Concrete Jokes
In poetry, words that evoke sensation are often referred to as “concrete imagery”. The more we can connect with our audience on a material level, through feeling, the more affective our writing will be, whether a poem, novel or script, drama and comedy.
Malcolm Tucker, from The Thick Of It, is one of the greatest insulters in comedy history. As well as being very funny, his diatribes teach us a lot about the importance of concrete imagery in comedy.
Pater Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker in 'The Thick Of It'
He is funny because he is specific: “I’d love to stop and chat but I’d rather have type 2 diabetes.” Not just die. Type 2 diabetes.
And he is original: “As useless as a marzipan dildo.” Recognise the original source? By adapting cliched insults, he delivers two things: familiarity and a twist, giving us a double-hit... the pleasure of pattern recognition, and the surprise of the unfamiliar.
Indeed, good scripts need to be both familiar but different on multiple levels. You can see that in macro; where a show takes a staid genre but places it somewhere we might not have seen before (for example, BBC’s ‘Blue Lights’), but also in micro, in the scene-to-scene and language choices a writer makes.
Humans desire recognisable patterns, on a neurological, primal level- it is safety. But the purpose of drama and comedy is to disturb those “normalities”, to break rhythms and upset expectation, before returning us to the comfort of safety: the resolution, the happy ending, the pattern. But not before we are tortured with conflict, transgression, dissonance.
It is in your twist on the familiar that your writer's voice and point of view is communicated, and with characters, who they are.
In his command of the English language, and his disregard for others’ feelings, Malcolm Tucker is the kind of character we wish we could be in our daily lives. But are also kind of glad we aren’t.
He exaggerates to a grotesque degree… but he is also poetic: “He’s so dense that light bends around him.” The word play here manages to be both scientifically factual and lyrical at the same time.
Indeed, for poetic writers, the comedic insult is a great way to smuggle lyricism into our scripts. Another example, this time from a more benign source, Bob Mortimer’s ‘Train Guy’: “You look like a haunted dishcloth.”
What does someone who looks like “a haunted dishcloth” look like? Grey. Tragic. Sad. Old fashioned. Dirty. Floppy. Tired.
To tell us that would have been alright. But to paint the picture of how it feels? It gives us, the audience, the keys to completing the experience, the feeling. It activates our imagination, and we feel.
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