean is a visual comic. Looking at visual comedy, you would think that it is a thing of the past: black and white silent films and mimes. However comedy as a result of physical activity is more common today than we realise, for example funny compilations of people hurting themselves. In reality, the big laughs result from physical rather than verbal humour. Physical/visual comedy is the performance using your body as the essential means of expression. It is important for the physical comedian to not only look funny, but they must also act funny. The three main principles of visual comedy, according to Atkinson himself, revolve around the object being funny by a) being the wrong size, b) being in the wrong place and c) behaving in an unusual way (Atkinson).  The main technique applied to Mr. Beans comedies are things behaving in an unusual way, however there are more visual performative aspects that are addressed, these being Slapstick and Violence, Jokes and Attitude, and Mime and Body Language. 

The Visual Comic character itself is presented as an alien, someone on the other side of the looking glass. The physical comedian is like us, but unique in quality of being innocent as though they were born yesterday. The visual comedian must constantly make mistakes, be susceptible to accidents, clumsy but also tenacious and no matter what they keep doing activities past the point a normal person would have resigned (Atkinson). Mr. Bean is this in the way he is an adult with the intellectual equipment of an infant that is constantly found creating and solving mishaps in absurd ways. He is a disaster prone character, who suffers from his self-made inadequacies. Despite this, his character never gives up, and is rarely ashamed, solving his problems with the bizarreness which is found in familiarity. 

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

The Visual Comic: Slapstick and Violence

Slapstick and violence is the most popular performance element of comedy when you think of silent films. They are a commonly used method to make jokes happen: someone falling or having something falling on them is always going to be funny. Slapstick is ruled by the principle of accretion: gags, situations, costumes, characters still eliciting laughs making comedies delightfully incoherent (Crafton, pp. 356). Mr. Bean is known for his gags. As an impatient selfish man, the character has no boundaries for when he wants to get his own way, for example, tripping people up, or blaming his violence on others forcing them against each other (See At the Hospital Video 1:22). Slapstick is funny due to its schadenfreude, where viewers seek pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. Mr. Bean’s character is misfortunate to another level, my favourite example being the classic slapstick gag of getting stuck in an object. Unfortunately for Bean this happens more often than a normal person would like to admit. In his reputable Christmas episode, he gets his head stuck in a turkey in search for his watch. In one of the first episodes ‘At the Hospital’ Mr. Bean is seen causing raucous in a hospital waiting room, being there to get his hand out of being stuck in a teapot, and ending up with the other hand in a garbage tin. In Mr. Bean’s case slapstick is funny because it is often himself losing dignity rather than oppressing another character, and is often in an unexpected way. In terms of the performative aspect being successful, it comes down to the ingenious reactions of the character, striving for believability by either overstating or understating an action/reaction. In this case, Mr. Bean falls into both overstating and understating depending on the gag being played. 

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean At The Hospital

Mr. Bean Visual Comedian: Slapstick and Violence

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean Christmas

Example of Mr. Bean Slapstick

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

The Visual Comic: Jokes and Attitude

In physical comedy the same jokes appear again and again, the value in the humour does not often change and so these actions and ideas are always re-presented. What develops a joke further, especially in the world of Mr. Bean, is performing and old joke in a new way. Visual comics do this by applying a new attitude to the joke: new attitude, new joke (Puschak). The attitudes most commonly used are: the dim attitude where comedy arrives from a lack of awareness, the aggressive attitude where the comedian has a lack of consideration for others, and the crude attitude, where the joke lies in the comedy of vulgarity. 

Attitude is the significant element that Atkinson is praised for most in Mr. Bean’s character, and is also the performative aspect that the actor enjoys the most: the attitude in which humour is told. Mr. Bean presents at most times a mix of all three attitudes throughout the episodes and it is also the element of the performance that Atkinson enjoys the most. Mr. Bean’s overall character is the buffoon, the dim and clueless alienated character, however being impatient he is also aggressive as his natural anarchy seeks his own needs before others. Like Tati’s Hulot, Mr. Bean is not a comedian in the sense of being the source and focus of humour, rather he is a signpost, an attitude and a perspective that reveals the humour in the surrounding world (Cardullo, pp. 359). It is not a joke that makes the action funny, yet the way in which Mr. Bean as a character reacts. An important example of the reshaping of a joke is during Mr. Bean’s restaurant scene. The waiter pulls out the chair for the character, however instead of the character accepting this, he expects the gag and rudely takes the chair from the waiter and pulls it in himself. 

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean At The Restaurant

Mr. Bean Visual Comedian: Jokes and Attitude

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

The Visual Comic: Mime and Body Language

Mr. Bean is funny because he speaks with his body. Idealistically in physical comedy nothing transcends character, where physical comedy is the ability to communicate through mime and body language. Humour is created by creating pleasure surrounding an illusion, and comic acting. Visual comedy is not about doing funny things, it is about doing normal things in a funny way based on observation of the human character and finding the funny in human mannerisms. By making the body the key site of comedy, the acting signals its comic intent, ensuring the aim of the performance can be understood to a universal audience (Mills, pp.131). Mr. Bean speaks most with his body, his body is his source of communication; whether it be an exhausted sigh, a crude facial expression or a gleeful smile as he schemes his way out of another sticky situation. He emotes himself through posture, expression and physique. As a naturally gormless character, Mr. Bean’s success is in the way that he reacts with his face, and has become a huge reliance during performance that Rowan Atkinson has faith in his face (Wood), reacting naturally to situations rather than forcing a facial reaction. The non-verbal communication present in Mr. Bean is not only a credit to its success because of its international accessibility, but it is a credit to the humour of the show, communicating without words often causes miscommunication between character interactions with Mr. Bean, which results in changes of his body language because he is easily aggravated when situations do not go his way. Body language is also important for Mr. Bean’s character for using his body to do normal things, but in a funny way. The use of human observation, using the world around him to inspire the way he communicates, or in some cases, does not communicate. Instead of creating his jokes, the funny of Mr. Bean derives from the human character and details surrounding the character. For example, the scene in which Mr. Bean impatiently tries to get past an elderly lady on the staircase, in his frustration the character struggles to communicate, and instead emotes with his body and then strategises an alternative way of progressing down the staircase.

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean In The Stairway

Mr. Bean Visual Comedian: Body Language

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean At The Pool

Example video of how Mr. Bean uses his body to emote and communicate

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Mr. Bean as a physical comedian performer is not funny because of his gags or his slapstick routines or meticulously planned sketches. Mr. Bean is funny because of his attitude, his alienation from the world, his gormless body and the way that he reacts to the situations that he gets himself in. Mr. Bean is someone in this world but not of this world and although he is uncivilised, clumsy and baffled by the world around him, he approaches the world with his own ingenuity. The performative aspects of Slapstick, Body Language and Jokes help make him funny, but it is his own personal attitude and approach to the world that are funny.

[hellomrcauliflower-blog]

Bonus Bean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aIfMX7FBbI

Mr. Bean Seaside Holiday, released 24 August, 2019  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUFIrBaTZ6E