As I was reading Michael North’s piece about the age of machine comedy, I couldn’t help but realize how similar I found the machine comic nature of Charlie Chaplin when watching an episode of Mr Bean. There isn’t a necessity for witty remarks or well written monologues, just a silly man doing silly things in an mechanical, recreational fashion.
Mr Bean like Chaplin is well known for his attire, where Mr Bean is known for wearing his signature beige suit jacket with a white shirt and red tie, Chaplin was “just as popular for always appearing in the same costume – the famous cane, bowler hat, and tiny mustache- as he was for surprising the audience with outrageous gags”. I didn’t necessarily think that the appearance itself was a source of comedy but in some cases, such as in the very first episode, it can be a ways to create a uniqueness for the character. This is fairly evident in the second sketch of the first episode where Mr Bean goes to the beach for a swim but is left in an awkward situation when a man is sat by the beach and he’s too afraid to dress down into his trunks. It should be noted that Mr Bean is very childlike in the way he acts and never does things in a straightforward fashion, putting his trunks on over his trousers and miraculously taking his trousers off under them.
Just like I wrote before with Gunning’s approach to gag comedy, there is a twist with this sketch in that the man Mr Bean is uncomfortable around turns out to be a blind man as he pulls out his walking stick to walk away. This tends to be a running gag with Mr Bean, where he fails to comprehend a lot of simple things around him. The simple silly idiotic stunts of the comedy is in a sense is what makes it more robust, whether it’s Mr Bean accidentally causing a car crash or invading a movie set by accident and being mistaken for an extra.
With Mr Bean, it’s apparent that the slapstick comic nature is also shared in regards to two defining aspects. Firstly Bean always moves rather awkwardly, looking around as if he has an acute curiosity (like a child). But also, back to North’s statement about Chaplin, “The repetitious aspects of his performance – the squared-off turns, the hackneyed flourishes of the arms- were just as amusing as the pratfalls, which were themselves usually telegraphed far in advance”, the repetition of a joke, even in longevity, arguably stronger in longevity, can still be funny if not funnier when the audience know the joke is long coming and eagerly awaiting the punchline. Mr Bean dawdles, lets out loud grunts and noises, moves very comically and at times unrealistically, he’s a walking signpost for comedy.
Lastly, one could feel bad for Mr Bean, seeing a deeper characteristic of anxiety or a learning deficiency, but as Henri Bergson says it best, “I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity”, or rather what I think he means is that we’re there to laugh and despite any misfortune one may suffer, the joke isn’t (shouldn’t) be designed with pity in mind, or deeper complex emotions.